Without Stories

The two guys who clear the grocery carts off the Costco lot were in a good mood. It was payday and one of them finally had enough money to get his nipples pierced.

He was absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of parading the beach with his newly sparkling pecs on the last long weekend of the summer, exhilarating in how Cool that was gonna be.

My first thought was of how “Cool” might have a different context when he was humping those empty carts across the windblown ice of the same parking lot come February.

But as they went on about whether they should splurge for a few beers at lunch or pick up one of those way sweet Budwiser knapsack cases on the way home, my second thought was of the inspired Craig Ferguson clip on “the deification of imbecility” that had been making the rounds.

As I finished loading my car and the boys continued their banter, one of them picked up a business card from the pavement and tried to decipher it. His buddy stepped in to help. And it quickly became clear that neither one of these guys really knew how to read.

For too many reasons I’d bore you to death by describing, I learned to read before I went to school. And I firmly believe the stories I read as a kid helped me understand and figure out things my parents, friends and teachers couldn’t. Those stories also gave me experiences and insight I wouldn’t have otherwise had. And they inspired me to strive for what others around me didn’t.

And while somebody much smarter than I’ll ever be once said that “good books are those that reinforce your own prejudices”, I believe even the bad ones help you find your way through the world.

From parables that founded religions and philosophies to Sci-fi novels that inspired scientists to get us to the moon, human history has always been guided by bringing our myths and fantasies to life.

We’re a species that hungers for stories and maps our progress with them. From kids needing comfort before drifting off to the unfathomable world of sleep to a foursome playing bridge in a Seniors’ home reminding themselves of their history, we are sustained and energized by the stories we share.

But those two guys in that parking lot had had a segment of their deserved humanity withheld from them. And they’re far from alone.

A few years ago, I went to see a much anticipated new Comic book hero movie. The snack bar line wasn’t moving because the cash register wasn’t working. By that I mean, when it tallied your total and you gave the kid behind the counter your money, it wouldn’t then do the math and let him know how much you got back in change.

A half dozen kids in spiffy uniforms were all trying to help each other and equally flummoxed. Older people in the line, those who had never had the luxury of pocket calculators in math class, tried to help, as in “You owe me $2.32.” But even then, the kids couldn’t deal with the lack of certainty the failure of the till had instilled.

And then about halfway through the movie, the pace of the action slowed for what was the only scene of character important dialogue between the male and female leads. Less than thirty seconds into their conversation, a voice from the back bellowed “Either Fuck or Fight!” an admonition loudly cheered by those in attendance.

I needed two slabs of post-movie pie that night to mull over what all this meant to the craft of screenwriting and the kind of audiences writers would soon be asked to engage.

Around the same time as my movie incident, people in other industries began complaining about the lack of high school and even university graduates who had basic skills in reading, simple math and other supposed core tenets of our education system.

Their criticisms went unaddressed and we now have a growing population that haven’t had the benefit of the perspectives to be gained from encountering Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield or even Harry Potter.

A few weeks ago, a High School Board in Brampton, Ontario voted to remove “To Kill A Mockingbird” from their school libraries because it contains the “N” word --- a word their students hear more often in one hour of listening to Hip Hop than they’ll find in that book, while at the same time missing out on one of the most powerful anti-Racism messages ever written.

It’s this same lack of story understanding that caused people to pull “Huckleberry Finn” off the stands when I was in school. Luckily, that happened after I’d already read the book, which left an 11 year old white kid from Saskatchewan, one who’d never even seen a Black man, with the impression that Huck’s friend Jim was about the best friend anybody could ever have.

Not being able to encounter the “N” word and then be masterfully shown the way past it by Mark Twain and Harper Lee would have made me a different person than I am today. A lesser person.

And that same lack of understanding of the true power of storytelling and the “lack of stories” itself has a lot to do with the problems we’re now facing in the TV industry.

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not some kind of book snob who thinks you need to appreciate the Classics to succeed in life. But I am a story advocate. And I don’t care if you get your stories from comic books, movies, TV or an XBox. Because that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have stories in your life.

A crisp Chardonnay is still a crisp Chardonnay whether it’s sipped from a mason jar or fine crystal. Novels (Graphic or otherwise), eBooks from iTunes or Kindle, movies, TV and the Internet are merely the context by which the content reaches you. It’s what’s in that content, those stories, that enriches you.

And when we lose what’s gained by following a fictional character on his journey and applying it to our own lives, we breed the aimless, goal-less, coarsening and porn imitating society anybody being honest with themselves can see burgeoning around us.

And I don’t blame any of the people you see in that lifestyle for any of this. Hell, if I was stuck with an endless string of dead end jobs at minimum wage without having been taught the tools to escape that prison, I’d probably skip the nipple piercing and go right for a Prince Albert.

For an image more accurately related to the above reference, please consult Dr. Google.

I once tried to get the Writers Guild involved in supporting some kind of literacy program. But we’re a small Guild here with not many resources and the general feeling was that if we were going to teach anybody to read, it might be in our best interests to start with those who make programming decisions at the networks.

And I tend to agree with that assessment.

We’ve just come through a decade dominated by “Reality” programming, most of which is actually manufactured reality, an imitation of dramatic elements that are most often not created or programmed by people with any real dramatic skill.  And yes, some of these shows do make a lot of money for broadcasters. But those profits can be deceiving.

This summer “Big Brother 11” and “So You Think You Can Dance Canada” were about the only shows our private networks offered which earned them any kind of audience worth paying their PR flacks to brag about.

Yet, even these successes have not managed to make much difference to their collapsing business model.

Anybody with any kind of profile in the entertainment business will not only tell you how much their continuing failure has affected our own bottom lines and ability to find work. But each and every one us also has a wealth of personal encounters we can relate with gym rats, bartenders and reno contractors who all firmly believe they could be the next reality star, hit show host or Bachelor/Bachelorette winner.

It’s all part of an “I know my life would look all right if I could see it on the silver screen” syndrome that’s as false as the lengthy careers experienced by “Canadian Idol” winners. There isn’t one person at any broadcaster who honestly believes their next/latest “SYTYCD” champion or “Triple Threat” winner will even be in the business a short distance down the road.

And that cynical, devoid of talent manipulation of a mass audience that already doesn’t have a lot going for it is killing television.

I don’t think I go out on too flimsy a limb in predicting that 2009 will be the last or at best next to last, season of television resembling anything the industry and its audience have previously known.

The 2009 – 2010 TV season will have fewer hours of drama than ever before. NBC has entirely wiped the once highly valued 10 o’clock show from its schedule. In Canada, even the CBC has stopped pretending it’s the bastion of Canadian drama as it endlessly promotes a pointless exercise involving retired hockey goons and past their prime ice dancers.

What will anyone learn from “Battle of the Blades”? That some semi-famous people have a sense of humor about themselves? So….?

Nobody in Canada wants to produce Drama anymore because making it is “hard” and “time-consuming” and “expensive”. But the truth is that our networks can’t afford not to endure that (painful for everybody) “Development Hell” process. Because more and more people are going elsewhere to find the stories their lives and their very souls need and they’re not coming back.

In the ten years since our networks began depending on non-dramatic programming, their audience has declined by 35%. Last season they experienced an overall loss of 10% from the numbers they had enjoyed only one year earlier. The drop in the coveted 18-49 demographic was 17%. 

You don’t need to be a business genius or even only smart enough to work at CanWest to know that continuing to follow a cheap programming business model is hastening the day when you have to turn out the lights for good.

It wouldn’t take someone with a much higher IQ to realize that the people who have been in charge of program development at almost all of our networks have a track record that would have seen them taken out behind the barn and shot if they had four legs instead of two.

And it’s not that these people have never had the time or the money to bring their chosen projects to fruition. In Canada, development lasts an average of SIX TIMES longer than it does South of the border. Meanwhile, channels that will NEVER broadcast the finished product chip in on somebody else’s development slate in order to meet their own mandated “development spend”.

What’s standing in the way of more successful dramas coming out of this country? To my mind it’s simply that the people in charge of development are not themselves story tellers. They don’t instinctively know what works, what inspires and which tweaks will evoke which emotions.

They understand how much the audience enjoys “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men” or “Arrested Devewlopment” because anybody even halfway human can experience and appreciate a finished product from any culture. Creating shows that original themselves, however, is simply far above their pay grade.

Babble about marketing trends and audience taste and the zeitgeist all you want. When a script works, it works. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And the majority of Canadian development executives can’t spot the difference at the outline stage.

So how do we solve this? How do we find people who know how to make good television in this country?

Once again, the answer is simple. We already have a bunch of them.

Just quickly perusing the membership of the Writers Guild of Canada, I can find a couple dozen writers with a hundred or more individual script credits to their names. These people know story. They know the craft backwards because they’ve had to create or fix the scripts that gave them all those credits.

These people are almost all approaching the age at which, if they wrote novels, they’d be considered for Nobel and Giller prizes, their next stories eagerly anticipated for the life experience and craft skills they have acquired along the way.

But in the film and television business they are considered mostly unemployable at 40 and not even worth talking to at 50. At a stage in their lives when they’ve pretty much heard all the excuses, seen all the games, savored every flavor of bullshit and know why what worked on “Desperate Housewives” won’t work on “Wild Roses” they are usually just turned out to pasture.

But like good Scotch, most writers actually improve with age. There isn’t one who looks back on a script he or she wrote at 20 and doesn’t long for the chance to turn it into what it could have been.

These people are story tellers. They have dedicated their lives to learning the ways you connect with an audience. And most of them already mentor the writers with less experience who populate the current network wish lists.

Having people who understand story from the inside actually on the inside means the entire development process suddenly becomes streamlined, faster, and cheaper with less emotional angst for all involved. Combine these people with showrunners who write and you suddenly have a network/studio team capable of bringing stories to our screens that will attract and inspire an audience.

Continue in the “cheap programming” direction we’re heading, continue to rely on people who can critique but not create and we not only lose an industry, we create more aimless, lost people who measure their achievements in piercings and body ink and one night become so hopeless and lost they carve somebody up for an iPod or take that one drink or hit too many.

Since the dawn of time, Story tellers have been our healers. If we’re going to save Canadian television, it’s time we let the ones we have do their job.

Lazy Sunday # 82: It Was The Best Of Times. It Was The End Of Times.

Everybody has heard that ancient Chinese saying: “May You Live In Interesting Times”. It gets trotted out to describe virtually every difficult news day or life crisis. For me, it’s always been one of those phrases of inscrutable wisdom reminding us that while things may feel chaotic and overwhelming, nobody really wants to live in “uninteresting” times.

In my own lifetime, I’ve seen men walk on another heavenly body, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup. Since there’s a good chance none of those things will ever recur in what remains of my life, I’m fairly pleased to have experienced those “interesting times”.

But a lot of people insist that when things get too interesting , using all sorts of snippets of news and hard to understand human activities as proof, it’s a sign that the end is near. Apparently, there’s a part of some of us that just short circuits when Life gets overly complicated and, well, there’s no longer any point. So it’s just gonna be OVER for everybody.

A few weeks ago, I shared a cup of tea with an elderly guy from a trailer park, who went to great lengths pointing out the locations where I would be safe when the end of the world comes in 2012. None of the spots on his map are very populated, or at least they aren’t --- at the moment.

His theory is based on some stone carved Mayan calendar created by a civilization that didn’t count too far past three.

My own theory is that we’re dealing with a stone carver who just ran out of rock or got hauled off before he was finished to be one of those human sacrifices the Mayans used to ensure a good harvest.

You’ll note the clear intelligence of that belief, so of course their calendar must be more accurate than an Atomic clock.

About 30 years ago, some cult or other publicized that the world would end on an absolutely precise time and date. In Toronto, it was around three on a Summer Sunday afternoon.

A few friends and I happened to be drinking beer on my front porch as the time approached and the Rock DJ we were listening to was doing a countdown in case any of his listeners had a Bucket List to get through.

About ten minutes before the allotted time, however, there was a big roll of thunder and we looked up to see this massive storm rolling in over the city. It was a definite “Holy Shit!” moment. But a few minutes later the rain was gone and the sun was shining again. The best part of that afternoon was that the cult issued a press release a couple of hours later insisting that indeed “The world we once knew has ended”.

Nothing I like better than a cult that remains committed to its ideals no matter the reality.

Which brings me to Hollywood and its endless commitment to the cash to be made from the Apocalypse. From Cecil B. DeMille to Michael Bay, there’s always been somebody in Tinsel town ready to destroy whole civilizations for our enjoyment.

There’s already a movie version of “2012” on the way from Roland Emmerich, a guy who has wiped most of us out a few times now with “Independence Day”, “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Godzilla” and “Eight Legged Freaks”. Surprisingly, the last two didn’t also wipe out his career.

Most of these movies are Special Effects showcases designed to do little more than quicken pulses and sell popcorn. But every now and then one comes along that wants to be something more.

“Legion” won’t be out until the end of January next year. Just about the worst time to release a movie and suggesting it isn’t good enough to be a Christmas blockbuster. But I have a feeling, it’s got “something”.

I liked this concept when it first came around in 1995 as “The Prophecy” starring Elias Koteas as a disillusioned priest turned homicide detective and featured Christopher Walken as the avenging angel Gabriel and Vigo Mortensen as Lucifer. Basically, God decides he’s had enough of our crap and it’s up to somebody to change his mind before it’s too late.

Based on the video below alone, I’m looking forward to “Legion”. And if this trailer is any indication, the end of the world actually is getting closer for TV shows that don’t want to spend money to compete with these kind of visual thrills and networks who won’t really push the content envelope.

I guess when all’s said and done, the best of times for some will be the end of times for others.

Enjoy your Sunday.

 

Tweeting the Twister

Last night a massive storm front slammed through Southern Ontario dropping a half dozen tornadoes all around, as well as in, the town where I live. This morning, the city of Vaughn and the town of Durham are still under declared states of emergency as they cope with considerable damage. Fortunately, there is only one confirmed death so far, an eleven year old boy who was camping with his mom, but many people are still missing.

The storms came in a wishbone shaped double wave with the first front hitting just before 6:00 pm. I was working at the computer, suddenly aware that the outside light had virtually disappeared. I looked up to see a black sky turn green with two funnel clouds forming to the North and West. This is far from Tornado alley, but any idiot could have realized what was happening.

Unfortunately, a special breed of idiots remains in charge of local Canadian television, for the station I had on in the office hadn’t even issued a storm warning.

I sprinted out to herd in the livestock, realizing we might be in serious trouble when I found my sheepdog already sitting completely still dead center of the house. The cat shot in from the deck and despite hating the dog even more than she hates me, took up a position right under the pooch.

The local radio station that was on in the kitchen was spitting out storm warnings as fast as it could, also letting me know that Durham had been hit hard. I sealed the windows against the monsoon as massive lightning strikes that looked like a map of the circulatory system began hitting about every five seconds.

Since the lightning was now crackling the radio so much it was unlistenable and local television was in news hour mode, I went back to the TV to find out what was happening.

I learned that the Lockerbie bomber had been released, the Prime Minister was enjoying his trip through the Arctic and Hurricane Bill was threatening Bermuda. Nothing about what was happening right outside my window and less than 30 clicks from where these broadcasts were originating.

To be sure, there had been a mention of Durham, where the first Tornado had hit an hour earlier and that there were “suspected” touch downs of funnel clouds in Vaughn and my hometown of Newmarket. But no details. No raw video from a courageous videographer. No field reporters ducking flying cows.

In the centralized model of Canadian local TV I’d predicted months ago but never thought might ever personally affect me, the two million people who live just beyond the Greater Toronto Area had no television service addressing the imminent threat they all faced.

Instead, I was treated to the same pre-packaged news segments, the same smiling meat puppets and the same banal “Sparky, what the heck’s happened to my Blue Jays?” banter.

By now, the weather site on my computer was giving me moving satellite maps and Doppler radar showing the second, much larger wall of storms approaching fast and a couple of my friends were Tweeting blocked roads and that the Twister in Newmarket had hit a children’s riding competition at the Canadian Equestrian Centre.

I started longing for the platoons of bubblehead blondes who appear on every LA street corner after an earthquake tremor, clutching their microphones and bug-eyed with intensity.

Can you imagine that many hot buttons (Tornado, kids in jeopardy, terrified ponies) being pushed in a market that actually tries to cover local news?

I kid – but consider for a moment that you are monitoring police bands in a Canadian TV newsroom and hear that a Tornado has hit a horse farm where hundreds of kids are participating in a riding competition. Wouldn’t that strike you as somewhat important, that maybe those hundreds of kids had parents who might want to know their children were in need of assistance?

But nobody reported any of that information even as the hyper-animated ass clown who does local weather on CTV finally started to show the Doppler I’d been getting online for an hour. You almost felt sorry for the poor schmuck. It was obvious that he was starting to grasp the enormity of what was happening and that hundreds of thousands of people within the sound of his voice were quite possibly in grave danger. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake his “Hippy-Dippy” on-air persona and be real for a change.

By the time the newscast ended, the streets around my home were fast-flowing, axle-deep rivers. A three foot thick tree down the block had been snapped in half and roofing material was skittering past everywhere.

I got Tweets saying every ambulance and fire truck in town was headed to the Equestrian Centre, that trees were blocking streets and barns had imploded. But my local news stations had all gone back to regular programming.

Try to get your heads around that…

SIX WEEKS AGO WE GAVE THESE SAME NETWORKS $150 MILLION TAX DOLLARS TO SAVE LOCAL PROGRAMMING AND IN A CRISIS IMPACTING MILLIONS THEY WENT BACK TO REGULAR PROGRAMMING.

If it had been up to them, these guys would have held off coverage of 9/11 until “Regis and Kelly” was over.

So I started Tweeting, in the hope that somebody following might get information they could use:

Sorry, lost it a little there and went for the Fox News version of news coverage.

Once the rain let up a little, I piled in the car to see if I could help at the Equestrian Centre as well as check on a friend who lives right next door to it. Power was out everywhere, trees snapped in half, debris all over the place. It looked like the twister had scored a direct hit on the show ring. It was gone. Horse trailers were shattered, over-turned and tossed into ditches. Barn roofs and doors had been torn away.

Cars lined both sides of the road, locals like me who’d come to lend a hand. OPP and York Region Cops were comforting terrified pre-teen girls in Jodphurs and riding boots as nearby farmers filled arriving horse trailers with dozens of skittish horses. A paramedic nearby was assuring a distraught woman that nobody had been seriously hurt as a cop let people know they could go back home.

“Nothing more you can do here.”

But there is something more I can do.

I can ask where the hell that $150 Million went.

I can demand to know why the people who are supposed to bring me local news are completely incapable of doing that.

I can try to discover why a part of the country with the largest concentration of media we’ve ever known didn’t get the journalism they pay for or even received the most basic level of service.

I’m sure CTV and Global will plead poverty and whine that they no longer have the staff to support their mandate and also need to rely on the Ad revenue from celebrity gossip to stay afloat in these “tough economic times”. Hell, they’ll probably use this tragedy to ask for EVEN MORE money from tax payers.

So, let’s be honest with ourselves. The people who run broadcasting in this country care more about Ricky Martin’s babies than yours and have more time for cell phone footage of Brad Pitt asleep than any programming Canadians might create.

We could write our MPs or complain to the CRTC. But it’s clear they’re not going to do anything.

At the most the CRTC will hold more secret meetings while denying that they even knew there were meetings.

The Greed and incompetence in our industry and the unwillingness of our elected representatives to act has reached a point where our television industry is no longer relevant to anyone.

Local TV is officially dead in Canada and it went not with a bang but a Twitter.

Lazy Sunday # 81: WOODSTOCK

I never made it to Woodstock. 

I wanted to go. Everybody I knew did. I think my first awareness of it was a full page ad in an issue of Rolling Stone early in the summer of 1969. The line up of talent was awesome, unbelievable for somebody who lived in Regina and only got to see the odd top 40 artist like “Tommy James and the Shondells” or “The Turtles”.  The thought of ever seeing Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin or The Who in concert was a distant dream, let alone the possibility of seeing them all, and many more, on the same weekend.

But a year later, I got to attend Woodstock and I’ve been back many times since, courtesy of Michael Wadleigh’s magnificent documentary.

The story of how “Woodstock” (the movie) came about is just about as fascinating as how the festival itself came into being.

In 1969, “Mike Wadley”, as he was often billed by the low budget producers who hired him as a cinematographer, was an Ohio filmmaker trying to crack the counterculture film scene in New York. But that crowd was hanging with Andy Warhol and none of Wadleigh’s “underground” films ever made a dime. But at some point he made the acquaintance of Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, the primary visionaries behind the Woodstock Festival, and they agreed to let him film the concert.

Kornfeld approached Martin Weintraub, an executive at Warner Brothers, for a donation to the festival and came away with $100,000 in return for the distribution rights of any film that might result. Since Warners was nearly bankrupt at the time, Weintraub had to battle the other Warner execs finally putting his own job on the line before the company would cut the check.

But $100,000 wasn’t anywhere near what Wadleigh soon realized the massive event would cost to cover. So he went around the New York film community, finding 100 underground filmmakers, film students and out of work crew people, who would give him the weekend for free. In return, if the film succeeded, he promised to pay them double their normal rate.

Among those who signed on to edit the film were a couple of complete unknowns named Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorcese.

Wadleigh arrived at Woodstock (actually Bethel, NY) with his crew and 1000 cans of film. But instead of just shooting the acts on stage, he set several of his cameramen loose in the crowd and on the town of Bethel, documenting not only the “Hippies” attending the festival but the reactions of small town America.

Like those attending Woodstock, Wadleigh’s crew dealt with the torrential rains, the mud, the congestion and lack of food, water or even a place to relieve themselves, constantly recording everything that happened around them. The following week, he dumped 120 miles of exposed footage in the laps of Schoonmaker and Scorcese.

What resulted was not only the best concert film ever made, but an intelligent and artistic examination of a world in transition.

In backroom battles with Warners, Wadleigh managed to keep the performances they felt the audiences only wanted to see off screen for the first 23 minutes of his original 3 hour release cut. He knew that for the film to succeed, the scene had to be completely set for not only the music lovers Warners needed to immediately recoup their investment, but the millions more who needed to understand what Woodstock really meant and whose return visits could make the film a real success.

And those first 23 minutes before Richie Havens, a relative unknown at the time, takes the stage, remain as powerful today as they did back in 1970.

Although “Woodstock” went on to earn more than $50 million in its initial release (back when movies cost $2) and won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Michael Wadleigh, once again, never made a dime. And while the later re-cuts and re-releases and the use of the footage he shot in his docs “Janis” and “Hendrix: Live at Woodstock” would finally earn him his financial due, he has only made one more feature film, 1981’s “Wolfen”, an inspired horror film years ahead of its time.

Twenty years after Woodstock, I met Richie Havens on a beach in the Caribbean. He was still touring (still is today) and still closing his concerts with “Freedom” the song made famous by the film. Havens didn’t really remember how Wadleigh and his crew went about covering his appearance that day, overwhelmed as he was by the moment and what it meant to someone of the Peace, Love and Groovy generation.

“You need to understand what it meant,” Havens said, “I looked down at that crowd from the helicopter bringing us in. All those people standing against the War and the darkness and the rigidness of the society. For the first time, you could see that we were winning.”

Here then are those opening moments of “Woodstock” followed by my favorite sequence of the film. Everything here has been copied a thousand times by now and evolved in a million different directions by ten million different artists. But this was the first time -- in one film – made by a handful of gifted people.

Peace. Love and Far-out, man.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Unnecessary Roughness

There are days when I feel like LIFE has decided it’s exam time.

I look around hopefully for a referee who’ll toss a flag and blow his whistle after I’ve been hit and call an “Unnecessary Roughness” penalty.

But referees only manage the violence in organized sports. LIFE gets to say, “Gee, Jim seems relatively content lately. Let’s see what we can do to shake things up. How about some of those friends he’s stuck with through tough times.  Let’s try him on that!”

And like all LIFE tests (and well written jokes – even when they’re on us) these pop quizzes come in threes.

Test #1.

I’m lining up a film cast and have breakfast with an actor who’s great, difficult, but a long time friend. She needs the work and “loves” the part. I need her talents and am willing to pay some of the Karmic debt I know it will cost to shepherd her through the shoot. But instead of a “Yes” or “Thanks for thinking of me”, I get a list of actors and directors who are the only people she’ll work with.

As the cherry on that Sundae, I learn she has already forwarded the script to most of them for comments or consideration and “They’ll be calling you".

Now being a Producer, I know I can find ways to blow off most of those people without upsetting anybody. But it’s work I don’t need and my first thought is to avoid all this and contact my second choice for the role, knowing I’m already settling for less at the wrong point in the process and maybe jeopardizing a decades long friendship to boot.

Test #2.

I have a producer pal who is trying to sell a show to a Canadian network and getting far more than a nibble. But they (being a Canadian network) won’t or don’t have any money to pay for development – and specifically for the budgets and breakdowns and other financial ephemera that gives networks confidence – or at least something thick enough to cover their tender behinds.

I agree to help, on the understanding that I’ve got my own “paying” priorities and I’ll get his documents to him by the end of the month. He calls the network to let them know the stuff is on the way.

And then -- hanging up the phone from fending off one of the actress’s friends last night, I get an email from the network exec who really needs the material before he goes on vacation --- this weekend. 

I wrote back with a list of books he might want to pick up for the beach and copied the Producer buddy a much shorter list of people who can accomplish the task by that deadline, although probably not as a favor.

And those emails went out as my sports ticker BEEPED with…

Test #3.

The Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick to a two year $7 Million contract.

Now, I can’t remember how long I’ve been an Eagle fan. But it’s certainly been as long as I’ve been a dog lover.

And for those who don’t know that connection, Michael Vick was the eminently talented and highlight reel quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons until he was convicted of running a dog fighting ring and personally dispatching those animals who “wouldn’t compete”.

And Michael didn’t just take his passivist pooches down to the Vet for a “humane” departure. He personally drowned them, or electrocuted them or hung them from trees and in one case flailed the poor animal against the ground until he beat its brains in.

Even the dogs who managed to please his blood lust ended up being chained up and raped or left to languish in cages looking like this…

Yeah, that’s the kind of guy I want to cheer on a football field. That’s a guy who epitomizes the “Character” football is supposed to build.

Apparently, the news leaked out during last night’s Philadelphia/New England pre-season game. Veteran sportscasters and reporters covering the event were stunned to see spectators deserting the stands en masse as their iPhones and Blackberries instant messaged or tweeted them the news. One reported fans roaming the concourses in shock, trying to make sure this wasn’t some sick joke and gathering in small groups to consider what this meant to their team, their city and perhaps what they themselves might have to deal with on future Sunday afternoons.

The sports world is one that thrives on redemption stories, on Cinderella stories and on tales of the benighted loser who finally puts it all together and wins the big game. The Philadelphia Eagles recently even had one of their own, “Invincible” the story of Vince Papale, that just might be one of the finest Sports movies ever made.

And let’s not forget that Philadelphia is synonymous with “Rocky”, the greatest underdog (sorry) movie ever made.

To the people handling Michael Vick’s career and PR, Philadelphia probably looked like the perfect place for his ”comeback tale” to begin.

The Sports nets, notably ESPN, appeared less stunned than Eagle’s fans at the Vick signing. The Jock meat puppets immediately directed the discussion off what Michael had done and onto the Eagles need for a dependable back-up to Donovan McNabb and how Vick might enliven the Wildcat formation and Blahdy-Blahdy-Blah.

They also played right into the “He’s paid his debt to society”, “deserves a second chance” etc. And they were quick to point out that Coach Andy Reid might have a redemptive need to help Vick since he couldn’t keep his own kids from being arrested for drug crimes and armed robbery and also backed the hiring on the recommendation of former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, who may be dealing with his own redemption issues following the suicide of his son.

Mostly you could see them gleefully spinning all the potential storylines that could pop up in future sportscasts. Michael Vick had become their very own Michael Jackson deathwatch in the making.

I wonder how far most of these guys and the Philly fans willing to look beyond Vick’s past if it means a Super Bowl win are really ready to take that “deserves a second chance” thing to its ultimate conclusion.

I mean, if Michael Vick deserves a second chance to play NFL football, do we need to make sure that Priests who molest kids get their pulpits back, that crooked cops are returned to the police force and anybody else who breaks the law gets to go right back to what they were doing before they got caught?

Does Conrad Black deserve another newspaper empire? Does Garth Drabinsky deserve Public funding for another Broadway play?

If you’re a member of the Canadian establishment, I know your answer to that, I read it every day in the columns of your main stream media.

But how do you think sensible people living in the real world feel?

In an interesting insight into the public forgiveness the Philadelphia Eagles are offering Michael Vick, a commenter on one of their forums was left wondering why they have not shown the same mercy to a disabled ticket taker they are refusing to rehire because of some past indiscretion.

I’m a big believer in second chances (and have been more than thankful for the couple I’ve received). But “Second Chance” doesn’t necessary mean getting to enjoy exactly the same set of conditions that existed when you first screwed up.

If you’re a Teacher who likes sleeping with teenage girls, you don’t have an automatic right to go back into that kind of classroom. If you’re a financial advisor who absconded with funds, you don’t get to pitch your services in an old folks’ home.

Michael Vick brutalized creatures in no position to defend themselves, get out of his way or cry out for help. He violently dispatched those who couldn’t play by his rules. So he doesn’t get to earn a multi-million dollar salary playing in a league that protects him from enduring “unnecessary roughness” and mostly – he doesn’t get to have me for a fan.

For me, one of the best, and most balanced takes on this whole sad affair came last week from Dennis Miller, SNL’s best news anchor before Tina Fey came along, former Monday Night Football Commentator and current Conservative Talk Radio Host. You’ll find it at 4:05 on the clip below for those of you who are uncomfortable with Bill O’Reilly, Fox News and that whole “Fair and Balanced” thing.

Although, I gotta say, tasting a different opinion now and then might benefit a few of you. 

 

 

Anyway, that was all yesterday. Pencils went down and Jim shambled off to bed still hurting from the contest.

By this morning, Philly sports columnists were weighing in on the team’s decision. Thousands had already joined Facebook groups to Boycott the Eagles and their corporate sponsors, PETA was on the march and a couple of people had commented on my own past musings on the subject.

Therefore, in the cold light of a too soon Dawn, Jim made some decisions. Decisions which will cost me two friends and a beloved football team.

But there you have it. Good-bye actress. So long producer buddy. Adios Philadelphia Eagles. It’s been fun. But I'm flagging you all for illegal hits.

Maybe some day I’ll give you a second chance.

But not today.

And as for you, LIFE…

I just passed your test.

LAZY SUNDAY # 80: VEGETARIANS

Once in a while, in  a strange town, not knowing the local customs or being able to read the language of the menu, I’ll walk into a restaurant and order a steak.

And then some people look at you like you just took a dump in front of them and allow that they would prefer that you don’t eat other “sentient beings”.

Okay, I get it. I do. I love animals as much as the next guy – probably more. Not so much that I’d dress up the dog in a garter belt and fishnets. But I do appreciate them for what they are.

Animals have their place – and I’m sorry, but sometimes that’s right next to the carrots and potatoes.

If you want to live on beans and cauliflower, good for you, and thanks anyway, but I’ll wait for the next elevator.

There are more ways than one of looking at the world.

Excuse me while I fire up the BBQ. And enjoy your Sunday.

The Lost Highway

Last month, I went on a kind of Quest, ferrying my 85 year old father back to the places where he (where we) come from. The trip took us to parts of Canada that never appear on television, to places unimportant to few but those who live there, meeting people whose life stories have never been much published or produced.

It was a journey that taught me a lot about my country, my people and myself. I’m still not sure what it all means. And like most of what I’ve written, I probably won’t discover what that is until some point in the writing. But from time to time over the next while, I’ll share some of these stories for whatever they may end up meaning to you.

I’ve been back in “The World” for a week now. “Back in the World” was a term Vietnam era soldiers used to describe leaving the war and returning to 1960’s America. But it seems as fitting today as it was back then.

In my current world of Toronto, the two big stories in the local papers were a month long garbage strike brought about by a struggle between Union and Management over worker benefits and a revelation that Paramedics were taking an additional 53 seconds to reach patients calling 911.

On the International scene, it was wall to wall coverage of the Obama Health Plan and a constant stream of invective against "Canadian-style Socialized Medicine”. Invective huffily dismissed by most in the Canadian media.

That 53 second story was of particular interest. Because I’d just spent time in a part of the country barely 20 clicks off Highway One – the blacktop ribbon that crosses the country from coast to coast and carries virtually all of the goods and services transported from East to West and vice versa.  But despite their being in the immediate vicinity of what passes for modern civilization, it was a completely different world.

A world where anyone who calls 911 waits an hour or longer for help to come, if it is even able to reach them at all.

And, in an odd twist, this is the region of Canada that first championed universal medical care and where the political movement that spawned that concept of helping ones neighbors in time of need had turned its back on those it had once vowed to protect.

I remember being about 9 or 10, sitting with my parents as they listened to Tommy Douglas on the radio, vowing that if elected his CCF party would make sure that everyone got the medical care they needed no matter their income or position in society. My mother cried and hugged me. I was very sick as a kid and what Tommy Douglas was doing meant my family could afford to keep me alive.

At the time, we lived in the South West corner of Saskatchewan, along a winding gravel road called Highway 32. There was a hospital at each end in Swift Current and Leader and one in the middle at Cabri. I’d spent time in them all.

A dozen towns six to eight miles apart were connected by that highway, each with their own rows of grain elevators and some with the garages, stores and banks that people in the other towns used the highway to reach. It wasn’t unusual to spend a Saturday going to the dentist in one, the Co-op store in another and the movie theatre in a third.

In an area where neighbors could be miles apart and 90% of the land had been turned into endless fields of wheat and grasslands for cattle, the 3-4000 people who lived near Highway 32 got used to all going to the same dentist in one town or using the same bank in another, aware that there weren’t enough of them for everything to be everywhere or even “convenient”. But they were close to some things and had to go a little farther for others – and the road they needed to take was pretty good.

About 5 years ago, that all changed.

The number of people stayed the same (even grew a little) and despite some of the towns declining, the economy around them prospered and diversified.

Farmers were now growing more crops, including healthier oil bearing Canola and even Lentils. They ranched Buffalo and Elk as well as cattle. Some raised deer to serve the Asian antler and velvet markets. Meanwhile, geologists discovered their farms lay on top of some of the richest potash and natural gas fields in the world.

Sleepy one street villages were replaced by gas plants that dwarfed the original owners of their place names. In 2005, the little towns along Highway 32 contributed $263 Million to the Province of Saskatchewan in Natural Gas royalties alone. 

Yet, the government allowed Highway 32 to fall into disrepair. In 2005, it was estimated that it would take $12 Million to put the road back in working order.

Four years later, that road still isn’t fixed.

All along its length you hear story after story of ambulances bottoming out in potholes during an emergency run and breaking an axle; of buses careening into ditches in the rain; of trucks overturning and blocking all traffic for hours because tow trucks can’t navigate the highway to clear the wreckage.

As a result, ambulances don’t run on Highway 32 anymore. Even when they reached victims in time, it was impossible to provide any care during the bumpy ride back to the hospital.

The buses have stopped. Basic goods don’t get delivered unless store owners truck them in at their own risk and additional expense. People have stopped making trips to the other towns along the highway’s route because they’re not sure if they’ll make it, let alone make it home.

On one rainy afternoon, it took me almost an hour to cover 10 clicks of solid mud, sliding dangerously close to steep ditches or slamming into potholes almost deep enough to swallow the car.

I met a bank teller who can’t get to work some days, meaning the two employee bank doesn’t open. I bought a coke from a kid who couldn’t count the number of days the school bus hadn’t been able to either pick him up or get him to school.

I pried stones out of the brake shoes with the help of an oil roughneck who deals with that kind of screaming every day and says his average windshield lasts two months because of all the stone hits.

I sat with a retired farmer who described the night his wife had a heart attack and he did CPR on her for an hour and pushed Nitro tablets under her tongue while a 911 operator told him to do nothing until the paramedics arrived.

The next day the doctor told him that it was he and not the medical system that had saved her life.

How did this happen in a Province making so much money its new nickname is “Saskaboom!”?

According to the locals, they made a mistake. They stopped voting NDP and were punished for sending somebody else to Regina to represent them.

That made a lot of sense to me, for I’ve seen how the party of Tommy Douglas’ compassionate revolution has devolved to defending union thugs whose sense of entitlement takes precedent over retirees in walkers trying to carry a bag of adult diapers past the picket line at a temporary garbage dump.

In 1960, the socialist government of Tommy Douglas airlifted doctors into Saskatchewan to break a strike by the medical profession to save its population.

In 1990, the socialist government of Bob Rae put its population at risk by reducing the number of doctors training in Ontario universities to save money.

Somewhere along the way, the party that cared became one where you only mattered if you were one of them.

The remarkable “Sand Hills Museum” in Sceptre, exhibits a poster from 1960 detailing the new Medicare plan “$24/person, $48/family” yet sometimes only sees one tourist a day because of the road.

In 2007, the party that had been founded on rural discontent only won seats in a few inner cities and the government changed with Premier Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan party (an offspring of the right wing Reform movement) coming to power. And plans were immediately made to put Highway 32 back together again.

Oddly, although gas revenues from the area are now higher than they’ve ever been and the trainloads of Lentils and velvet are making us new friends all over Asia, the repairs to the highway proceed at a snail’s pace.

It seems the new boss suddenly has other “priorities”.

From personal observation, it would appear that Premier Wall’s most pressing priority is building as many casinos as he can to ensure that none of those gas and potash riches get beyond his borders.

There are new casinos everywhere in the Province. I suggested the locals might actual get the highway fixed if somebody called the Premier’s office and complained about being unable to get to Swift Current’s shiny new “Living Sky” Casino so they could have their pockets vacuumed.

But seriously, how is it possible that people living in one of the richest regions of one of the world’s richest countries can’t be certain an ambulance will arrive in time to save a pensioner who’s had a heart attack, a farmer trapped under an overturned tractor, or a child drowning in a community pool?

Cities in the country facing bankruptcy can still get help to their citizens in under 3 minutes. In Brad Wall’s cash flush Saskatchewan, help might never get there.

A few years ago, people along Highway 32 started fighting back. They sold bumper stickers, a very popular “Pothole Calendar” and a website with the full story (and video) at www.highway32.ca.

They’re getting somewhere, but they could use more help.

If you feel your fellow Canadians should have the same access to health care as you do or simply that people elected to public office are there to serve all the people and not just those who vote for them, pay a visit to the site and kick in your two cents (either literally or figuratively).  A few thousand people you’ve never met will be forever in your debt.

And do that soon, because if the tales of Medical need along Highway 32 ever get across the border, we’re in for a week of hysteria on Fox News, more Canada bashing and a lot of Americans who might end up not getting the reformed Medical system they so desperately need.

You might also write a letter to Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and ask why a Province that plans to build nuclear power plants and space age wind farms can’t fix a short stretch of highway.

In my letter, I’m also going to mention that all the tourists I talked to thought the downtown of his capital city was a “shithole” with nothing to do or see.

Unless you wanted to visit the casino.

LAZY SUNDAY # 79: FLOATING

It’s not unusual for me to return from a vacation more tuckered than when I departed. Work hard, play hard is a cycle that eventually results in diminishing returns. So, I’m taking a breather for one last day. Regular irregular blogging resumes tomorrow. In the meantime, I float amid images like these.

Sometimes this is the only vacation you really need.

Just let them wash over you. Enjoy your Sunday. And awake refreshed.

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

WHY SO SECRET?

Are you starting to get the feeling that the CRTC, Canada’s TV, Internet and Telecommunications regulator, is beginning to think it’s a branch of the CIA or maybe even CSIS?

I mean, what’s with all the fricken secrecy lately!?

Have these guys got real classified information to protect or would they just like people to believe they’re suddenly that important?

First they were redacting hearing documents, as if the public they were appointed to serve didn’t deserve to know what was going on in publicly funded meetings.

A couple of weeks back, they announced they were levelling fines on two Telemarketing firms that violated their “Do Not Call” list.

But the companies being fined and the amounts they had to pay were not revealed – and won’t be unless they don’t cough up by the end of the month.

And then there’s this little nugget from Conservative Blogger Stephen Taylor, indicating the Commission erased a section of its “Review of Broadcasting in New Media” after publishing it suddenly pretending their report never said what it used to say.

These guys even silence their own, snuffing out any ideas from their personal staff, despite the cost and time involved in doing the research and work involved in coming up with those ideas.

Somehow speaking openly and honestly has come to be considered a dangerous practice at the CRTC.

Posing the question -- “If they can’t be straight with us, how are we supposed to be straight with them?

And also making some people wonder if this cloak of secrecy is a way of hiding the CRTC from publicly revealing their own incompetence and inability to actually regulate the industries they are charged with regulating.

Let’s take this “Do Not Call” fine first.

The CRTC initially sold the lists of numbers telemarketers were not supposed to call to telemarketers; ostensibly to make sure they knew who not to bother -- but apparently without any real protections in place to make sure nobody used those lists or passed them on to people operating outside the CRTC’s jurisdiction.

Maybe these firms did just that but why the reluctance to reveal their names? Does the CRTC not want to publicly ‘shame’ them? Because anybody who has dealt with telemarketers knows that they have no shame. Tell them you can’t afford what they’re selling and they’ll call back ten minutes later offering you a new Visa card.

Is there any chance this whole ‘fine’ thing is really an elaborate sham to make them look like they’re handling things?

They’re taking heat for the failure of the “Do Not call” list. So they pretend they are penalizing “a couple of guys” who broke the rules. Yeah, that’ll show the public they mean business. I mean, how do we know these penalized companies even exist – or are the worst offenders?

And how much is the fine? Huge or a slap on the wrist the culprits won’t even notice? And where does it get paid? In what item line of the Federal budget will this income be shown? And how do we know it actually has been paid beyond the CRTC’s say so?

This is not how the Federal budgets of open democracies operate – with secret payments being made God knows where with no accounting oversight to acknowledge where it’s coming from or to make sure it doesn’t actually end up paying for somebody’s Book of the Month Club subscription.

For the last few months, entangled in the mess the Commission has made of the broadcast system, by allowing acquisitions which have been financially disastrous for all involved and threaten to completely capsize the broadcast system – or at least shrink it to the point where it no longer provides what Canadians want to see broadcast; Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has bemoaned the CRTC’s “lack of teeth” ie: the inability to enforce their rulings.

So how is any unnamed Telemarketer going to feel obligated to pay this unnamed fine anyway? Revealing that maybe this is a straw man move by the CRTC to make it appear they are doing something when they are not.

Which brings me to the CRTC announcement (also from a couple of weeks ago) that the Cableco’s will increase their commitment to local television by supplying a further $100 Million to the Local Programming Improvement fund.

The broadcasters immediately announced local TV had been “saved” (at least for now) took a few bargain priced stations off the auction block and otherwise celebrated the windfall – as well as the right to produce far less local programming than they had previously.

In the new Maxwell Smart legalese of the Commission, the press release announcing this aspect of the deal said…

“In addition, the Commission has harmonized its requirements for the broadcast of local programming in English- and French-language markets. Each week, local television stations will have to air a minimum number of hours of programming that is produced locally and that speaks to, and about, the community.”

Ooooh, that sounds so firm and forceful – until you learn that under the new rules most local stations are only required to produce one hour of local news and information daily.

One hour – for their share of $100 Million.

However, the Cableco’s simultaneously announced they weren’t paying the new freight rate, so there.

And who’s going to make them?

I mean if the CRTC couldn’t enforce their own requirements for Shaw and Rogers to actually make Super Channel available to their subscribers and the subscribers aware of its availability, how will they force them to cough up another hundred mil of their own money for no additional programming at all?

Actually make that $100 Million for less programming.

Much less.

The situation got so bad at Super Channel, that the movie network, launched two years ago to challenge the geographic monopolies in Canada's pay-television sector finally filed for protection from its creditors.

Yet, despite several appeals to the CRTC, the Commission didn’t move to help them. However, a little whining from their historical favorites, the terrestrial broadcasters, and they’re quick to find them the money they supposedly need.

I say “supposedly” because simultaneous to the CRTC releasing their edict, the Federal Government’s own statistical arm StatsCan reported that Canadian television revenues were up 5.4% in 2008.

Yep, despite what the industry would have you believe, private television broadcasters in Canada earned profits of $691 million in 2008.

Much of that was in Specialties and Pay to be sure (all owned wholly or in part by conventional TV nets) but apparently the “disastrous decline” in conventional broadcasting that had resulted in mass firings, layoffs and cuts in programming was a mere –1.8%.

I wonder how those Stascan figures compare with what the broadcasters told the CRTC in those closed sessions that later had their minutes redacted?

Yet, the CRTC still chose to hand the broadcasters $100 Million of somebody else’s money – the Cable Company’s for now - but it’ll be yours if the cableco’s take the hit and pass it on.

There was initial support from the Writers Guild for the decision, mostly because the CRTC held the line on the amount of Canadian content the broadcasters are required to carry.

But while there may be screenwriter jobs saved for now, that may not be the case if folks start dropping channels to reduce their cable bills and those dropped channels are ones which create work for Canadian writers.

This is a vicious circle that has been created by the CRTC’s initial mistakes and their inability to own up to screwing the pooch.

They’ve had a history of ignoring their mandate of protecting the Canadian public. And with this decision they’ve thumbed their nose at the public’s elected representatives.

The Parliamentary Heritage Committee that also held hearings on the local TV issue, in passing the final decision to the CRTC, requested that they take the profits of the broadcasters’ entire corporate holdings into account when determining their financial need.

But the CRTC did not.

More and more, the CRTC is becoming a rogue arm of the Federal government, protecting neither Canadian consumers nor the artists and producers who serve them – and trying to cover their shortcomings with an ever darkening veil of secrecy.

LAZY SUNDAY # 78: MOON WALKING

40 years ago tomorrow, I watched the moon landing while ripped out of my gourd on Peyote buttons. I could’ve sworn Neil Armstrong’s first words were “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind.”

But I was also dealing with several R. Crumb style cartoon hot dogs and root beer bottles doing a kick line on the window sill to a selection of show tunes from “Oklahoma” and “Camelot”, so I can’t be considered a reliable source.

A few years ago, Armstrong acknowledged that what I heard was what he was supposed to say and thought he had said, but an audio dropout somewhere between here and the Sea of Tranquility left a different version of man’s first words from the Lunar surface for posterity.

Wrecked as I was, the first moon walk is still vivid in my memory. And in some ways, the combination of my state and Armstrong’s achievement defines what set the 60’s apart from other eras.

Back then, it seemed like everybody was looking for ways to get outside the box. We were exploring both inner and outer space as well as boldly going where no one had gone before in almost every conceivable direction.

The imagination, innovation and courage that defined NASA and the Apollo astronauts could be found in every aspect of human endeavor. Everybody seemed to be looking for a way to discover or simply experience something people hadn’t even attempted before.

It just seemed expected and completely logical to risk everything –- your body, your life or your sanity, in the hope of uncovering something new.

And so, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strapped themselves into the Lunar lander fully accepting that they had a 50% chance of safely reaching the moon and even less of getting back.

And I, taking psychology classes from Dr. Duncan Blewett, acknowledged as the Canadian Timothy Leary, was “doing my homework” attempting to record my altered state after swallowing whatever was being handed out that day.

Armstrong and Aldrin made it to the moon, apparently with their onboard computer failing, four miles off course and 15 seconds from running out of fuel. And they made it home, both men profoundly changed by the experience, altered from disciplined Navy fighter pilots to humanitarians and philosophers.

Not long after, I gave up psychotropics. Whenever somebody offered me a joint or something stronger, I always passed, telling them I’d already seen God and didn’t need any more.

And in a way I had seen God – in the form of Neil Armstrong pointing out the distant pale blue marble of the Earth floating over the cratered horizon of the Moon.

Both Neil and I figured we’d be on Mars by now and maybe even further out there. Maybe we also thought that his shot of our planet floating in the vast blackness of space might make people look at a lot of things differently.

But instead, the human race decided to play it safe and stick close to home and keep doing what it already felt comfortable with. No more pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, taking too many chances.

Maybe celebrating the 40th Anniversary of our going to the Moon will re-inspire some to grow back their courage and thirst for discovery.

NASA has done its best to help, taking the familiar video we’ve all seen (which was originally shot off the single television receiving it in Mission Control) and enhancing it to what we were supposed to have been watching.

Have a look. Think of what might still be. And enjoy your Sunday.