Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Pitches, Re-Writes and The Fall TV Preview

Warning: If you find yourself here via a google search for such things as TV shows or films, recipes or cities, this blog has some facts. However, this blog is one author’s very twisted musing on many weird things. It is sometimes graphic in content. If you read on, don’t write to yell at me.

There will be much in the way of wandering to follow. I’ve had a long, crazy week.

I feel like Joe Friday when I report on the weather in Los Angeles. It was sunny in Los Angeles, Jon and I were working on the romantic comedy division our boss is the guy with the money. My name is Warner. I’ve watched a lot of Dragnet lately. It’s free on Hulu. It’s easy to listen to while working on something else. Probably because it had been a radio show before it reached TV. I think Joe Friday has a record sized police beat. It almost covers all of LA County. Only Fred Dryer’s Sgt. Hunter had a bigger one. I think his goes to Dan Diego. But back to the weather. The humidity is gone for the moment. I think it returns later in the week. There was talk of a monsoonal trough in our new, doppler driven micro-climate forecast. I have no idea what a micro-climate forecast. I’d think it would be a climate so small that no one would notice.

Re-Write and Divining Dramaturgy

The re-write continues. How close it is to being completed, I won’t say. We’re keeping to our original deadline to make sure that we aren’t unduly pressured to rush through the draft. Since this is such a big film for us, we’re being thorough in detailing the underpinnings of each character’s action throughout the individual arcs. Most of it will never be put on the pages of the script (I think it would be 300 pages, if we did). But we have to know everything about every one of these characters. Now, we don’t have experience with these disparate walks of life. I’ve been pestering most of my musician friends about why they do what they do (there are a few of you still out there I want to talk to). I’ve been pestering my contracting guru about house renovations. Jon’s been pestering me about the dynamics of a catered event (one of my thousands of careers involved bartending for a caterer). We get a lot of input from wherever we can find it. The effort is worth it. We’ve discovered during our past shoots that rehearsals and blocking movements on set are far smoother when we can answer any question about the characters quickly and succinctly. It’s also a better acting experience for our performers. Though the work can be tedious at times, we have been enjoying it. I like all of these characters, and I enjoy spending time in their heads. The big excitement beyond the re-write is the big banking scare. We thought the funding was jeopardy. Thus far, I’m only partially convinced that we shouldn’t keep the entire budget of the film in our mattresses until it’s needed. Barely convinced. The latest in casting news is that all of the leads we are interested in are ready to have meetings with us. I hope to be told the schedule for these meetings this week.

Speaking of the meetings, we have our pitch meeting this week with the cable network execs for the shows on the Dragoncor Concept page. We know one of the execs very well, and even cast him in one of our projects, so I’m not as nervous as I usually would be. Nervous, yes, but not panicked. Success would mean one more task on the pile that we’d have to attend to, but we’d rather be insanely busy than creatively idle for years at a stretch. In a move that some might consider arrogant (even I do), I’m going ahead with developing a title sequence and some scenes for Blood Oath, the like action version of the Soldiers novels. I am anticipating having to do a proof of concept trailer. The show has a lot of stunts and special FX. We maintain that they can be done within the budgets of the network’s other programs. We may have to prove it. As I do with everything I work on, I’ll be developing a web page to follow the progress.

Fall Preview
Spoiler warning for CSI: Miami, Criminal Minds, CSI: Crime Scene Investivation and Whatever, Martha

The Fall TV season sort of snuck up on me. Honestly, I haven’t seen a single preview until today while watching the Eagles torture their fans against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I checked my cable guide to find that almost everyone is back. When last we saw Horatio Caine, he was lying on an airport tarmac with an allegedly fatal gunshot wound. I had my suspicions. Storyline wise, one must remember that his brother, Ray Caine, faked his own death twice. Reality wise, if David Caruso left the leading role of another series, it would have been all over the news and the internet. Lo and Behold, the episode title for the season opener is Resurrection. Surprise! Now, we’ve established last year the show won’t go so far as having zombies, so he has to have never been killed (yes, that sentence is messy, so is the show). Meanwhile, a show that usually has a lot more common sense than my beloved CSI: Miami is having it’s own dubious opener. Criminal Minds ended last season by blowing up a car containing one of the main cast. All the black SUVs looked the same, so we don’t know which one it is. Horrors! Again, any defection of a main cast member from a hit show would have made news in a lot of places. There hasn’t been a peep. And now I’ve just seen a very revealing promo during the football game. really don’t like being arbitrarily manipulated in a cliff-hanger. Criminal Minds doesn’t need to do that. Of course, we saw Warrick Brown get shot at the end of CSI and we know that the actor, Gary Dourdan (hot Philly fellow) has left the series. No resurrection there, but there will be much angst.

A new show that I must recommend is Whatever Martha on the Fine Living Netowrk. In short, Martha’s daughter, Alexis and her best firend are skewering segments from Martha Stewart Living. Since Martha herself is in the opening credits and the executive producer, I doubt she minds. The women are wickedly funny and Martha’s own acntics make the show hysterical. I lughed so hard, I cried. Mind, I have the Martha chip in my brain that makes me engage in all sorts of extreme entertainment related projects (thought I refuse to wrap an entire turkey in puff pastery). I can’t wait until they do my favorite Halloween episode where Martha was dressed like a pirate. One of the lines in the segment was ‘You can get a navigation wheel for your pirate ship at your local yatch club.’ Sure, Martha. They let me borrow from them all the time. And then there is the egg nog segment that I watch religiously every year. I’ve never made it according to the recipe though. I’ve never had that much liquor in my house at once. If memory serves, there was rum, buurbon and Napoleon brandy. She says that a small punch cup wouldn’t cause any harm. I’d still have to collect car keys after just one. Take a look at a clip on making s’mores and proper s’more sticks here.

I’ve got cooking and scheduling to do. Stay tuned.

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