Hollywood Babble On & On #1255: Can Amazing Stories Be Amazing Again?

Cult TV showrunner Bryan Fuller has been given the green light by NBC to bring back the 1980s anthology series Amazing Stories.

If you're one of those millennials with no knowledge of your pop culture heritage Amazing Stories was an anthology TV series inspired by Amazing Stories Magazine, the first science-fiction and fantasy magazine founded by Hugo Gernsback. The show was brought to television by Stephen Spielberg at a time when he could literally do no wrong on the big screen and NBC was hoping to bring some of that to the small screen.

Like most Spielberg related TV projects it had a huge beginning with lots of big names appearing in front of and behind the camera, but like so many other Spielberg TV projects it fizzled out in the second season, and was cancelled. 

This is because Spielberg has two things against him when it comes to producing a TV show. He is too busy making movies to be much more than a name in the credits after the pilot's been shot, and Spielberg has a notorious aversion to conflict, which means that unless he has a strong partner and showrunner, the network will walk over the show and grind it into the dirt. That's why the only Spielberg-branded show to have any real success after its first season was ER, because he had Michael Crichton's name on it, and they had showrunners with balls and clout.

Now, hot on the heels of cancelling Fuller's critically claim and hyper-stylish horror series Hannibal, they want him to bring it back.

Now Fuller can do Amazing Stories in one of three ways:

STORY OF THE WEEK: This is the traditional approach made famous by The Twilight Zone. The problem with this traditional approach is that tradition can very quickly become a rut. The tendency is to not exactly do what The Twilight Zone did, but a vague memory of what they thought The Twilight Zone did. They slip into a comfortable trap of stories of things that seem normal at first, then they go weird, and pow, there's a twist in the end.

That can get really boring, really quick. There is a way to avoid this, and this is to go literary. 

There is literally a couple of centuries of short fiction in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. That means that they don't have to be reliant on TV writers and their vague memories of another TV show for stories. Of course that would take effort to find the stories, and money to buy the ones not in public domain, which means that plan probably won't be done.

STORY OF THE SEASON: This format is pretty popular through shows like True Detective and American Horror Story. Basically, you do each season like a novel for television where a story goes for X number of episodes of a season, it ends when the season ends, and new story runs for the next season.

This is popular, but it too has its pitfalls. If you have an incredible first season story, the odds are really good that if the second season story isn't light years better, it will be declared a total failure.

Plus, networks are tempted to take a successful story that originally had a set ending, and then say: "Hey, let's have a second season of just that" and then they flog it until it's dead and stinky.

MASTERPIECE THEATRE IT: This is a hybrid of the other two formats. Basically you set the show up as a sort-of brand that covers a range of science fiction, fantasy, and horror productions that range from stand-alone one-episode stories, to multi-episode arcs.

This can give the writers the leeway they need to experiment with long form and short form stories, but the hazard is that the audience might find the format jarring, and tune out, or that only certain stories and their sequels catch on, and come to dominate the show's run, thus killing the whole "anthology" idea.

Anyway, that's what I think, let me know what you think in the comments...

Hollywood Babble On & On #1247: Friday The 13th The Series?

Flush with success from DC superheroes, magicians, and a pregnant virgin, the CW Network now thinks it can work miracles by raising the dead. The stinking foetid corpse in question is the Friday The 13th franchise which they hope to adapt into a TV series about the people of Crystal Lake facing the return of a more "grounded" version of the unstoppable killer.

Now I've never been a fan of the franchise, it came to embody the worst of the 1980s slasher-horror boom, coming up with lamer and lamer excuses to ramp up the gore and keep Jason coming back no matter what happened to him. It got very silly and very boring, and it showed in the diminishing returns at the box office.

Even a big budget remake failed to revive interest in a franchise that was deader than a Voorheez victim.

The funny thing is that the franchise had already branched into TV back in the 1980s.

Sort of.

Back in 1987 the producers of the Friday the 13th movies were branching into television with a Canadian-USA syndicated late night horror series that was originally going to be called The 13th Hour.

They decided that title was too obscure and went with the more famous "brand" even though the show had nothing to do with Jason Voorhees.

The premise of the show was pretty straightforward. An antiques dealer named Louis Vendredi made a pact with the devil for wealth and immortality. To cash in the stock in his store had been cursed to lead those who buy them into madness and murder by bombarding them powerful temptations.

But in the pilot Louis had an attack of guilt and broke the pact, and ended up dead and in hell.

Two distant relatives then inherited the store, which they then cleaned out in a huge sale. Shortly afterward, with the help of their uncle's ex-partner, they discover the curses and spend the rest of the series trying to get the stuff back and locked up safely in a supernaturally fortified vault.

Now I was just a kid when I saw it, and it ended 25 years ago, but I remember that it was one of the scariest things I had ever seen made for TV, and that includes Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

As far as I can remember, it sure was scarier than anything the Friday the 13th movies dished out.

Which is why I'm not holding out much hope for the CW's idea.

They should stick to DC superheroes.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1244: Random Drips From The Brain Pan.

THE STEWART CONUNDRUM

"I'm just a comedian, except when I'm not."

Jon Stewart, the outgoing host of The Daily Show, has been getting criticized, mostly in conservative media for meeting with President Obama in the run-up to and during the 2012 election. Stewart's been trying to deflect the criticism with his usual defence of "I'm just a comedian" that he brings out in between telling people that he's the most trusted source of news for the millennial generation for which he's paid $30 million a year, more than Leno & Letterman despite averaging 1/3 of their ratings.

All I really have to say is to offer a little thought experiment: How would Jon Stewart react if a rival satirist had secret meetings with a Republican president and his material was seen as having a pro-Republican slant?

He would shit kittens and go after that rival with both hands as a craven political toady.

You know he would.

FEAR THE WALKING SPIN-OFF

AMC is doing a spin-off from their mega-hit The Walking Dead, called Fear The Walking Dead, and are hoping to have some sort of crossover with the flagship in some future season.

Here's what I would like the spin-off show to do.

At the end of the first season, they find a solution to the zombie problem, and clean it up to the point where life quickly goes back to normal. However, they run out of money to clean up the zombies in a narrow corridor between Atlanta and Alexandria. For the rest of the show's run it's just a family-based kitchen-sink drama with only occasional scenes of characters wondering if any living people are still in the zombie zone and then going, "Nyah, we run the evacuation instructions during every PBS pledge break, they're bound to have seen it."

That also opens the door for The Walking Dead finale to feature the last surviving character finally stumbling out of the quarantined zombie zone and going "Aw shit."

PEZ ME OFF

"AAAAAGGGHH!! MY THROAT!"

Some producers are planning to make a Pez Movie. Yep a movie about those little candy dispenser that look like candy's being ripped out of a cartoon character's throat.

Time to put a big "CLOSED: OUT OF IDEAS" sign out on Hollywood.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1238: Who Is To Blame?

If there is one thing most people agree on, it's that the movie business is in a sorry state. Too many sequels, remakes, reboots, re-imaginings, and the sequels to the re-imagined reboots of the remakes.

Even Dustin Hoffman, one of the most successful and respected movie actors of his generation thinks the movie biz is in the worst state it's ever seen.

I guess he finally got around to seeing those Fockers movies.

Anyway, some like to blame the executives who decide which films get made, I am one of those people, and some like to blame the audience who they think is getting dumber by the day.

Actually, the blame is more widespread and more complicated than we previously thought.

So let's break it down into something easy to read and give it a swift kick in the listicles:

1. THE PAIN OF THEATRE GOING. The days of the neighbourhood bijou within walking distance of the average North American home is long dead. For most North Americans getting to a movie means getting in a car, driving down to the mall or downtown, finding a parking space that you'll probably have to pay for, buying your tickets, buying your snacks, and finding a decent seat where you can see the screen and not have your head blown off by the sound system.

Now imagine doing that with a spouse and kids.

Basically what used to be just a casual stroll, and the spending of some loose change, is now a major expedition requiring transportation, hassle, and a hell of a lot of money.

That means that people are more likely than not to just stay home and watch TV unless the production is some sort of massive event/experience that simply can't be duplicated on a home-size screen and sound system that the whole family can enjoy.

Couple that with...

2. THE HIGH COST OF MAKING & SELLING MOVIES. Hollywood's business practices, which I call the "self-fulfilling idiocy" had given the industry an inflation rate not seen outside of Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany. It just keeps getting worse even though new technology has made the ability to make professional looking cinema cheaper and cheaper.

It's not just the large scale epics that were busting out budget wise. Genres that were once reliably affordable, like romantic comedies, straight-up comedies, mystery-thrillers, and small scale action films were beginning to cost more than they could possibly deliver on screen and at the box office. 

It's not just production. The "synergy" promised by the mega-mergers of the studios with media companies only succeeded in hiking the costs of advertising upward to ridiculous levels. Plus, try to sell a smaller, mature, movie that's R-Rated and you're in for a struggle with the media outlets, many of them refusing to carry ads for R-Rated movies, even if their own sin was dropping one too many "fucks" in the dialogue.

To stay in business Hollywood realized that they needed...

3. FOREIGN MARKETS. If a film is going to have a chance of at least breaking even it's going to have to do well internationally in non-English speaking markets. Now the smug cineastes love to lecture about how foreign films are so much better than the dreck Hollywood puts out. But many of those art-house films they like the bloviate about are not the everyday entertainment the locals enjoy. Most of those foreign language films that play in art-houses in North America usually play in art-houses in their home nations.

Do you know what the plebeians in those foreign language markets like?

For the most part: Tits and Explosions.

Plus, a lot of foreign audiences don't mind plot holes that you can drive a truck through as long as what they're viewing is visually exciting and has some sort of hook that'll keep them interested, like having a familiar "branding" associated with it, like it being a sequel, a remake, or part of some pre-existing franchise.

Gee, they sound a lot like what people think of North American audiences, don't they.

But since the average return on a ticket is about 25¢ from every dollar the studios are going to need more than just the world buying tickets, they also need to dominate...

4. HOME VIEWING. The studios need you to buy or rent Blu-Rays, downloads, or streams of their movies, or to watch them every time they appear on cable, so the cable channels will keep paying to air them. This is where they make their real profits over the long term and make it possible to stay in business.

The studios hope that by sticking to big budget franchises the fans for those franchises will repeatedly see the movies, as well as buy the merchandise.

But there's a...

5. A BIG FAT PARADOX. Actually, there are many big fat paradoxes that are making things worse for the movie industry. So let's have a list inside our listicle...

• The dependence on mega-budget franchises, reboots, sequels, etc., is turning off a lot people who just plain give up on going to movies, and stay home and watch TV.
• The TV channels and streaming services whose license fees have been the profit margin of the movie biz are getting more and more into producing their own original content. Content that's often far better than the stuff playing in theatres.
• The foreign markets all have their own domestic film industries, and thanks to the affordable technology, are starting to produce their own domestic content that can compete directly with Hollywood without the dubbing and massive expense.
• Too many movies, just aren't worth the repeated viewing. They're based on fear, ignorance, and greed, not on a desire to entertain, and they will eventually just gather dust on the shelf.

And that's just a few of the reasons why movies are in the shape they're in.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1237: NBC To Trump - "YOU'RE FIRED!!"

I'm not posting a picture of Trump so here's Ivanka instead

Donald Trump, real estate heir and TV personality, is running for President, and decided to open his campaign with a rant about illegal immigration using all kinds of inflammatory language setting back the cause of immigration reform back about a decade. 

In response, Univision, the Spanish language TV network, ended their relationship with Trump's TV endeavours. In response Trump was loud and boorish, and then NBC cut all ties to the man known as The Donald.

This makes Trump's campaign just one of the most expensive publicity stunts he's ever pulled.

And that's what I think his campaign is, it's just another publicity stunt from a man whose entire life is built on publicity and spin.

Trump's greatest successes, outside of his daughter, who beyond her aesthetic qualities, seems to have a capable head on her shoulders, is his ability to sell myths about himself.

Trump sold the myth that he was a self-made, up from nothing, entrepreneur, when he actually just walked into an already successful real estate business built by his father.

He named a casino after what was supposed to be a tomb

Trump sold the myth that he's been an unqualified success saw a business genius, even though companies in his casino empire have gone bankrupt 4 times.

Think about that, his companies have gone under 4 times in a business where people just walk in to give you money, on land he bought for pennies on the dollar from the Atlantic City government.

Which brings me to my next point, he's currently selling the myth that he's a Republican. I've been doing a little digging, and the more serious conservative outlets do more than consider him a joke, they consider him an opportunist Democrat. I even heard on pundit describe his campaign as how a liberal Democrat imagines a Republican candidate to talk and act.

Despite occasionally registering as a Republican, and endorsing GOP candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, most of Trump's political donations, endorsements, and stances are firmly in the orbit of the Democratic Party.

In the past, Trump has financially supported, endorsed, or actively campaigned very un-Republican causes like strict gun control, government run health care, and the expansion of eminent domain.

"What is eminent domain and why does Trump support its expansion?"

Eminent domain is when the government forces a property owner to sell their property to the government at a discount, sometimes at an even deeper discount if the government decides the property is considered "blighted." 

Normally, eminent domain is supposed to be only used to build projects for the public good. Things like roads, bridges, hospitals, airports, etc…

Still won't post any pictures of Donald.

However, many local and state governments have broadened the definitions of public good, and blighted. Those definitions means that they can effectively take property from taxpaying citizens and give them to private companies for their private aims. They've also expanded the definition of "blighted" to basically allow governments to use taxpayer money to take to private property and sell them to their buddies for pennies on the dollar.

The Supreme Court declared the practice legal in the Kelo V. City of New London decision, a decision that Donald Trump has publicly declared he loves. The abuse of eminent domain is how he built those Atlantic City casinos who went through four bankruptcies.

A little known fact that I gleaned from my research is that while Trump loves the Kelo decision a lot of Republicans despise it. They consider it a combo of big government abuse on behalf of their cronies. It's unlikely that they will let someone who "loves" it get the GOP nomination without a brutal fight.

It's only a matter of time before Trump's many ideological differences with the party become a campaign issue, and the 50+ other Republican candidates jump on him like a pack of ravenous dogs.

Now let's get back to Trump being dumped by NBC.

First, Trump is not being "censored" by NBC. They are a private company, they are not the government. They are also not stopping him from speaking his mind, they are simply saying that they are not going to pay him to do it.

NBC is perfectly within their rights to do that.

Donald Trump is boasting that he will sue NBC for breach of contract and win.

I doubt that.

All showbiz contracts, especially television contracts, have what is called a "moral turpitude" clause. It basically means that if The Donald does anything that might reflect badly on NBC or anything associated with NBC, they are well within their rights to can his ass.

He did, and they did.

End of story.

Now, can we please stop talking about Donald Trump?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1236: Random Drippings From The Brain Pan...

ITV PASSES ON TWC TV:

British TV giant ITV has passed on buying the TV arm of The Weinstein Company, which could have meant hundreds of millions of dollars for the Weinsteins which would have been a nice cushion for their feast/famine business model.

Now some are wondering why ITV is walking away from the deal.

I think I know why ITV backed out, but I'm wondering why it hasn't ended in a lawsuit, which is usually how deals with TWC usually end.

Then again, the day is young, legal papers could still be filed.

Anyway, back to why ITV pulled out. I think they looked at TWC, looked at their history, and looked at how they had to trade over 200 films from their library to avoid bankruptcy a few years ago and said: "Maybe this is not for us."

Remember, television is all about making shows and airing them when you promise to air them. It's all about regularity, predictability, and reliability.

TWC's business model seems based almost entirely on Harvey Weinstein's whimsy, especially when it comes to things that should be simple, rational, business decisions. Whimsy can get expensive.

Then there's trust.

TWC's flagship TV project is Project Runway, a fashion themed reality show. It's run for 13 seasons, they license foreign versions all over the world, and it's a solid ratings earner for the Lifetime Channel.

Now it wasn't always on Lifetime, in fact, for the first five seasons it was on NBC-Universal's Bravo Channel. It was during negotiations for Season 6 that Harvey Weinstein literally buried NBC-Universal boss Jeff Zucker under a ton of aggrandizing horse-shit about how their deal was as good as done because they were the truest friends.

Meanwhile, Weinstein had already inked the deal to sell the show to Lifetime.

Ouch. 

So now you can probably understand why ITV chose to avoid getting into bed with TWC.

TOMORROWLAND TANKS?

Disney's theme park ride turned sci-fi-fantasia film  Tomorrowland is underwhelming at the box office, hitting number one during a shockingly sluggish Memorial Day weekend.

I had a feeling this would happen the moment I saw George Clooney at the centre of the ad campaign.

Hollywood's grim determination to make him a star even though he's dropping more bombs than Curtis LeMay is starting to look both sad and ridiculous.

Clooney's only truly successful film in the last decade was Gravity, and that was essentially Sandra Bullock's movie, he had a glorified cameo, and he didn't feature in any of the ads.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

It's becoming a trend when a celebrity dies that their family start hurling accusations and counter-accusations and everything goes straight to hell. Casey Kasem seems to be the most famous and drawn out case.

Well, it's happening again with the recently deceased B.B. King.

I fear it's going to spread, like a virus, and will happen every damn time someone famous dies.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1234: Friends, Romans, Countrymen...

Last night David Letterman broadcast his last episode as host of CBS' Late Show, paving the way for his replacement, former comedy central host/faux pundit, Stephen Colbert.

I should mourn Letterman's retirement, because I was a fan of his blend of comedy and performance art when I first stumbled upon him on a summer night in the mid-to-late 1980s. He was different, he was daring, he was edgy, he seemed sincerely interested in his guests and their work, and he wasn't afraid to tweak the noses and the expectations of not only the audience, but the elite New York corporate establishment that signed his pay checks.

Back then it was him and the audience against the stuffed shirts of the establishment, and it was exhilarating. It showed that late night talk shows, which were becoming stuffy institutions had possibilities to be something more than just a place for celebrities to plug their next product.

He made the talk show cool again.

Then it died.

Not quickly. It was a slow and painful death, but it was a death nonetheless.

The first was the severe thrashing he got at the hands of NBC in the War of the Tonight Show succession between him and Jay Leno. At first it looked like Letterman had the upper-hand, since he was the handpicked successor of the retiring Johnny Carson. However, neither he or Carson saw just how bloody this war was going to get.

Leno won the Tonight Show, through a combination of what the network thought was his more mainstream appeal and compliant personality, as well as the ruthless machinations of his then manager.

It was a bitter victory for Leno because the Tonight Show struggled in the ratings for quite some time after he took it over. It was so bad in that early period that NBC offered the job to Letterman who had been finishing off his contract with NBC. Johnny Carson advised Letterman to jump to CBS and free himself from the constant internecine warfare that dominated NBC's internal politics.

For the first while on CBS it was great. David Letterman seemed to be winning the war for late night supremacy, then came Hugh Grant.

The Tonight Show scored Hugh Grant for his post-hooker-scandal mea culpa and it caused a seismic shift in the late night audience. Suddenly Leno started getting better ratings than Letterman, and that must have burned Letterman.

Letterman's style changed, becoming harsher and more caustic, and not against his old establishment targets. Instead his eye was now aimed at the audience that he saw as failing him by preferring Leno.

He also seemed to lose interest in his guests. The main purpose of the interviews changed. On Leno's Tonight Show it was all about getting the plugs done in time to make it to the next commercial break, and on Letterman's old show it was all about having fun. But in the mid-90s Letterman's interview style went from having fun to proving himself superior to his guests.

An air of smug arrogance took over Letterman's whole milieu. It was no longer him and the audience versus the establishment, he was now a fully paid up member of that establishment versus the audience. The establishment welcomed him with open arms, because he gave them a safe veneer of rebellion without challenging any of their own pet shibboleths.

Then audiences for late night talk shows in general began to shrink. A lot of people dropped out, souring on the declining returns from the talk shows, and the wider temptations of cable television.

The days when a late night powerhouse like Johnny Carson could earn over 25% of NBC's total revenue was gone and Letterman and Leno were part in parcel of that decline.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1226: In Cold Blood…Again?

The Weinstein Company has bought the rights to adapt Truman Capote's "non-fiction" novel In Cold Blood for television as an "event series."

This news has inspired one question:

WHY?

In case you spent the last 60 years in a cave I'll do some explaining.

In 1959 two recent parolees Dick Hickock and Perry Smith slaughtered four members of the Clutter family in rural Kansas because they heard a nonsensical rumour that the family had a mythical stash of money in their house.

Truman Capote, already a successful author, and his childhood friend turned personal secretary Harper Lee, travelled to Kansas to write about the case, and Capote got to know the killers very well as they waited for their execution in 1966.

The book was a monster best-seller and opened the door to a flood of "True Crime" books that sell well even to this day. Ironically it was the last substantial work Capote ever wrote, producing only short pieces, one unfinished novel, while transforming himself from an author who became a celebrity into a celebrity who was once an author.

Despite some disputes over its accuracy In Cold Blood became his most famous and enduring work.

Which brings us back to the question: Why do it again?

The first adaptation was in 1967 and is considered a classic due to the powerful performances and Conrad Hall's vivid black and white cinematography.

Then it was done again in 1996 as a TV miniseries.

Then two other movies, Capote and Infamous, were made and released almost on top of each other and they were about Truman Capote's writing of the book.

So, it's not exactly as if the story's never been told on screen.

In fact, it's been told FOUR TIMES.

Even by remake-crazy Hollywood standards that's a little extreme. Even reboot nutty superhero movies they at least try to change things up with different villains and situations.

This is not that kind of story.

It's a story that's been told, repeatedly, and often pretty well, so why try again?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1225: Farewell To Nova Scotia?

The Finance Minister of Nova Scotia is planning to slash the payroll tax credit for film and television jobs by about 75%. Local producers naturally object to this, because it burdens them with extra costs, and even American rapper Snoop Dogg declared his support for the tax credit because it makes his favourite show, Netflix's The Trailer Park Boys, possible.

Now you're probably wondering what all the fooferall is about, so I'll do a little explaining.

A little over 20 years ago the Nova Scotia government instituted what's called a payroll tax credit program for film and television productions that shoot in Nova Scotia and employ Nova Scotians. At the time, there was about $6 million a year spent in film/TV production in Nova Scotia, but it has grown to about $130-$140 million a year.

That's a lot of jobs created by taxpaying companies, and held by taxpaying citizens.

That's not counting the secondary and tertiary jobs created by the spending of those same taxpaying citizens. Usually an industry creates between 2-3 secondary and tertiary jobs for for every one of their jobs.

That's a lot of jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist.

I'm betting that the Nova Scotia government breaks even on the income taxes at the very least, but more likely turns a profit when all the numbers are crunched.

And dropping the tax credit would be really stupid since without it the province would probably lose Tom Selleck's freshly revived Jesse Stone TV movie franchise, The Trailer Park Boys, and CBC's flagship political satire series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. For many productions the credit makes Nova Scotia affordable, and in many cases possible. 

Now you're probably wondering why I'm defending what many see as a government subsidy, since I regularly state my opposition to government subsidies in the film business.

Well, it's not a subsidy when you look at the facts, and it's not run like a subsidy.

You see, the tax credit is basically a refund of all or some of the payroll taxes employers in film and TV would normally have to pay the government for the privilege of employing Nova Scotians.

That's right, the payroll tax is a tax on anyone who is creating taxpaying jobs.

That's a stupid tax.

It's also not handled like a normal film subsidy. You don't have to go to a funding agency and kiss the ass of bureaucrats in Toronto to prove your worthiness of taxpayer's money by employing the same-old same-old pack of cronies you see in 90% of Canadian productions. All you had to do for the tax credit was prove that you were making film and television programming that was shooting in Nova Scotia, and that you were employing Nova Scotian taxpayers.

Then you didn't get a subsidy, you got relief from a stupid and counterproductive tax regime.

And let's not forget that it's not just foreign productions shooting on location getting these benefits, there's also a hell of a lot of 100% homegrown work that wouldn't otherwise exist without it.

So save the tax credit and save Nova Scotia's fledgeling industry. A quick way to make your voice heard is via social media, like Twitter, so let the Nova Scotia Finance Minister know what you think.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1224: It's Just A Joke.

First South African comedian Trevor Noah was tapped to be the replacement for Jon Stewart at Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Second came increased interest in this guy who most Americans have never seen, since he had only three Daily Show appearances before being crowned heir apparent. More people were tweeting about Noah than actually watch The Daily Show.

Then came the inevitable event for any comedian, close scrutiny of Noah's Twitter feed uncovered jokes, but not just any jokes, jokes that offended some people, by going outside the list of pre-approved subjects and targets.

Naturally this led to outrageous outrage that a comedian would dare to joke about something that might hurt the feelings of someone somewhere. Then comedian Patton Oswalt stepped in with an epic Twitter rant mocking those outraged at mockery.

Leading to Oswalt to be declared "Problematic" yet again by the authors of many an online think-piece.

This controversy taught me three important things.

1. It explains why Jon Stewart avoided doing ANYTHING where every single word he said wasn't pre-written and pre-scrutinized by a staff of 20 professional writers, producers, and probably a few lawyers. He learned to avoid talking or joking off the cuff, because it was nothing but trouble. Better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak, and remove all doubt, even better to have professionals do all the heavy lifting for you.

2. The post of Daily Show anchor is extremely important to the people who staff the Twitter outrage machine. This is because whether they actually watch the show or not, they use the Daily Show, and the hundreds of almost daily on-line think-pieces it inspires, to determine who or what they're supposed to be outraged at while not feeling like a censorious prig because they're the right kind of hip for following The Daily Show. For a host-apparent to violate their shibboleths must feel like a horrible betrayal.

3. If Noah gets the same ratings as Jon Stewart, but doesn't get paid the exact same money that Jon Stewart got for the exact same job, then Comedy Central is irredeemably racist.

______________

In other news...

My short story A CHOICE OF MONSTERS is now available for Kindle users for 99¢ US.

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Maybe a crime story is more your thing.

Hollywood player Carter Bennett is losing friends fast. They're dying young, in the weirdest ways, and there's a strange old man showing up at their funerals and leaving the same cryptic message.

Bennett's investigation uncovers a brutal revenge from the darkest corner of the Cold War.

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