Hollywood Babble On & On #1074: Commissioner Gordon- The Series?

The Fox Network has inked a series commitment deal with DC/Warner Television for Gotham, a series set in the titular fictional city made famous by a certain dark knight named Batman.

Now the series, developed by Mentalist creator Bruno Heller, won't feature Batman. But will centre on a detective James Gordon as he and other cops battle the city's assorted madmen and masked villains and rise up the ranks to the post of Commissioner.

Both DC and Fox TV are hoping to cash in the hype surrounding rival Marvel's Agents of SHIELD which premiered last night. So let's take a minute to look at the PROS & CONS!!

PROS:

1. COMMISSIONER GORDON: Jim Gordon was often relegated as just the exposition guy, telling Batman where there was trouble and who was behind it. However since the 1980s he's been given more of a backstory, and became a more interesting and human character.

2. DRAMATIC POTENTIAL: Gotham is a great setting with great potential. It's a great city besieged by crime, both normal and abnormal, as well gangsterism and public corruption. It's a city beset with moral malaise where decent men have to struggle to maintain their humanity.

3. DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Gotham also has a wealth of interesting characters from the comics that aren't super villains. From bad/good cop Harvey Bullock, police officer Renee Montoya, District Attorney Harvey Dent, and the characters from the cult comic Gotham Central. 

If the people running the show know and appreciate these creations, they can use them and bring their potential to the screen.

CONS:

1. NO BATMAN: Some may hold not having Batman in the show against it and won't give the show a chance, regardless of quality.

2. NEED BATMAN?: Let's say the show does succeed. It runs seven years where Gordon and his associates successfully fights off the fiends both normal and freakish from destroying the city. Where does this leave Batman, will the city still need him? Will the writers contrive a horrible setback suffered by Gordon and his team that makes Batman necessary?

3. NETWORK & STUDIO: While the show has great potential, it also has tremendous potential to get screwed royally by the network and the studio. You never know what management will do and having a comic book company, a major studio and a network involved creates such pitfalls by the power of three. They might forbid the show from using ANY of the villains, or supporting characters from the Gotham/Batman canon, they could cast a completely inappropriate vapid pretty-boy for the lead, or a million other things you can't imagine because you're not a Hollywood executive with a compelling need to meddle.

Those are the pros and cons I thought of, what pros and cons can you think of?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1073: TV Tidbits

The new fall TV season is starting, and I've manage to catch a couple of the new shows. The first ones I saw were the new Fox sitcoms Dads and Brooklyn 9-9. While B9-9 showed some potential as long as they find the right way to present Andy Samberg's man-child detective. 

Dads however is a different story. It has a good cast, and the people behind the show are supposed to have some sort of comic pedigree, but I found it offensive. Not for its use of negative Asian stereotypes and politically incorrect language for laughs, but because I laughed harder at funerals.

Funerals of people I liked.

The film was a mash of hackneyed plot-lines, cardboard characters, and dialogue that would have been exponentially better if they just set up a camera and let the actors improvise.

It reminded me of the sort of sitcoms Fox made in its early days when it kept trying to rip off its own hit Married With Children, but failed.

My theory behind the show is that the people behind it thought they were being subversive and "meta" by being so hackneyed, but did it without the sort of manic energy and imagination to make being subversive and meta work.

Sleepy Hollow showed a nice bit of bat-shit imagination in its premiere. An intriguing central plot of Ichabod Crane and a modern police Lieutenant battling monsters to stave off doomsday, but runs the risk of slipping into the realm of Lost when they start pulling monsters and mysteries out their ass once folks get bored with the headless horseman.

I'm actually eagerly curious over Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, since I was a Joss Whedon fan since the dawn of the Buffyverse, and would like to see what he does working in the Marvel Universe and what he's allowed to do with it.

I'm also curious to see what happens on the returning Person of Interest, the series that shows how to do continuing mystery-box story-lines right.

Though I must admit that I watch very little network television.

What do you folks think about the new TV season?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1072: Dear Jerry...

AN OPEN LETTER TO JERRY BRUCKHEIMER

Dear Jerry.

I can call you Jerry right?

Okay, Mister Bruckheimer it is.

Anyway, I just heard that Disney won't renew your 'first look' deal when it ends in 2014.

In case you might have amnesia due to a freak accident involving a cast iron skillet and a misplaced roller skate I'll do a little explaining. A 'first look' deal is between a major producer, like yourself and a major studio, like Disney, and basically involves you taking projects to Disney first. If Disney passes, you're then free to take those projects to other studios.

It was a sweet deal, giving you a home with the Disney media empire while also giving you the freedom to do projects with other studios.

But now it's over.

Need a hug?

Okay, I'll keep my distance. All the better to give this situation a little dispassionate analysis.

Let's begin with the reasons Disney is giving for dropping you like a hot potato.

Disney says that your projects don't fit in with their new strategy of sucking the life out of the franchises they can squeeze from Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and Pixar. And that you want to do more "mature" projects that don't fit the Disney brand.

Ain't that just a nice little plate of horse-shit.

We both know the real reason Disney dropped you.

It's money.

Or to be more specific the fact that you spend WAY TOO MUCH MONEY.

You spent $300 million to make the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Sure, it made over a billion at the box office, but once you deduct the theatre's nut, the back end shares, and the costs of marketing and distribution, the film would have broken even only if Disney was very lucky.

And that's your problem.

You've been making big blockbuster movies since the 1980s, and a lot of them have broken records.

But not all of them have broken records, and with your budgets having a rate of inflation not seen outside of Weimar Germany, they increasingly need to break records just to break even.

That's not a good business model.

A business needs profits so it can stay in business.

The bigger the profits the better. Because bigger profits means happy shareholders and happy shareholders means a healthy and growing company.

Even when your films do "make money" the margins are usually so thin, you can see through them.

Yes, the movies do get revenues from home video and television releases. But it takes years for that money to come in, especially in the amounts needed to cover the mega-losses that flicks like The Lone Ranger racked up. Plus, you can't rely on people wanting see a movie on TV or on home video, especially when the film has so much negativity attached to it.

All that risk and loss can be mitigated if you had practised a wee bit of self control when it came to the spending.

You know, the sort of thing a producer is supposed to be doing.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Even your former go-to guy Michael Bay has shown the ability to operate within a reasonable budget as he did with Pain & Gain. Sure, it didn't break any records at the box office, but it didn't have to.

Can you do something like that?

Because you might have to. Studios might be a little hesitant making the sort of deal you had with Disney if they're going to see a lot more money going out than going in. The days of easy cash and a complacent audience is long gone. This may be the age of the blockbuster, but it's also the age of the shrinking audience.

People are staying at home enjoying a golden age of television storytelling. They're becoming more and more selective of the movies they choose to pay money to see, and even family movies can't rely on the repetitive viewing habits of children. Money's a lot tighter in the real world, and you're going to have to show that you can be tighter than two coats of paint to survive in this environment.

I hope you find this helpful.

Sincerely  --  

Furious D.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1071: The Art Of Wrapping Up...

The Fall TV season is just beginning, news shows are starting, but online everyone is talking about a show reaching its end.

Breaking Bad, one of the flagship dramas on the AMC channel, is coming to an end. Unlike a lot of shows it's ending by the choice and design of its creator Vince Gilligan. 

People are eagerly anticipating the show's finale and ratings are going up because the viewers aren't content to let it wait in their DVRs and are watching it live.

Artist's Conception of Vince Gilligan

If Mr. Gilligan's work lives up to expectations, which are high, his show could go down in history as one of television's groundbreaking crime epics. If he fails, it could be a stain on his career that fans may find hard to forgive.

Remember The Sopranos? One of the most honoured and revered shows in TV history. However, the show's deliberately obscure, just stops, finale? Not so much. The only people who defend it are either the people behind it, or folks scared of being thought stupid for not "getting it."

So let's do a little thought experiment.

Imagine that you are the creator-showrunner of a critically acclaimed hit TV show. It's had a great run, but you've decided that now is the time to wrap it up.

But how?

Before you fire up the old Final Draft on your laptop you're going to need to ask yourself these questions:

WHERE DID YOUR CHARACTERS COME FROM & WHERE ARE THEY GOING?

Every show these days has some sort of an arc for its characters. Even television's most rigidly structured procedural dramas feature characters that change and evolve over time.

When it comes time to wrap up a show, and you have a chance to do it properly, you have to look at how they started, how they changed, and where do you think they should end up.

WHAT THEMES ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE SHOW?

Some shows are built around friendship, family, and thus should end on a note that enforces that theme. Some are built around less positive themes, and cry out for a darker ending.

WHAT COURSE BRINGS THE CHARACTERS & THEMES TOGETHER IN THE MOST SATISFYING WAY?

Are your characters on the road to hell or redemption? Are they being brought together, or torn apart? You need to work out how your characters and overarching themes work together to create the most satisfying conclusion.

And let's not forget...

IT'S NOT THE AUDIENCE'S JOB TO 'GET IT' IT'S YOU'RE JOB TO GET THEM.

A thing that annoys me about some conclusions is that when people expressed dissatisfaction the people behind them said variations of: "You just don't get it."

As an artist if you ever feel the urge to say "You just don't get it," slap yourself instead.

Because if you've got the urge to say that it means you've failed as an artist, and are at risk for failing as a human being.

Art is a form of communication that goes beyond the simple definitions of the words being said. If people don't understand what you're saying, and you have to toss a lot of academic sounding baffle-gab to explain why they don't understand what you're saying, then you probably aren't sure what you wanted to say in the first place.

You might think that your art is for you, but without the audience you're not an artist, you're just a dingus writing stuff no one enjoys. You need to make that vital emotional/intellectual connection with the audience, and satisfying them is a sign that you're doing it right.

That's what I think, tell me what you think in the comments...

Hollywood Babble On & On #1070: Little Budgets Need Big Ambitions

I like low budget movies.

Or to be precise, I like good low budget movies.

I also respect low budget movies with ambition. Even if they're not my particular cup of tea in style, subject matter, or even fail utterly creatively, I can at least respect their attempt to step beyond the constraints of their finances, genre, or talents of the filmmakers.

Take the people behind the Insidious franchise. The first one had a production budget of about $1.5 million, and made about $97 million at the box office, and the sequel Insidious: Chapter 2 has made over $41 million on its opening weekend and judging from audience reaction could at least repeat, if not better the first film's performance. 

It doesn't matter if I like the films or not, I haven't seen them, so I can't judge them, but it does mean that I can respect the ambition and hard work behind them and their success.

However, what I find hard to respect is the trend for making "deliberately bad" cinema as some sort of post-modern ironic form of anti-entertainment.

I can't appreciate such films which the makers see as a license for laziness in almost every aspect. The premises are composed via Mad Libs, you're lucky if the dialogue even went through a first draft, some "I can't believe they hired them" stunt-casting, and loads of shitty CGI special effects that can out-done by an adolescent and their home computer.

There's very little imagination, and very few calories burned to make these films.

So I end this mini-rant with a plea.

Please stop supporting, or promoting deliberately bad movies. There are more than enough inadvertently bad movies released every year, we don't need anymore. Support and promote movies where it looks like some effort was put into the production. Even if they fail, at least respect that they tried.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1069: Invocato a PERNEO

Warner Brothers and author J.K. Rowling have announced that they are working together on a spin-off of the Harry Potter franchise.

Sadly, they passed on my pitch for a movie franchise based on the solo adventures of Voldemort's nose who becomes a private investigator, called I Sniff A Mystery.

It will not involve Harry, Hermione, or Rupert Grint, who I know was an actor, but his name was more fitting for a character.

Instead it will be set in New York during the 1920s, and will no doubt somehow involve jazz, speakeasies, gangsters, goblins, ghosts, ghouls, and other strangeness as it follows wizard Newt Scamander as he compiles his future Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them.

Personally, I have no problem with this. It's not like they're trying to drag Radcliffe and Company into doing another sequel. They're working with JK Rowling to make new stories and expanding on the fictional universe she created. Nobody has a problem with new people previously totally unconnected with the originals working on new Star Wars movies. Actually, that's a bad example with the prequel trilogy flashing back into my mind like a painful repressed memory.

I think the fact that she has about half of all the money in the universe and has successfully branched into other projects and genres means that no studio, poverty, or an egotistical desire for artistic respectability could force her to do something she doesn't really want to do.

I feel that while she may be done with Harry Potter specifically she might not feel that she's done with the world she created for it. 

That's what I think, what do you think?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1068: The Runaway Emergency!

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti declares a state of emergency near the end of August.

It wasn't over an earthquake, a forest fire, the chronic traffic problems, collapsing or the general sense of discontented malaise that permeates big city life in Southern California.

It was about movies and television.

You see working in Hollywood is like attending a convention that never seems to end. You come, have meetings, make deals, and then go off to a different city and state to actually do the work of making movies and television.

As opposed to the golden age of movies and television when almost everything was shot inside Hollywood today very little is shot in the greater Los Angeles area's famous Thirty Mile Zone.

In case you think the TMZ is just a gossip site I'll do a little explaining.

The Thirty Mile or Studio Zone is the area set by unions to determine if a production has to pay extra for filming on location. Filming inside the zone was supposed to be cheaper and easier, but my oh my things have changed.

The thing politicians like to point and blame for the exodus of productions out of California are tax breaks. These allow runaway productions to legally get out of paying the payroll taxes they would normally have to shell out for the right to employ people in a given state.

While that is a factor, and an important, it's not the whole story behind the exodus. So let's try to break it down...

1. FINANCIAL:

A) Tax Breaks: As I said they're a factor. States are willing to sacrifice a small amount in payroll and other taxes that they hope to make up in income taxes on a couple of hundred highly paid professionals and skilled tradespeople working in their state.

California, on the other hand, has some of the highest state taxes on payroll and salaries, in the USA. All attempts to reform or simplify these systems usually die on the vine.

B) Salaries: Costs of living is much lower in almost every state that is not California. That means that  what qualifies as not-quite-good-enough money in Los Angeles, California qualifies as great money in Baton Rouge, Louisiana or Charlotte, North Carolina. So the salaries and per-diem costs are usually much lower.

C) Regulations: California does not make it easy to do anything in their state. It's regulatory regime is strict, and goes beyond the normal strictures of ensuring health and safety. They require paying multiple fees to multiple municipal, county, and state agencies, as well as hiring above and beyond the actual needs of a production. Agencies in other states, on all levels, tend to be more flexible, easier to navigate, and more affordable.

2. ARTISTIC:

A) The Look: When I was a kid I just assumed from television that all of America was either a traffic jammed sprawl, or a semi-arid hilly scrubland.  In fact, the geography of the USA is much more diverse and filmmakers are taking full advantage of that diversity. Why try to fake a New England town in an area that doesn't look one bit like New England, just go to New England.

B) The Talent: Diversity of location also comes with a diversity of talent, both behind and in front of the camera. It's good to have people who look like they've lived in a small town instead of just come down from Beverly Hills.

C) The Community: It's pretty much guaranteed that filming in Southern California is going to be complicated if not aggravating. Cities are poorly designed, and poorly managed, making working in them an occasionally baffling ordeal. Just dealing with the traffic can make anyone scream. A lot of those problems just don't exist in many other cities and towns.

Now these issues raise a question.

What can Garcetti, as Mayor of Los Angeles do?

Of the many problems that are driving away production are beyond the control of the city government. State finances are a shambles and any and all attempts to reform them are blocked by a wide range of forces. The city government is not much better, if not worse. It also has its own inertia caused by differing factions all wanting a piece of the civic pie.

So while Garcetti's made a nice gesture, it's just that, a gesture. Whether he can do something concrete about it, I don't know.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1067: TV Tidbits

Time for some TV tidbits.

DOES COMCAST KNOW WHAT IT'S DOING?

All last year we heard how Comcast was going to rebrand its G4 Channel, which specialized in tech, games, geeky stuff and reruns, into the Esquire Channel, which will be a more upscale lifestyle brand, in association with the magazine Esquire, natch. They cancelled all of G4's original programming, fired all the employees, and generally burned their bridges with everyone associated with the channel.

Now, in a fit of whimsy, they decided that the fashion-centric Style Channel would now be the Esquire Channel instead.

So what about G4?

It looks like nobody knows. Not even Comcast.

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.

There are now four Wizard of Oz themed shows being slapped onto the airwaves.

First came....

1. Emerald City on NBC which puts Dorothy and her adventures in modern day New York City, because New York is cheaper and easier to work in than either Los Angeles or Oz.

2. Dorothy on CBS which is apparently some sort of medical drama.

3. Warriors of Oz on SyFy which is going to be some sort of post apocalyptic action adventure show that will no doubt have the same class and quality as Sharknado.

And now...

4. CW's adaptation of a novel called Dorothy Must Die, which is about Dorothy becoming the dictatorial ruler of Oz, and the rebels who seek to overthrow her.

What do you think about this 19th Century English Gentlemen?

That's what I think too.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1066: The Return of Stargate?

MGM is currently flush with cash, thanks to the success of franchises like James Bond, and The Hobbit, and now they're aiming for a three-peat by re-booting the Stargate franchise.

If you don't remember Stargate, it was the artistic peak for the team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.

It starred Kurt Russell as a macho military man, and James Spader as a nerdy archaeologist who lead a team through an ancient alien portal right out of Ancient Aliens, and have to go through a lot of Chariots of the Gods nonsense to save the world from aliens dressed up like Egyptian gods.

The original movie was spun-off into three Canadian produced TV spin-offs, Stargate SG-1 which ran for like forever and a half on basic cable and syndicated reruns, and three relatively shorter lasting spin-offs from the spin-off Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Universe, and a 1 season animated series called Stargate: Infinity.

Now let's look at the PROS & CONS!

PROS:

1. The franchise has a familiar name and the movie and the first TV spin-off has a fan base.

2. The plan of a big screen reboot of what looked like a moribund franchise worked for Star Trek.

CONS:

1. Is that fan base as dedicated as the ones that support Star Trek and Star Wars? The TV shows were a model of dwindling expectations and the last series, though it got some good reviews, didn't last very long. 

2. Will that fan base, whose reaction to the news seems to be a shrug, go to the big screen reboot if it has NOTHING to do with the films and TV shows they knew and loved?

3. The Star Trek reboot sold a lot of tickets because they got JJ Abrams, who had tapped into America's love of lens flare, but the films were so expensive, the profit margins on them were relatively thin.

Does MGM have their own JJ Abrams waiting in the wings for this franchise? Can they take the thin profits from an obviously expensive project like the proposed trilogy?

Now I've proposed my own remake ideas for MGM before, a few times, but they don't seem to be listening to me. So let's play a game. You guys tell me if there are any pros & cons that I missed, and what MGM owned film would you remake and how.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1065: Two Little Drips From My Brain Pan

FOX GOES SWEDISH

Fox TV has inked a deal with a Dutch company called Eyeworks to start a program designed to develop Scandinavian writing talent, like this guy...

Bjorn Borkborg writer of "Bork! Bork! Bork!"

Okay, just kidding.

But there's a very simple reason Fox is doing this.

Money.

Scandinavian thrillers and crime stories are hot right now from best-selling books, to successful TV formats. They are also, unless it's being directed by David Fincher, capable of being produced for under $100 million.

HE HAS A POINT

Michael Douglas says that the major studios are afraid of risk...

He has a point. Not a complete point, but a point nonetheless.