Meet and Greet
The past few days’ burning question has been: Would I still write this post if I hadn’t been an award recipient? Close behind it has been this Schrodinger follow-up: Would I still be an award recipient if I hadn’t decided the day before to attend the event? (Employees and families of employees of the organisers are not allowed to answer the second question.)
So, yeah, wow. Last Thursday I went along to the SWANZ awards, cheering for the competition because that was the only way I could deal with the pressure… and Goodbye My Feleni won. And the night itself, viewed in the preceding fortnight with dread and anxiety, turned out to be a very pleasant evening indeed.
I got to meet and talk with:
- playwrights Dean Parker and Briar Grace-Smith*;
- Unproduced Feature Film Script finalists Blair Soper and Simon McCarthy;
- big- and small-screen screenwriters Nick Ward, Kathryn Burnett, and James Griffin;
- producers Leanne Saunders, Tui Ruwhiu, Kath Akuhata-Brown, and Jeremy Macey;
- Commish exec Chris Payne, Motel director Todd Rippon, and Scriptease‘s Jane Sherning Warren;
- and fellow recipients Michael Bennett (Best Factual Script – The Confessions of Prisoner T), Daniel Joseph Borgman (New Writer Award), and Hone Kouka (NZWG Mentorship Award).
Ahh, networking. Not always as painful and dreadful as I imagine.
* I know they’re more than playwrights.
About Time —
— writers got some television-love: there’s a new show called The Writers’ Room that’s about – you guessed it – TV shows’ writers’ rooms.
Yah, bring it.
Monkey See
The scene is familiar: our Hero Detective’s supervisor – a lieutenant in an American show or a superintendent in a Commonwealth show – having had his arse chewed out by his superior, seeks out our Hero Detective in the bullpen.
Spotted recently on the box:
INT. DETECTIVES’ BULLPEN – DAY
Detectives are scattered about the open-plan office, a hubbub of conversations throughout.
Our Hero Detective’s supervisor, THE SUPERINTENDENT, strides through the entrance:
THE SUPERINTENDENT
Where’s Hero Detective?
RANDOM DETECTIVE
He’s on a call, sir.
THE SUPERINTENDENT
(fumes)
Get him to see me when he comes in.
RANDOM DETECTIVE
Yes, sir.
As The Superintendent heads for his office, the Random Detective turns to a colleague:
RANDOM DETECTIVE
(sing-song)
Someone’s in trouble!
I was like, WTF? What happened to this oldie-but-goodie:
INT. DETECTIVES’ BULLPEN – DAY
Detectives are scattered about the open plan office, a hubbub of conversations throughout.
Our Hero Detective’s supervisor, THE SUPERINTENDENT, strides through the entrance:
THE SUPERINTENDENT
Where. The fuck. IS HE?
The bullpen is silenced, its occupants afraid to move or speak.
THE SUPERINTENDENT
I want him in my office NOW!
The bullpen springs into action as --
-- The Superintendent continues to his office and SLAMS the door behind him.
Sure it’s a cliche that’s been parodied endlessly, but at least it doesn’t look and sound like a bunch of school kids hearing that Mr So-and-So is on the warpath.
Ongoing
At the end of Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again, our hero, broken in the first act of the story and now painfully reconstituted as a stronger, more focused, more realistic hero and human being, walks into the figurative sunset with the love of his life.
I stopped reading the series at that point. I knew if I continued, it would just go on and on and on: there would be more villains, more life-obstacles – more of the same, but different.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever been a big fan of ongoing serials. My comic collection is made up largely of one-off’s, mini-series and trade paperbacks. As for the viewing library, even though I was a massive fan of Law & Order, it’s taken quite a conscious effort to get myself to buy up to the sixth season of the show, as opposed to the complete runs I have of The Shield, The West Wing, and The Wire.
I think real life is exciting and ongoing enough, thank you.
Monkey Say
Spotted recently on the box:
INT. POLICE INTERVIEW ROOM – TIMELESS
Our HERO DETECTIVE studies his SCUMBAG PERPETRATOR from across the METAL TABLE.
SCUMBAG PERPETRATOR
... Okay. I’ll talk.
Our Hero Detective reaches across to the RECORDING DEVICE and pushes the ‘Rec’ button.
HERO DETECTIVE
I’ll just record this.
In a post-Law & Order age – in the too-small shadow of the short-lived Interrogation, even – shouldn’t that scene have played like this?
INT. POLICE INTERVIEW ROOM – TIMELESS
Our HERO DETECTIVE studies his SCUMBAG PERPETRATOR from across the METAL TABLE.
SCUMBAG PERPETRATOR
... Okay. I’ll talk.
OUT ON our Hero Detective pushing the ‘Rec’ button on the RECORDING DEVICE.
Filler: Beauty and the Beast (2012)
I’m old enough to have fond memories of the 1987 series with Sarah Conner Linda Hamilton and the ever-reliable Ron Perlman looking longingly at each other every damned ep or two. So when I sat down to watch the 2012 version, it was partly curiousity but mostly because it has Go Girls‘ Jay Ryan in one of the lead roles – hey it’s the same reason I’m looking forward to trying similarly Kiwi-led shows Banshee and Falcón.
So I’m past the teaser, maybe ten minutes into the show, when the thought occurs to me: This must be what shows look like in the world of Logan’s Run.
Or maybe I’m just feeling my age.
Filler: In Plain Sight
Nothing like being alone in the fortress whilst the Goddess is away (auditioning chargers) to catch up on half-watched shows on the box, among them the short-lived Karen Sisco, Identity and this show.
In Plain Sight is a genial procedural with Mary McCormack‘s US Marshal Mary Shannon each week dealing with a witness protection client and their backstory, with a few beats on the side about the marshal’s personal life. You know what a sucker I am for procedurals. You also know what a sucker I am for the personal life of a favoured weekly law-enforcement/operating-room/intergalactic protagonist when done well.
So when, in the pilot, Shannon’s mother and sister move in with her, signs above them flashing ‘trouble’, I put them down to comic relief. Only, Shannon’s partner Marshall Mann (Fred Weller) is the droll and actual comic relief which left the mother and sister to be unwitting instigators of doom.
I put up with twelve episodes of that goddamned Shannon family arc, the cases-of-the-week a flimsy life preserver of sanity and interest, until a realisation in the season finale: those Shannon harpies were there to stay, to continue to be instigators of drama for the sake of drama, no matter that logic and safety and mental well-being dictated a couple of desert graves. Ah well.
I tried.
Justified Returns
This Salon article on the blurring of realities/worlds between the TV show and Elmore Leonard‘s latest novel, Raylan, also mentions that the fourth season hits the small screen today stateside.
Yusss.
Bittersweet
I realised with a bit of a shock that 2013 is the year in which two must-see TV shows end their runs: Breaking Bad and Mad Men.
Salon has a nice piece by Joe Winkler on the impending departure of 30 Rock and The Office. It’s about sitcoms but the sentiments are similar:
In the most recent episode of “30 Rock” — there are only two more remaining in the series — Kenneth Parcell and Tracy Jordan discuss the reason behind Kenneth’s childlike love of television. Tracy guesses: “Despite cellphones, iPads and computers, they are still the most effective portals for poltergeists?” No, Kenneth tells him, It’s “because nothing ever really changes, the people you care about never leave.”
Even though it hurts like hell, good things do come to an end – how else can we remember them with fondness?