Toronto Muppet

2004-03-27T19:57:00.000-05:00

Wrapped

So my failed little experiment has come to an end. The show wrapped a few weeks ago - it was an amazing success and generally I am thrilled with how it turned out. I think it's great and I know that I have zero objectivity at this point so I won't really know if it IS great until it airs which will be some time in the fall.

I've thought a bit about why I only blogged a handful of times...aside from the obvious reason that I was swamped and couldn't keep up with my dry cleaning, my bills or my friends, much less my blogging.

Reasons why my blog failed:

1. I am a profession writer - as in, I write to make money and therefore associate writing with work. I've never been a diary keeper (more on that later) and so after a while, keeping this blog started to feel like work I wasn't getting paid for.

2. Paranoia. I know I mentioned this briefly before, but I've come to feel that this is the major stumbling block for me. It's strange because I'm generally considered wildly open, but as time passed I started to realize that I feel about a blog the same way I feel about a diary or homemade porn. If you write it down, take a picture of it, or tape it - someone, somewhere, somehow is going to find it and then you are done for. In the case of this blog I really cannot afford to write down all the juicy little details and then have someone connected to me find it. I've seen several bloggers quit on account of someone in their community finding their blog and they were hounded, or embarrassed or forced into an uncomfortable situation.

If you live in Canada and have cable, watch for my show in the fall. I realize I've neglected to give out any salient details like the name, the subject, or the network. Maybe you'll watch it and won't know it's mine, maybe you'll figure it out 'cause you're really smart.

In any case, thanks for reading...bye everybody!

2004-01-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

If you dream it, they will build it

Thank God we're back in the studio. In the studio I don't have to spend all my time worrying about how cold I am, how cramped it is on location, how much I would love to shower....

In the studio I know the secret place that the kraft people hide the m & ms they buy just for me. I can take my pants down to wardrobe and get them sent out to a tailor, I can sit in my office and watch rushes, or hang out with actors, or watch the next scene or just bum around and visit different departments. I am learning just how much fun being on set can be, and why people get addicted to this industry and never want to leave even though they're doing shitty jobs and working long hours.

It's intense and it's creative and for the most part, everyone is smart and everyone is a problem solver and the whole machine feels like one giant toy. All the different departments are geared toward creating whatever you need, making it big and beautiful and fabulous.

I feel like I'm living in a fantasy world. Yesterday I had a dream about placing our season finale in a labyrinth. Can we build a labyrinth, I asked our production designer.

Of course. Of course we can.

With money, we can build anything. This is the truism of the film industry. Nothing is too elaborate, nothing is too crazy. Everything can be gotten, built, modified. What if the nice people we're renting our locations from don't feel like giving up their house to us after this year? What will we do then? Well, we'll build it of course.

The whole house, I ask?

The whole house. An exact replica. All the rooms, all the furniture. All the window dressings and the wall colours. This is what they did with The Gilmore Girls. They shot to first season in a small Canadian town. Then they got a second season and they build the town. They recreated the whole thing from scratch. It sounds normal I guess, but seeing it happen feels immense. Realizing that if I dream it, they will build it feels bizarre.

2004-01-15T22:58:00.000-05:00

Clouds: God's camera filter on the sky

They really are you know. The past few days have been (cold, and snowy and) cloudy all day long. A dream for us. When there is cloud cover, the light is all diffused and you can basically just point the camera and shoot. Today the sky was clear so the camera department was wrestling with reflector boards all morning and it wasn't snowing so we were all freaked out because it won't match the scenes we shot the day before and they are supposed to cut together and, and, and...

I spend my time hovering beside the director, peering at the monitor and then running after him to hesitantly offer up a concern I have about a line reading or a story issue or a performance tweaks. 90% of the time he agrees with me and I trot back to video village, happy to be of service.

Tomorrow night is my first all night, all outdoors shoot - it's gonna suck. Let's hope it's worth it.

2004-01-15T22:42:00.000-05:00

Shoot day four

The past couple of days have been a new kind of hell. We're shooting a big portion of our show in a small town outside of Toronto. Originally it was going to be all golden and leafy and charming, and when my partner and I talked about it in hurried conversations between meetings we always smiled and pictured ourselves there, wearing tank tops, sipping soft drinks and getting a great tan.

If you live anywhere near Toronto, you know that the past few days have been frigid. Correspondingly, I have found myself with a whole new focus: Avoiding frostbite.

My first day was a disaster - by day three I was a pro - ready for an arctic expedition. Instead of thinking about story arcs and actor performances I was thinking, "If only I can figure out how to warm my extremities, everything else will fall into place. I spend my time on set quizzing the hardened veterans on their gear. Talking to them about the Swedish overalls they had shipped over, or the best way to position your hot shots in your boots. Twice I almost went up in flames when my (highly flammable) jacket got too close to the (entirely useless) outdoor heaters.

Cold is something you can't relate to unless you're feeling it. You're all probably reading this thinking, so - you were cold, so what? I've been cold before, it sucks but you get through it.

And I say back to you - I seriously doubt that you've been out in -32 degrees for fourteen hours straight.

I won't go into too much detail about the system I worked out, but at this point my basic philosophy is that the closer I get to looking like a giant snowball, the better. Today I was wearing so much clothing that I could barely walk. I waddled around, no peripheral vision, muffled hearing and smiled to myself, realizing that I felt great. Aside from the fact that the saliva in my mouth kept freezing, I felt just great.

2004-01-09T22:48:00.000-05:00

We shoot Monday

Today was the last day of prep. We did publicity shots of the cast, I got to talk to them about everything from their kissing scenes to how our director had told them that they are not to improv any of the lines because, as he put it: "these scripts are fucking well written, and unless you have something brilliant or witty to add, don't bother".

Yeah! You tell'em!

At then end of a very long day, we had a big champagne toast moment and all basked in the glow of how great everything was. The sets are dressed, the props are ready and the whole thing felt unBELIEVably exciting.

Regarding a scene in which an actor is supposed to walk around outside with a large frog on his shoulder.

Line Producer: Calliope, we have a problem.

Me: Problem? What problem?

Line Producer: Well it turns out that the life expectancy of a frog in -15 degrees is oh...about nine seconds.

Me: Tropical creatures aren't they?

Line Producer: Quite.

Me: Hmmm. Can we put a little sweater on him or something?

As you can see, I'm mostly pretty stupid and not all that helpful when it comes to suggestions. It's only occasionally that I come out with something *actually* useful. But, bless them - they continue to ask me my opinion, even when I sound like a moron.

(BTW: Toe is still broken, walking around in Rudolph's shoes. I look like Ronald McDonald)

2004-01-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

Tanned and broken

I broke my toe yesterday.

Rudolph and I were playing pirates on the beach and I ran into him and something snapped and I screamed and that was it. Goodbye yoga classes, hello revoltingly swollen foot and very impressive and colorful bruising.

Oh well. At least I have time to read...

Calliope's holiday reading list - all are recommended
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Girl with the pearl earring (FABULOUS)
The Gift, imagination and the erotic life of property (For the big brains out there...)
The patron saint of liars

On Monday I return to Toronto, and to the start of production. I'm missing a visual effects meeting (what visual effects - we have no money for effects!) and a stunt meeting - really bummed about that. I really wanted to be there to talk about the stunts. In the meantime I'm just hanging out by the ocean, limping around pathetically and wondering frequently (and aloud) how I could possibly have been so stupid and careless with a baby toe.

Oh...it also looks like we've finally named the show that cannot be named. I won't tell you what it is, but it's a compromise between 6 parties, and as with any and all compromises - no one is happy with it.

2003-12-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

One more week of Prep

The sets are up, the locations are booked and the production office is a revolving door of kids coming in for wardrobe fittings. I spend my days flitting from wardrobe to sets to the cafeteria for yet another chocolate fix. People wander around carrying plastic axes, or large taxidermy emus.

Discussions about the title are reaching a frenzied pitch. We still don't have a title and our distribution people are breathing down our necks. It's kinda' hard to sell a show that doesn't have a name. Everyone has a suggestion and none of them are very good. My partner and I are despairing - we know the name that is eventually picked is going to suck and we are bracing for the inevitable.

I turned in yet another unacceptable outline today. If I have to rewrite that thing one more time I think I'll scream. We are also very close to finishing our casting. It's interesting what I'm learning - I actually made a decision today that I swore up and down last month I would never make.

I voted in favour of casting a 22 year old to play a 16 year old. Can you imagine such a thing? Remember my post ridiculing the idiots who cast people in their twenties to play young teenagers.

Well...today I realized that it's not that I'm so brilliant and everyone else is so stupid. It's that sometimes (read: often) there is no one else. In that case you have a choice - you can cast someone who is dull as a rock to play this very crucial role or you can cast someone fabulous who isn't the right age.

And that's when it all comes into focus. A shitty actor you can't live with. That doesn't leave you very much choice.

Another eureka moment happened this week with regards to ages of our cast members. One of our leads is fourteen. She is fourteen and she's playing fourteen. Great right? How authentic, how wonderful.

Actually, it's a disaster. The actor's union (ACTRA) is very strict on child labour (as they should be), and there's a world of difference as far as they are concerned between a 14 year old and a 16 year old. 16 year olds are adults and you can work them to the bone. 14 year olds are children. They can't work overtime. They can only work 8 hour days, with a 10 hour day thrown in there once and a while. When you think that your typical day is easily 12 hours, having a lead that is in a 100% of the show is not just unfortunate, it's unworkable. Which means we have to now spend lots of time and effort cutting our LEAD out of the show.

Yuck.

2003-12-13T09:52:00.000-05:00

One hairless albino rat coming right up

We started prep on Monday. Our big empty school in the middle of nowhere suddenly was filled with construction guys and coordinators and a line producer and locations people and on and on. Cheesy eighties posters started going up on the walls in the offices (big empty classrooms, actually) and best of all, lunch was catered every single day.

By the end of two days, the sets were up. Three days later, they were all painted. By the end of next week they'll be almost dressed. It's amazing to see the speed at which everything gets done. I'd walk downstairs from my office every twenty minutes and suddenly find that four new walls had just gone up.

Speaking of offices - I was amazed to find that people started decorating them as if they were going to live there. My partner brought lamps, a blanket for our couch and a couple of pillows.

You're probably all wondering what this has to do with a hairless albino rat, right? Well last week we had our animal meeting. I absolutely had a ball.

This older guy comes in. Introvert type - turns out he's a professor of entomology and he can get us whatever kinds of animals we want. Live or pickled. So we start hesitantly asking him...can we get a frog, can we get a ferret and soon it becomes clear that the sky is the limit. We can get absolutely anything, for a price of course.

The thing is that we want weird animals. Not just an ordinary frog, a rainforest frog with big red eyes and flash marks on it's hind legs. Not just a rat , a hairless albino rat. No garden snakes for us. We have to have red and yellow pythons, or even better a two-headed snake, if he can find such a thing.

In the end we settled on the following:

A hairless albino rat.
Tarantulas
Maggots
A rainforest frog (something cool and weird looking)
A snowy owl
Pythons
Horned cockroaches

I'm so psyched for the animal days. I'm going to get right in there and hang with the pythons.

2003-12-04T19:04:00.000-05:00

Drowning in too many drafts

How do you write a script about a guy who commits suicide by jumping off a building without ever using the words 'suicide' or 'kills himself'?

I'm making a list because this is exactly what I've been asked to do.

1. takes a dive
2. goes over the edge
3. splat@#$!

Instead of Jimmy commits 'suicide', try:

Jimmy takes a dive. Jimmy goes over the edge. Jimmy goes SPLAT!

It just doesn't have the same punch, does it? Another day, another draft. We're trying to get all the scripts in draft form before Monday. Impossible you say? Yes, it is impossible.

Pre-production starts on Monday. That means I get an office! My first office ever, though I'm sharing it with my partner, but that's okay. Who wants to sit in a big, old empty classroom all by themselves anyway.

It's also the start of giving notes, instead of taking them all the time. I quite like giving notes. It's way more fun to point out the problem to someone else and let them go fix it then to have eight people all hurling ideas at you and then you have to go away and try to make a story out of it.

We're almost done casting as well. I'm quite happy with all our choices - they're a terrific little bunch of actors. Skinny too. No insulation there - I don't know how they're going to handle 12-hour days in the freezing cold. Wardrobe is going to have their work cut out for them.

How do you make a kid sexy and aspirational in a giant parka?

2003-11-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

Stories

Rudolph and I were watching Castaway last night. For those of you who don't know the story - it's about a guy (Tom Hanks) who gets shipwrecked alone on an island for four years. With nobody to talk to, he draws a face on a Wilson volleyball, props it on a stick and starts halfheartedly chatting with it.

About three quarters of the way through the movie, he's been on the island for four years. His relationship with this volleyball is no longer a lame attempt to feel less lonely. Wilson the volleyball is, for all intents and purposes, his only friend. It's around this time that Wilson gets blown off the raft that Tom Hanks was trying to esape on, and bobs out to sea.

So I'm watching Tom jump in the water to go and save his volleyball, his only friend, and I'm crying and I'm thinking about stories and about why I love drama so much.

My basic feeling is that there is nothing more powerful in the world than a well told story. We've all been conditioned from a very young age to understand the rules of the story - and we all know that if you don't play by the rules you won't enjoy yourself.

The rules are that you must sit quietly. You must focus. Above all, you must throw your lot in with the hero. In a movie theatre, we sit down in the dark with strangers and under our collective breaths we say to the moviemakers: tell us a story, make us feel something. Take us out of ourselves, into someone else's world.

And if the moviemakers do their jobs properly, then they have complete control over us. We will like who they tell us to like. Hate who they tell us to hate. Cry when they want us to cry. What could be more powerful?

This idea about the power of stories was never made as clear to me as when I saw a movie about a pedophile. It was a small arthouse film - some of you might remember it.

Throughout the film this guy, this father, this pedophile is either fantasizing about molesting children or actually doing it. Normally in movies with pedophiles, the moviemakers make it pretty clear to the audience how we're supposed to feel about the 'pedophile' - we're supposed to hate him. And that's fine, that's great, that's a position we're comfortable with. Is there any more universal position than the hatred of the pedophile? At least that's something we can all agree on, right?

That's what was so amazing about this movie. In this movie, the pedophile was the hero. And the crazy thing is that halfway through the movie you realize that you are rooting for the pedophile. You want him to get the kid. You want him not to get caught. You want all these crazy CRAZY things. All because the story is beautifully done...it reels you in, makes you care. Makes you want the protagonist to get what he wants.

After all that's all a story is ever about. We the audience watch the hero try to get what they want. If it's well done, then we will also want, we will care deeply and hope and pray for the hero's success.

This is the amazing power of stories. You can make people feel whatever you want them to feel, you can change their opinions about things...all because whenever we watch a film we put ourselves into the shoes of the protagonist. We identify with that person...whether it's a guy who's made friends with a volleyball, or a pedophile.

Breathtaking, isn't it?

2003-11-13T18:06:00.000-05:00

Grrrrrr.

They've pushed production.

I'm so irritated. I understand why and everything, but I'm still irritated. I know that it doesn't make sense to shoot one episode then break for Christmas then start again but still.

It snowed today.

It snowed today and I'm just picturing all these kids running around in the freezing cold through cemeteries and parks and I'm thinking, thank God I'm not an actor. January to March - that's our shooting schedule. The bleakest, most miserable time of the year and they are going to be outside, freezing their butts off.

I was getting so excited. Finally, it seemed like things were moving. I went and checked out the locations, saw where we were going to shoot this scene and that scene. Went to the school we're shooting at - rough area of town, there were all these bullet holes in the windows?! And now it's been pushed...AGAIN. And it's just a month I know, but it's hard to keep my energy up when they keep pushing it. This show was supposed to start shooting in August. One more month until we shoot, until our offices open, until I get PAID.

I wish I had more exciting stuff to write about right now but I don't. I've been sitting inside all day watching the wind blow the leaves off the trees and I'm grumpy from writing one too many character bios, and now I'm supposed to work on the outline for Episode 10 and I'm dreading it.

Oh wait...here's something. We had a big fight about acne the other day.

Director: I've noticed that Timothy (not his real name) has a lot of acne on his forehead. Maybe we can have his sister make fun of his acne or something.

Calliope: Yeah, I could put something like that in.

Producer: Oh no. We're going to have to do something about that acne...

Director: Like what?

Producer: Cover it up of course. Or you'll have to shoot so that we can't see it.

Calliope: I like the acne. I think it's realistic.

Producer: This character has to be a guy other kids would want to sleep with. He has to be 'aspirational'.

Calliope: He can be aspirational with acne.

Producer: Calliope, it isn't always about keeping things authentic...

Calliope: Yes it is. Everyone has acne in high school.

Director: ...Forget it. I'm not blocking for acne.

2003-11-05T00:11:00.000-05:00

Casting....again

When you're writing a character you hear them talk in your head, you picture them in your mind, you SEE them and you have an exact mental image of how they sound, look and move. I'm learning that in the process of casting that character, if you're lucky one of two things can happen.

1. The person from your imagination walks into the room.

or

2. Someone walks into the room who is nothing like what you hoped and imagined. They do something totally different with the role and it makes you think about the character in a whole new way.

Yesterday we had a casting session and number one walked in the door. She was perfect...She had the right energy, the right look...the right everything. She was fragile and vulnerable and not too pretty. You fell in love with her as soon as you saw her and most of all, she inspired an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness.

The downside and it's a biggie is that she wasn't a terrific actor. She was good, very good even. She just wasn't terrific.

And it's horrible because you're watching her and you are dying for her to nail it because she's so perfect. But then she misses the note the director gives, or inflection isn't quite right and the disappointment starts seeping in and in your mind you're still all "c'mon! You can do it!" But really in your heart you know she isn't quite good enough.

Then this other kid walks in. She's funny looking and kind of tough and spunky and really really confident. In other words she's nothing like your character. But then she starts to audition and she's just so awesome....she's just so smart that she takes the character and gives her an edge, gives her an awkwardness that's more real than the rare beauty that you imagined, than the actress who just broke your heart because she wasn't as good as you hoped she would be.

Then this awkward thing happens where you're reluctant to give up your dream of the character even though you know this is better.

But then you get over it. 'Cause you know this kid is going to rock the show. And you remember the promise you made to yourself to always ALWAYS pick the best actor no matter what.

2003-10-28T18:42:00.000-05:00

The trouble with magic beans

In the comments for my last post, Uninvisible said:

"Also, you gotta still believe on some level that magic beans are always worth trading for. "

I don't know why, but I read His/Her little snippet of a comment and I started thinking about magic beans and Jack and the Beanstalk and the story started taking on a whole new weird meaning for me.

If you'll indulge me for a moment - let me tell you what I think about magic beans.

I know a tonne of artsy people who I met in university who wanted to be musicians or artists and ended up getting their liberal arts degree and heading straight off to law school because their parents assured them that they could never make any money singing or acting or painting. So these friends of mine dropped their dreams and picked a profession. Essentially they wanted to buy the beans, but fearing the repercussions, opted for the safe choice and sold their cow for money...or was it food? Anyway - the point is that they opted for the safe choice because the risky choice was too...well...risky.

The thing is, when I started thinking about magic beans it kind of hit me as the perfect metaphor because in choosing to become a tv writer, I kind of feel like I sold my cow for beans. And boy am I glad I did.

The fears of my friend's parents are not unfounded. It is really hard to make a living in this world as an artist. I remember when I was struggling to get my start as a writer, I used to attend panels and conferences and breakfast meetings and workshops and I would listen to the successful people in my industry talk about how they had 'made it'.

And I would become deeply frustrated because it seemed like it was endlessly anecdotal - it seemed like there was no path I could follow that would get me where I wanted to be.

All my lawyer friends went off to school, worked hard, passed the Bar and presto - became lawyers. I was still wandering around in a daze, wondering how the hell I was going to get any work.

That's when I saw this one speaker on this one panel. He's a pretty well known Canadian director (is there such a thing?) and he articulated exactly what I was feeling. He said that making a living as an artist was like wandering through a forest and there were all these cliffs everywhere with bodies lying at the bottom of people who'd failed or bailed or whatever. Pick a profession like law or engineering and there's a nice, clear little path trailblazed for you through the forest. You just stay on the path - be it law school or med school and eventually you get where your going.

When it comes to an art career, everyone bushwacks their way through the forest. So when they tell their story it's about how they knocked down that tree over there, and got trapped in that quicksand before struggling to get free etcetera etcetera.

It's that magic bean thing again. There are lots of different ways to sell your cow for magic beans and lots of times in life we are afraid or cautious or too aware of what can go wrong so we say no to the beans.

So I picked the beans, and I'm glad. But I have a friend who's much braver than I am. She sold her cow for food the first time around and became an engineer even though her heart was somewhere else. She spent four years working in her chosen profession and was doing very well. That's when she decided to throw security to the wind and switch career tracks altogether. Now she's gone back to student loans and no money and I look at her and think - wow.

It's impossible to know what would have happened if at any point in our lives we chose a different path. All I'm saying is that I think a lot of people I know might be happier, more challenged and more fulfilled if once and a while they traded for the beans.

Any thoughts?

2003-10-23T17:30:00.000-04:00

How do adults forget what it's like to be a kid?

I've thought about this question on and off for years. I remember the first time it really occurred to me was in my high school English class. I remember watching a teacher hand out an assignment and thinking, she just doesn't get it does she?

It was something where we had to do a bunch of reading and then come in and discuss it with our small group. Sounds reasonable right? Except of course, nobody did the reading. We weren't being marked on it - so what was the point? Instead we just bluffed our way through the conversation when she was within earshot, then gossiped about other stuff when she left. The whole class turned out to be totally pointless. We did no work at all.

The problem with this teacher is that her basic assumption about us was wrong. Unforgivably wrong. Naive, even. She thought that we'd all be so KEEN that we'd just go off and do the reading just because she made it part of the homework. When did she forget that all fifteen year olds really care about is getting an A on their report card so they can get into a good university? If she wasn't going to mark us on it, of course we weren't going to do it.

The thing that bugged me about it is that she was once fifteen herself. She thought and acted the same way we did. Having been in our position, how could she be so utterly clueless?

The same issue came up at our script meeting today. I was sitting around the table and listening as all of the producers complained that the kids seemed so...well...mean.
There was our lead calling her best friend a 'freak'. Another guy called his buddy a 'loser'.

It just feels unrealistic, they explained. Unrealistic that kids would be so mean to their friends.

HUH? WHAT? I was totally dumbfounded. Didn't you all used to BE kids? Don't you remember how kids talk to each other? That's what kids DO. They're mean all the time. To their friends, to their enemies, to their parents and their siblings.

God...enough of my 'all the adults I work with are out to lunch' rants. I know this must sound so repetitive, but it just comes up all the time. It's like there's an inability to put aside the sensitivities developed as an adult and just remember what it was like, how you thought and felt and acted - as a kid.

I've been fighting against this tide of mass amnesia for the past ten years. Always urging myself to separate out my later experiences and try and put myself back at fifteen. I probably sound fanatical - but I really believe that if you ever hope to create a show that speaks to that age group, you have to put aside your adult brain and think like a kid. Sounds obvious, but in this case it seems to be easier said than done.

2003-10-20T18:23:00.000-04:00

Waist high jeans and a vest

Looooong meeting today. We are starting to get into the intricacies of the process and my head is spinning from all the complications. A little background history for y'all...

The show is based in two worlds. One of those worlds is live action, the other is animated. Over the course of the show, we switch back and forth between the live action world and the animated world. Not such a big deal right? Lots of shows have done it before - in fact, combining live action and animation is all the rage right now.

The tricky part is that my show is essentially about a parallel universe. All the stuff that happens in the 'real' world, happens in a more extreme version in the 'animated' world. This is a nightmare for the animators because it involves all kinds of matching problems. We went through all the picky little things they need to know, and how it's going to be done. Part of what is taking forever right now is getting the drawings right. Because of the whole parallel thing, the animated characters have to sort of look like our real kids, but sexed up and funkier, scarier - just generally more 'warrior' like.

We've been going back and forth on versions and it's starting to feel really close. The biggest problem all along has been the clothes.

Ah...the clothes. Who ever thought I'd be putting up such a fight about clothes. I have to say that in high school I was not the trendiest of dressers. I was pretty much a sweatpants and sweatshirt kind of girl. These days, I find myself staring at every 14 year old who walks down the street and picking apart their style - trying to remember stuff about what they're wearing and how I can work it into the drawings.

The first drawing we got back gave me heart palpitations. In a bad way.

The guy was wearing tight jeans and his hair was spiked and platinum. The girl was wearing a vest and jeans that sat around her WAIST. When I talked to the animator, a very nice man in his late 30s/early 40s, he said he was going for a 'Billy Idol' look.
Billy Idol? Huh? I'm twenty six and I've barely heard of Billy Idol. I certainly couldn't point him out in a lineup, and if I don't know who he is, I seriously doubt that any fourteen year old out there today would identify Billy Idol as their idea of cool.
I have to admit that this is (yet another...) huge pet peeve of mine. People in their forties who create shows for kids and somehow forget that the style changes every year. If you thought about it for two seconds, you would figure out that the 'Billy Idol' look is not going to resonate with this generation.

So I find myself making lists that say things like...

Low jeans. No zippers on the bottom.
No vests.
No large cell phone cases. Cell phones are getting smaller, not larger.
No sloppy off the shoulder shirts - the era of Flashdance is over.
No short leather bomber jackets (Again with the eighties...)

It's not like it's that hard either. Just look at the kids today. Look at what they are wearing and draw that. I'm not asking for major research here - but c'mon - when was the last time you saw a fourteen year old with waist-high jeans and a vest?!

2003-10-14T21:25:00.000-04:00

All you lurkers...

...out there, I don't know if anyone reading this site is actually interested in breaking to the film and television industry in Canada. If you are, feel free to post any questions you might have and I'll try to help if I can.

In other news with the as yet unamed show:

We sent off seven sparkling new drafts today. Whew! Pre-production starts sometime in November and since we are block shooting, the plan is for us to have all the scripts ready BEFORE prep. I'm feeling pretty excited today - it's finally starting to sink in that the show is actually going to go. I'm also feeling pretty lucky because I know that this is a terrible year for the Canadian Film and Television industry. There have been tons of cutbacks to funding (my ambivalence about funding = whole other story), and now people are terrified that with Schwarzenegger as governor in California the amount of "runaway" service production to Canada will drop significantly, cutting back even more jobs. As a writer, I don't benefit at all from the service production aspect of the Canadian industry, but many of my friends who are DOPs, ADs etc...do.

The truth is that this is the first year that I'm actually working. I'm actually paying proper taxes, actually making a decent living. I've spent two years trying to get this project off the ground and the past 6 months have had me bouncing from euphoric to depressed as we struggled to raise money and get this thing to finally GO.

I didn't used to believe it but that saying about how if anything can go wrong, it will has been proven to me over and over again.

Ah well. Now is my time to be excited and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

2003-10-10T01:15:00.000-04:00

Paranoia.

So here I am blogging about my tv show and the truth is that I really don't want anyone connected to the show to ever find this blog. Of course, if that were to happen it would serve me right for writing about it and posting it on the internet, right?

The chances of someone I know finding this blog is extremely unlikely. Mostly, when I worry about it I'm just being paranoid.

This is because:
a. There are no real details that could lead a person searching for info on my show to this site.
b. Almost nobody comes here. (That 'almost' is for you Uninvisible...)

B. is probably a better safeguard than A. - I'll admit.

2003-10-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

Production Notes.

Yesterday we had a highly anticipated meeting with our broadcaster. I was pretty stressed out about it. The plan was to pitch her the arc of the season and get some feedback from her on our casting choices. I wasn't so worried about the arc part. The show is what she wants as far as I'm concerned: spooky, dark and sophisticated. Not just another locker show. I was terribly worried about the casting because it had become such a divisive issue between the creative people and the producers. If she didn't okay our choice it was going to be back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, there really is no drawing board to go back to. We saw over a hundred children from all over Ontario. Our producers refused to start casting out of province for money reasons - so that basically means that we've exhausted our options.

She okayed the cast with one caveat. The girl we cast to play the freaky weird one was too 'ordinary' and too 'conventionally pretty'. Deep down I know she's right but this kid is such a great performer and she makes the role ditzy rather than freaky. It would be great to get a kid who is odder, and has a more unconventional, interesting look but the bottom line is that we haven't found a kid like that who has the acting chops. Believe me, I would love to find a freaky little kid to play this part, but when it comes down to it I'll take a better actor over someone who fits the part but can't act any day.

At one point during the conversation I asked her to explain what she was looking for in this kid that wasn't there, and she thinks about it for a minute and then launches into this whole thing about how she pictures someone less pretty...less conventionally pretty...more like you Calliope. I giggled nervously, thinking - should I be insulted here or what? But then she went on to talk about my looks and how I'm pretty, but not in a conventional way and all the producers are just staring at me...kind of appraising me you know? And I can feel my face getting redder and redder...

The arc pitch went pretty well. We zipped through 13 episodes in under an hour and I was pleased to see how far we'd come and how well we knew the show. The only major problem facing us now is the stupid title.

The thing with the title has been going on for ages. At first it was 'we have to change the title'. Now I came up with the title originally and I was all gung ho to change it. The truth is that with how the show has developed, the title doesn't really make sense anymore. The problem is that at this point I'm suffering from total title burnout. We've suggested scores of titles and getting 6 people to agree on a title is next to impossible. I don't even care at this point - it's gotten so ridiculous that I could care less what we call the show. Now we're looking for a one word title that's dark and edgy and suggests action (whatever the hell that means...). The title I love we can't have because our distributor and the broadcaster think it's a 'mouthful' - and kids won't understand it. I think we're assuming kids are a lot dumber than they are, especially since Hillary Duff just came out with a album with the same name and there doesn't seem to be any problem there.

I've just resigned myself. Whatever it's called is fine with me. I'm not going to fight the title battle.

2003-10-02T23:40:00.000-04:00

Obsessed.

The topics covered in my tiny little links and blogs section are:

1. Sex surrogacy
2. Orthodox Judaism
3. Yoga
4. Transexxuals
5. Pictures of naked girls.

It's a pretty strange cross- section of interests and I've only recently started to think about how weird it actually is. I have no real *reason* to be interested in any of this stuff. Except Yoga. I actually enjoy doing yoga and the studio I've linked to belongs to a friend of mine. But orthodox Judaism? Transexxuals? Naked girls?

I can't explain my attraction to all these random sites. The only theory I can come up with is that it has something to do with my fascination with fringe elements in society. Other favorites include a site exclusively for very elderly gay men, any and all white supremacy sites and an excellent resource site for parents of children with severe disabilities.

I wonder if other people do what I do. Spend their free time trolling the internet for communities of people with problems/beliefs/ passions wholly different from their own.

Rudolph hates that I love to do this. It would be okay if I was reading a book about white supremacy, but he can't stand coming home to find me on these sites. It's as though the fact that I visit the site makes me complicit in some way. It would glib to say 'I do it because it helps my writing'. It DOES help my writing, but that isn't what draws me back day after day. It's like watching a documentary that never ends.

It's fascinating and addictive and I won't give it up.

As for the naked girls. I don't really have a good defense. Too much time on my hands? They're pretty? I don't really know - it's not a sexual thing contrary to what my husband thinks. It's just pictures of pretty naked girls hanging out. What's not to like?

2003-10-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

Casting The Show.

So I arrived at the casting location feeling all nervous and jittery. Our director was locked away in a small room, talking to one of the kids and I was faced with my first dilemma: Where to sit. Seems like it should be an easy choice, but really it's not.

Casting sessions revolve around the director. He's the one who directs the kids, he's the one who does most of the interacting, makes most of the decisions. The rest of us just sit there and watch. Being next to the director was important to me because it meant I would be able to have more input. Really, that's probably where the executive producer should be sitting but I was there first so...what the hell? I dumped my stuff down and bet that no one would have the nerve to call me on it.

The casting session was hard for me. We were divided pretty neatly down the middle in our preferences. The main issue was the lead girl. It's terrible how something as dumb as the shape of a person's mouth can end up being the deciding factor in something like this. The girl I like has a very pouty mouth. She's a great performer and has a bit of edge to her, and her mouth turns down on the sides when she's annoyed. It's a small detail, but our producer hated her because of it. Thought she seemed to be sneering all the time. She (our producer) was gunning for the sparkly blond girl who was ALL WRONG for out lead. At one point I got so stressed out that I went to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet just to calm myself down. I'm one of those people where everything I'm feeling shows on my face. I needed to get out of there for a few minutes and just remind myself that it's a television show not a war.

In the end the producer came around but we aren't out of the woods until the broadcaster agrees to our choices. We'll know by Monday - I just hope she doesn't want us to cast the elfish blond kid as the lead in our edgy, dark, horror show.

2003-09-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

She's 21 but she can play 16 in TVland.

I just don't believe that's true, but it's a common assumption that's made by producers, directors, tv execs....just about anybody. I see it all the time and I think in part it's denial that's justified because 99% of the 14 year old actors out there are truly horrifying. Of course they are - they aren't actors, they're kids. You'd rather have a 21 year old playing 14 well than 14 playing 14 badly.

This sort of follows from my previous post about sexy 14 year olds. It's such a weird age - some of the kids have gone through puberty, some of them look like they're still a year away. In TVland, everyone wants the kids to be 'attractive', 'cool-looking' and 'appealing'. As an example, right now we are having a fight about our goofy kid. This character is supposed to be a low-status kid - you know the type.

We're down to two boys to play the part. One of them is genuinely a weird little guy. The other is a football player with a big thick neck who can act goofy. Everyone wants to go with the second kid because he's been in more stuff and he's a safe choice. The thing that drives me crazy is that you look at this kid and you know that he's really popular at his high school. You know he's on all the sports teams and he probably has a girlfriend. He's nothing like this character, he's never been this character. Everyone is comfortable with the stereotypes. Oh yeah...the nerd, the jock, the hot girl. And with the jock and the hot girl - they're fine, but give them a real 'nerdy' looking kid and suddenly it's 'whoa - who is going to want to jump into bed with that kid?".

Nobody is. And nobody is supposed to. We're trying to be *real* here. We're going for *believability*, not a hot guy playing a loser. I hate that.

That's why I loved Freaks and Geeks. Those guys were the real deal. They were the right age, right look, right everything. It was such a refreshing change from the old 'let's find the best looking guy we can and put glasses on him - presto! Nerd.'

Casting is tonight. I'll post what we decide for my non-existent readers. :)

2003-09-25T15:24:00.000-04:00

The Tarantula stays

Stressful times call for desperate measures. The past few days we've been arc-ing the show. This involves very long days sitting huddled together in a room and staring at an enormous whiteboard.

Trying to track all of the different plot points and character arcs in a way that makes sense in the context of the season is enough to give you a major headache.

As well, if creative differences don't get resolved relatively quickly, things can turn ugly. The thing about a serialized TV show is that it's basically one very long story. All of the pieces have to fit and if you start pulling out plotlines the whole thing can unravel. Things got very bad yesterday when a fight broke out in the story room - honestly, it was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life.

We're going to try to smooth things over, but right now I'm struggling with not knowing when to fight and when to back off. For all my claims to confrontational fame, I'm really a mouse when it comes down to being confrontational in a professional environment. Unfortunately, there are times when you start to feel that the creative underpinnings of the show are at stake, and you have to stand up and say something.

The dilemma is further complicated because their are two types of notes. Creative notes and production notes. Production notes are the ones that you have to really pick your fights over. For example, my partner and I want to situate several scenes in and around a pool, we also have lots of scenes involving small animals. Pools, animals, stunts, effects - all these things are production nightmares. Pools are noisy and a safety hazard. Animals require expensive handlers and are difficult to control...etc.

It's reasonable that they would want us to cut down on these things, but at the same time they do, on occasion add immeasurably to the show. That's when you have to stand your ground and say, "The tarantula stays."

2003-09-23T20:18:00.000-04:00

Over My Dead Body

I was at a family wedding in Las Vegas over the weekend and when I got to our table, I noticed the placecard said 'Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Jones'.

This is the sort of thing that bugs me. It's not like I'm going to make a scene, I'm not going to get all upset and storm the head table or anything like that. I just notice it. I NOTICE that my name is conspicuously absent and I wonder that in this glorious age of modernity women continue to tolerate this.

Aside from it being weird, (Admit it...it's weird that your name just disappears because you get married) it's insulting and a holdover from the 'wife as possession' tradition.

You should know that I'm serious about this name thing. This is not just lipservice to a cause here. When I was fifteen and met Rudolph, we had this conversation and I said to him, "over my dead body I'm taking my husband's last name'.

It's a good thing that he heard it from me then because when we actually got engaged some ten years later it came as no great surprise to him that this last name thing was going to be a problem.

We arrived at a solution that was in my opinion, totally fair. We combined the first three letters of my last name with the first three letters of his last name. Presto! New last name, everyone is happy right?

Wrong. Everyone is NOT happy. His parents were definitely not happy. They were in fact, appalled and it took them almost a year to get over it. They were so embarrassed by our decision that they begged me not to announce our new last name at our wedding. The other downside of course is that changing your last name as a man is no easy thing in this country. I filled out a couple of forms, Rudolph had to get a new birth certificate.

Ah well. He likes being Rudolph Jones. He's the adventurous type after all.

2003-09-23T11:05:00.000-04:00

This just in.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

I cna't bileive it...

2003-09-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

"That kid has no sex appeal, he looks like a muppet"

And that wasn't even the weirdest thing I heard today. It's crazy how much people inadvertently expose themselves in my industry. When you start getting into creative struggles you really start to find out stuff about people - like what they find attractive in a fourteen year old.

We're trying to cast kids who are 'attractive'. We want to pull in girl viewers so I guess we're really looking for 'hot' fourteen year olds (who can act of course). The problem is that not one of us really knows what a hot fourteen year old looks like. They all look like little boys to us. They're all pre-pubescent fourteen year olds. They look like children.

So when ends up happening is that we find ourselves embroiled in a ridiculous conversation about which of the kids we're trying to cast is 'sexier'. None of them are sexy. That's the problem. If we were looking for sexy, we should have cast a 20 year old.

2003-09-17T00:06:00.000-04:00

Casting

I just watched the tape for the casting callback and now I can't sleep because I have this itchy, nailbiting feeling about our meeting tomorrow. I feel like I just KNOW who our leads should be and I'm terrified that I'm going to walk into the office tomorrow and find that nobody shares my opinion.

Then I'm going to have to put up a fight and it's hard fighting when you are the low person on the totem pole. (Even though I created the show - as an inexperienced newcomer I am still the lowest of the low on the totem pole)

It's weird how you get attached to actors right away. I've been writing this show for two years, hearing the voices of the characters in my head. You watch a casting tape with fifty kids and sometimes it's just - BANG, that's my lead, right THERE.

I find that with things like casting, you can lose your ability to be rational very easily. If an actor embodies a certain character for you it becomes almost impossible to see someone else in the role.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Maybe I'll get a nice surprise and everyone will agree on who we should see again. Somehow I doubt it though.

2003-09-15T20:22:00.000-04:00

On Humility

I didn't used to be big on humility. I don't mean the modesty kind of humility, the 'no I'm not so great, really' kind...

I mean the kind of humility that you experience when you're really truly VERY wrong about something you were positive about.

In my case it was my husband.

I guess I should preface what I'm about to say by telling you that I've always claimed to know myself very well. I think most of us are like this. The basic assumption is - who knows you better than yourself? No one, right?

When I was fifteen I met a guy. He was skipping class and came to hang out with a friend of his in my class. That friend of his was a friend of mine and that was how we met. This guy - let's call him Rudolph - was debilitatingly shy, quite unattractive (to me anyway...) and just generally not the sort of person I would ever consider dating. If someone had told me that morning as I headed off to French class, if someone had come up to me and said - hey Calliope, guess what? Today you're going to meet the man you're going to marry. If they had said that and pointed to this Rudolph guy I would have...

a. Said they were a liar.

or

b. Cried.

Rudolph was a nice guy. He had an adventurous side I enjoyed. He was this weird combination of shy and fearless. He was afraid of nothing except talking. Where talking was concerned he was afraid of everything. Getting him to speak to me was a chore. Since talking was useless, we were friends that did things together. This went on for eight years. I moved away to go to school, we spoke a couple times a year until I got back, and then we pretty much picked up where we left off. I was single. He was single. I remember sitting next to him in the car on the way off to one of our activities and thinking:

If I there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that I'll never get together with Rudolph as long as I live. This is not going to be one of those friends I turn into a boyfriend.
First of all...I don't find him that interesting...second of all, I'm not attracted to him....third of all.....

No. Just no. Not possible. Never. No way.

So as you can imagine it came as a fairly substantial shock when I fell in love with him. And I think 'fell' is a pretty excellent word to describe the experience. Fell. Or Plummet. Or Dive.

I was standing on the escalator next to him on the way out of a movie and I looked at him and started to feel sick. He saw that something was wrong and asked me what it was. I burst into tears and after several minutes managed to blubber out what I thought I was feeling. We were both shocked. And the story gets a lot more complicated after that but that isn't my point here.

My point is that whatever happened on that escalator changed the way I view myself. Permanently.

I know longer feel as sure about the things I know to be true. If someone were to say to me...

"It is possible that you will convert to Buddhism, move to India and join an ashram" -I can no longer really say, nope - that's never gonna' happen.

Because after the elevator, I feel like I could be wrong about anything. I was wrong about Rudolph. And for eight years I was as likely to marry him as I was to join an ashram.

But marry him I did. And it's all going swimmingly. So although my newfound humility has lessened my confidence some, I can't say it's altogether a bad thing can I?

2003-09-14T20:45:00.000-04:00

My TV show

Two things you should know:

1. I don't watch TV. I didn't grow up watching TV. I am not a 'TV' person.
2. I write for TV. As in, that is my profession. I am a screenwriter who works exclusively in television.

How could this happen? I've wondered that myself. Basically, I found that my university degree was pretty much useless. After four blissful years studying exactly what interested me I graduated and found that I had zero job prospects.

I started to panic. Took an incredibly dull job at an insurance company where my purpose was to find ways to deny coverage to little old ladies on vacation in Fiji who had become desperately ill and needed air evacuation.

But I digress...

So I was miserable and casting about for something, ANYTHING to get me out of insurance. All my arts-y friends threw in the towel and succumbed to law school. I started writing very bad screenplays.

Fast forward five years and that brings us to now. I won't bore you with stories about how much time I spent bashing my head against the door and trying to break into a business that is determined to keep all but the most persistent OUT.

So here we are now and I've gotten over my dislike for TV. This is because I am on the verge of having a major dream fulfilled.

I'm about to have my own TV show head off into production.

Sounds like a load of fun, but so far the experience has me reigning in my ego every few minutes. I created this show, I write (much of) the show and yet I have very little say over anything and everything to do with the show.

For example: This week we are casting and I have a feeling that there is going to be a major battle with myself, my writing partner and the director on one side, and the main producer on the other. Casting is something that everyone gets really emotional about because it can make or break the show.

Of course everything can make or break the show. Bad writing, bad directing, bad acting....This show of mine stars two fourteen year olds, and as finding a decent child actor is notoriously difficult I have a feeling we are in for a major battle.

2003-09-14T00:13:00.000-04:00

When I was seventeen I gave a guy I liked a cucumber by way of an introduction.

I'd been watching him in our enormous 'Religions Of East Asia' class and I really wanted to meet him, but I couldn't think of anything scintillating to say. I wanted to be memorable so my plan was to hand him the cucumber, say something vague like 'I think you should have this' and walk away.

This way, I didn't have to deal with any awkward conversation or weird looks or potential rejection. I would just thrust the cucumber into his hand and take off. If he was interested, I figured he would follow up next class.

So I brought the cucumber to class, tapped him on the shoulder at the end of it and handed him the vegetable. He looked stunned (no surprise there)... and before he could say anything I chickened out and hightailed it out of there.

Next class I returned to find him sitting on the opposite side of the class. I wish it could have turned out better, but it didn't. He avoided me after that which I guess was the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this experience didn't teach me a lesson and I continue to have a knack for screwing up introductions.

I've always felt that starting off with a really weird question, or a statement or anything other than 'hi, I'm....' would startle the person I was trying to get to know and therefore cause them to afford me an undeserved glimpse at something real about them.

By how they reacted to my asking them 'if they preferred scotch or masking tape' I knew I would catch them off guard and by their answer, I would know if this was a person I wanted to hang out with.

Unfortunately, by that time they usually didn't want to hang out with me.

Lately, I've been forced to become more patient. I'm trying to learn about people the old fashioned way and I'm finding (much to my chagrin) that it works way better.

So... Hi.

My name is Calliope. (It isn't really, but I always wished it was). I live in Toronto. I'm 26 years old and this is my first time posting a blog anywhere ever.