Make It Better

It might have been mentioned before, but to refresh, I work in Development. For those of you who do not know what Development is: It is the department department that resources the concept for a film or television show whether it's a book, original script, play, article in a magazine, some fluff piece on internet, or a writer or actor or director saying over lunch, "I had this idea about a girl with a polka-dot skirt and a cupcake store who meets a guy with a striped tie and dog...and they HATE each other, but she's pregnant with his baby. I'm thinking Michelle Williams and Jason Segal" and crafts it into a pitch or treatment to be shopped around to the money people. If the piece gets the backing, then the Development person starts looking for a screenwriter and then holds the writer's hand through the process so that the producers, writer, and engaged talent come to a coherent consensus on the finished draft. The Development person usually works for a producer, studio, network, or "talent" who have shingles. Not the kind that comes from dormant chicken pox and brought on by stress (BTW: Yuck). But a director, actor, or writer who is established enough in the industry to get a movie or show financed based solely on their reputation and establish their own production company where they mold material they like. (See: Smokehouse, Plan-B, Amblin, and about a gazillion others.) When people find out what I do for a living -- basically, get paid to read and make suggestions so that other people look geniuses by spotting that Award winner -- they want in. But I'd like to take a moment to relive with you something that happened to me recently. I will take liberties with the timeline just a bit as part of my job is to prolong the suspense so that the climax feels cathartic.

About a year and a half ago, I read this book which I felt fit the current the mandate of the production company that employs me: A Christmas piece with family drama -- but not too much -- and a romance that targets the female demographic between the ages of 25 and 54 taking place in the contemporary time frame, preferably in a beautiful Americana locale (that Canada might easily double for if tax incentives for that American state aren't comparable). And, yes, this is how specific it can get. I have three bosses, overall, and while there is a hierarchy, it's a pretty casual one. The first is the Director of Development whom I call DD (prosaic? I know). Then the Producer who I'll call "Chip" and the Executive Producer whom I'll call "Bobby." In the beginning, DD totally saw what I saw in the piece, which makes sense because we are females in the target demo. One might want to listen to those voices, but as in D.C. and the GOP talking about women's health, why should we listen to the the people we want to support us? Chip "didn't get it." I admit, the book was a bit of a mess, but I wrote a treatment that reconciled a lot of the plot holes. Bobby got it, but Bobby often loses focus on Development and unless Chip is on-board some material can get put onto "the backburner," meaning that it's not a Pass per se, it's just Chip's hope that the mandate will change, and I won't bring the piece up a billion times more. But the mandate hasn't changed, and I keep banging my drum. (Do you like all these cliches? Welcome to Hollywood.)

Recently, we were doing our big Christmas push. This happens about five times a year as Christmas material is consistently derivative of A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, or someone seeing/being Santa Claus and -- unlike their progenitors -- not good. It's difficult to find honest Christmas material. For years, we used to do material that just took place around Christmas, but focus groups have now told us that audiences want Christmas to be the center of the storyline. (Focus groups -- taking creative out of Hollywood year after year!) I took it upon my self to pitch the book one more time to Bobby. I told him that I thought I could refocus the pitch.

Bobby: Can you make it good?

Me: I can make it better.

Bobby: Well, if you can get it to me by Friday, I'll put it in the pitch packet.

Me: *running to my office*

I reopened the treatment from 18 months ago and remembered it was eight pages. A year and a half ago, eight pages was about the norm. At some point, someone decided that we should do two-page pitches instead of longer treatments. It took the whole day, but I did a complete re-write, got it down to a page and half, refocused it from the child's point of view, and handed it to DD.

DD: I still love this concept. I thought there was a dog in it?

Me: Yes, there is, but I didn't want it to be too long, and the dog thread isn't imperative to the overall narrative.

DD: *Nodding the way women do to state that she understands your position while not necessarily agreeing with you*...still. It kinda gave it a little something, don'cha think?

Me: *Nodding while going back to my office*

I put the dog back in and it was two whole pages. The next day, I gave it to Bobby. On the third day, Bobby called me into his office.

Bobby: This is better!

Me: Thanks! *Big smile*

Bobby: I like the kid, and there's a little mystery now.

Me: Yep!

Bobby: And the dog is funny.

Me: Good!

Bobby: ...but...

Me: ......

Bobby: ...the guys kinda come off as...weird.

Me: Weird?

Bobby: You know, not like men.

Me: Um...

Bobby: Just make 'em funnier. They're supposed to be funny, right?

Me: Yeah! Totally. It's not supposed to be literal.

Bobby: Then just make sure that I know that they're funny.

Me: *going back to my office.*

To help get the male protagonists to seem funny, I throw in some dialogue and a bunch of adjectives and adverbs. But now the pitch is three pages. I bring it back to Bobby. The next day, I get called into his office.

Bobby: This is much better!

Me: Good! I'm glad. *Big smile*

Bobby: The ending is kinda...

Me: ... down?

Bobby: Not 'down,' exactly. Just...flat.

Me: Okaaay.

Bobby: *looking at me*....

Me: I can make it not flat. I just don't know, um, --

Bobby: ...*looking at me*....

Me: -- it's just that, uh, that's how the book ends. I didn't want to go to far afield from the source material.

Bobby: I don't care about that. Just make it not flat.

Me: *going back to my office.*

I come up with an idea that still holds true to the spirit of the novel while making the piece feel a bit more of a Happily Ever After. But it's just over three pages now. I give it back to Bobby. An hour later, I get called back into his office.

Bobby: There's a typo here.

Me: *going back to my office*

I fix the typo and bring it back to Bobby. The next morning is Friday. Bobby calls me back to his office.

Bobby: I'm sending it in.

Me: Good! *Big smile*

Bobby: Just show it to Chip then email it.

Me: Okay!

I bop into Chip's office and tell him that Bobby wants to put the treatment into the Christmas pitch packet, but wants him to look it over first. Chip sees the title of the pitch and groans. About an hour later, I get called into his Chip.

Chip: It's better, I guess. But it's long. Can you get it to two pages? Maybe cut back on the dog and this goofy shit with the guys.

Me: ...but...

Chip: .....

Me: *going back to my office.*

The sad fact is, this is nothing. Once we pass this on to the money people, they have their own ideas, and then once a writer is engaged, I have to start the negotiation phase all over again as s/he often can't figure out how the hell I got to where I did when the source material is nothing like my treatment. Then s/he has her/his own idea of how the material should play out...then the director gets involved...then the actor! It's a never ending tidal wave of "ideas." Let's just put it this way, I spend a lot of time in my office just trying to make it better.

Is SMASH a Smash?

Three things I like about NBC's new show SMASH:

1) Debra Messing with a gay guy BFF!

2) Anjelica Huston stalking around like Joan Crawford!

3) Broadway-like vignettes!

Two things I think SMASH needs to reconsider:

1) That worn-out chestnut of the dewy faced, wide eyed innocent fresh off the bus who has big, Big, BIG dreams of making it on the Great White Way because she was so pretty and so talented she locked all the leads in her high school productions...in Iowa. (And, in this case, luckily lands in the bed and heart of a British-speaking Mayoral assistant who has plenty of money to care for her while she's being turned down at auditions because otherwise, she would be living in a studio apartment with three other girls in Astoria, but instead gets to live in a HUGE ASS apartment somewhere in Manhattan. One would assume in Tribeca.) This might have worked before the advent of the internet, but when Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black can become part of the zeitgeist for a couple of YouTube videos, Kim Kardashin and Paris Hilton can have whole careers based on nothing but sex videos, and reality TV has given 5% of Americans 15-episodes of fame, the naive waif from Nowheresville is just kinda ridiculous. Even Iowans have the World Wide Web. Don't condescend, Hollywood.

2) Debra Messing's home life. I'm not sure what's going on there. Unfortunately, Brian d'Arcy James gets the awful character position that is usually left to a woman to play as the wife, but here we get the groundbreaking, role reversal of a man as husband taking on the trope: The shrill spouse who married an obsessive, but who now erratically swings between encouraging the raging workaholic in her endeavor and yelling at her for never being available, listening, paying attention, forgetting, etc. "Oh, fame-inducing, money-making success! Why must you exact such a price on the family life?! It's a curse - a CURSE! - I tell you! I preferred it so when we had no money and you were just a neurotic shell of a person and only MY love could salve your wounded vanity...." Stop! Please, stop. If you want to do something innovative, take this trope and really, psychologically dissect it and give the actor something to do.

One thing I think SMASH did disastrously wrong:

1) Casting Katharine McPhee. I know. I know that Steven Spielberg suggested her, his royal self. However, Bob Greenblatt, you are not "introducing" Katharine McPhee to anyone. I know you've been toiling over there in cable and probably looked down at network -- which was kinda evident when all you could do was talk about cable at the recent TV Critics Association -- but, you see, Katharine McPhee was on the only television show outside of the SuperBowl that Americans watch. It's called American Idol. And Ms. McPhee did very, very well on that show. And after she did that blockbuster show, she decided to dye her hair blond and marry some Hollywood player twice her age before being cast in a successful movie called The House Bunny. But let me tell you something about Katharine McPhee that you don't know and perhaps should have used a focus group to figure out before pulling the trigger: Katharine McPhee is bland. Seriously. Evidence?

Exhibit #1: She lost to Taylor Hicks. Taylor Hicks! Despite how successful she was on American Idol, she cut an album and it flopped. (BTW: Starting the show with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," her AI breakout song? Passe. Don't ever do that again. All you did was serve to remind us that we saw this girl already...six years ago. When she lost to Taylor Hicks.)

Exhibit #2: While I remember she was in The House Bunny, I don't remember her actually *in*House Bunny. Do you know who I remember? Emma Stone and Kat Dennings. Hell, I even remember Rumer Willis, vaguely. But I don't remember Katharine McPhee.

Exhibit #3: When the cast of SMASH was announced, everybody's reaction was the same: Debra Messing! Anjelica Huston! That guy from Pirates of the Caribbean! ...Katharine McPhee? Then people started laughing about the "introducing" tagline. Then Bob Greenblatt tried to say how wonderful it was to "introduce" Katharine McPhee *again.* Reader, have you ever been to a dinner party where you've met everyone, but some people have forgotten who you were so you had to be introduced *again*? It's embarrassing. No matter how you spin it, and they've been spinning it, it's weird. You should be "introducing" Megan Hilty.

While SMASH does not want to be compared to GLEE, I think it's relevant to point out what GLEE did right: They hired Broadway vets to portray the leads. Who knew Matthew Morrison before GLEE? Well, I saw him in the Tony-winner A Light in the Piazza up at Lincoln Center. Who knew Lea Michele before GLEE? Anyone who saw Spring Awakening. These people could sing and act and dance. But unless you were living in New York and taking in the theater for the last ten years, you wouldn't know 'em. Which is why I think Megan Hilty will do gloriously on this show if they would only push Katharine McPhee and her big, brown eyes to the side to let the woman shine. And, by the way, I think it's fairly obvious that McPhee is going to "get the role" after that weird pyramid where Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston is at the bottom(!) while McPhee is holding it all together. If you had two unknowns portraying Karen and Ivy, I might be willing to go all fifteen episodes to find out Who Will Get The Part?! But, I kinda know, don't I? You're not going to give it to the real Unknown, you're going to give it to the unknown that we all know.

Is it a smash? That's hard to say. Ratings were good last night, but dropped a chuck of The Voice's lead-in, and will probably drop further next week. They can't afford to drop much, however, especially not with the overhead that a show of this size -- with these kinds of names both in front of and behind the camera -- must cost (pilot was 7.5 million). I, for one, don't know if I'll be checking-in back in long term. I might watch for the next four or five weeks on DVR, but I'm going to need more than what I saw in the "upcoming" package that aired at the end of last night's episode. If SMASH goes the way of GLEE -- hoping that the musical numbers are enough to keep eyes glued to the TV while we watch warmed-over plotlines -- then my days are numbered. And if you lose too many women and gay men, this one will go the way of the original "Marilyn" Broadway tuner.