Time to steal back
Why are TV dramas so good these days? Because they’ve borrowed the look, style and ambition of features. They’re mini-movies that are better than movies. It’s time to steal back.
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September 12th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I like that.
September 12th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
But not at the expense of tv, I hope. Having 17 hours per season (without commercials) of amazing tv shows, like LOST, is something I like. :) But Heroes? Heroes can go. Please.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Most networks are beginning to realize their audience wants something intelligent to watch with exception to UPN. People are responding to that. The bar for entertainment is being raised across all mediums tv, films, Internet and games. So if you are going to produce something, aim high and don’t program to the least common denominator.
What brought me back to (some) TV are shows like Deadwood, Rome, The Office (UK version) and Battlestar. And all of these shows have a few things in common, great writing, wonderful acting and short runs. Don’t milk a good thing to death…tell a good story and kill it. Let us believe by watching we were part of something special.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
We live in an incredible time in terms of TV shows. What once were non-progressing storylines, flat characters, resetting scenarios after each episode has now become a true form of art – each season an epic movie in twenty+ pieces. Suspense curves that are constructed in the most brilliant way. Endless climaxes. Cliffhangers.
Having seen Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes or Firefly it´s the first time that I actually -favor- television over the movies. The mainstream cinema doesn´t surprise me anymore, and independent stuff is hard to find in my countries theatres. Some TV shows, however, seem to become braver and braver. Fox may kick them out after a couple of episodes, but –heaven forbid– they turn into CSI-like run-of-the-mill. Folks like Tim Minear rather let the ship sink in style.
Yes, steal back, please. I think, John, that – without seeing the whole picture – The Nines is a good start. From what I´ve heard of it, it´s fresh, a bit cheeky and most definitely something to talk about. Time to bring the big screen back on par with the small one.
September 13th, 2007 at 4:02 am
I don’t know about “straight” dramas, but genre TV shows are better than genre movies: Supernatural is better acted, better written, and scarier than most horror movies.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:41 am
While I like your words, John, I don’t know how to translate the “steal back ” into action. What are you referring to exactly?
September 13th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I’d like to thank HBO, Showtime, and FX for revitalizing the drama. Let’s just hope the networks don’t get tired of $2 million per episode prices!
September 13th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Alex #6: I second that emotion.
John?
September 13th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Case in point: Friday Night Lights. I saw the TV show before the film and was completely floored. Later, when I finally did see the film, it didn’t impress me as much as the show. TV has a lot more room to explore each character and conflict.
September 13th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Is it because, in general, TV writers are not dogged by legions of dumb-ass studio execs? I dunno.
My friend has his own show and it seems he can argue his point and stay on point whereas with the movie world you have bigger egos with less focus on making something “good,” and more focus on making money. More cooks do spoil the broth and when those cooks haven’t even been to culinary school and are, dare I say, sub human in their understanding of the human condition(!?) you end up with something that looks like shit, tastes like shit… my God man! It IS shit.
Feed em shit, they eat shit… did you guys see Britney on the VMAs??
September 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Alex (#6):
Courage. Ambition. A desire to challenge the assumptions of the medium.
Look at what 24 has done to the frame: there’s multiple actions happening simultaneously, in different locations, and you’re supposed to follow all of it.
“Lost” plays crucial plot points silently. It’s not radio with pictures. And it allows you — invites you — to be confused.
Heroes has a sprawling cast, and no clear lead.
30 Rock doesn’t care if you miss a joke.
The Office (both versions) has an impossible documentary conceit, but never yields to it. And never hides behind music.
Desperate Housewives pulls off an impossible tone, aided by its dead narrator (a narrator!).
In all of these cases, the show is the star, not the actors, not the marketing campaign. Writers made bold choices, and were rewarded. They trusted the audience was smart enough to keep up with them. And if they didn’t? Fine. A noble failure in TV is a good thing. A noble failure in features lands you in movie jail.
Features don’t trust the audience. Features believe the audience is a bunch of idiots, so they dumb it down until the idiot feels smart. We’ve been trained by the movies to be a little bit dumb. Somehow, my brother can follow “Lost,” but he gets confused in “Big Fish.” I think he’s using his popcorn brain.
Why did TV get better? I think TV showrunners were competing with each other. Each season, they pushed harder, from Bochco to Kelly to Whedon to Abrams — and a lot of folks I’m leaving off. These shows had their names on them, so it mattered.
They cribbed from features, from comic books, from reality TV. Meanwhile, top screenwriters hacked away on Martin Lawrence vehicles.
So, when I say that we need to steal from TV, here’s my looting list:
The obvious counter-argument is that audiences don’t want to be “challenged” when they go to the movies. So why are they willing to be challenged sitting on their couch, after a long day of work? Because they recognize that sometimes the mental work is worth it.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:32 am
I’m of the opinion that the audience virtually always wants to be challenged – the engrossed viewer finds the experience exciting, not “challenging” as though it were some ordeal, or frustrating puzzle.
Ask any regular fan of House, Rescue Me, etc., if they find watching their show “challenging” and they’ll most likely say it’s not; that’s because they’re caught up in it and relish the mental chase through each plotline.
A big, hearty “Amen” on those sentiments, Brother August.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
TV is our new social circle. It has replaced the backyard bbq, bowling team, sewing circle, kaffeeklatch, church picnic, etc. It’s simply our new best friend. And, as any good friend would do, it reacts dynamically to us as we react dynamically with it. Its job is to basically agree with and reinforce us. The failures of television are failed friendships, failing for the same reasons (nonresponsiveness, manipulation, taking more than it gives).
Movies don’t/can’t share this dynamic. Movies have replaced church, carnivals, summer camp, and other staged events. The failures of movies are much simpler than the failures of television (boring, insulting, not worth the trip).
In the end we don’t care about our friend’s complexity or erudition (though that might be the initial attraction at times). We can forgive a friend being boring or insulting at times, but we certainly don’t want our preacher, carny, or camp councelor worrying about how to be our friend.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:39 am
I think it’s just that TV found it’s stride and has taken advantage of it’s natural advantages over movies for one type (by no means all types) of drama.
I like to compare TV series to novels and Movies to short stories. The biggest part of a novel is its middle, while a short story is almost all beginning and endings.
A great deal of mental energy is taken up at a beginning of a story when the viewer is attempting to make sense of the world, figure out which character is which, and get a grasp of the world. This is real work on the part of the viewer, and like all work can wear someone out a bit. Because TV shows only have to make this energy investment once (during the pilot), TV shows have the option of focusing that energy elsewhere in other issues. This is similar to how you can put down a novel when you get tired.
In a movie the viewer is already a bit worn down after the introduction and can’t invest as much energy in the middle part of the story, which is typically where depth of character can be explored and narrative complexity created. Meanwhile the end of the movie is running right up. So the time restraints of movies and the attention limitations of viewers stack the deck against movies in competition with TV in terms of character development and narrative complexity. It’s just a structural limitation of the form.
Meanwhile the same structure gives the movies a lot of advantages in a number of areas.
First, movies are short, so particular stylish quirks of language or visual style that people would get sick of week after week can be terrific in short doses. Think of Hal Hartley’s dialog or the visual style of “I ‘heart’ Hucklebees” week after week. Both would get old quick (in terms of the 20+ hours of a television series), but are refreshing and fun in a 90 minute chunk.
It appears that “Pushing Daisies” is attempting this in a television format, and I expect the series to die because of it. The more unique a voice is the more suited it is to a particular story, and thus it limits the total satisfying stories that can be done with that voice. I think “Pushing Daisies” is going to scrape that ceiling pretty quickly.
Second, movies can tell stories which are about the end. Stories all have different focuses, and stories which are about a resolution to a particular problem or about the dawning of some epiphany are particularly well suited to the shortness of movies.
“The Sixth Sense” was, in a lot of ways, about the realization the protagonist was dead. Once you’ve gotten there, the audience is satisfied, and carrying on is a waste. It would have made a miserable TV show, but a fine movie.
A short story like ‘The Swarm’ by Bruce Sterling is another example of something that would make a great movie, but a lousy TV show. To make a short story shorter the basic set up of the story is such, “Mankind meets what an mindless alien swarm, mankind sets about to tame and domesticate the alien swarm and is all proud of mankind’s big brain, then mankind discovers that its big brain is actually a disadvantage and weakness that the swarm will turn against it.” Once you get to the epiphany (the thing you thought was your greatest strength is also an insurmountable problem) your done and the viewer is satisfied. And the viewer is satisfied in large part because they haven’t waited 30 hours to get there. The payoff was worth the investment.
The opposite side of this type of story is something like “Lost”, where it gets harder and harder to see what type of payoff can justify the length of the show.
I guess I’m just saying that I think movies can learn a lot from television, but the movies shouldn’t forget they’re not television.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:56 am
I would really, really love to agree but I think I know why TV can be far more complicated and involved than film. It simply has more time. Time to introduce the conventions and subvert them, time to introduce the characters with a simple truth “plane has crashed – have to survive” and then expand “something else is going on”. People also had time in between the two to think about it.
I hadn’t thought about it until reading this post and the comments. A movie is like a long short story, a TV series is closer to a novel (maybe a serialised novel), after each chapter you get a chance to have a bathroom break, sleep, go to work and think about what you saw. That allows you to be more complicated.
Disclosure: I haven’t seen Lost or Big Fish (although I do own Big Fish on DVD and hope to watch it soon).
September 14th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Good points, of course, but I’d like to add a few observations.
I don’t always see pilot episodes. I can tune in at episode 19 of The Office and follow it perfectly. Even a complicated show like Lost or Heroes is comprehensible to a first-time viewer.
I think television is helped by the act breaks. Not only do they invite reversals; they let the story move in different directions. Even HBO shows like Six Feet Under will use them, because they help. (Because someone will point it out: both Go and The Nines have notable act breaks. Charlie does to a lesser degree.)
The cliche is that “it’s all about the execution.” In movies, execution is what the director does, but in television, that’s the writer/showrunner. He or she is the last word, and that’s no small part of why it’s better.
September 15th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Okay.
You’ve convinced me.
Lets get to it.
September 16th, 2007 at 4:31 am
John –
“In movies, execution is what the director does, but in television, that’s the writer/showrunner. He or she is the last word, and that’s no small part of why it’s better.”
I think that is what it all comes down to. The writer – developing the storyline, characters, relationships, twists and plots – is suddenly in fact the most important person of the whole game. It´s a brave decision that has been made in television, and to give the showrunner complete faith in running or ruining a show has paid off so many times.
I mean – it´s interesting. “Prison Break” for example has so many plot holes, so many “WTF” moments when you start thinking about all the coincidences – but it works. It just does. “Structure is everything” was once said, and that´s what we begin to see in todays high ranking shows. The details are flawed, sometimes the dialogue (we´re not talking about Joss Whedon here) is aweful – but the structure, the general plot, the character profiles keep you glued to the screen, each and every episode.
I really hope that those brave decisions will be made tomorrow as well.
September 21st, 2007 at 9:01 am
I bet you could have sold the premise for The Nines as a TV show. Maybe you could do the Serenity/Firefly trick in reverse. That’s a show I’d watch – and happily write for!
xJ