John August

Rant

Fucking pilots, cont’d

Follow Up, Rant

Following up the [previous post](http://johnaugust.com/2011/fucking-pilots), several TV writers I’ve spoken with agree with commenter Nick:

> Network execs in 2011 cannot afford to scorn cable TV programming. Maybe ten years ago they could, but now they all want their own cable show. They want the same level of prestige and edginess, but they want to somehow make it within the confines of the usual network restrictions on language and sexuality.

> The easiest thing to do, then, would be to take an outstanding cable pilot script and strip the offending elements from it, leaving (in the network exec’s mind) a perfect product: edgy, yet safe; prestigious, yet nipple-free.

> A writer who hands in a network script laced with nudity and profanity and the like is playing right into the fantasy. It’s got the same TV-MA stuff you’d see on cable, so presumably the quality of the rest of the script must be right up there.

> On the other hand, if the same writer handed in the same script but without the naughty bits, it would look like just another network script. And the exec doesn’t want to make a network show; he wants to make a cable show. On a network.

What bugs me about this isn’t the swearing — I love all variety of curses, the filthier the better. What annoys me is the dishonesty. The bait-and-switch.

Imagine I wrote an ABC pilot that featured a scene in which Angelina Jolie plays poker with Jennifer Aniston, with Brad Pitt’s heart as the wager.

Maybe it’s a great scene. Family Guy could do it as animation. But for a live-action show, it’s completely fucking moot, because Jolie/Aniston/Pitt are never going to agree to play themselves in this pilot. I’ve wasted everyone’s time putting this scene in the script.

It’s the same with characters saying “fuck” and “shit.” It’s not going to happen on broadcast television, so including it is just jerking everyone around.

Fucking pilots

Rant, Television, Words on the page

I’m reading more network pilot scripts this year than in years past, so I can’t say whether this is a new trend or just something I was unaware of:

**What’s with all the swearing?**

These are network pilots, not HBO or even basic cable. You can’t say shit or fuck in any combination. But characters in several pilots say both of these words a lot — at least in the drafts I read.

What gives? Why write words you can’t say?

I know some shows have a house style where the scene description is loaded up with a lot of profanity to give it texture:

Wallace turns to see --

THE BIGGEST FUCKING MONSTER ever. Seriously, this thing eats Girl Scouts and shits Trefoils.

That’s fine. It’s amusing for the staff and crew, and makes for a better read.

But I don’t understand the instinct to use never-okay swearing in dialogue. You’re going to have to replace it later, and you’ve made your job more difficult by setting up a dialogue structure that seems to demand a certain word. It’s going to sound wrong to everyone who has read the dirty version.

On D.C., I chastised a writing team for doing this. Now I see bona fide showrunners doing it. And I’m stumped.

Denialism, and Toy Story 3

Rant

Many of my favorite people hold opinions I don’t. They enjoy things I find annoying, and support positions I find misguided.

That’s good. Part of being a grown-up is accepting that others don’t have to share your tastes and beliefs, just as you don’t have to embrace theirs. Surrounding yourself with only like-minded people is narcissism by proxy.

When you zoom out to society as a whole, you want a healthy mix of opinions to generate discussion. Yes, you get a few blowhards and demagogues, but they often foster enjoyable debate. Culture is the result of a never-ending game, and you want good players.

But do you know who’s no help at all? Denialists.

“Denialist” is a term often linked with Holocaust or climate change skeptics, but in a general sense applies to anyone incapable of rational discussion on a given topic. You can’t debate them. Not really.

DENIALIST

There are huge gaps in your “fossil record.”

BIOLOGIST

Between which species?

DENIALIST

All of them! Pick any two, and there’s a gap between them.

With topics that can be argued from objective facts, you can ultimately feel pretty secure calling a denialist *wrong.* But what if you’re talking about a subjective experience, like art or literature or movies?

What if you’re talking about Toy Story 3?

> Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination–the usefulness of toys–and strictly celebrates consumerism.

In his widely-panned [review](http://www.nypress.com/article-21357-bored-game.html) of the widely-adored Toy Story 3, Armond White seems to have segued from film critic to film denialist. “Contrarian” feels too small, too polite — he’s not just paddling in the opposite direction of most critics, he’s climbed out of the boat and started grabbing fish with his bare hands.

Criticizing Toy Story 3 for celebrating consumerism is so non-sensical as to be objectively wrong.

Or maybe we’ve all been duped:

> [Toy Story 3 is] essentially a bored game that only the brainwashed will buy into. Besides, Transformers 2 already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence.

Oy.

Paul Brunick does a [point-by-point dissection](http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/07/hating-the-player-losing-the-game-the-armond-white-meta-review/comment-page-1/#comment-38298) of the Toy Story 3 review, revealing its many factual inaccuracies. Never mind what movie is being projected on screen — White is here to catalog how it falls short of his ideals:

> What makes Armond’s reviews perversely fascinating is that he is so obviously intelligent, yet this intelligence has been harnessed to the warped imperatives of an increasingly frustrated personality. Where your average critical hack job is just banal, White’s ability to disconnect the dots exerts a kind of bizarro brilliance. Try to take any of his recent reviews as seriously as he insists and you’ll find yourself, like Alice and the Red Queen, running in hermeneutic circles, getting nowhere fast. It makes for mediocre criticism but lurid psychodrama.

Don’t feed the trolls
—

Since you can’t debate a denialist, shouldn’t you just ignore them?

In forums and message boards, yes. On their own blogs, sure. But when a denialist has a platform that otherwise feels legitimate, are you doing society a disservice by letting the counterfactual opinion sit there uncontested?

Take evolution, per my example above. By attempting to engage with denialists, defenders of science paradoxically lend their opponents legitimacy — particularly if they can portray themselves as persecuted. “Teach the controversy” starts to sound like a reasonable middle ground, drawing in otherwise-reasonable people who want to be perceived as wise and fair.

I don’t have a good answer. I haven’t devised a formula for figuring out when to just ignore it. And thus I spend a few hundred words on a terrible review of an excellent movie.

Hulu is not dead to me

Film Industry, Rant

CNET has good [interview with Eric Garland](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10383572-261.html), the CEO of media measurement company [Big Champagne](http://bcdash.bigchampagne.com/), talking about file sharing and the future of film and television.

Most of his points aren’t new, but they’re delivered in less-hysterical terms than you often see.

> The music people used to say, “How can you can compete with free?” And now you ask anybody in digital music and they’ll tell you, “I’m just trying to compete effectively with free.” They’ve embraced the very condition that up until very recently they said they would reject. I’m telling you, you are going to compete with free. Sometimes you’re even going to win, once you make the commitment to living in the marketplace as it is and not as you wish it were or as it once was.

Garland [shares my sympathy](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/more-on-the-torrents) for international viewers, who are often told to wait months for movies that the U.S. gets on day one. If you don’t give the audience a convenient and legal way to watch something, they’re going to find a convenient and illegal way. And it’s hard to blame them.

I have much less sympathy for users outraged that [Hulu is going to start charging](http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/10/22/hulu-to-start-charging-in-2010/). “Hulu is dead to me” is the common refrain on messageboards and Twitter.

But here’s the thing: you don’t have a god-given right to free shows, just as you can’t walk into Barnes and Noble and start shoving books in your backpack. We’ve conflated the ideas of intellectual liberty and zero cost into a big bundle of entitlement.

While I disagree with many points in Chris Anderson’s Free
, he makes a useful distinction between flavors of “free.” I’d argue that movies and television need to be free as in accessible — by a global audience on their timetable. But you can have that kind of free without setting the price at zero. In fact, charging for something often makes it more accessible, by making it economically worthwhile to keep the systems running.

Right now, Hulu competes very effectively with free torrents on price. But if it chooses to move to a subscription model, it can ultimately offer more content at higher speeds, allowing it to compete better with free torrents on access.

Netflix is often seen as a tremendous bargain, offering a vast selection of movies and TV on demand for a low subscription price. That’s what Hulu may morph into, and that’s not cause for alarm.