The Sonny Bono Incident

Happy New Year All!

I just recently read Steve Martin's biography, "Born Standing Up, " and I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the creative process. Martin does a great job telling the story of how for nearly two decades he developed his amazing stand-up act. He also reveals many of the personal setbacks that shaped his character and his routine.

When I was a kid I spent hours listening to, laughing at, and memorizing his iconic albums. I recently started doing some standup in New York, and reading this book gave me a whole new appreciation for this genius who created hours of hilarious original material with almost no punch lines.

One story in particular popped out at me. Martin wrote and performed on the Sonny and Cher show for a spell, and he tells about the time when Sonny and his producer took him aside to say they loved his work, and that they were going to develop a show around him. Naturally, Martin was thrilled and looked forward to great things. The punch line here is that nothing happened. Sonny and his producer never said another word to Martin about their big plans.

So what lesson should you draw from this? People, especially television and entertainment people, are often totally full of it. They say things without thinking or because they're high on drugs or because they have a pathological need to please or whatever. At Haverford we like to think we can take people at their word, but I'm sorry the rest of the world (and sometimes Haverford) just doesn't work that way.

Having spent my entire academic life in a relatively honest Quaker cocoon, this kind of behavior (and not returning phone calls) was perhaps the most difficult for me to understand. How could someone not say what they mean?! Even though my eyes have been opened by some of the magnificent jerks I've come across, I still like to take people at their word. Only now I try to live by the great words of that terrible President, Ronald Reagan, "trust but verified."

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

David

P.S. In case you were wondering. I am completely honest.

TV BAD

Hope all is well. Things are picking up around here at Peacock Productions. Working on live programming for the Travel Channel which will air on New Year's Eve. They're running a string of No Reservations (Chef Anthony Bourdain eats his way around the world), and starting at noon we're doing live segments at the top of the hour about New Year's traditions in countries that Anthony is visiting and some others too. I'm actually supposed to be scripting some of those right now, but this is a great way to procrastinate.

I'm going to tell you a few bad things about television, show you some cute video and then get back to work.

According to Time Magazine, "The average U.S. household has more televisions (2.73) than people (2.6)." The survey goes on to report that we spend over two and a half hours a day watching television, that's more time than we spend doing everything else in our lives besides working and sleeping.

I can't emphasize enough what a waste of time this is unless you happen to be watching any combination of the following: The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ugly Betty, Chef Gordon Ramsay, Project Runway, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Talk Soup, The Closer (sometimes) and House (Hugh Laurie is great, but I watch less and less as the show gets muddled with too many characters). Should mention that Back to You is good theater and Keith Olbermann has his moments. So, again, I can't emphasize enough what a waste of time television is.

In other TV BAD news, Gawker has an item about Viacom, the owners of MTV, VH1, CBS and on and on. According to a Viacom staffer nearly 50% of their employees are freelancers. This means they make tv for the company without benefits and can be fired at will. The rest of the employees are "staff" and get full benefits, contracts and nicer holiday gifts. I'm a freelancer hoping to be made staff at NBC. I get no benefits and could easily get canned for blogging while I should be working leaving me without any immediate means to support little baby Clyde who you'll see in action later.

Previously at Viacom you had to work for a year before getting any kind of health benefits. Now they're upping the work-week to 50 hours but giving benefits to employees who work 25, 50 hour work-weeks in a given division. On the surface it seems like a better deal. Employees get benefits faster, BUT, and there's always a BUT, if they get shifted from their division (a regular occurence) they lose all their hours and have to start at the beginning again. Something tells me our friends at Viacom will be working the shell game like you read about in the months to come. Anything to keep from paying benefits and making it look like you have too many staff employees which makes investors nervous and drives your stock down. Almost forgot to mention that Viacom plans to give freelancers the news when they go to pick up their Christmas party invites. Now that's classy.

Also salaries for the tv entry level positions in television (this means you soon to be college graduates) are so low that unless you have inherited money or some ongoing support from family you can't afford to work in television in New York. The system insures that, by in large, only people with money can work in television. This means the vision will tend to be homogenous and the product will suffer accordingly. I am, of course, an exception to that rule, no really.

Enough about TV. I've decided to put the medium to good use. Here's a clip of my son Clyde taking some of his first steps. 9 months and 3 weeks, a Felsen family record, but who's counting.

Clyde the Glide

Happy Finals!!

DF

Strike!

The writers strike is on. I know because Tina Fey was outside 30 Rock with a sign in her hand and a frown on her face. She was not acting. I'd say I'm totally behind the writers on this one and I think they're entitled to a cut of the internet revenue but it might get me in trouble with management.

More importantly, what does this mean for me? I'm a producer. Producers are writers too. Tina's a writer. Writers are striking. Shouldn't I be striking with Tina? Afraid not. For some reason when I wear my producer hat and I write for news, reality and non-fiction shows, I'm not part of the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

I also write screenplays, and on that glorious and hopefully not-too-distant day when I actually sell one to a WGA signatory producer I will officially become a WGA member. Now, because of the strike I cannot sell my "art" to a producer because then I'd be a rat, and Tina wouldn't like me.

So now the studios are scrambling for "non-scripted" reality shows. The joke here is that reality shows like Dog the Idiot, I mean, Dog the Bounty Hunter are all heavily scripted. I know of so-called reality shows where producers are setting up scenes and in some cases writing dialogue for the characters. That's the reality folks. When Larry David shoots a scene of Curb with Steve Coogan, they know the plot, they know the situation in the scene, but the dialogue is actually fleshed out on the fly. The only difference between Curb and some "reality shows" is one of the two uses professional actors, and Larry David is a total genius.

Anyway, that's about all I have on the strike. Word is it's going to be a long one. Might be a good time to turn the tube or plasma or lcd off and read a book. Or, even better, start writing a screenplay, the studios are going to be starving for material by the time this is all over.

Best,

David

P.S. You must watch this satire of a pitch meeting. It's almost perfect.

Bummed and Powerless

It's 84 degrees and sunny and you know what that means, it's Fall! Ah, Global Warming, just one more thing to make us all feel simultaneusly bummed and powerless. Speaking of bummed and powerless, what's going on with Men's Soccer? Seems like the program has lost the plot. A word of advice from this former player to the young men on Walton: shut out all distractions (coach included) and play the beautiful game with joy and passion. Good things may follow.

Things have been a bit slow on the television front. Spending a lot of time trying to develop non-fiction series for cable. Basically I sit around calling friends and surfing the net looking for the next Ice Road Truckers or The Deadliest Catch. Development taste is notoriously ephemeral and fickle. These days if you can find a bunch of rednecks freezing their tootsies off while in imminent danger of losing limbs or life you've got television gold. A few years ago everyone was looking for the next Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I'm still a little bitter about my "Soul Eye for the White Guy" pitch being shot down, but you can't win them all.


What's sad is that all the networks want shows similar to proven shows. Trying something new or something that hasn't worked in the past takes guts, and most network television executives are unlikely to go out on a limb for your crazy idea. It's tough to blame them though, it's not easy to find a sweet gig with benefits where you get to watch lots of TV.

I remember pitching a History Channel Exec on a show about the Fire Department of New York. they balked saying, you know, I just don't think the American people are interested in Fire Fighters. Did I mention this was just two years after September 11? HELLO!!

Whew, I could sit around and spit out stupid executive stories all day long, but I should probably get some work done before some executive gets wind that I'm avoiding work to tap at you all.

Peas and Carrots,

David

P.S. Go Fords!! Or, is it the Red Wave? Why not Communist Hordes? I kind of liked the idea of Black Squirrels, but some short-sighted executive squashed it.

Manson

Welcome back from wherever you were. May your transition to the harsh realities of September be as pleasant as possible.

So, Diana aired this past weekend and no one is suing us (yet) so it couldn't have been all bad. Actually spent most of August with a really nasty piece of work: Charles Manson. Think I mentioned earlier that I was working on an hour about Manson based on a 1987 interview he did for the Today Show.

We brought in former FBI Profiler, Candice DeLong to watch the interview and she gave our correspondent, Keith Morrison, her unique perspective on Manson. Candice inspired the Clarice Starling character in Silence of The Lambs, and I thought she did a great job for us. If you're interested you can check out The Mind of Manson on MSNBC this Wednesday September 5 at 10p. You should also read Helter Skelter by Manson Prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi. In the tradition of Cold Blood, Helter Skelter gives a thorough and vivid account of some of the most bizarre and heinous murders in American history.

When the Manson interview first aired a lot of people at NBC thought it shouldn't have, and I was skeptical about my assignment. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that giving people like Manson airtime is only justified if one makes an effort to learn from and understand how these monsters work. I think that's what we did.

Not sure what my next assignmnent will be and in the meantime I'm getting ready to go see my mom in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico for a week with my wife and little baby Clyde Felsen pictured below.

Somehow I've managed to put snaps of my son and Charles Manson in the same blog. It's all about balance!

Hasta La Proxima

y

Hasta La Victoria Siempre

Tina Brown

On Friday we finally got Tina Brown to sit down for an interview based on her book, The Diana Chronicles, excellent summer reading. As you may imagine, Tina's terribly busy and could only talk with us at 8am. Not usually an ideal time for an interview as most of us can't form cogent thoughts before 11. Not Tina Brown. She is a star. The former Editor of Tattler, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair completely has her act together at all times I suspect. She helped us fill in lots of blanks for our Diana Conspiracy Theory show and gave a clinic on clever, concise responses. I asked Tina off-camera what she was up to next, and she asked me who I'd like to read a book about. I mentioned our current President, and she agreed it would be fascinating but clearly had some reservations about an in-depth exploration of our ongoing national nightmare. I should add that the interview was filmed at New York's Women's Republican Club (lovely location) so our chat was sotto voce. You never know when the walls might have ears, and at the Republican club their likely to be extra-large. That's an elephant joke.

Production

Okay, now we're into the fun part (kind of) of the whole production process. We're moving forward with the Diana project with some changes to the overall story which I won't bore you with. I'm also doing an hour on Charles Manson for MSNBC, so my dreams are going to be really weird this summer.

Diana comes first and we're shooting interviews for that now with "experts" in different fields. I try to think of the interview subjects as characters, and ideally your characters are passionate and animated, because if they're not excited about what they're talking about then Elma in Iowa's going to change the channel. My stand-up teacher (story for another time) talks a lot about the idea of joyous communication and it helps me with casting.

I can't get specific about characters because that's proprietary and I could lose my job :( I can, however, tell you how I cleverly found them. I used the internet. See how clever we are at NBC. Actually, I started with the internet and found authors and journalists who sounded authoritative and then called them up to get a sense if I would want to interview them. Youtube is a real boon to Producers because now you can see subject interviews and get a read on how they deal with lights, camera and action. Some people are scared to death of cameras. I had a Doctor in Zambia who was a warm and articulate, but just before we sat down for the interview she warned me that she was "photophobic." The poor woman proceeded to blink like you read about for the majority of our 40 minute interview. I can't tell you how painful that was for me.

That's all for now, more on production next time around.

David