Do Your Own Damn Job

Reality TV shows don’t have “writers,” per se.  They have what are called “story producers.”

Their job is pretty much twofold.  First, they come up with the wacky situations for the contestants to get into.  They’re the ones who send the rich debutant to a farm, and the ghetto-fabulous girl to Morton’s.

Once all this is shot, the story producer must trim hours and hours of footage into a manageable story.  In some cases, they go so far as to write a “script” from dialogue that’s already been spoken.  It’s basically screenwriting in reverse.

A while back, I was working on a classy show I shall not name.  We were several seasons into the series, and the well of ridiculous situations had run pretty much dry.

So, a story producer came into the office and explained to everyone that the show runner wanted a list of 50 “complications” for our cast.  Things that would impede them from reaching their goal.  If any of us had some brilliant ideas, we should let him know.

And I thought to myself, Not only is this your job, it’s the ENTIRETY of your job.  It’s the only thing you have to do right now.

Argh.  How do people like that get work?

Voice Mail

Pardon me if I’m stealing an old Seinfeld bit or something, but seriously, what is the deal with voice mail?

When I call my voice mail at work, it asks for my number and password, as you’d expect. Then it says, “You have… ONE… message,” and you wait.  And wait.

And wait.

“If you’d like to listen to your message, press 2.”

If? IF?! What the hell you do you mean, “if”? You’re voice mail! Did you think I called you just to chat?

Turing Test

And what the hell’s with “2″? What possible function could supersede “listen to messages” in voice mail? I’ve never actually pressed 1, mind you. I’m afraid of what might happen.

Let’s not forget leaving messages for other people. With some cell companies, like Sprint, you can skip the outgoing message by hitting 1. With other services, you have to listen to all of the instructions, in case you haven’t used a phone since 1973.

My favorite is, “If you’d like to send a page, press 2.” After all, who knows, maybe you’re trying to contact a drug dealer circa 1992.

I know these sound like minor quibbles, but I’m on the phone a lot. Stupid programming gets on my nerves, after a while.

Fair’s Fair

I’m working on a friend’s web series. “Working” in sarcastic I’m-not-getting-paid quotes. But, like I said, he’s a friend, and it’s a funny show. It’s basically an extended version the “You Only Move Twice” episode of The Simpsons. (Well, not exactly, but I don’t want to give away more before they release it.)

Don't call me Mr. Scorpion, it's Mr. Scorpio. But don't call me that, either. Call me Hank!

There’s a funny bit with an acid delivery guy.  I won’t spoil it.

Anyway, a few episodes later, the art department, being children of the post-modern age, threw in a call-back joke in the background: on someone’s bulletin board, they wrote: “Compare acid prices.”

Since I was just standing around at the time, I suggested they write “LexCorp vs. Osborn Industries?” underneath. If you’re nerdy enough, you’ll know that those are villainous corporations from two different comic book universes.

Everyone had a nice chuckle at the idea, until the producer shot it down. He was afraid of incurring the wrath of both Marvel Comics Entertainment and whichever conglomerate owns DC right now.

I’m not a lawyer, but I did read a comic book on the subjects of copyright and fair use.

It’s been pretty well established that parody is fair use. Granted, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, Justice Souter wrote, “Parody may or may not be fair use, and petitioner’s suggestion that any parodic use is presumptively fair has no more justification in law or fact than the equally hopeful claim that any use for news reporting should be presumed fair.”

And, of course, this series is ultimately intended to make money, which is one of the four factors when considering fair use.

Souter found that the second factor, the nature of the original work, has no bearing on whether or not a parody is fair use.

In any case, it’s clear this minor joke passes the other two criteria: “The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole,” which, in this case, is one company name in over seventy and forty years of comics, respectively. If you look up “insubstantial” in the dictionary, you aren’t likely to find a picture of an abstract concept like seventy years of comic books, but still, it’s pretty insubstantial.

Lastly, there’s “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” I imagine that’s rather slight. First of all, no one is going to see this joke. It’s in the background, out of focus, in a tiny streaming video window. Even fewer will recognize it. It’s pretty esoteric.

It’s sad that people are so terrified of getting sued. If only there was some organization who could help entrepreneurial young filmmakers fight these chilling effects.

By the way, if there are any copyright lawyers out there, please tell me if my reasoning is unsound.

Links! (So I Don’t Have to Write a Real Post!)

Get it? He's Link! Eh? Eh?

Things are picking up around work, so, in lieu of a real post here are a few fun links:

Script Goddess has a great post about the little moments on set.

Did you know there was a terrorist attack in New York? In 1920? I heard about it from a Slate podcast.

While searching for some (innocent, I swear!) images, I stumbled across this page for Feminist Film Studies at the University of Minnesota. I love reading people over-analyzing images. The study of the pregnant woman is particularly amusing. The anonymous responses to this student are great, too.

Here’s a nerdy post about why modern video games are even harder than they look.

Economists can make anything sound boring.

Over at Variety, Brian Lowry claims that reality TV is getting stale.  Cynthia Littleton thinks the same thing about script shows.

Lastly, a few fun TV tropes I recently discovered:

• Remember Encyclopedia Brown? Not as smart as you think.
• If someone calls you a “Christmas cake,” it’s an insult.
• On the other hand, “boobs of steel” is not.

30 Rock Reconsidered

I got an unusually large number of comments on my 30 Rock post a couple weeks ago, so I thought I should respond.

First of all, I grant that me watching a Hollywood show is like a geologist watching The Core. I just can’t help noticing all the details they get wrong.

Eric said:

I think you’re reading too much into Cerie because you’re an assistant, too.

I might be taking it personally, it’s true. On the other hand, I do fancy myself a writer, and I like to think I know how writers think. This mockery of assistants isn’t an accident.

johnd said:

Not only is Ken the ONLY seriously nice person on the show and gets mad props in the “assistant” role, but the show takes digs at EVERY other profession, most often in gruesomely hilarious ways.

That’s actually my point. Executives are meddlesome, actors are clueless, producers are frantic. 30 Rock mocks of all of these guys by exaggerating the reality. No executive is really as obnoxious as Jack, and writers aren’t always that socially inept. (Some actors are as clueless as Tracy, though.)

Which is fine, and apparently funny (to some people). But if you reverse-engineer this caricaturing process, you’ll find that “assistants are idiots,” which is really what my gripe was about.

Lastly, Rob Long wrote me an e-mail, saying he agrees with me:

Many thanks for your email, and for the link to your blog, which is excellent. I don’t think you’re wrong, either, about that episode of 30 Rock.

Thanks, too, for your kind words. They almost make up for reminding me that there are people too young to remember Cheers…

Is “Guy” Gender Neutral?

I applied for a job last week. At the interview, they told me it came down to me and one other person.  My prospective employer said they’d make their decision by Monday.

On Tuesday, I called to see if they were still weighing their options, or if they went with the other guy.

“The other girl.”

Now, she didn’t quite emphasize it that much, but she definitely wanted me to know that they hired a female, not a male.

To me, “guy” is gender neutral.  It just takes less time than saying “person.”

Yet another image of the Anonymous Production Assistant.

Am I crazy?

Placement

I was helping a friend with a short film over the weekend. I was the camera assistant, or “AC.” Don’t ask me why the letters get inverted in the acronym.

It’s been a while since I’ve ACed, and to tell the truth, I forgot how much influence a camera assistant can have.

I knew an AC who had a signal worked out with the director. Whenever the director didn’t like the take, but didn’t want to make the actors self-conscious, he’d have the AC announce that the focus was soft, even when it was fine. Sometimes, the AC would make the announcement when he didn’t like the take.

I didn’t actually do that, because we have, thankfully, a great cast. But there’s a subtler form of influence an AC has.

Sometimes, a director or DP will stand on a spot and hold their hand at the level they want the camera.

No one ever actually does this.

Other times, they’ll just vaguely gesture in some direction, and say they want a wide shot, or whatever.

At which point, it’s up to the AC to actually pick the location, find the right height, set the focal length. You know, frame the shot.

Of course, the DP will check the frame, and occasionally they will pan a little or move the camera up or down, but generally, they leave the camera where it is. From a given location, there are a finite number of compositions that can actually work.

Granted, this is a very squishy and indefinable artistic contribution to the project (unlike the line I suggested: “Hurry up! I’ve got an appointment at 3:00, and Chavez isn’t going to assassinate himself.”), but I’ll take what I can get.

Poking the Frog

Every once in a while, the hype surrounding 30 Rock overwhelms me, and I decide to give it another chance.

This is always a mistake. I can count on my hand the number of times I laughed at the show (“Did a Korean person die?”). I tend to turn it off after the teaser, when I go five minutes without laughing.

I didn’t even get that far with last night’s episode.

It started with Liz Lemon, a showrunner of a fictional TV series, not realizing that the crew of her show didn’t get the next week off. (Which is, granted, mildly amusing in a meta way, as the writers of the 30 Rock itself must obviously be aware of such occurrences, or they wouldn’t know to make a joke of it.)

Then the show establishes that “the only thing” Liz does for herself all year is go to St. Barts, and she refuses to let anything interfere with this trip.  From personal experience, I know this is not true of any television producer, ever.

Worse, setting this up as the character’s central problem for the episode strikes me as a bit of a “Let them eat cake” moment for the writers, squandering the good will of the self-mockery above.

Then Liz’s stupid assistant informs her that her hotel overbooked, and the trip is off. She meant to tell Liz earlier, but forgot to press ’send’ on the text.

Annnnnnnnnd… I turned it off.

There’s really two kinds of jokes. Well, actually, there are many, many kinds of jokes, but for the purposes of oversimplifying to make a point, I’ll consider two.

First, there are jokes where you take the assumed reality, and do the opposite. This is why the pie-in-the-face gag only works when the sap’s got dignity.

The other joke is to take reality and exaggerate it. Cartoons, and cartoony shows like 30 Rock, do this.  Which is how I know the writers think their assistant is a moron.

So, now I have a personal beef with 30 Rock. Producers are helpless without us “over-qualified, over-educated assistants with the unjustified self esteem and the ludicrous salary day-dream.”

And the worst part is, there is an assistant character for the second joke. Why not have an assistant that’s mind-blowingly, unbelieveably awesome? I mean, most comedians seem to think the funniest thing about Obama is that he’s perfect.

Give us assistants some credit, 30 Rock.

Aspirations

Today, I was stuck on Sepulveda behind a BMW 750I.  I’m not really sure what that is, but it looked very expensive.

I took note because the car’s license plate frame was from my alma mater.  This not an uncommon occurrence in Los Angeles.  Many of our alumni have grown rich and successful in Hollywood.  (I see far fewer plate frames from our cross-town rival.  Hee.)

Seeing those frames on fancy cars riding down the freeway or, even better, parked in a studio parking lot, always picks me up.  Somebody made it; I can too!

Granted, I have the same frame on my crappy PA-mobile.  I may well be depressing the driver behind me.

Metric Time

Here’s a favorite joke from one of my student films–

PRESIDENT: I want the file by oh-twenty-four hundred hours.
CHIEF OF STAFF: Sir, twenty-four hundred would require a twenty-five hour clock. We’re not on metric time, here.

Imagine my surprise when I was filling out my time card the other day. I had worked the late shift, from noon to half-past midnight. Time cards are usually done in military time, so I wrote my outtime as “0:30.”

My boss came in a little while later, and told me my time card was filled out wrong. “We use military time on the time cards.”

“…Yes. I did.”

“So your out time should read 24:30.”

I couldn’t believe it; I actually got to quote myself: “Um, 24:30 would require a twenty-five hour clock.”

She still made me redo my time card, but I felt it was a moral victory.