Linda Stasi

New York Post Television Critic Linda Stasi.
McGraw Hill Building in Mid-Town.
A morning larded with an extra-half an hour Post 9-11 security.
I.D. checking;
Bag searching;
Picture taking;
Security calls up to get an instant voice mail.
Do journalists ever answer their phone?
Seems like no.
They retrieve messages;
Make sure it’s someone they’re willing, wanting to talk to.
So we wait…
Waiting…
Shifting weight while waiting.
Another call upstairs.
No avail.
Then, just as I’m about to sit on the tripod case – right in the middle of the lobby, right in front of the security desk – a call back.
The escort is to arrive, shortly.
Sticky-backed bar-coded passes handed out to each of us.
Adhere it to my jeaned-thigh.
The lugging of production bulk: tripod, new camera (dvx100a), reflector, boom pole etc…
And Linda Stasi...
Funeral black outfit.
Happy smile.
She has the perfect mix of authority and joviality.
And she’s gracious.
And so accommodating.
More accommodating than the newsroom seems to reciprocate to her, actually:
She’s seated in her carved out corner of the hive of reporters.
And it is vast.
The sprawling room is heaped with news stories, bundled and junked everywhere.
Has this place ever been as clean as it once was on the day it opened?
Will it ever again be as clean as it once was?
The things people won’t throw away, fearing to one day need it.
Often we forget that we actually have it at our disposal in the first place.
I’m afraid that that is exactly what is going to happen to all this footage.
We’re shooting so much.
Each interview has taken an entire dv tape.
Sometimes we slap in a second.
Hours upon hours of footage we’ll eventually have.
Bill Marsilli asked, “What are you going to do with all of it?”
Perry’s answer: “Perhaps two documentaries. One on television production, and the other, maybe, a doc about pitching.” What?
Since when were we doing this?
Not that I mind, but…
But, I do see what he means.
I’m just shocked to hear those words come from him.
Anyway…
Linda Stasi is a conundrum.
Not only does she seemingly love Reality TV, but, clearly, she also hates it.
A perfect mix, which may sound odd, but by my estimation, she was a very honest interview.

Lizz Winstead

Co-Creator of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead.
She’s a New Yorker…
by way of Minnesota.
Amazing the difference between those who are not afraid in the biz.
Those who are afraid: reserved, don’t want to say the wrong thing, save they will piss someone off.
Those unafraid: the truth.
Often with venom.

Lizz Winstead:

Development people and Executives are the least daring people I’ve ever met. Because the second they make a decision to buy your idea, their job is on the line. They will try, it seems, at any level to say ‘no’ or to find a flaw in your idea so that they can live another day in their offices.

So perfectly true, perfectly terse.
Really does bring up the whole issue of how the entire industry runs on fear.
If you risk in creativity, creating something that has the potential to be unique, then you are essentially risking your job. Brings up an old issue of mine and all my time spent at MTV and VH1…
My theory (and at this point I can recount a sundry of examples, but it certainly is not fact… at least not yet): a person in power will never hire anyone smarter than they are, because if they do so, the territory they’ve carved out for themselves will without question diminish.
It’s what I’ve taken to calling the “descending, backwards hiring slope.”

Ben Gruber and Verite

Interview of Ben Gruber, writer and supervising producer.
He’s a friend, so it was somewhat of an easy, stressless shoot.
Is stressless a word?
How about stress free.
What I do notice in interviewing Ben, however, is that when the camera went on, verité tarnishes.
Perhaps I should say that verité ceases.
Not Ben’s fault.
Just an observation.
I’ve known Ben for quite sometime and I know his behavior, so when I see that something as minute as his posture changes when the camera is turned on then, yes, verité ceases.
And except for the fact that it is shot in the present moment (big deal), I kinda believe that there is no way to truly capture reality.
Point a camera.
A personality changes.
Grandly, slightly… It hardly matters, a change does occur.
So how do you actually shoot something verité?
Does it exist at all?
By the very nature of either a camera being in the room, or, even if the subject doesn’t know the camera is there, then usually the environment is manipulated.
Perhaps the only real verité that can be captured is on video surveillance cameras.
ATM machines catching a robbery, or some such.
But who wants to watch that?
Er… I should rethink the above sentence.
Because plenty of people want to watch “caught on tape” shows.
Cops.
Cheaters.
I could go on.
Hmm…
Thinking…
Could I write a script using hidden cameras that actually captures a narrative without the people knowing it was actually being filmed?
An actual hidden camera movie going for verité and not the performance.
Jee-zus, so many variables would have to come together for that to actually work.
Plus, how could you not manipulate the situation?
How could you not tell at least one person that this is going to be a scene?
Christ, it would be dang-near impossible to shoot.
I’d have to create scenarios…
then coordinate the manipulation of the situation…
then it’d be like an improv session.
Ugh.
That’s all we need are another crop of improvisers infecting the entertainment world.
And then there’s the compression of time – i.e.: the edit – that would take place and, therefore, all verité, again, would cease.
Essentially, that’s all reality shows are doing: compressing time, maximizing the moments… I should go back a watch some of John Cassevettes films.
Thinking of his Faces and Husbands, in particular.
There is something to this hidden camera aspect of capturing truth, however.
Perhaps Boiling Points will prove to be something other than having shackled my soul with hairy bacteria.

Big Figures: Bad Form

No calls.
No answered emails of note.
A financier came to our office to hear our pitch, however.
However, indeed.
It was the first time we tried to get funding for the documentary proper.
On our end it went much better than imagined.
But on his end, the financier, he immediately started tossing around figures, large sums of dosh that he’d be able to invest into the project.
In my limited experience, that’s always a bad sign.
Forget him asking the right questions about the film or film investment; he had no questions to ask.
Just figures.
A heavy indicator that we had just wasted our time.
Go figure..

Commitment Issues

We haven’t been unable to book a single interview in LA.
Each and every person says, sure, excellent, glad to help.
But then each and every person refuses to commit to a date and for the simple reason that we’re not in town.
“Give us a call when you get in to town.”
Much in the way people won’t commit to a weekend plan because, clearly, they are hoping something better might pop up.
Industry of the non-committal.

On Creating Reality

Perhaps the project is bigger than first imagined.
I say this because everyday a new crop of announcements: shows bought, sold and shot.
And the ratio of reality to sitcom is grossly lopsided.
It’s been this way for sometime…
But I’m astonished.
It’s as strong as it ever was.
Reality, still, is catapulting the sitcoms out of commission.
Been reading the trades a lot, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Cynthia Turner’s Cynopsis, IndieWire and it’s truly crazy what is actually being produced.
Reality.
Reality.
Oh, the humanity!
Also, there is another aspect starting to sway me quite forcefully.
Clip shows, the “Behind the Reality Shows” or whatever the hell they’re called.
All being produced in the same vein as a reality show.
Trumping the salacious, maximizing the drama.
But a film, a theatrical feature doc would have a greater magnitude, no?

Rob Shernow

Old writing acquaintance, Rob Shernow.
Works now for A&E.
Head of development?
Or is it original programming.
Better find out.
He's largely responsible for Dog the Bounty Hunter.
We met in Brooklyn Heights a few years back, when he saw me writing a screenplay at a coffee shop.
Our conversation began as bitch session about agents; and, as it happens, we discover that we’re bitching about the exact same agent at The William Morris Agency, here in New York.
Then, small world, two tables over, another writer who couldn’t help but overhear us, says, “Yeah, she was my agent too! She was horrible.”
I went on to tell them the story of when I was pitching at Winddancer on the Disney Lot in LA… and when the development people asked who my agent was, I told them that I was between agents (lame thing to say, but it was the truth), Who were you with prior, I was hip-pocketed with WMA, Who with, they asked, And upon revealing her name, all oxygen was sucked clean out of the room.
They had had a horrible experience with her, too, they said.
One actually said to me that she had been in the business for 14 years and had never worked with a more inept agent.
Strange, I have the angel and the devil on my shoulders.
Should I spare her?
Should I reveal?
Yes.
No.
Say her name, you owe her nothing, handsome devil says.
Don’t, you’ll sound petty, angry, the good-looking angel pleads.
Both seem like the appropriate and valid things to do.
Or not to do…
I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore…
I will say this, however… Think of it as advice:
If you find yourself sitting across from an agent and that agent says something akin to, “My trade secret is that I trust my instincts! As an agent, I have to trust my instincts.” If you hear that…
Run.
Run very far away.
Actually, first poke her in the eye and then sprint down the hall and don’t turn back.
This was her standard line.
I even read it a couple of time in the trades.
Yes, she may have instincts but, unfortunately her instincts are bad.
Back to the coffee shop.
All three of us, the writers at that coffee shop, we all received a variation of her “I trust my instincts” line…
Okay, enough of that crap.
Rob Sharenow.
He agreed to be interviewed about the pitching process.
He’ll be good because he’s been on both sides of the table.
My hope is that we can bring in a couple of writers so that they can pitch him later on in the process.
He did e-mailed me yesterday and agreed with phase one; Had a curious line though…
Said something akin to, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Having worked for Michael Moore’s TV Nation some years back, I’m wary.
So please,” he writes, “Don’t sandbag me.”

Sports Illustrated Auditions

Sports Illustrated auditions for their new reality show.
Don’t even know what the show is called.
Something about finding the next SI swimsuit model.
Talked with a few casting directors, met a guy named Zach Johnson who has cast various NBC reality shows.
In the actual audition, which we just walked right in to, I would not have thought twice if a tumbleweed bounced on by us during our brief stint there.
This audition was dead.
Worse, actually.
The audition was haunted by the staff that was zombie-fied by lack of anything to do.
It stands to reason that we, a mere three people, called a lot of attention to ourselves.
So much so that a production manager, or maybe she was a producer from the Production company, don’t know for sure, but comes up to us and starts giving us a hard time.
“Who are you?”
“We’re a documentary film crew (blah, blah). I spoke with ******* and he gave us permission to be here.
“And who is ********.”
Had to laugh at this one.
“He would be your boss. The executive producer of your show.”
The name registered nothing on her face.
“Hold on,” she said with a raised index finger.
She turned.
She walked away.
She never came back.
Wasn’t much to shoot anyway...
We hung around for a bit longer but, alas, nothing...