The Great Communicator

So last week, I was supposed to have a meeting with my executive producer, Lance.

Lance is meeting with everyone quickly to make sure they understand how ratings work, go over their job description, and put names to faces. I don’t think he knew everyone’s name up until a few weeks ago. But give the guy a break; he’s only been here six months.
My meeting was postponed. I don’t know why mine was postponed, but I know a co-worker’s meeting was put off so Lance could pick up his dogs from the dog-sitter.
It’s hard to get Lance’s attention, for Lance is a very busy man. Last month, he was in a meeting with my boss, the marketing director of the show. During that meeting, Lance took a call about curtains for his house.

When Lance’s phone rings he immediately pulls it off his belt (from a sexy holster!) and looks at the display. I’m unsure as to why he examines the display as no call is too unimportant to take. The person standing in the room is always less important.
I’ve yet to see Lance in a meeting with the bigwigs or “suits”. The suits are the board of directors that own the companies that own our show. While I doubt that he actually takes calls while with the suits, I’m sure he breaks into a sweat due to the restraint.

So my meeting has been verbally re-scheduled for sometime this week. I very much doubt it will happen at all, since Lance regards me about as much as he regards the kid that bags his groceries. I really shouldn’t be too offended since, from what I gather, Lance doesn’t hold his wife or kids in very high regards either.
If my meeting does happen, I’m giddy with anticipation of the phone call that will end my meeting.

RING!
This is Lance….
Yes, I’d love to hear about your introductory zero percent APR!

FURRIES!!

Furries...one of the funnies things to find it's niche on the internet....and that's saying a lot.
I'll talk about them more later.

Wrong Numbers

We get a lot of wrong numbers here at the show. It may be that we just have lots of extensions within one bullpen, but it’s also probably due to the fucked up phone situation here in Orlando. (You have to dial the area code without the “1”, even when dialing a local number).
That’s not the important part.
For me, the funny part is people here explaining the show to random wrong calls. I hear some variation of this every day. Naturally, I only hear this side of it;

Random Co-worker: Hello, Generic Morning Show, this is Blake, how can I help you?

Random Co-worker: No, it isn’t.

Random Co-worker: Yes, I’m sure. This is the Generic Morning Show.

Random Co-worker: We’re a television show….

Random Co-worker: Uh, yeah. We’re in Orlando.

Random Co-worker: We produce the show here and we’re on here.

Random Co-worker: Thanks, bye.

I don’t know which is funnier; a person mildly intrigued that they’ve called a television show, or us having to identify that we are indeed a show on in their market AFTER they’ve heard the name of our show.
Awesome.

The (very possibly) Talented Mr. Hanks

So I’ve had to do some thinking about somebody nobody else thinks about; Colin Hanks.
I was taken to task about tsk tsking Peter Jackson’s choice to cast Mr. Tom Hanks’ son.
After much thought, I guess I’ve sort of met the tsking halfway. Here was my reasoning.
First of all, I don’t know Colin Hanks from Adam. He could be a dick, or the nicest guy I’d ever care to meet. However, this doesn’t really have any bearing on weather or not he’ll be good in Jackson’s movie, so no point there.
Next, I didn’t see Orange County. I didn’t see his 6 or 7 other little movies where he’s cut his teeth. I’ve only seen him in BAND OF BROTHERS. There, he was an empty uniform; plenty of people could have done it much better, but it probably could have been done worse as well. So I haven’t seen piles of filmic evidence as to his suckitude.
Now for the only concession that’s important; Lots of really good directors have squeezed excellent performances out of what have been considered less-than-top-tier actors. Scorsese got a great performance out of Sharon Stone in CASINO. Everyone was surprised by Kim Basinger’s acting in LA CONFIDENTIAL, or Jamie Foxx in the over-touted RAY (apparently, Foxx is very good, the film is OK).
So this leaves me here…Hanks will probably be totally fine under the direction of Jackson. Heck, he might even be good.
Which brings me to the real beef. Fuck him. Fuck Colin Hanks in his legacy millionaire ass. Thousands of talented actors (not neutral, but talented) that have pissed away their life as waiters because they can’t break into a closed system. Fuck Colin Hanks for acting. Seriously. More deserving people are bringing him coffee. I don’t care if the “system” is made that way. The system didn’t make Tom Hanks’ kid take up acting.
Is some or all of this jealousy? Absolutely! I’d give Big’s right nut if my parents worked in the entertainment industry, that would make things a lot easier.
However, I hope I’d still be intellectually honest to know that I didn’t earn my position, I was born into it.

King Kong Jitters

Peter Jackson has been one of, if not my favorite director for about ten years now. Five minutes ago, I just read that Colin Hanks is in KING KONG. For the first time ever, I got a flutter of doubt in my stomach.
He has carte blanch now, he certainly didn't "owe" casting Hanks to anyone. That can only mean he specifically went after Colin to cast. I can't imagine what Jackson saw in that particular industry legacy child to cast him in anything but a body cast.

Poor, poor Rizzo's wait is finally at an end.

Rizzo, my rat, cannot walk. For those of you that know him, you know he's struggled with jeers and laughs from all the other rats about his little rat wheelchair.

Now he can walk on his own...

While I'm joking about the rat, huge leaps forward in science are no laughing matter. I find this stuff genuinely exciting. I can't wait for the anti-corporate/environmental/animal-rights movement (they're adorable when they're being righteous) and fundamentalists to meet each other outside the research firm that's developing this technology. I want a front-row seat to see the look of absolute horror on all their collective mugs when they realize they stand on the same side of the caveman issue.
They're both scared of fire. One group is scared because the sky spirits told them to be scared, the other group is scared largely because they don't understand it...I'm splitting hairs, really.
I guess my greater fear is that both of these groups don't seem to be waning at all. If anything, they're either growing or getting better publicists firms.
It's entirely possible I'm simply reading more about these groups because I'm 1)reading more or 2)both groups are in their death throws.

It's actually difficult for me to even see a bad side to these types of developments. Stem-cell fiascoes aside, how does anyone in the US with at least an 8th grade education in history not recognize how much better mankind is due to science?

Me: Hey hippie co-worker, they've made a new pesticide that just makes the crop taste bad for the bugs, isn't that cool?

Hippie co-worker: Man, that shit'll kill you.

Me: No, let me just do that for you.
(I bludgeon the hippie co-worker to death with his copy of The Complete Works of Marx).


If they won't learn by violence, will anything convince them?

I rest my casizzle

Pirates of The Caribbean was a Disney ride.
"Pirates of The Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl" made lots and lots of money.
Thus JUNGLE CRUISE is on the fast track to production.
Awesome.

More later, I swears master, I swears.

Seriously…when will they learn?

So…I’d love to talk about how Hollywood is stupid and clueless. Since it is VERY covered territory by funnier writers than myself, I do honestly wonder; will they ever “get it”?
Electra hits theaters this weekend. Rotten Tomatoes (with over 45 reviews in) have it at 2%. Now, assuming you give some audience to critics…once more -a consensus of over 100 critics with varying tastes and margin for quality- a 2% approval rate is overwhelmingly damning…it’s in all likelihood a very terrible movie. I won’t see it, so I suppose I’m incapable of making a judgment call on the movie personally.
So, I’ve heard from someone with fantastic taste and a keen eye for filmic qualities that it’s absolutely terrible.
Now with that established, how and why does this scenario happen so often?
Meaning; LOTR was phenomenal. In time, it will be a benchmark in cinematic achievement, a success on so many levels it’s mind-boggling. Suits just saw horses, swords, and the return of the Epic. “GLADIATOR” wasn’t a fluke God-damnit! Kids wanna see swords and sandals; we’ll give ‘em swords up the ass!”
I’m sure there are dozens, literally dozens of writers, producers, executives, grips and set painters that understand that the quality of the product is what made it good; the story told, the execution and so on…not that it was a particular genre.
Up until very recently, pirate movies never made any money. In fact, the record-holding money-losing film of all time (this may be different now) was CUTTHROAT ISLAND. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN made gobs of money.
This means one of two genres (perhaps both) will start to flood out of Hollywood; either movies based on Disney rides, that only have the most tenuous connection to the ride (like the name) or more pirate movies. Now while I’d love to see better pirate movies, that’s the rub…GOOD pirate movies.
Which brings me to the comic movie. We (as fans and geeks) have had a pretty good run of comic book movies lately; X-MEN, X2, SPIDERMAN, SPIDERMAN 2, MEN IN BLACK and to a lesser extent THE HULK, HELLBOY (marginally watchable). It does seem like there are an excess of failures; LEAGUE of EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, two of three BLADE films, DAREDEVIL, MEN IN BLACK II, and now ELEKTRA.
In the development world, it’s a big, fat payday. I’ll save this for another blog sometime, but there’s a whole industry of producers and packagers that have put food on the table and sent kids through ivy-league schools...while not making movies.
To my knowledge the next Batman, Fantastic Four, Superman Returns, Sin City, and Constantine are all coming out this year or next.
Black Widow, Black Panther, Captain America, Deadpool, Dr. Strange, Batman Vrs. Superman (World’s Finest), Deathlok, Green Lantern, Ghost Rider, Gen13, Iron Man, Jinx, Magneto, Luke Cage (yes, Luke Cage), Man-Thing, Powers, The Preacher, Shi, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner, The Watchmen, Lone Wolf and Cub, Wonder Woman , X3, and a bunch that I’ve missed are all in various stages of development.
While the fact that they’re comic books has absolutely zero bearing on their inherent potential to be a good film, they’ve gotten into development simply because they’re comic properties…awesome.

A bear might shit in the woods, but it does wipe.

So have you seen the toilet-paper advertisement with cartoon bears? I THINK it’s for cottonelle. I could be wrong. At any rate, one of the bears wipes his ass with the toilet paper at the end of the commercial. I’m really jealous and impressed that they got away with this.
I bet the spitballing meeting at the ad agency went something like this;

Johnson: More toilet paper? Ugh.

Goldman: I know, but whatcha gonna do. We gotta make this sing!

Johnson: How ‘bout we have somebody actually wipe their ass for a change.

Goldman: You know damn well we can’t show somebody wiping their ass on TV.

Johnson: Fine, we’ll make it cute. A cartoon. A cartoon bear.

Goldman: There’s no way that’ll fly. They’re not gonna go for it.

Johnson: I bet you $1,000 I can get a bear wiping it’s ass on that spot.

Goldman: You’ve got yourself a bet.

And sure enough, the toilet paper people went for it. A bear slides a length of toilet paper sideways back and forth across his ass as cartoon characters would dry themselves back in the day.
Genius.

And now...The Interns!

So, as I may or may not have mentioned before, our show does not have much money. In fact, I’d wager a guess that we’re the cheapest-produced show that’s on in more than a single market.
A quick insight…
People signed up for this show because it was supposed to become sort of a “big deal”. It was designed to be syndicated into many markets, which it has.
So, many persons came from local news, straight out of college, out-of-work actors that were tending bar, etc. Basically, people were counting on this to be their break.
Since some of them came from local news, they’re filled with contemptuous bile about how local news is “amateurish” and “terrible”. Local news has to do things very cheaply. They use one shooter with no field producer or audio. They have simple graphic packages and their production values in general are much lower than national shows. That’s perfectly understandable as they’re local news. We’re a (semi)national show. We’re on over 130 markets and in two top-10 markets. However, we do single-camera, no-field-producer, no-sound guy shoots. We don’t have a field boom mic. I personally own a field boom with a broadcast quality mic…they’re not that expensive, yet the show doesn’t have one.
Thus, you can imagine the self-loathing that fills many of my co-workers souls. They desperately want to feel self-important about the show being big shit. However, we’re not big shit. We’re the little bit of pee that you shake off when you’re finished.
This was much more explanation than I anticipated for the arrival of the interns. Interns, unlike equipment, experienced employees, and other such luxuries are free. Our whole staff is 26 people, counting the part-time floor crew (camera ops., prompter op, floor director). We have 9 interns. Two of them are for my department which consists of me and my boss. So with an employee/intern ratio of 1-to-1, we’re absolutely festooned with interns.
They’re like Tribbles. Everywhere you turn, there’s a gaggle of interns watching somebody work, or trying to figure something out themselves.
And the self-loathing co-workers? Loving every minute of it. They have somebody to tell what to do, and more importantly, there’s somebody around that knows less about television than they do.

As you wish...

So I work with some pretty despicably horrible people.
Sure they have their tolerable moments, but for the large part, they have souls black as pitch and a special spot waiting for them in hell.
We –our department- (well, mostly my boss) made the show shirts. That’s part of our gig (branding, outside promotions, blah, blah, snooze). So we ordered shirts in a color that match our color palette. We’re a morning show, so our colors are a little fruity.
We picked a color out of a catalog and sent them our logo…and we were done. When the shirts arrived,…there were distinctly two different dye jobs done in the batch. One batch was pretty close to the color we ordered. The other was less orange and a bit more salmon…sorta.
Naturally, we took some good-natured ribbing about the shirts. Most people knew these were not what was ordered and left it at that.
Monday, an intern sticks his head into y bosses door.
Intern: Hey, I need one of the polo shirts.
My boss: What for?
Intern: I think for the people from the zoo.
My boss: Well, those shirts for the the show’s staff,”
Intern: Well, Lydia (we’ll call her Lydia) sent me up to grab a shirt for her.
My boss: Well, I’m headed down (to the studio). I’ll take one with me and see what she needs.
My boss heads downstairs. Lydia is chatting up the zoo people. Her job is to book people on the show. After they’re booked, it’s apparently also her job to sit in the green room and crawl up their assholes to actually smooch not only their ass, but their colon as well.
Lydia holds up the shirt making a face like someone just shit on her hand.
Lydaia: Isn’t this the ugliest shirt you’ve ever seen?
Zoo people: It’s not really that bad.
Mind you, my boss –the person responsible for the shirts- is standing right there. He just handed her the shirt.

I’m convinced that she is so wonderfully miserable, she isn’t happy unless she’s spraying a constant stream of shit onto everything within scorn distance.

Of course, our EP takes her side on every dispute. Once, she claimed it was bright outside at night, and dark during the day. It was good for our department for it to be daylight during the day so our EP says "Well, they do light up football fields and highway work areas at night, so she IS right guys". This didn't happen, but it may as well have.

Sometime soon: THE INTERNS COMETH!

Ladies and Gentlemen....Danny Tanner. Maybe

So, Bob Saget is booked to come on our show. The local Improv owner swears he's coming.
The level of confidence in a B-levl celeb like Saget actually showing up on our show is so low, we plan segments during the time that Saget's supposed to be here.

While I'm sure Full House made Bob some serious bank (it was the highest rated show for many years), I know his comedy runs very blue. He's plugging his comedy tour because it's dirty, and he wants to get away from the Full House image....so what are we showing...?

Naturally, only a small minority of people think we should show the clip of Saget from Half Baked.

I promise to not blog about the show next.

Good Times

This is my filter. A filter is a set of rules which every spot I produce must follow...
(names have been changed)

Marketing Filter

1) Most importantly, the delivery and/or attitude must be smart funny.
2) We must advance the image of “plugged in quickly”.
3) We must advance the image of “local and/or severe weather”.
4) Assume the audience knows nothing about the show.
5) Talent should always be identified.
6) The host must always appear to be within in their roles.
7) When there is an opportunity, sell the “surprise” live element of the show?
8) When there is an opportunity, mention the time the show is on.
There will be no exceptions!

Do’s
Jane or Dick must be in promo.
If Bob is in promo he must say “weather”.
At least a 4-second tag, always end it with “Our Morning Show” before tag.

Don’ts
No Sports.
No Tech talk.
No Testosterone.
No Trekker, Nerdy stuff.
Nothing that damages the on air hosts credibility.


Now this is how things were as of a couple of weeks ago. I got a new filter today. The filters are supposedly based on a bunch of research we did to determine what people like in their morning news. We've changed out format, become less irreverent, less funny, less goofy. We HAVE tried to up the production value of the show by getting higher profile guests. The result? So far, I think Tracey Morgan is the most famous person that's been on the show. (Although arguably, me booking Ron Jeremy is still the most famous person in terms of fame, career length and, um girth).

So, if any of the two or three people that read this wonder why my spots are so shitty and un-funny for the past 6 months (which I'm sure has been driving you all crazy)...this is why.

They're discussing killing the "topical" promos I've been doing and going back to image spots. That would make my life at work a lot more palatable...but still not so palatable that I don't want out of here like crazy.

Also, I've heard tale that Joe Gressis is gay. While I've seen no solid PROOF of this, I trust that hearing it over and over again is paramount to physically seeing him viciously railing another dude.

Honestly...I don't know

This happened.
I honestly don't have a joke here. It struck me as really sad. Perhaps I just didn't get enough sleep. I'm sure these tribesmen have seen helicopters before. Perhaps they were just trying to get the pilot's attention. At any rate, it's an odd story.
I'd like to make fun of it, but tribesmen are tribesmen and helicopters are made of metal. That's all I really have to say about that.

HOWEVER... we're all reading more and more tsunami coverage here at work. Turns out Sandra Bullock donated 1 million dollars to the red cross for tsunami relief (the same sum she gave after 9/11).
I don't really have a joke here either. I look for bad things about celebrity behavior so often (and take such glee when they act like spoiled infants) that it's a little sobering when they act selflessly.

I guess the lesson here is; While most celebrities act like narcicisitic, spoiled toddlers, Sandra Bullock is not so bad.

Kwality with a "K"

Last week on the show we featured a nutritionist that told us about all the fad diets, and how they don't really work/don't keep the weight off/aren't healthy.
This week, we've got a guest talking about all the hot (read: fad) diets for 2005. When I asked our senior producer if this was a conflict, or if it made us look a little silly, she looked at me as if I'd just sprouted a second head, and that head was made of raw sewage.

Vowing to write...

at least a little bit.
So today on our show we've got the author of a relationship/self help book. It's called something like "Why he doesn't like You. Nice. At least she isn't capitalizing on women with low self esteem in their relationships.
Anywho, onto my favorite part. The author looks to be 29, 30 years old at the most. We'll call the company that owns my show "Mimes". Mimes also happens to own the publishing company that put out this woman's book, who also just happens to be, coincidentally, married to one of the owners of Mimes.

It's good to see people can still succeed on their own merit. It's very encouraging.