REALITY BITES – part 1

What do you call REALITY TV? The Real Housewives of the OC or NY or Spokane or wherever they're from? AMERICAN IDOL and Nashville Star? Gladiator and Survivor? Project Runway and Design Star? Breaking Bonaduce and Celebrity Rehab? Oh the list goes on…. Well guess what they are all REALITY shows. Even talk shows and game shows are considered REALITY.

AH, I remember when it all changed. A new little show to hit the airwaves with a striking host dropping 24 contestants onto an island and saying ‘Fend for yourselves.’ Nobody knew what was going to happen to these people. The Network, initially, didn’t know what was going to happen to these people. What a long shot and very intriguing for all involved. A game show that isn’t REALLY a game show, but it is, and it plays out more like a soap opera than a game show. What more could we want, we have the best of both worlds. Those mad Executives took a leap of faith and we caught them in a collective cushion that sent TV, as we knew it, reeling. I don’t know if we initially begged for more, but they fed it to us. They dangled that MILLION-dollar prize in front of us like a rhinestone covered carrot.

I know, I KNOW there is another reality show that was before SURVIVOR. But this show hit it big on a little cable TV network that grown ups didn’t really watch. Can you guess? Yep, it was MTV and “The Real World”. But only kids and 20 nothings watched. How did it work? They made a bunch of culturally different 20 nothings live together for a few months to see if they could “create a business”. It quickly became a hit about the “younger generation”. Don’t get me wrong, and do not underestimate the “younger generation”, because “The Real World” really held its own for many years and was a HUGE hit for the cable network. It’s reason for kind-of not succeeding was the network it was on and the demographic of its watchers. That’s it. However, in a few years the style would be retooled and re-aged to appeal to the masses, and THAT worked. Well, and the fact that it was cleaned up to work on network TV.

OK – hold on, maybe I do have a bit of unknown knowledge about REALITY TV and this won’t be as much of a rant. Here goes. SURVIVOR or “The Real World” were NOT THE FIRST REALITY SHOWS.

WHAT? I just heard the collective gasp. Yes it is true. SURVIVOR may have made reality TV IN VOGUE but the original was “AN AMERICAN FAMILY” on PBS. When?

This is the kicker – 1973. “An American Family” was a 12-episode mini-series chronicling the lives of the Long family from California. (Wow they call 12 episodes a mini-series, now we call that a whole season.) The fascinating part, it was about a REAL family dealing with REAL issues, divorce and the eldest sons homosexuality amongst other things. And you thought that Billy Crystal’s portrayal of Jodie on SOAP was the first gay boy on TV. However, notwithstanding the 10 million viewers that tuned in to watch the Longs live their lives, the genre did not catch on; but the impact that the genre made on the TV industry was ten fold. Gone were the days of Jan breaking the family portrait because she forgot to wear her new glasses. We wanted to see our sitcoms and our dramas have REAL families with REAL problems. And it worked. Now even the fluffiest of shows have their “Very Special Episode”.

Now back on track. The first season of SURVIVOR was slick; it was about the contestants learning how to live on the land and trying to figure out how to work together to win the ever-coveted immunity idol. Yeah there was a bit of backstabbing and game playing going on, but it was about the human spirit and what tenacity we have as people and how we really live and what we would do for a little pocket change. Then HE won. And it changed all right.

Suddenly the common man, and when I say common I mean COMMON, had won. And then he became a celebrity. The talk show circuit, magazine articles and radio interviews hoisted this COMMON man from Middletown, RI to stardom. The floodgates were open

ed. Anyone could be a STAR. No talent needed, just be you. No matter who you are, we want to watch YOU to see if YOU will make a fool of yourself.

Then came season 2. SURVIVOR has a new style. There is a little less of the GAME and more about the people. More about how they care about the other people. Not about their families, their lives or how they play the game, but about the other contestants bathing habits, how they wear their Survivor tee shirt or what is one of the male contestants doing by himself in the woods. A little more whispering was gong on. And “the Alliance” was born. This show about learning to live with one another and learning to band together as a team to live in a remote part of the world with nothing had changed. Now it was about lies and whispering and backstabbing and the ugliness that we all seem to hate in our REAL lives.

STOP – STOP it right now…DO you know there are as many producers and writers on reality shows as there are on sitcoms and dramas. YEAH – for REAL.

Nothing that happens on REALITY shows happens for no particular reason. EVERTHING has a reason. The telephone call from the girlfriend just about the time that the guy is ready to kiss the gal in the house that he is attracted to. Coincidence? No!

My own personal experience: While working on a talk show I witnessed an ASSociate producer bring a girl to tears just before she was to be interviewed. Just because? NO. The ASS. Producer ,more or less, told her that the audience was going to laugh at her when she went on stage. The guest gets upset and starts to cry, cue host, “Sweetheart, don’t cry. Your not THAT ugly.” Did the host know that the ASS. Producer was in there moments before with the guest, again, NO. But we got some good TV. Ugly girl cries the host seems sympathetic and we are drawn to it like a bug to the big purple light. ZAP.

We talk, as a society, about how we feel that we have no feelings anymore. How we think that people are ruder than they were ‘when we were younger’. Why life is not as simple as it was. Why our kids do NOT respect their elders. All of these questions are being answered by so much of what we watch on REALITY TV. On one show we had a young deb and her friend steal from a local store to give the farmer and his wife a gift. After being caught, sadly enough, they were not punished neither on nor off camera for their actions. Guess what people, it was all set up. A writer wrote it and the girls did it and made it out as funny as our children watched and we, the adults, laughed. What message is that sending?

More and more we are leaving the sitcom, with it’s family values and happy endings, to watch a world were people dislike each other for who they portray themselves to be in a world that is created by cameras, lights, producers, directors and writers.

I know I can’t change the world but please the next time you see the whisper cam or the confessional closet and the contestant raising that eyebrow because they have something to say about someone, remember that there is someone out there in life who may be saying something about you. Do we want to promote that? Do we want to live in that world?

Not me.

THIS IS BEAU TALKS, AND

AFTER THESE MESSAGES, WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK.

Strike that Word

Scene 1

Location:

Inside a French style Bistro lush with heavy colors in Burgundy and Gold. The Bistro is full of couples making small talk and holding hands over wine and coffee.

Action:

Lisa, mid 30’s enters the restaurant. She is a pretty and unassuming girl with brown hair. She has put herself together for the evening in a tasteful black dress. She stops momentarily and looks over the crowd a slight smile brushes across her face. She approaches the Matre de. They exchange silent words and he walks her to a small table for two in the middle of the restaurant. She smiles, he smiles and helps her with her chair. As he walks away she looks at the empty chair across from her. A young man walks up behind her. She turns her head with a large grin of anticipation. A well-dressed bus boy smiles and pours her a glass of water. He nods and her smile washes away uneasily. She watches as he walks away. She glances at the chair across from her again, then to the door and then at her glass. She reaches for the glass as if to drink, but hesitates. Nervously she takes her napkin from the table and puts it on her lap. She reaches for the glass of water. A small tear of condensation drips down its side. Her finger taps the glass. She takes a hesitant sip. She sits the glass down and picks up the menu in front of her. She opens the menu, glances at it briefly and sits it back down on the table tapping the top of the menu with her fingertips. She looks at the couple across from her. She notices their hands. She smiles tentatively brushes her hair behind her ear, takes a deep breath and crosses her hands in her lap. From beside her she hears:

Male Voice:
Excuse me.

Action: Lisa turns and smiles sweetly.

There you have it people. I don’t say that I am a fantastic writer, but did you see LISA in your head? Could you feel, at least a bit, the nervousness and uneasiness of her time at the table? And who is the VOICE?

When you read a passage from a book you run a mini movie in your head. Well guess what? So do Producers when they read a script. They read said script and then start to envision its possibilities. Once they see the script in their heads they begin to build their team. A Director, Assistant Director, additional producers, actors and everyone all the way down to the kids that stand at the copy machine making additional copies of the changes to said script. HOLD ON - BACK UP…I am getting a bit ahead of myself.

THE BEGINNING. THE SCRIPT. THAT is where it all begins. Well, kind of, but I don’t want to go into the pitch process and bore you with the story of the person that was bought out of their “story”. Wow – so many branches to this tree.

So again back to the beginning. This Issue is about the Writers. What we don’t understand, about what we see on TV and in the Movies, is that it is not only about our favorite Actor, Producer or Director; it is about the WRITER TOO. Without the writer, what do we have? The movie SUNSET BOULEVARD has a great line about how the audience thinks that the actors just show up and talk and the director films them.

Gillis:
“Audiences don't know somebody sitsdown and writes a picture. They think the actors make It up as they go along.”

And this was true until recently – Cue the Talk Show hosts. We’ve all seen how they’ve handled it. They have all tried desperately to find some type of momentum in their own humor to keep the show even sort of funny. So what did they do? Most of them quickly formed a special contract with the WGA (Writers Guild of America) so that they could get their writers back on the job so that, ironically enough, they wouldn’t sound like they were never comics or satirists to begin with.

I know that this topic is going to be OLD NEWS very soon. The Producers and the WGA are coming very close to an agreement. But what we cannot do is forget what this mess was all about and HOW it’s going to affect TV for the next year. The Writers are due their compensation for DVD and Internet sales that are well deserved. The Big pocket producers are making money hand over fist on the sale of DVDs and from the Internet.

Advertisers pay VERY big money to sponsor The TV shows that are on the Internet. Why do they pay so much money to sponsor these shows? They sponsor these shows because you, the watcher, MUST watch their commercials. Come on have you tried to fast forward past the 2 commercials within the show on the Internet? YOU CAN”T. There is a reason for that. The commercial is fast forward suspended so that you MUST watch it.

At home when those blessed commercials show up we lovingly grab the remote and “BLIP BLIP” right through those darned annoying 30 second spots. Of course, we do watch the SUPER BOWL commercials, and that is why the sponsors pay 2.7 Mill for a 30 second spot of our game-day attention. However, on the Internet the sponsorship is given and we are held hostage to watch their commercials. WHO is getting THAT money? The Producers the Networks and all of those great people that get money “on the back end”, that’s who. (BTW-“on the back end” means that if the project makes money down the line that person gets a cut.)

Ok Class can you tell me, who is left cold? The WRITER is. The person who put this world in the Producers hand, the direction in the Directors eye and the words in the Actors mouth, that’s who. And the crazy thing is that the producers don’t want them to have a fair cut.

Can you see what that FAIR CUT has done to TV? We are being bombarded with the worst REALITY TV ever and reruns of TV shows that we did not want to see go away. The only upside is that we can catch shows that we did not get to watch in September like Moonlight, Damages, Saving Grace and, my fav, The Closer. (And in great Buffy style, I believe that Moonlight will get a cult following and will find life amongst the Undead. For some reason we love vampires.)

This blasted strike is going to affect everything we watch for the next year. 24 has already changed its season from a January beginning to sometime later this year. They only had half the season filmed when the strike occurred. And with a show like 24 you can’t take a few weeks off to let the strike end and the writers catch up. And Lost is shortening their season to accommodate the strike as well. The studios have cut the amount of Pilots for next year. And the new shows that are being piloted now are only a few episodes deep. So the September season may not happen like we are used to. We may have a summer season. Will you put down your hot-dogs long enough to watch Desperate Housewives? Even if the strike ends this week, it may take 6 to 8 weeks for production to start on our favorite shows. And I wont even get started on how this whole thing is affecting the peripheral folks in the industry; i.e. food service, laundry, prop houses, florists and all of the fantastic people that make this crazy industry run.

Writers are the roots of the industry. That’s all there is to it. They deserve more than $.03 per unit on DVD sales and they deserve a small cut of the Internet Cash Cow that is barreling down the ole Internet Super Highway. You may ask yourself why do they need the money. Why the fight? Why now?

History lesson for you here, so listen up. In 1988 the WGA went on strike over the amount of money that they were getting from the sale of VHS tapes and this new fangled thing called a DVD. They asked for only a small amount of money per unit sold because who is going to buy VHS tapes and DVDs to keep in their home. GUESS WHAT? YOU DID. Who would know that fifteen years ago the DVD would take off. Ok you just did the math (1988-2008=20 years) What I meant to say is, fifteen years ago the DVD became affordable. And before we knew it every household had hundreds of them. And the Studios, Networks, Producers and all the rest of those people “on the back end” were making money.

Where are the VHS tapes? On thrift store shelves. Gone. Remember when we thought VHS was HI-Tech. And where are those crazy LAZAR Disks? Here is the bottom line, twenty years have passed and the DVD has replaced the VHS tape and the DVD is being replaced by this new fangled thing called the Internet. That’s right people, soon enough the DVD will be gone. The Sale of DVDs has crashed, the Internet has invaded our home and affordable and easily accessible “video on demand” is right around the corner. Making sure that the writers get a bite of the last slice of the DVD pie and making sure that they get their fair share of ice cream on the Internet pie that is still bakin in the oven is what this bakeoff is all about.


Male Voice:
Excuse me.

Action: Lisa turns and smiles sweetly. A young attractive man in a white shirt and a black tie is standing beside her.

Man:
Would you like to order a drink now or wait for the rest of your party?

Lisa:
(Reluctantly, but with a smile) Oh, I’m alone tonight. This is my first night out since I lost my husband. This is our favorite place. So (with a deep breath a smile and more confidence) I think I will have our favorite cocktail. May I please have a……

See? When you think you know what the end is, the WRITER has the control. Unless you are Stephen Spielberg, Tom Cruise or one of the many juggernauts of Hollywood who feel that they can take the script and change it at whim. But that is why THEY get the bigger bucks. Folks I’m not here to give any solutions. Just to give my support.

GO WRITERS….

THIS IS BEAU TALKS, AND

AFTER THESE MESSAGES, WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK.