The Cat

 DAISY (V.O.)

My name is Daisy and this is the
story of Christmas Carole and how
she changed our lives. It begins right  

here in Sherman Oaks, California, 

where I was born and raised. 

This is the first piece of dialog in my new spec script, Christmas Carole which I finished last week. So far I have 5 places who are "interested". And being interested doesn't mean any them will buy it.

I hope they will.

The odds are in my corner, if one wanted to entertain that thought. After all, I did The Town the Christmas Forgot in 2010 and it played a several times from November thru to December. As you know, it got a 3.7 mil viewership and the company who made it proudly advertises it in it's inhouse credits.

And they have a few dozen credits for movies so being at the head (or second head), is a nice thing. Better than not being last. 

If you're wondering why I quoted "Daisy" above,  it's because Daisy isn't who you think she is. Or what she is.

And if you think there was a glut of Christmas movies last year, well, wait till this year. And the damndest thing is - people watch them. That much of an audience would have grossed over $30 million. Which means at a cost of $1 million, the studio/network would have a tidy sum.

And if it had Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman in it, it would have grossed $50 million.

But it didn't. It barely will make back it's cost of the original $1 million budget. Because times have changed and now the big 3, Hallmark, Lifetime and ABC Family dictate what they can pay. Ratings for TV have mostly gone down.

Too many damn channels.

Commercial rates are dependent on ratings so the less ratings, the less it costs to advertise. Except that Superbowl thing. And American Idol. AI gets around 21 million viewers on an average.

And speaking of advertising,  if this was a theatrical movie that $30 million would barely cover the cost of the $1 million movie and around $25 million to advertise it. Which means about a $5 million profit.

Okay, enough of the figures, some of you have left to check your tweets. But there's a reason for my rambling, as they say.

Yes, I do have a better chance at selling my script than most of the writers out there. But you never know what they like or don't like.

And that's where Daisy comes in.

The story of Christmas Carole started with the title. I had no story, just a really good title that, amazingly, nobody's ever used. It's registered now so I have a little bit of security.

The logline is this: Unemployed lawyer gets stuck with juvenile delinquent over Christmas. 

Simple. Easy to see. Maybe not as good as someone else might describe it. But good enough.

The rest of the story is a bit more complicated, conflict comes from a tragic past for both people (women, incidentally, they watch  more Hallmark movies), confrontation with major life changes and the consequences of being afraid of life and loneliness.

So now it's a bit "fatter" as a D-Girl I knew used to say to describe the major element of any screenplay. Conflict.

Except that I added a fresh element.

Daisy.

You see, Daisy isn't human. Daisy is a cat.

And I don't know why I added her to the cast. I was about 2/3rds of the way through the screenplay when something flashed in my mind. Daisy was there from the beginning, but she was not talking. In fact she just meowed a lot.

Then that god of weird ideas struck me.

Daisy should talk. She should tell the story.

And I'm not talking about all the way through. Just in the beginning and a few lines here and there and finally at the end.

I wish I could say it was brilliance on my part but it wasn't.

Years ago (and I'm talking 50's) I saw a movie that was somewhat like this, don't even remember the title, but I remember the cat. It spoke. Then there was the Francis the Talking Mule  movies. Don't ask.

Somehow it all collided in my hard drive of a brain, and reconnected with several other movies and anything to do with cats (I have hosted cats several times in my life) and it spit out Daisy, the name of which incidentally is from a real cat who lives in San Clemente. According to quantum physics experts, putting random ideas together is something computers can't do, nor will they ever.

And when I sent out the screenplay on Sunday to a producer, I wrote "the cat says in the picture". And when he asked why, I simply added something that he could not deny...

Imagine who would be Daisy's voice?

Betty White? Julie Newmar (the original Catwoman)?

Get my drift?  They could get a name actor for almost nothing to do the voice of Daisy. And they would put that name prominently in the titles. You know, "and Betty White as Daisy".

I just use Betty as an example. There would be at least 50 or more actresses who would love the job.

As Gweneth Paltrow tells the aspiring country singer anxious to overtake her in Country Strong "that's how it's done, sweetheart".

(Thurs: Daisy demands an agent)

Back to the Future

Today I leave the world of episodic TV and get back to what I really enjoy a lot more.

Movies. Independent movies. 

What's the difference? There are essentially 3 kinds of movies, studio, MOW's (Movie of the Week) and independent, also known as "Indies". Studio movies are the big ones, Avatar, Ironman, Hangover, Robin Hood and Shrek. While those are all big budget projects at $200 million or more, studios also release smaller movies, mostly romantic comedies and family films that cost $35-70 million.

Then there's the almost forgotten "MOW, the much smaller TV relative to studio pictures. These began in the 60's and carried through until about 2004 when reality TV in the form of Survivor appeared and basically wiped out MOW's overnight. Reality was cheaper (TV movies averaged around $3.5 million) and faster to make.

In the months that followed hundreds of people who depended on TV movies were suddenly out of work as the big 4 networks went to reality shows. There were at least 3 parties at the Roosevelt Hotel lamenting "the death of the TV movie". The mood was like an Irish wake, drinks, gossip and "what the hell are we gonna do now?

I was one of those who were affected. After my experiences with series in Canada I was lucky enough to get a fair amount of TV movies, both originals of mine and rewrites on others. I spent 4 months in Luxembourg working for Paramount as well as Mexico and Canada, in my home province of Manitoba.

But reality TV killed almost all of us.

What survived was three cable networks, Hallmark, Lifetime and Sci-Fi Channel who continued creating movies mainly for their audiences. Hallmark was family, Lifetime was women and Sci-Fi, well that was for all those sci-fi types. I managed to write movies for two and rewrite one for Sci-Fi.

These movies were mostly done in Canada due to tax credits and their budgets went from $3 million plus down  to around $1.2 million. Licence fees for Sci-Fi at one point was $700,000 and the producers had to raise $500,000 or so on their own to barely pay for the making of the movie. These companies continue to do movies and at this moment, I'm very close to a deal for one.

And recently CBS has been making TV movies with Tom Selleck to fill in Sunday nights along with Hallmark movies. As reality series get overexposed, there is a hint that the network TV movie might return.

And finally, there's the stepchild of all those other movies, the "indie" film. Independent films are usually the territory of writers and directors who prefer to tell their own stories, films that don't have creatures, CGI or big stars. Budgets for indies can be in the millions but mostly they're done on budgets where the actors drive their own cars to work and writers, producers and directors defer some of their salaries to get their dream project done.

It can be argued that the first real independent filmmaker was John Cassavetes, who was also an actor (Rosemary's Baby among others). In 1959 Cassavetes made a ground-breaking movie, financed entirely by the money he made acting for studio movies. It was called Shadows, and dealt with interracial relationships.

It was filmed in 16mm black and white and mostly handheld. He followed this in 1968 with Faces, an ensemble piece. Most indie filmmakers credit Cassavetes with this new art form which mirrored the French filmmakers of the time. I've always felt his best film, a favorite of mine, is Husbands with him, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara.

Which movies are indies? Mostly ones some of you have never heard of. Movies like Frozen River, Pieces of April Little Miss Sunshine, Wendy and Lucy, Sweet Land. They were all movies made outside of the Hollywood System, thus the term "Independent films". They didn't rely on Paramount or Universal for their budgets.

Budgets for indie movies can be as low as $15,000 (Paranormal Activity) to $8 million (Little Miss Sunshine). Money for these movies comes from the makers themselves, family, accountants, lawyers, shopping mall owners, even credit cards and a hundred other sources.

Little Miss Sunshine actually had Hollywood stars, Greg Kinear and AlanArkin who worked for less money than they usually get. Frozen River had an Oscar nomination for Mellisa Leo, it's lead actress. Wendy and Lucy had Michelle Williams, a studio actress.

This is where the lines begin to blur. When is an indie not quite defined as an indie?

When it has stars.

Since many indies get Academy nominations now, big stars see the opportunity to "stretch their talents", in other words, get more attention to their acting chops and thus more shots at the golden boy. Actors who get paid millions will settle for a few thousand if it means a great script and the chance at a nomination.

So there you go, a basic primer on movies as they are today.

Where does mine come in? Well, you're looking at one, Travel Day, which I started almost one year ago with Shirley Petchprapa. Shirley directs and I produce. We had a good start but got sidelined by a producer in Canada who didn't deliver. Since Travel Day is a winter movie I closed it down until fall and filming late 2010.

But I've got a few more projects on the go as well.  So hang in there, we'll take the ride again and what made this blog one of the top 50 in January.


(Fri: Lay it all out)

Features vs TV

My friend Lynn Ival, actor and visual artist Lynn Ivall asked me about the difference between feature films and TV movies so while this might be old hat for some of you, let me offer my take on the whole thing.

First of all, feature films are those made for theatrical release and of course TV movies are made for what else... TV. And features end up on TV after their run is finished, usually a few weeks for average films, a month or two for more successful films, and of course, the Avatar audience will most likely keep it in theaters for maybe 6 months with one of those odd things like a theater in Toledo who plays it for the full year. 

Here's another point; features are the status movies, they are made by major studios like Paramount and Warner's and Universal. More money is spent on them (unless you count Paranormal Activity, but we know that as a "non-recurring phenomenon) and bigger stars and the prestige is greater, you could get nominated for an Academy Award vs the same nominations every year for the TV award Emmy.

Their poorer sibling, the TV movie began way back in the late 60's when TV networks  were starved for product and there were no HBO's or Showtimes that showed recent feature films. In the beginning, the movies were written by good writers and were actually very good, tackling controversial subjects and even action.

Steven Spielberg's first movie was a TV movie, called DUEL which became a cult feature film in Europe. If you haven't seen it you should. A car pursued by an evil truck on the highway, done in 12 days.

But it wasn't long until the TV movie fell into "disease of the week" as it became known as. You know, the woman who has to go to look after her dying mother or father, or the woman woman whose husband dies and she has to fend for herself. Or the woman with an incurable disease.

Notice something familiar. Yes, towards the end of the 70's they became female-orientated and stayed that way for the next 40 years until they became redundant as plots were redone and redone and re-imagined and re-thought. There were a few good TV movies but not many, not when you stick to the same formula for 40 years.

And yet today TV movies still exist. TV movie production by the major networks ceased in the early 2000's, and they were most of what I did with the exception of a few. Too much competition from pay-TV and videos pretty much killed that genre. But cable networks were quick to pick it up, the female-driven audience was new now, the GenXers with young families. And so the women's network Lifetime began producing and/or buying TV movies. One of my first projects, Betrayal of Silence, was aired by them. 

And Hallmark came along and went beyond their usual Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movies (they always had the best screenings with food and live music tied to the theme of the movie.). They had smaller budgeted family movies (my version of Gentle Ben) mostly. Their cost was in the $2 million range rather than the respected but incredibly slow-moving Hall of Fame movies at anywhere up to $9 million.

Then ABC launched it's ABC Family network to create product for their cable sibling. Then came Sci-Fi Channel which bought science-fiction themed movies with monsters and creatures from other worlds. 

And then the prices dropped in the late 2000's, some producers were making these movies for less than $1 million dollars. Most of my TV movies were in the $2.5 to $5 million mark. Suffice it to say these movies weren't very good at all, with B and C level talent and many done in Canada to help keep the costs low.

A friend of mine made one called Savage Planet, where giant bears populated a planet and he had only one day to shoot with a trained bear who waved his paws a few times. The result was fairly comical but it was supposed to be a sci-fi thriller.

Then something else was created.

There's yet another species of movie being made now and before. It's primarily aimed at the DVD market and just to make it confusing, is sometimes referred to as a feature film. But these films never see a big screen nor do they play on regular TV. They are simply made for DVD release and usually star Michael Madsen, Val Kilmer (who seems to have destroyed his feature career), Eric Roberts (did one for me) and a lot of other actors who have slid down the slippery slopes of mediocrity.

I recently read a casting ad for one name actor for $50,000 for one day's work. Thus his name could be put on the DVD box.  Seems the producer hired two other "name" actors, each at $50,000 a day and each in maybe 4 or 5 scenes.  The lead actors were people you never heard of.  The money's not great a once A-list actor, but everyone has bills to pay.  And these guys can get a lot of days like that.

I'm told these "straight to DVD" movies play in Europe and Asia, and this is confirmed as I get residuals from at least 2 movies that went to DVD from Great Britain and Europe with some in Asia and Russia. My best residual was from Turkey for 67 cents.

But, as I mentioned in a previous blog, things are changing. A new format will be released soon into the DVD market but it isn't a DVD, it's a memory card. Like the one in your digital point and shoot camera. Only bigger to fit the full-size video box. Some of you might have forgotten the major concern with DVDs when they came out: they would be easy to steal. So bigger boxes were created and sealed to prevent this.

And of course, the great DVD/BlueRay killer is on-demand video, which I have on Netflix. I can play movies on my computer when I want but those people with new TV sets will have internet jacks built into them and they can now watch some (not all, not yet) movies on big-screen TV straight from Netflix bypassing DVDS completely.

The memory card described above is cute, but I think it'll go the way of Video discs. Remember them?

How quickly we forget.

And what about movies. They will continue to be made for those markets described above that still exist or will manage to keep their heads above water. But budgets will be lower as more people download movies illegally. A whole generation has grown up thinking it's their right to not pay for anything, movies and music included.

People say "it's not everyone", and no, it's not, but in a world of over 6 billion, even 1% can hurt the industry.  There are 6 million people in the U.S. who download illegal movies in 3 months with 60% being porno, and the rest being TV shows and movies.

I want my 67 cents!!

Coming Monday - who holds the power in features and TV