This column originally appeared in The Canberra Times on 3 December 2007.
If you’ve read anything about Hollywood and the movie business (it’s occasionally mentioned in magazines), you might be aware of the big pitch, in which a writer or producer grabs the attention of a studio exec by describing his film idea using only an unbeatable, one-sentence concept. Something like “A musical love story, set in the 1960s, to the songs of the Beatles.” Or “Santa's bitter older brother Fred, a fast-talking small-time criminal, almost ruins Christmas when he is forced to work for the elves.” Or “Adam Sandler plays an obnoxious jerk who gets beaten up by a newspaper columnist with a baseball bat.” OK, that last one hasn’t been made into a movie just yet, but it shows promise.
This is called “high concept”, which makes it sound very intelligent, but is just a clever-sounding way of saying “attention-grabbing”.
Of course, most successful TV shows could be described as “low concept”. How did they sell Friends? “Six good-looking young adults hang around their Manhattan apartments and, like, do stuff.” “Like what?” “Well, that would depend on the episode, of course.”
Or Neighbours? “The minor goings-on of a modest suburban street.” Presumably, a prophetic Grundys producer back in 1984 said “Brilliant! It might flop badly and be cancelled after a year, but if that happens we can just resell it to another network and cast Kylie Minogue. Then it should be HUGE!” “Who’s Kylie Minogue?” “Oh, just some high-school kid, but she’ll be a big star one day.”
Of course, a few TV shows have had high-concept ideas: Bewitched, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Buffy. But what do those three have in common? Latent communist subtext? No! Escapist fantasy? Yes, but that’s not what I meant. Spunky blonde stars? No! Well, yes... but apart from that, they were all based on movies.
Now, television has taken the next step. Television shows now have such high, cinematic concepts that I couldn’t for the life of me imagine them stretching the concept into a whole series.
Take 24. Somehow, this has gone on for five seasons. For those people who have just been thawed out of suspended animation after a terrible boat accident in Norway several years ago, this show is in “real time”. All 24 episodes of each season are set in the space of a day, so the only chance the characters get to relax or have lunch is during the ad breaks. Even if you’ve never seen it before, you’ve probably seen some real-time films like High Noon, Rope and the little-known (but underrated) thriller Nick of Time, which is otherwise most renowned as the film in which Jonny Depp played someone relatively normal.
So 24 was an interesting idea: use a gimmick that worked well in a movie, and see if you can string an entire television series around it. Not to be outdone, someone came up with Day Break, which was Groundhog Day: The Series (minus the laughs). Yes, really. Taye Diggs played a police detective framed for a murder, who re-lives the same day in each episode, always getting closer to finding the real murderer. You might not think that this can sustain a whole series, and the critics would agree with you. Within three episodes, they already thought it was getting stale. Not long afterwards, it was gone.
But TV producers are still sustaining one-movie gimmicks for several episodes. Have you seen Life on Mars (detective slips into a coma, finds himself in 1973 and tries to get back to 2006), or Worst Week of My Life (man makes final preparations for his marriage)? Hey, it’s been working! Even Worst Week of My Life has been going for two seasons so far.
So let’s keep doing it! Who knows what movies will make successful TV series? Don’t forget that Buffy was based on a flop. So, if they’ve tried Groundhog Day, High Noon and at least one dud, what’s the next big movie gimmick that they’ll try to stretch into a series? May I suggest:
Knocked Up: Katherine Heigl stays pregnant for at least two seasons. Think of all the wild and crazy slapstick hijinks that would ensue.
Wolf Creek: A bunch of backpackers run from a maniac in the Outback for at least 12 episodes.
Rashomon: Let’s go to the classics for inspiration. This series tells the same story from a different character’s perspective, every week for 26 episodes. If we can afford 26 actors, imagine how much we can save on sets! (Then again, I think there’s already been a series like that, which proves my point.)
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: This wacky sitcom finds new and hilarious possibilities around the scenario of two blokes trying to pose as a gay married couple for partner benefits. It could last for decades! To ensure that it’s a hit, we should get the original stars, Adam Sandler and Kevin James. And we should introduce a great new character: a guy with a baseball bat who keeps on beating up Adam every episode. Who could resist?
16 February 2009
09 February 2009
Why Should Women Rule?
This column originally appeared in The Canberra Times on 26 November 2007.
I have a confession to make: I wrote this last week. Yes, it’s true! You probably thought that I write every column just minutes before it goes to press, to ensure that I’m riding the cultural zeitgeist. But no, I file each column a few days previously.
As a result, I don’t know who won the election. All I know is that, if Kevin Rudd has won (and as I write this, it seems almost certain), we’ll be one step closer, one way or another, to having a female Prime Minister.
Naturally, I’m not talking about Kevin07 himself. His deputy Julia Gillard, however, is almost certainly a woman. Julie Bishop, surely the only remaining frontrunner for the Liberal leadership who anyone actually likes, is also female. Yes, we might indeed have a female PM in the next decade (unless Howard has won, in which case I’ll probably move elsewhere).
This is great news to at least one female friend of mine, whom I won’t name. (She asked me not to mention her, and respect for her wishes. Besides, she threatened to kill me.) “It’s about time women took over the world!” she said, in an announcement of blinding originality. “Men have been screwing it up for thousands of years.”
True enough. Then again, men have been screwing up everything, not just the world. This, dare I say it, might be partly because women haven’t been given a chance. It’s a tragedy that women have been treated as second-class citizens for so long, but for that very reason, we can’t tell whether the world would have been better if –
“What do you mean?” my friend snapped, before I even had a chance to finish that last sentence. “Men have proven themselves incapable. Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin, Alexander Downer. All men!”
As usual when someone tries to make a point, she was only listing the extreme examples. I suggested that not all male leaders have been bad. Look at Akbar, Jefferson, Lincoln, Mandela, Gorbachev.
“Bob Hawke?”
“Er, no. I wouldn’t quite put him on that list.”
“See?” she said proudly. “That proves my point. We should only choose women to lead us from now on.” At this moment, I realised that I couldn’t win, because I was trying to use logic, and she was obviously impervious to such a weapon.
Would Julia Gillard make a better PM than Howard? I’m sure she would! Julie Bishop? Of course! Julia Zemiro? Look, I’m even willing to go that far! But that doesn’t mean that only women deserve to rule the world. In fact, at the risk of being clobbered, I’d have to say that, on the sadly rare opportunities that they’ve been given, they’ve done their bit for equality by proving that they can screw things up just as well as any man.
The world’s first female Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was elected PM of Sri Lanka in 1960. She proved herself a formidable politician, but did she have the enlightened wisdom that female PMs are alleged to possess? Perhaps not. Here was a woman whose disturbing brand of nationalism, granting extra rights for her fellow Buddhist Sinhalese, inflamed ethnic tensions between them and the Hindu Tamils, leading to a long war. Here was a woman who, in her later years, was happy to pit her children against each other in order to continue the political dynasty. Rebelling against his mother, her son joined the despised rival party. Her daughter Chandrika later ran the country, and spent much of her time trying to end the war. Cleaning up after her mother, as it were.
The first female President was Argentina’s Isabel Martínez de Perón, who inherited the job from her husband Juan in 1974. She proved to be unsuited for it, perhaps distracted by all the people who still cried for Juan’s long-deceased and much-loved former wife, Evita. (It was a bit like comparing Princess Camilla with Princess Diana.) She was deposed in a bloodless coup in 1976. More than 30 years later, she was arrested near her home in Spain over the suspicious disappearance of an activist back in ’76. OK, not every female leader has been so disastrous, but the idea that they are inherently more peaceful and kind-hearted than men must surely have been dealt a blow by Margaret Thatcher.
Australia, meanwhile, has had some wonderful female pollies, but many of them have either shot themselves in the foot (remember when Cheryl Kernot was “the woman most likely”?), or been stabbed in the back by other female politicians (like the wonderful but unfortunate Natasha Stott Despoja, who at least kept her principles).
Australia was the second nation in history to grant women the vote. Now, it looks like even the U.S. is going to have a female head of government before we do. Happily, that doesn’t bother me. As they say, “Let the best man win.” Whether he’s a man or a woman, that’s fine with me.
I have a confession to make: I wrote this last week. Yes, it’s true! You probably thought that I write every column just minutes before it goes to press, to ensure that I’m riding the cultural zeitgeist. But no, I file each column a few days previously.
As a result, I don’t know who won the election. All I know is that, if Kevin Rudd has won (and as I write this, it seems almost certain), we’ll be one step closer, one way or another, to having a female Prime Minister.
Naturally, I’m not talking about Kevin07 himself. His deputy Julia Gillard, however, is almost certainly a woman. Julie Bishop, surely the only remaining frontrunner for the Liberal leadership who anyone actually likes, is also female. Yes, we might indeed have a female PM in the next decade (unless Howard has won, in which case I’ll probably move elsewhere).
This is great news to at least one female friend of mine, whom I won’t name. (She asked me not to mention her, and respect for her wishes. Besides, she threatened to kill me.) “It’s about time women took over the world!” she said, in an announcement of blinding originality. “Men have been screwing it up for thousands of years.”
True enough. Then again, men have been screwing up everything, not just the world. This, dare I say it, might be partly because women haven’t been given a chance. It’s a tragedy that women have been treated as second-class citizens for so long, but for that very reason, we can’t tell whether the world would have been better if –
“What do you mean?” my friend snapped, before I even had a chance to finish that last sentence. “Men have proven themselves incapable. Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin, Alexander Downer. All men!”
As usual when someone tries to make a point, she was only listing the extreme examples. I suggested that not all male leaders have been bad. Look at Akbar, Jefferson, Lincoln, Mandela, Gorbachev.
“Bob Hawke?”
“Er, no. I wouldn’t quite put him on that list.”
“See?” she said proudly. “That proves my point. We should only choose women to lead us from now on.” At this moment, I realised that I couldn’t win, because I was trying to use logic, and she was obviously impervious to such a weapon.
Would Julia Gillard make a better PM than Howard? I’m sure she would! Julie Bishop? Of course! Julia Zemiro? Look, I’m even willing to go that far! But that doesn’t mean that only women deserve to rule the world. In fact, at the risk of being clobbered, I’d have to say that, on the sadly rare opportunities that they’ve been given, they’ve done their bit for equality by proving that they can screw things up just as well as any man.
The world’s first female Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was elected PM of Sri Lanka in 1960. She proved herself a formidable politician, but did she have the enlightened wisdom that female PMs are alleged to possess? Perhaps not. Here was a woman whose disturbing brand of nationalism, granting extra rights for her fellow Buddhist Sinhalese, inflamed ethnic tensions between them and the Hindu Tamils, leading to a long war. Here was a woman who, in her later years, was happy to pit her children against each other in order to continue the political dynasty. Rebelling against his mother, her son joined the despised rival party. Her daughter Chandrika later ran the country, and spent much of her time trying to end the war. Cleaning up after her mother, as it were.
The first female President was Argentina’s Isabel Martínez de Perón, who inherited the job from her husband Juan in 1974. She proved to be unsuited for it, perhaps distracted by all the people who still cried for Juan’s long-deceased and much-loved former wife, Evita. (It was a bit like comparing Princess Camilla with Princess Diana.) She was deposed in a bloodless coup in 1976. More than 30 years later, she was arrested near her home in Spain over the suspicious disappearance of an activist back in ’76. OK, not every female leader has been so disastrous, but the idea that they are inherently more peaceful and kind-hearted than men must surely have been dealt a blow by Margaret Thatcher.
Australia, meanwhile, has had some wonderful female pollies, but many of them have either shot themselves in the foot (remember when Cheryl Kernot was “the woman most likely”?), or been stabbed in the back by other female politicians (like the wonderful but unfortunate Natasha Stott Despoja, who at least kept her principles).
Australia was the second nation in history to grant women the vote. Now, it looks like even the U.S. is going to have a female head of government before we do. Happily, that doesn’t bother me. As they say, “Let the best man win.” Whether he’s a man or a woman, that’s fine with me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
