Writers' Office Prank PHLOG... (enter at own risk)

I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you are Cliff Olin.  You are pictured above, at right. 

You are an executive story editor at Brothers & Sisters.

You are addicted to English muffins. 

You write ridiculous things on the Writers' kitchen shopping list... things like, "What's the difference between jelly and jam?" and "Brain D. Possible." 

You wear shoes that appear too large for your feet. 

You show uncanny excellence in inane competitions such as tossing quarters through tiny openings in hideous, stainless-steel office sculptures... to say nothing of the late, great Season One pastime, Fiji Scoot.

You love Zankou Chicken... but hate the pink pickled turnips that come alongside every menu item.  You refer to these as "electric radishes."

So.

Monday morning, 10AM.  It has been a good weekend.  Your favorite team, the Chicago White Sox, swept their weekend series with the crosstown Cubs.  The weather in Los Angeles was mild and delicious.  You are coming off a productive week at work, with many serious questions addressed regarding the future of the Walker family.  And next weekend is the Fourth.  In short, you are riding a wave of good vibes as you pull into Disney lot in the car you will soon sell or abandon because filling it up costs the same as 51 In 'N' Out burgers. 

You park in the Zorro structure and make your way to Stage 6, where the elevator waits patiently to take you to the fourth floor. 

As you amble down the hall, you feel a wave of satisfaction wash over you.  Everything is as it should be, and nothing can spoil your mood.  Not even that faintly unpleasant smell, you remember thinking. 

But that smell grows progressively less faint until, indeed, it is all you can smell.  And this is your POV, as you enter the office you will soon wish could be run through a carwash...

(Remember: you hate electric radishes!)

[Cue Bernard Herrman slasher score...]

TO BE CONTINUED...

Comments

[will]

Cliff:

Let Kevin Walker warm up to baseball. Seriously. Why not? Why do gay characters have to be so rabidly anti-sports on tv? (Nothing will be contradicted either; Kevin has never given off vibes that he hates sports). Let Kevin hoot and holler and become a little unhinged whenever the Angels' Casey Kotchman or the Dodgers' Andre Ethier steps up to the plate (or the Twins' Joe Mauer....grrrrr....but maybe we should keep his interest in a California team).

Let Kevin mix his love for baseball and his love of men's bodies and men's athleticism and sex all into one vibrant, sexually sublimated hobby.

Yeah. See, Kevin has to sublimate his sexual impulses elsewhere because too much of Scotty gets to be a big bore. Scotty can be like a mother hen, pecking away. So let Kevin get his groove on and get a little wild and freaky whenever A-Rod swings his bat. Give Kevin an outlet to vent.

[will]

Dan, one last...

Pic of you & Cliff very early-'70s David Bowie sexually ambiguous androgyne. In fact, you two look like you're ready to play street hustlers in a low-budget Todd Haynes or Gus Van Zant film.

So why the half-dozen photos of Dada-istic turnips turned into flamboyant, minimalist, surrealist art? You channeling the ghost of Salvador Dali?

I feel very crabby tonight.

[will]

Oh god, I'm over-posting again.

ok fine. Whatever. It's morning now.

Dan, that photo of you & Cliff is pretty great. It's idiosyncratic and funky in its own way. Loose. Distinct. Peculiar. Exactly the qualities I've been arguing for in a "Brothers and Sisters" script for two years now.

I DARE all you writers to go back and re-watch all of Kitty's scenes from season 2, back-to-back. I'm being serious. Experiment. Re-watch her entire storyarc. Instead of coming out of the experience fresh and alive and full of insight, you return from the ordeal slightly brain-dead and disoriented. There is a quality to her scenes (not just her performance, but the maudlin material) that INHIBITS peculiarity and emotional rejuvenation. There are few incidental joys of watching a talented performer perform.

Ok. I feel like I'm going off the deep end again. But we all realize what a showstopper (in the worst sense) that Lena was. Please soundly remove Kitty from her present Lena rut. Give her a little unexpected eccentricity. Watching her scenes can feel like taking sleeping meds and waking up still doped up. There is a large disconnect between reality and the alternative universe presented.

Let the writing catch fire. Be quirky. Go places. There is no excuse for poorly written scenes (with Calista paying the cost).

[Riley]

Awesome.

[JoAnne]

Will, I am beginning to feel sorry for you. You have to get a life and stop rewriting this show. I don't mind a story with gay characters but I think you are a little overboard with your suggestions.

I really hope this blog doesn't become the "Will show" I enjoy reading all the opinions and sometimes I have enjoyed what you have to say but I feel now you are getting carried away.

Im sure you know there is a gay channel where you can get all that you need to fullfill your fantasies.

I hope when the new season starts you will accept what the writers write and of course, give your critique just don't rewrite the whole show.

[Sylviane]

Hilarious!!! ... ahum, I mean, very, very bad...
Curious about part 2 now though.... :-)

[will]

Titles!

Let's look at a few of the titles in the pipeline for season three:

3.01 "Glass Houses" - This title strikes me as running on empty and cliche-ridden. You can almost feel it slogging along. Something vaguely tired in its construction; a lack of rhythm or spark. A title you'd thoroughly expect to find on practically any damned drama or dramedy while surfing a cable tv guide. After all, it's part of an over-used aphorism ("people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones") with quasi-biblical overtones. The creativity embedded in this title is run-of-the-mill generic.

3.02 "Book Burning" - Ok. I am perking up somewhat. "Book Burning" sounds like a title with themes running beneath it's surface. A story not told dismally straight or literal-minded. And, of course, "Book Burning" evokes Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (the fireman, in this future setting, is a "book burner", and number 451 refers to the temperature in fahrenheit at which a book or paper auto-ingnites):

"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black."

3.03 "Tug of War" - This is a dreary little title. It doesn't evoke anything. It is so unevocative as to be almost invisible. Enough said.

3.04 "Everything Must Go" - Well, at least you sense the writers are TRYING for something above and beyond ordinary title fare here (if not much else). There is a whisper of multiple meanings, of plots within plots. I guess I'd have to give it a mild, tentative thumbs up.

3.05 "You Get What You Need" - BINGO. Ding ding ding!! Though I prefer a longer, rolling title myself ("But if you try sometimes, well you just might find,
you get what you need"), I'd like to think that I had some small influence on the title choice here, tirelessly lobbying as I have for 60's & '70's-based song titles - "Rainy Day Women", "Jingle-Jangle Mornings", "Love Me Two Times" (this title is reserved for Kevin's first serious affair), "The Hissing of Summer Lawns". Actually, ideally, I lobby for episode titles that eclipse the quotidian. That are roughhewn around the edges. That are not afraid to be confrontational or in-your-face. That may, if fact, symbolically give the middle finger to the commonplace (quaint titles like "Something New" or the sleep-inducing "Family Day"...or at the other end of the spectrum, "artistic" howlers like "The Feast of Epiphany").

This comment is getting a bit long, isn't it? I'm going to shut my yap and turn off my incessant opinions.

But, as creative episode titles go, so let the storylines go. Go off the freaking beaten path. Formula means death in today's marketplace. Shake it up. Give us magic and what we did not ever expect to find leaping at us in the middle of a "Brothers and Sisters" episode. Keep us off balance, in a state of expectation and wanting more. And, please, please, forego the usual woozy Tori Amos or Sarah MacLachlin-type ballad in episode 5 and play for us what you tease us with:

I went down to the Chelsea drugstore
To get your prescription filled
I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy
And man, did he look pretty ill
We decided that we would have a soda
My favorite flavor, cherry red
I sung my song to Mr. Jimmy
Yeah, and he said one word to me,
and that was "dead I said to him

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need

[Vin]

Nice one. Very thoughtful of you to protect the furniture from any electric pink stains.

I await to read about Cliff's reaction to this nasty but considerate office prank.

If I imagine I am Cliff for a moment, I'd be thinking gleefully "Revenge is a dish best served cold"
(cue Vincent Price's evil laughter)

Don't listen to Will. Reading the spoilers I think the titles are in tune with the episodes themselves.

And though I am worried about what you are doing with Kevin, because it doesn't make sense (yet) and I fear the wit, that makes Kevin such a great character, will be drained from him, I will try to keep an open mind on the possibilities.

Kevin/Scotty are popular characters and I hope you will not diminish the relationship Kevin should/could have with Scotty.

[sylviane]

I forgot to say, that though I disagree with Will's opinion on the titles, I agree with him on another post, that Matthew Rhys's talents are underused.

But I'd like to add to that: so are Luke Macfarlane's. I've seen him in 'Over There' and he is capable of a wider range of acting, than what has been given to him so far.

[will]

Thanks, Sylviane. I'm okay with people disagreeing with my posts. My opinions aren't for everyone. Still, I'm going to be as absolutely honest and true to my own reactions during season three as I can possibly hope to be. That's the goal. I will try not to be "mean-spirited" or needlessly sarcastic (a fault, admittedly) with the actors, directors and writers, but I have decided to live and observe and write and breathe like the TRUE ARTIST and critic lives and observes and writes and breathes. I'm going to open myself up - unabashedly! - to the "Brothers and Sisters" season three experience and leave as candid and discriminating and analytic (and humorous) an account of what I find - here, right here, on these threads.

Yeah, I realize this sounds pompous. Yet, I am willing to play the butt of the joke.

JoAnne. I still love you. Even though you say I need to "get a life". Even though you say I need to surf the "gay channel" (Logo? Here!?) to "fulfill my fantasies". JoAnne, I have an involvement with "Brothers and Sisters" that goes beyond a singular gay aspect. I have internet porn for purely gay interests, to "fulfill my fantasies", if that's even the correct phrase. With B&S I was hoping for a little out-of-left-field art and entertainment... with a bright, sparkling dextrous script. I usually don't get it. We sometimes get patches of decent banter, of course. Snippets of smart, iridescent dialogue. And Matthew and Dave and Sally really threaten to bring this show alive for me by sheer force of idiosyncratic - of very singular and personal - talents. So I stick around and manage to show up at 10pm on Sunday nights with a renewed sense of hope and anticipation.

[will]

Oh. By the way. "Love Me Two Times" would be a great title for what I have in store.

[Allen]

Please tell Balty that I think he's taken the whole "method acting" thing a bit too far.

[JoAnne]

Love you too Will, and hope you will forgive me if I insulted you. certainly was not my intention.

I will watch the show next season, read your comments as well as the other posts and that will be that.

[will]

Can I please be allowed to say, Why the F**K was Matthew not nominated for a freaking Emmy? Ok, I am being discreet here. I am not using the actual offensive WORD to express my sharp displeasure. There are mitigating asterisks present, but WHY THE freaking flipping F**K was Matthew passed over again? Oh, I am wading through an engulfing sea of mediocrity reading William Shatner and Ted Danson.... I seriously need help. I live in a culture that cannot recognize art.

[Lee]

This blog is three weeks old. Have you forgotten about us? Can we please get an update on how the writing is going?

We know the actors are off, but someone here said you were all continuing to work through July.

[will]

Dan,

I hope you realize that for the entire past 2 months you've discussed nothing of substance with the fans. A mildly diverting, yet, ultimately trite dream analysis with David and Beth ("Look, it's
about the fear of getting older... it's a dream about trying not to hold on to your childhood"), and, of course, the attack of the "electric radishes" from Zankou Chicken (another disquieting dream scenario).

The actor's strike is still looming (the studios put down their "final offer" at the end of June and still no resolution); you've already filmed several episodes; Emmy nominations were announced. You are not at a particualr loss for interesting topics on which to chat (otherwise, what exactly is the raison d'etre for this writer's blog?).

Open up. Share, man. Don't be a stranger. Fill us in. Connect the dots. Be a better liaison.

In other news, two successive Field Polls here in California conclude that a majority of state residents now support gay marriage - in the form of being AGAINST Proposition 8, which seeks to continue a ban on gay marriage, an attempt to overturn the CA Supreme Court's recent 4-3 ruling legalizing gay unions.

-------------------------

Poll: California Voters Oppose Gay Marriage Ban

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― More California voters say they would oppose a November ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in the state's constitution than would support it, according to a survey released Friday.

The Field Poll found that 51 percent of likely voters say they would vote against Proposition 8, while 42 percent say they would vote for it.

The poll shows a turnaround from 2000, when 61 percent of voters cast ballots in favor of Proposition 22, which strengthened the state's 1978 one-man, one-woman marriage law with the words "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

[jim]

LOVE IT!!!

[Steph]

Wow. Just, wow.