Apparently, you can find something morally repugnant and enjoyable at the same time, which explains the behavior of certain Republican congressmen.

In it, a team of cops investigates homicides. It’s what industry insiders are calling a criminal investigation show and if it catches on…MAN.

Oh, and while you try to wrap our brain around that concept, consider this…the show takes place in Detroit! My first instinct was, no, the mean streets of Detroit are too dangerous for a crime investigation show…but I suppose if you’re going to revolutionize the TV landscape, you might as well go all the way.

On a down note, if the show works, it kind of sinks my new pilot: “Chandler, AZ 496″ about a duo of local cops investigating the handling of stolen property cases in a booming suburban town.

If vampires are immortal and have lived hundreds and thousands of years, why haven’t they ever invented anything?

As many of you know,  I’ve spent years trying to crack into Hollywood with my “light” comedy about a Midwestern grain farmer who learns how to increase his production modestly through hard work.

Needless to say, the crass Hollywood machine would rather remake cheesy 80s films than take on something actually original!  It’s been frustrating to say the least.  Who doesn’t like grains? And what’s better than a “light” comedy–not so much laughing that you overdo it, but just enough to deliver a satisfying, pleasant smile?

Now, I come to find my idea has already been green-lit in North Korea under the lovely title “Echo Mountain.”

It’s not surprising that North Korea is ahead of us in terms of light comedy. They are a people known for their sense of humor, such as when they pulled off that irresistibly witty famine in the 1990s.

Anyways, if you want to know what Echo Mountain is about, here’s your movie poster straight from the PNK news release:

The light comedy encourages the people to turn out in making a fresh upsurge in their work.

I’d cast one of those Twilight kids in the lead. Merchandising pretty-much sells itself…(hello McGrain Meal).

Why these women owe their career to John Cheever.

A pretty comprehensive review of Sex in the City 2 that misses one, important fact: Sex in the City 2 was not an original screenplay, but an adaptation of a short story by John Cheever entitled: “The women who went to the desert and died there.”  The film takes a few liberties with the plot (spoiler alert: only one of the women dies in the movie), but is pretty faithful to the story’s central concern, which is not actually about science fiction (as the referenced review brilliantly suggests), but rather a strange thought experiment that plagued Cheever throughout his life: If God is all-powerful, could he create a world so vapid even he couldn’t find meaning in it?

The question led Cheever to reject religion, but grow increasingly obsessed with shoes–it said he had over 725 pairs when he dies.

Could the girl from the Sonic commercials (not pictured) be off to bigger and better things?

It’s upfront season, where the TV Networks roll out their Fall lineups to impress advertisers, only to later renege on every program they presented in favor of cheaply produced reality shows about famous people you’ve never heard of getting drunk and yelling at less famous people you’ve also never heard of.

But for at least a week, there is the promise of new TV shows, each more promising than the next, and mostly combining concepts from previously popular shows.  To review, the most tried-and-true TV formats are:

-       Procedural dramas

-       Criminal investigation shows

-       Angsty shows about teenagers who may or may not be vampires but definitely are exasperated at the general state of everything

Having attended the upfronts for years in a former-life as a madvertising maven, I’ve come to understand the formula for a successful pitch, which is why for the last several years I’ve been desperately trying to get traction on this UNBELIEVABLE high-concept, that I imagine starring Rob Lowe and the woman who does the Sonic commercials.

I call it: LEGAL PROCEDURE CRIME LAB VAMPIRE.*

Here’s the premise:

A legal crime investigation procedural vampire drama with a twist. Rob Coneroy (Rob Lowe) was a high-priced prosecutor and also, somehow, a Crime Scene Investigator, who not only investigated the toughest, most unsolved murders in Washington D.C. using his uncanny memory (he can remember everything that has happened to him for the last 32 years), but he also prosecutes these same cases in the highest court in the land (other than the Supreme Court—this is like the next highest court). But when he falls for a super-sexy defense lawyer (Sonic commercial woman) who is also involved with politics and is a vampire, suddenly his world gets turned upside down.  Now the two of them are taking Capital Hill by storm because they’ve been employed on opposite sides of a political controversy that threatens to take down the president, but will super-sexy defense lawyer vampire’s secret be safe once her former vampire lover (Tom Cruise) comes to town to advise the president?  And what about the crazy gang of misfits at Coneroy’s law/forensic investigation office? They’re sure to be up to hijinks. Especially since one of them is really a robot. And when famous actor Tom Cruise (Hank Azaria) shows up, things start to really get out of control.

*The original title was LEGAL PROCEDUE CRIME LAB ANGEL, but that was before the Vampire bubble.

Why does this man owe Ezra Pound an apology?

This weekend while doing a bit of light reading, I discovered a SHOCKING revelation about a beloved TV show and it’s main character’s catch phrase (see fact 4).  This led me to wonder what other strange pieces of TV trivia are out there that I’m unaware of.  Such as the following:

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1. While many think that the Munsters was the first TV show to portray a husband and wife in the same bed (in 1964), a little online research will reveal that in fact the first husband and wife to share a bed were Mary Kay and Johnny in a TV series that debuted back in 1947!  There is very little we know about the show other then it’s premise: Johnny is a space alien sent to earth to impregnate a woman (Mary Kay) in an effort to corrupt the purity of the white human race. Luckily, Mary Kay is a prude who keeps faking a headaches and ends up saving the human species.  The show was wildly unpopular.
2. The original TGIF lineup on ABC was Full House, Perfect Strangers, Mr. Belvedere, Just the Ten of Us. Of these shows, only Just the Ten of Us had a reoccurring guest role featuring a star of another ABC show, playing a fundamentalist Christian who passed out anti-evolution propaganda on college campuses with often hilarious results.
3. The Monkeys was not the first TV-show featuring a fake, lip-syncing band. That honor goes to The Fabulous Elvis Presley Review, debuting in 1962 and featuring Elvis Presley as a kung-fu instructor with a heart of gold.  What’s that? You didn’t know Elvis lip-synced all his songs?  Surely you aren’t that naïve…
4. The character JJ of Good Times had a catch phase, “Dynomite!” Or, sometimes, “Dy-dy-dy-dynomite!”  But did you know this catch phrase was PLAGIARIZED from the epic modernist poem The Cantos by Ezra Pound? It’s true. It’s easy to miss, but buried in Canto 154, there it is.  A little further reading shows that the show 227 is basically entirely ripped from Pound’s earlier work, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
5. While many people remember the TV show CHiPs for it’s portrayal of California highway patrolmen, few remember that in the pilot episode, the show was really about the main characters Ponch and Jon’s desperate attempt to find their kidnapped adopted son.   This theme is not carried out in future episodes, but they remain the first openly homosexual couple on TV.
6. Many remember that the TV show Gossip Girls is based on the experience of real-life high school girls in Manhattan, but few know that the actual “Gossip Girls,” were also members of a secret society dedicated to putting America back on the gold standard.  This was dropped from the TV show for the reason that the CW HATES GOLD.
7. Most of the Real Housewives of Orange County (or NY, Atlanta, etc.), are not real housewives at all, but rather CGI animated simulations.  While they aren’t particularly realistic looking, they do a better job of remembering their lines than most “reality” TV stars.

When Jay Leno’s new primetime experiment began, I expressed my general ambivalence about the whole thing.  As I said then, I find Jay Leno rather harmless, not hilarious by any means, but hardly any less un-hilarious than most everyone else in late night.  It’s a genre predicated on their being nothing else on, so the bar is low.  A few amusing jokes, maybe a good bit here and there, and some celebrity guests. That’s the formula and it has been unchanged since the late night genre began.

Now of course, Leno’s new primetime show has bomb, and he’s returning to late night, kicking his heir apparent Conan out after an inglorious couple month run. Leno’s getting killed in the press for how he’s handled this, with many focusing on a few components of the story:

1.  That Leno promised this spot to Conan 5 years ago, then immediately took the spot back (Kimmel hit hard on this on Leno’s show)

2.  That Conan is funnier than Leno

On point two, I don’t disagree. I like Conan way better than Leno.  But the public, despite the vocal Conan defenders, clearly doesn’t agree. Conan’s ratings for the Late Night Show were way lower than Leno’s.  More on that later.

As for the first complaint—I understand it, but it makes no sense.  Do people understand that the Late Show is not Leno’s to give? He doesn’t own it.  Naming his successor was nothing more than an NBC marketing ploy—at the very least NBC had to approve his choice, if it wasn’t there choice to begin with.  It’s just logic—you can’t give what you don’t own.  Leno doesn’t own the show, ipso facto etc.

So, if NBC is the bad guy—the ones that promised Conan a spot, than yanked it from him after a few short months, should our anger be directed at them?  As the lowest-rated non CW network, they clearly deserve blame for such a sequence of terrible moves.  But what move should they have made?

The situation is this. You have the Leno Show bombing in primetime, pissing off affiliates. Canceling it is a no  brainer.  Now, you have two options: First, let Leno go (his show is the one that bombed, right?), and keep Conan in Late Night.  Or, do what they did and force Conan out.  As a viewer, I prefer the latter, but it would have been a terrible move for an already struggling network.  Because as much as I love Conan, his ratings were lower than Lenos when he was in that time slot.  By losing Leno, you are basically downgrading your entire late night lineup.  Your bombing in primetime and late night.  Move Leno back and you at least salvage late night.

It’s just business. The same reason the best show ever got cancelled.

Maybe they should have been more patient with Conan—maybe he would have started pulling better ratings. But when you’re in last place in the ratings race, patience is a virtue that is hard to justify.

So did Late Night TV just get a lot unfunnier? Yes, unquestionably (though if Conan moves to fox as rumored, maybe not).  But blaming Leno or NBC makes no sense.  If anyone deserves the blame, it’s 20th century economist Simon Kuznets (he knows what he did).

If nothing else, this whole thing has finally made Jimmy Kimmel funny again.

In winning multiple golden globes the other night, many praised the film for its daring originality, and how it reinvented what is possible in a movie-going experience.  Whether the movie is great or not is one question, but on the issue of originality, more analysis is required. Let’s take a look at the film’s core premise:

A magical world populated with blue people who live in a secret, special place, is threatened by evil humans who want to do them harm for nefarious reasons.

Original? Or did I just perfectly describe the plot to the popular cartoon series, THE SMURFS?  Yes, while some are suggesting Cameron lifted inspiration from some old sci-fi books, the truth is much more damaging, and obvious.

It doesn’t take much to see the blatant ways in which Cameron ripped off this classic fairy tale, making only minor cosmetic changes (the Navi are a lot bigger than the Smurfs, and Gargamel rarely flew in a missile launching, fighter jet, except, of course, for in the ill-advised final season where the producers tried to up the ante by giving Gargamel access to nuclear weapons. Incidentally, this paralleled heightened cold war tensions between the US and Soviet Union and many, to this day, read the cartoon as largely anti-Soviet propaganda, with Gargamel only a veiled caricature of former Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin).

In the end, this is not the first time hit cartoons have been transformed into mega block-busters. In fact, Cameron’s previous mega-hit Titanic is largely understood as a re-imagination of the cartoon, The Snorks, a cartoon Cameron has called “the most important artistic achievement of the last 60 years.”

Just saw Avatar the other night. Everyone is raving about how amazing the 3D looks in this movie. Personally, I wasn’t impressed. What’s so special about 3D? I see it every time I open my eyes.  When I go to the movies, I expect something better than what I see in the real world–if the real world was interesting, we wouldn’t even need movies.

That’s why I’ve written a sternly worded letter urging Cameron and other so-called technological innovators in the film industry to finally start delivering movies in 26 dimensions.  Superstring theory tells us it’s possible that this many dimensions exist, and if they do, I expect nothing less in my sci-fi blockbusters. Just imagine how awesome those blue aliens will look in jaw-dropping 26 dimensions!

I think when we finally utilize all the available dimensions, 3D movies will look as dated as the hopelessly invisible 1D  movies that were so popular in the early 20^th century.

One bad thing about Avatar is apparently people are suffering from something called post-Avatar depression after coming out of the movie.  Note to sufferers: You need to remember to remove your 3D glasses. Not only do they not work very well in the real world, they are blocking out much needed light, which is probably why you’re feeling so depressed.

As for the movie itself, there was much to like. While many find the love story compelling, for me what makes the movie successful is that it reminds us of an important historical lesson: Namely, that in a battle between a technologically superior military force and a local, primitive, indigenous culture, the indigenous culture will always win, not because their continued guerilla resistance will eventually wear down and tax the resources of the invading force, but because primitive weapons such as bows and arrows and magic are always superior to modern weapons.

That helps explains why the Native Americans were able to successfully thwart European invaders and protect the sovereignty of their casinos, a Gandhi-led India defeated the British empire using elephants and magic, the Ewoks defeated the Imperial Army by rolling logs at them, and the Bengal Tigers were finally able to unite and destroy all those hunters trying to make them extinct.

In history, the superior technological force will always lose the war because they don’t understand the power of angry animals and treacherous forest landscapes.  That’s why instead of wasting so much money on these advanced super-bombers, we ought to be rigging our shores and national forests with complicated, elaborate booby traps, just like the kid in Home Alone did.  Only then will we be able to defeat the race of super aliens and robot butlers currently plotting our destruction.

If Avatar teaches us nothing, I hope it’s that.