Executive Death Match

It's rare that so much corporate business ends up in the papers. But, once again, we find ourselves privy to all the dirty little secrets over at Par.

As I speculated in an earlier post, Gail Berman is getting back into television, pulling together financing and turning her frown upside down by leveraging her resume and that of her friend Lloyd Braun. Now is the time when you call in all your favors and get a nice fat baby from the dear showrunner friends and acting talent you coddled and favored when you were on the other side of the fence. Expect Gail to keep making announcements about how great she's doing and how hot she is: you gotta beat back the vultures with sunshine in this town. Good on her. Come out swinging. She definitely didn't waste any time. Probably doesn't want to miss pilot season. She'll probably offer to co-finance something the network or some other production company can't quite pull together. A new shop forming up is great news for anyone with a spec pilot (anyone with a track record and an agent, that is). If you count yourself among those folks put your ear to the ground and find out what type of material she's looking for and then fling it into the open maw. If it's any good it might hit the ground running.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, everyone's winding themselves up for some slow-singin' and flower bringin' (to quote Biggie Smalls, my favorite rapper). It's never a good sign to get this much negative ink. Ever.

And in happier news, the Death Star showed ominous signs of creating an event horizon in the middle of Century City.

I'm glad I work at home....

Production

I started out my career working physical production. I like telling people what to do and how to do it, what can I say? :-)

Anyway, there aren't any blogs out there covering the logistics of making entertainment. The headaches, the joys, the way stuff can go right and the way it can go terribly, horribly, embarrassingly wrong, and then how you can pull it together anyway. Greg Beeman has a great one that covers the logistics of putting HEROES together. I've been reading it and having production flashbacks. In a good way. Most of the time.

I highly recommend it. It's a great read, very informative, it does have spoilers, but nothing too outrageous. If you haven't actually produced anything you are working on, or had your work produced, then think of this as a virtual reality machine. And then get out there and make it happen.

Battles To Be Fought

LAT had an article today about the battle for control over at Paramount. Interesting stuff. Keep your eyes peeled, anytime things get put in the paper, an announcement is not far off....

Hugh Laurie

I love Hugh Laurie. When I was in England last month I had a chance to watch some episodes of A Bit of Fry and Laurie and came to a new appreciation of him. In honor of his Golden Globe victory, here's a little snippet from the show.

Bon Mots

I'm still working on my screenplay, keeping my ear to the ground for dirt from the Globes and barricading myself from all the Sundancing coming up, so I'll not be posting too much.

I'm working on building some additional conflict into my lead character's relationship with his parents, so I find myself sucked into every psychodrama taking place within 100 miles. Here's a little gem I found via kottke. Enjoy.