August 22, 2005
Baby G, Screenwriter, TV
One of the nice things about work is that there'll occasionally be a link that leads to something like the Baby Gollum on the right. :) The guy who did it isn't related to work in any way -- he just thought it was a good idea. :)
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Had Amphigorey and her "bro" over for fish'n'chips and random viewing -- we ended up catching the second half of E.T., which was slightly surreal, since all of us had seen it as kids, and none of us had seen it recently. Didn't remember how creepy E.T. was, or Drew Barrymore's performance at all; Amphigorey hit it on the head when she described Drew as giving the feeling of a child, rather than a child actor. I'm not sure I'm inspired to see the whole thing again, but it was interesting to watch the bit that we did. We then saw the first episode of Scrubs, because A hadn't seen it before. A very pleasant way to spend a Sunday evening. :)
After they went home, I was sorely tempted to rewatch Scrubs; luckily, I pushed down the crazy. Of course, it probably helps that I'm in the middle of watching season 5 of The West Wing. :) I seem to be falling into a pattern of watching four episodes in a sitting... which is bad when you start watching them at 10pm. Oh well, one of the advantages to having a decent laptop is that I can watch this stuff in bed.
(When I should be sleeping. Never mind. :)
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Another screenwriter's blog, this time coming from Kung-fu Monkey -- " I find your lack of faith disturbing", which describes itself as... another screenwriter's blog. Um. Anyway, as is common with the blogs of professional writers (in this case, the co-writer of War of the Worlds) he is articulate, interesting and funny.
I wonder whether screenwriters tend to be blogspotters, rather than any of the other thousands of blogging options, or if my sampling is somehow biased. I mean, there are exceptions -- look at Doris Egan (who I was unreasonably please to discover wrote "Two Bit Heroes", one of my favourite pun titles ever :). There's probably a certain amount of "it's what my friends use", I guess. That's certainly why I'm on the AdditiveRich server. :)
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I think TV might, on the whole, be getting better.
Now, this is a slightly odd thing for me to say, given that I don't actually watch any broadcast television. But take children's programs in the Eighties -- things like Thundercats, Dungeons and Dragons and The Smurfs -- and compare them to, say, the animated Batman series, or The PowerPuff Girls, or Arthur. Or even, bless her heart, Dora the Explorer. Now, there'll be exceptions, and you can make comparisons like Dangermouse vs. [current terrible animated program of your choice] -- at which point I challenge you to sit through an entire episode of Scooby Doo. Just go ahead and try.
(ReBoot occupies a weird netherworld for me. I've heard lots of good things about it, and have known people my age who were really enthusiastic, and taped it off TV... but I don't know that I've ever actually seen an episode. :)
Other people have written books on the subject -- for example, Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You". One of the main premises is that we remember the best of old television, and we remember it through the golden glow of nostalgia. Also, television is more complicated now than it used to be, with multiple story threads being the norm rather than the exception. Whether the rise in sales of TV on DVD is pushing or being pushed by this phenomenon is hard to say; nowdays, it's probably a little of both.
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I should try and get a little bit more done, and then go home. :)
Posted by svend at August 22, 2005 9:27 PM