tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47062822217614279962024-03-13T10:52:07.095-07:00The Bitter Script ReaderThe advice and rantings of a Hollywood script reader tired of seeing screenwriters make the same mistakes, saving the world from bad writing one screenplay at a time. Learn what it takes to get your script past one of these mythical Gatekeepers.The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.comBlogger1438125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-52855638653532408132023-12-27T14:25:00.000-08:002023-12-27T14:26:42.767-08:00Why all three seasons of PICARD were necessary to Jean-Luc Picard's journey after the end of TNGI did another rewatch of the two-part finale of STAR TREK: PICARD and between that and some things from Patrick Stewart's memoir swimming in my head, I'm left with some thoughts about Picard, both the man and the series.
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When PS was approached for the new series, he was the one who set down the mandates that distanced it from TNG. He didn't want any of the original cast. He didn't want to be in Starfleet or wear a uniform. If they were bringing back Picard, it had to say something new about him rather than re-explore old ground. I actually think there was a lot of merit to these stances, even if all we really wanted was a TNG reunion, which we eventually got. But I don't think S3's reunion undermines the rest of the show, nor do I see it as a retreat. It's a necessary conclusion for Picard.
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Think about where Picard was at the end of TNG. He just had his Christmas Carol-like jaunt through time and came out realizing he needed to change the nature of his relationship with his crew. He joins the poker game. He's on his way to becoming less distant. He's opening up... And then what happens six months later in GENERATIONS? His brother and nephew are killed. He's the LAST Picard. There IS no biological family left for him.
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And then what else happens? He meets Starfleet's greatest, James T. Kirk. And what's the retired Kirk's firm advice?
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"Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do ANYTHING.... that takes you off the bridge of that ship because while you're THERE.... you can make a difference."
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Taken together, we see how this pretty much cements the crew of the D as his family.
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And over the course of the movies, that changes. It can't last forever. Worf leaves the nest and moves on for a time. Will and Deanna get married and go off on their own. Data DIES. Beverly leaves.
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Then comes the whole Romulan crisis and then the android revolt. Picard's at the center of that crisis and Starfleet fails him. After an android sabotage of the shipyards built to evacuate the Romulans, Starfleet scraps the whole project and makes artificial life illegal in the Federation. It goes against everything Picard has fought for. By then, most of his "kids" have moved on. He took Kirk's advice. He stayed devoted to Starfleet and it fucked him in the end. So he quits in protest.
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He doesn't recognize Starfleet. Problem is, without Picard - who had no bones about standing up to them in cases like INSURRECTION - Starfleet loses its moral way too. And that's where PICARD the series picks up. Picard's lost his family and the thing that was supposed to matter.
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When he has to go on a new adventure, he's determined to do it without getting in the way of the old crew's new lives. This is JLP in his "Wings" phase. (The Enterprise D/E era being his "Beatles".) And look, Wings was a fine band. But they weren't the Beatles.
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But step by step, PICARD shows us its title character putting things right. The android ban is lifted. He goes back to Starfleet, beginning to restore its moral center. S2 at first glance, can be mistaken as a bit of a sidequest. Q messes with history to create a timeline where Starfleet is a totalitarian conqueror, which forces Picard to go back in time and try to put things right.<div><br /></div><div>Eventually it's revealed that history hinges on one of Picard's ancestors going on a crucial space mission. The ripple effect of her not going is what would result in the imperialistic Starfleet. What this means is that the moral fibre of Starfleet is inextricably linked with the Picard bloodline. Starfleet and Picard inform each other.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just as The Sisko is of Bajor, Picard is of Starfleet. Starfleet is what it is because of the Picard family. In Starfleet, Picard found his family - both in spiritual and literally biological terms by the end of the third season. That is the lesson that Q is trying to teach in season 2. Why else show him that? </div><div><br />Picard needed to rediscover Starfleet as being core to his destiny so that on the final adventure, it plays out the only way it can for Picard to truly come full circle. The lesson he's been learning for 30 years finally is achieved.
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His old crew IS his family. Of course they are the ones he ultimately has to take this last ride with. And for his full restoration, is there ANY other ending that could be more perfect than him leading the charge to save all of Starfleet with those people by his side?
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And if you're putting all The Beatles on stage together, what madman would do that and NOT having them perform?
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Kirk insisted that on "the bridge of that ship.... you can make a difference." It HAD to be the Enterprise-D. These seven people had to be by each other's sides one last time, willing to die for each other because if not, what were the last 35 years even for?
<br /><br />For Picard's arc since the series - the man who lost his blood family, lost his ship, lost his friend Data, lost his faith in the institution that was supposed to be his life - he gets a new family. He gets back the ship and the friend that he lost and he restores it all. Yes, I know.... every brick on that road was laid individually, with no real plan of it leading all the way to this path for much of it. But when you look back with hindsight, it all makes so much sense. PICARD S1 and 2 had to happen to make 3 the earned ending to EVERYTHING.
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And that's why STAR TREK: PICARD was my favorite show this year. It wasn't a mere farewell tour that played the easy crowd pleasing hits.... it was an ending, one where each of those gracenotes had a purpose in the narrative and MATTERED.
</div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-52596170914763772912023-06-27T22:39:00.002-07:002023-06-28T16:11:05.339-07:00Podcast appearances on The Writers Panel and Children of Tendu<p>In a complete coincidence I had two podcast appearances drop on the same day this week.</p><p>First, my friend Ben Blacker had me on The Writers' Panel to discuss my thoughts on networking on the picket line. We're in the nineth week of picketing and I've met something like fifty writers while picketing. And as I mention in this podcast, I also met Brandon Routh (SUPERMAN RETURNS) and his wife Courtney Ford (LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.)</p><p>Listen to The Writers' Panel <a href="https://benblacker.substack.com/p/pov">here</a>.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfV5Ysgrwrwea4BaLPmnViuuHY_s_BRubczI1XXg-6Bvj5CpFHvZb2HSynBMi8J4-qL2l5nUqBidRjXEsukch9nYTZs5ufOyhbkKH8adgjDq4Lyad-qv7uP0NYDipu8yCXTRgH9ZogQgHAcorg7Yc1MTq3b9US-5eW3FmPf61nkiTlrKb2sH_dJ8ZVk1U" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1517" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfV5Ysgrwrwea4BaLPmnViuuHY_s_BRubczI1XXg-6Bvj5CpFHvZb2HSynBMi8J4-qL2l5nUqBidRjXEsukch9nYTZs5ufOyhbkKH8adgjDq4Lyad-qv7uP0NYDipu8yCXTRgH9ZogQgHAcorg7Yc1MTq3b9US-5eW3FmPf61nkiTlrKb2sH_dJ8ZVk1U=w303-h400" width="303" /></a></div><p>And then I got to fulfill a nearly decade-long dream by appearing on a podcast hosted by another two of my friends and former co-workers, Javier Grillo-Marxauch and Jose Molina. Their show Children of Tendu is one of the greatest resources for an up-and-coming TV writer and it was an honor to speak with them about my path from internet guy to assistant to staff writer.</p><p>The episode I'm on is called "Live from the Strike Line."</p><p>Listen to Children of Tendu on Stitcher <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/children-of-tendu/episode/live-from-the-strike-line-304805194">here</a>.</p><p>Listen to Children of Tendu on Apple Podcasts <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-from-the-strike-line/id833831151?i=1000618526476">here</a>. </p><p>Listen to Children of Tendu and download the ep as an MP3 <a href="https://childrenoftendu.libsyn.com/live-from-the-strike-line">here</a>.</p><p></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-32801431255279072002022-04-19T10:30:00.029-07:002022-04-19T11:25:25.953-07:00A SUPERMAN & LOIS comic I co-wrote is out today and it has a very personal meaning for me<p>Today's the day! The SUPERMAN & LOIS comic book I wrote with fellow S&L writers Jai Jamison and Andrew N. Wong is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Prime-Superman-Lois-2-ebook/dp/B09VVYJQNF/">on sale</a>.</p><p>As a lifelong Superman fan, it is absolutely surreal to see my name on a Superman comic, let alone one with pencils by Tom Grummett - one of my favorite Superman artists. Tom was one of the artists on the book during the 90s, particularly during the period that covered the Death and Return of Superman. Tom's art is what a Superman comic should look like to me.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpOJHz4Um7LsjKbJurtF6i8z8BNcvTwj6uLppJj31VkiRiuHQMUg--ne-L4U9p0ouoO15dGeq2TenRx6wQrAxeNkJQsVBKe_6NQsLhF0OfOY_w-EY3QSQQNC5c9-pDF0zeQTf0JQ9u5mry_BY3nCxgJMOqSFMabqiUpnyHQeJsXrIDzkFW_uLFcBcE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="740" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpOJHz4Um7LsjKbJurtF6i8z8BNcvTwj6uLppJj31VkiRiuHQMUg--ne-L4U9p0ouoO15dGeq2TenRx6wQrAxeNkJQsVBKe_6NQsLhF0OfOY_w-EY3QSQQNC5c9-pDF0zeQTf0JQ9u5mry_BY3nCxgJMOqSFMabqiUpnyHQeJsXrIDzkFW_uLFcBcE=w280-h400" width="280" /></a></div><br />The writing was a very collaborative process, but I wrote the actual script for the second and third stories in the issue. The second one was very personal for me. It's a story about Clark thinking about some of those small moments in his childhood where his father's influence put him on the path to be the man he'd become. <p></p><p><a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-its-like-when-your-dad-is-going-to.html">I lost my father to COVID</a> in November 2020, after I'd been working on SUPERMAN & LOIS for about 8 months and only a couple months after I'd gotten a script assignment. <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/12/2020-seemed-to-give-me-everything-i.html">My dad never got to see the show I'd waited my whole life to work on</a>. He never got to see my first episode of TV, and as I started this, I was aware he'd never see my first comic book. That one especially stung because when I was younger, he bought me many of my first comics.</p><p>As the three of us writing the issue generated ideas for our stories, I landed on the second story that eventually saw print. I pitched it to Jai and Andrew as a story about the father/son relationship. Though I didn't specifically underline it was inspired by my feelings about my dad, they certainly knew what I was drawing on. Between the three of us we had several ideas and we had to whittle them down. They absolutely could have vetoed this early on... but they didn't.</p><p>Then we had to pitch our stories to our showrunner Todd Helbing. There were a couple that Todd passed on for one reason or another, but he gave the thumbs-up to "Father's Day" along with four other premises. We had to pitch three stories to our editor at DC, Andrew Marino. Andrew and Jai were supportive of "Father's Day" and it survived the culling.</p><p>After Andrew Marino approved the story, I told him about how it was a tribute to my dad and asked if there was any way it would be possible to dedicate it to him. He was immediately supportive of it, much to my gratitude.</p><p>To Todd, Jai, Andrew and Andrew... I lack the words to tell you what this means to me. I sent my mother and my brother advance copies of the issue and I'm at a similar loss of vocabulary when it comes to expressing how meaningful it was to all of us to pay tribute to my father, to make him a part of this experience even though he's no longer with us.</p><p>To Tom Grummett and Norm Rapmund, you rendered this story exactly as I saw it in my mind's eye. Thank you for the gift of your beautiful art.</p><p>Eventually I'm going to feel like I've said "thank you" enough times. So far I haven't reached that benchmark. The entire experience of working on SUPERMAN & LOIS has been one that I'm full of gratitude for. Losing my dad is always going to be tied to my history with this show... but thanks to this issue, so is celebrating him.</p><p>You can buy the issue digitally at Comixology and Amazon by going <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Prime-Superman-Lois-2-ebook/dp/B09VVYJQNF">here</a>.</p><p>For a peak behind the curtain, check out this interview that Jai and I did with <a href="https://screenrant.com/superman-lois-arrowverse-earth-prime-comic-interview/">ScreenRant</a>.</p><p>We also did a very in-depth interview with Craig Byrne over at <a href="https://www.kryptonsite.com/earth-prime-superman-lois-comic-interview-adam-mallinger-jai-jamison/">KryptonSite</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.supermanhomepage.com/mild-mannered-reviews-earth-prime-2-superman-and-lois/">Michael Bailey of the Superman Homepage</a> (which might be the first Superman site I read on the internet EVER) gave our issue 5/5 in Art and Story for all three of our tales. He writes: <span style="color: #2b00fe;">"Reading a story where you get to have all of the action of a standard Superman tale and see Lois going all out to get the story and on top of that throw in some amazing Easter eggs and on top of that give them a special way to celebrate their anniversary… I really can’t ask for anything more than that. It’s Superman and Lois as a show in a microcosm."</span></p><p>We also got the most <a href="https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-round-up-earth-prime-2-gets-pa-kent-in-a-way-man-of-steel-never-could/">generous review from Cori McCreery</a>, whom I know to be a massive fan of the Pre-Crisis Era of Superman. <a href="https://twitter.com/CoriMarie21/status/1516447490102501384">In a tweet</a>, she said, <span style="color: #2b00fe;">"This was one of the best Superman comics I've read in a long time, and really captured both the feeling of my favorite era and of the show it was spun out of. Great job guys."</span> <a href="https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-round-up-earth-prime-2-gets-pa-kent-in-a-way-man-of-steel-never-could/">The review</a> made me unexpectedly emotional and I'm grateful to Cori for what she said.</p><p>I hope you all enjoy the issue. And if you don't, as Ed Wood says, "My next one will be better!"</p><p>Here are the preview pages, which are basically just an excuse for me to show off Tom and Norm's lovely work.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgr20rV8CB6UX6REa0a1Ew0pLcyh2RbojQsvd_cnD9H7WAqNHNj97UoY_zi_xtKNZWS3qAk3b4rANrHC6vt_Nr3h7VXjCdavLxf798FTE5LD2uqeFkiJ6dQD8Dr66X8a4M1Y-vyUaQqNEeMpzpJfcE9c3lJTW7dPwK7g7KuQD273wZjCeSm5fZ5eAlN" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="740" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgr20rV8CB6UX6REa0a1Ew0pLcyh2RbojQsvd_cnD9H7WAqNHNj97UoY_zi_xtKNZWS3qAk3b4rANrHC6vt_Nr3h7VXjCdavLxf798FTE5LD2uqeFkiJ6dQD8Dr66X8a4M1Y-vyUaQqNEeMpzpJfcE9c3lJTW7dPwK7g7KuQD273wZjCeSm5fZ5eAlN=w280-h400" width="280" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2Ame1oVK5wdtCCcZmyQRTo1cNHZL4PoUnc1wj88T8ix9PJTRnT9g_5rOQS3uPjzmJxMfpwvhuxwX_9UG2T6nsz2zGjzAj94xZbMp_mzv-qHmUX4LivlQFHNME68RDPu97tDjw2rkNqrDmhCgz8msm2NoO2Cs8_bsSKV5kbqFptd7rPj5-63JNjwMc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="740" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2Ame1oVK5wdtCCcZmyQRTo1cNHZL4PoUnc1wj88T8ix9PJTRnT9g_5rOQS3uPjzmJxMfpwvhuxwX_9UG2T6nsz2zGjzAj94xZbMp_mzv-qHmUX4LivlQFHNME68RDPu97tDjw2rkNqrDmhCgz8msm2NoO2Cs8_bsSKV5kbqFptd7rPj5-63JNjwMc=w280-h400" width="280" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsqNAG-HUhTeytYeUkhxh8fqBjVxSgfz1NyUY3SB1WYyCncgvQwPMW4q7sNZc0M3MrADHO0BkPfFG2kJWRL1xoeCiXmWRuTos-Df-mbeP85CvKUNdHpnxdHOWQPrrDiEIRcTUMdjQI036jKXg2mkCa-Wo7fuwCIAUQBc1V3ZnEDxkJJFPcKd8GSh2c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="740" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsqNAG-HUhTeytYeUkhxh8fqBjVxSgfz1NyUY3SB1WYyCncgvQwPMW4q7sNZc0M3MrADHO0BkPfFG2kJWRL1xoeCiXmWRuTos-Df-mbeP85CvKUNdHpnxdHOWQPrrDiEIRcTUMdjQI036jKXg2mkCa-Wo7fuwCIAUQBc1V3ZnEDxkJJFPcKd8GSh2c=w280-h400" width="280" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlO5DGlXk-9i9ezolBcILE3vSRtmFtX-cRcUBF2bxIWaYCoBZHPh6ce5prrm5rwZ1zzJhg4FKNR6sLLUrkVooQCiOZ6V9eOg9F-2I9l1CY4EMdBRjzKznm_wjrH4tOAPC99IpfDfg2Co7-GfeV3RhAWyQNkh8REpc4XvIeh8e7hyeisa-u3sugPqpn" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="740" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlO5DGlXk-9i9ezolBcILE3vSRtmFtX-cRcUBF2bxIWaYCoBZHPh6ce5prrm5rwZ1zzJhg4FKNR6sLLUrkVooQCiOZ6V9eOg9F-2I9l1CY4EMdBRjzKznm_wjrH4tOAPC99IpfDfg2Co7-GfeV3RhAWyQNkh8REpc4XvIeh8e7hyeisa-u3sugPqpn=w280-h400" width="280" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-82447578325385712032022-02-22T09:00:00.056-08:002022-02-22T19:13:38.341-08:00Sometimes you get to work with your heroes while you write for your heroes<p>Anyone who told you "don't meet your heroes" never got to write an episode of TV with Rina Mimoun.</p><p>I'll back up a little bit. Longtime readers of this blog - assuming any of you are still out there - are probably well aware of my affection for the WB TV series EVERWOOD. I not only once <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/04/breaking-down-pilot-of-everwood.html">wrote a breakdown of the pilot</a>, I also wrote <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">a fun script called CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> that incorporated the characters of Ephram Brown and Amy Abbot in a multiversal teen drama crossover.</p><p>And then amazingly, got to see Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-is-hit.html">perform the script for a live read a little over a year ago</a>. My point is, there's little point in pretending I'm not an EVERWOOD superfan, or that the show hasn't been a major touchstone for me in my own writing.</p><p>So with that, imagine my delight when EVERWOOD writer and showrunner for seasons 3 and 4 Rina Mimoun joined the writers room of SUPERMAN & LOIS this year. I wasted no time in trying to get EVERWOOD stories out of her. And by no time I mean that I'm pretty sure the first thing I said to her was "Hi, I'm Adam and I'm a huge fan of EVERWOOD."</p><p>Flash-forward a couple months. The first four episodes are broken and episode five had yet to be assigned. Our writers were doubling up, so that meant that Rina and I were the only two left without an episode. That didn't necessarily mean we were going to be teamed and at one point it looked like each of us might fly solo on different eps.</p><p>As an aside, most of the time episodes are assigned based on seniority and availability. Indeed, you'll see that the writer breakdown this season mostly starts with the highest ranking writers on staff and works its way down. In rare cases, there might be an effort at matching a writer to their particular strength, but usually I'd caution against making assumptions about an episode that are based on what the writer has been credited on before.</p><p>For example, my name is on two of the biggest Lana episodes, but I actually didn't write any of her scenes in this week's episode at all.</p><p>To make a long story less long, I was thrilled when the assignment came down that I'd be working with Rina AND that we indeed were going to be getting "the quinceañera episode." Also, by that point, our EVERWOOD shorthand was well established so we were saying thing back and forth like, "It's like the Amy Abbott thing."</p><p>Our story break went pretty well. Most of the other writers were off on their own episodes for large parts of the break so much of it was just me, Rina and our excellent support staff. Showrunner Todd Helbing kept approving our beats along the way and eventually we were sent off to Story Area.</p><p>In the middle of this, Rina and I also reached out to Inde Navarrette, who plays Sarah. We wanted to get her perspective on what was absolutely essential to get right about our quinceañera and what elements of the celebration were likely to vary in real life. One of the notes became something we hammered again and again in our production meetings - "Make sure the tamales are authentic."</p><p>The way our show works is that we do a pretty detailed story break, send a 5-6 page Story Area (basically a synopsis of each storyline, broken into A, B, C stories) to the Studio and Network and then are sent off to script. Rina and I divided responsibilities on Story Area, which sailed through with mostly no notes and then had to decide how to divide the script.</p><p>The storyline of Sarah's quinceañera is filled with the kind of family drama that Rina is known for, BUT I also was prepared for the possibility that she might feel like she's written all that before and was more eager to dive into the superhero stuff. It turned out she was hungry for the Cushing family storyline, which was a relief to me because I did NOT want to be the guy trying to play "Piano Man" while Billy Joel was in the room.</p><p>I took the Jon and Jordan storyline and we divided the Clark/Lois A-story up by act. This worked pretty well, but while I was writing Act Two, I arrived at a concern that hadn't been evident in the story break. When Rina and I compared pages, we discovered we both had the exact same note. Still, we did the job we were sent off to do, completing the first draft according to the story break. Neither of us were shocked when Todd's assessment of that story element was the same as ours.</p><p>We rebroke the offending scenes and the second draft played much smoother. At that point, my job was done as the script rewrites become the purview of the showrunner and the upper-level writers. By the time we got to the Production Draft, it was in really good shape.</p><p>At the start of November I went to Vancouver for the shooting of my episode. After I arrived, I was told that usually they have separate cars to take the episode's director and writer from hotel to set, but for the first couple days, they needed me to double up with the director because we were tandem shooting with the previous episode. I had no problem with that.</p><p>My director was a wonderful woman named Diana Valentine. She's directed about 40 episodes of television and had worked her way up through the ranks to get there. The ice was broken immediately on our 30-minute drive to set. I mentioned she'd directed an episode of TV a friend of mine wrote and that just started a run of stories where we discovered all our various industry contacts in common.</p><p>I took my lead from Diana on set and very quickly picked up where I should be standing to be out of the way while still being available and engaged. While we waited in Video Village before our first shot, she said, "You know, I used to be Lynda Carter's photo double on WONDER WOMAN." What can you really say to that but, "Tell me more!" This was how I learned she got her start as a stuntwoman in the 70s and 80s and let me tell you, someone ABSOLUTELY needs to make a movie centered on the stuntwomen of that era because it's an underexplored topic rife with entertainment.</p><p>Also, I very much feel like we had extra superhero karma, making a Superman episode with a Wonder Woman calling the shots.</p><p>Suffice to say, by the next morning I went to our PA and told them they could just send one car to pick me and Diana up together for the rest of the shoot because we were getting on like a house on fire. It was great to start the day riding with her, and always fun doing a post-mortem on the way back.</p><p>On top of that, Diana was just a fantastic director, period. I learned quickly that she could anticipate almost any note I had and was thinking two steps ahead, always with an eye to the edit. She came prepared, knew what she wanted and - most importantly - knew how to communicate that to everyone. This was her first time on our show, but if you wandered onto our set at any point, you'd have assumed she'd worked with everyone there for years. That's a testament to her and to our crew.</p><p>I don't want to get into too many set-stories here, but I will say that the very first scene we shot for my episode had Tyler Hoechlin in full Superman regalia. That was a pretty cool moment. The day I traveled to Vancouver happened to be the anniversary of <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-its-like-when-your-dad-is-going-to.html">the day my dad died</a>. I was already thinking about him, but as I was standing there, two feet from Superman, I felt very sad I wasn't able to tell him about this moment, and that he missed it by such little time.</p><p>I also resolved not to immediately turn into a fanboy and ask for a picture with Superman. After all, I was a professional there with a job to do. Also, due to COVID protocols, I had to be masked on set, so what good would ANY picture be?</p><p>All of our cast are fantastic people, by the way. I had only met Bitsie Tulloch and Erik Valdez prior to this, as they both briefly visited the writers' office at the start of the season. Both of them were friendly, personable people. I knew Erik slightly better, with our first interaction coming via Twitter. In the early weeks of shooting season 1, he saw a tweet I posted about my dad's death and that led him to realize I worked on the same show as him. He reached out over DMs and was very kind to me during a tough time. The day after that, I got flowers and a lovely note from "The S&L Cast." I'm sure that was Erik's doing, and it shows you the kind of guy he is. By the time I saw him on set, Erik felt like an old friend.</p><p>Erik's friendliness is not an anomaly among our performers. All of them proved to be very kind people. Though I didn't get to work with Wolé Parks, I did run into him at base camp and got to tell him, "I'm the reason you're Steel!" He immediately hugged me. I probably ended up spending the most time chatting up "the boys," Alex Garfin and Jordan Elsass. Because L.A. is like Neverland, I foolishly still think I'm the 22 year-old who moved out here and not someone much older. Inevitably, hanging out with the boys would disabuse me of that delusion, such as when I referenced at teen drama character of my youth and one of them responded, "Who?"</p><p>But all of our actors were wonderful professionals who came to set prepared and often brought their own suggestions and nuances to the scene. We had a ball spending two days filming the quinceañera scenes because most of the cast was there, but there was a lot of down time between shots when they were needed. They all hung out in the green room area together and I gather that for some of them, they don't often get to work with certain other cast members. Any time I happened back there, it seemed like they just delighted in each other's company and really enjoyed having that time together.</p><p>I also have nothing but raves about the crew as well. In the writers' room, we're all very passionate about our show and our characters, but we're very much isolated from the other production workers and the actors. It was very exciting to meet everyone and see they're just as jazzed about the show as we are. It was a very enjoyable two-plus weeks on set.</p><p>Our penultimate day was spent shooting a massive fight scene involving Superman. Our stunt coordinator Rob Hayter did an amazing job with this fight. I got to speak to Rob on set during a different action scene for the episode and it was great hearing him talk about how they go about making sure every fight tells a story, and how everyone knows exactly what they should be doing. For this fight, we were in a very large space and so Rob was on the "God Mike" talking our performers through the beats and moves of the fight. It was a little like hearing a boxing commentator call a match.</p><p>And I'm talking around spoilers here, but at one point we had one actor on a throwback rig and I got to watch - LIVE - Superman punch a dude and send him flying thirty feet backwards in the air! That was a helluva thing to see, and a great thing to come near the end of the experience.</p><p>Oh yeah, and in the middle of all that... I couldn't resist any longer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhH43b4FXAOjbretNsXdXNADCKkCJ6bksLgNrqPDuexm-yELrmjcU6uJqFBHgUtMFSX_TukFlUGnwC5SSKLMh_dBP1uO2Iz9kvWJbbATWGDt5sVuUbSNqjpvhBacMZvbpLLvasizupi5OwYcwtXzgBfVS7nZTpKW8juTOTQcTJmef6nTuuv24jHwhL=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhH43b4FXAOjbretNsXdXNADCKkCJ6bksLgNrqPDuexm-yELrmjcU6uJqFBHgUtMFSX_TukFlUGnwC5SSKLMh_dBP1uO2Iz9kvWJbbATWGDt5sVuUbSNqjpvhBacMZvbpLLvasizupi5OwYcwtXzgBfVS7nZTpKW8juTOTQcTJmef6nTuuv24jHwhL=w300-h400" width="300" /></a></div><p>I had come over to Tyler during a long downtime between set-ups and said, "So... I can't come all this way and NOT get a picture with Superman." He was happy to oblige. After someone from our crew took the picture, I said, "I just realized, you can't tell I'm smiling with the mask on." They said, "Oh, you can tell!"</p><p>You might also be able to tell by the four layers I had on that it was FREEZING there.</p><p>I hope you tune in tonight and see the results of all our hard work. The entire experience of making this episode was a delight, and a collaboration with so many awesome people I'm looking forward to working with again.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-17636751366282578822022-01-21T14:06:00.002-08:002022-01-22T15:16:33.660-08:00I'm writing a SUPERMAN & LOIS comic and want your help to make it a best-seller!It was announced today on <a href="https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2022/01/21/earth-prime-brings-dcs-televsion-super-heroes-to-comics-for-an-epic-in-universe">the official DC blog</a> that I wrote a SUPERMAN & LOIS comic book with my fellow writers Jai Jamison & Andrew Wong. Even more awesome for me personally is that DC got iconic Superman artist and co-creator of the Kon-El Superboy to draw it - <b>Tom Grummett!</b><div><div><br /></div><div>I've been a fan of Tom's work for literally 30 years and he was always one of my favorite Superman artists. Nothing I say here can adequately convey the thrill that my first comic book will be drawn by him.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's coming out in April and I hope it sells well enough that DC will ask us to do more. Also, just from a purely ego standpoint, I'd love if we could make this the best-selling Superman book that comes out that month. To that end, I have a plan...</div><div><br /></div><div>Pre-orders are incredibly important because they help determine the print run and how many copies a particular shop has in stock. If you know you want to buy the comic, it would really help out if you went to your local shop and preordered it. Most stores offer a discount if you do because you're helping them out too. At my store, you get 25% off if you pre-order.<br /><br /><b>Step 1 - Go to www.comicshoplocator.com/ and find your nearest shop.<br /><br />Step 2 - Go to the store before 2/19/22 and ask them to put aside a copy of EARTH PRIME #2: SUPERMAN & LOIS for you.</b><br /><br />That's it!<br /><br /><b>On Sale: April 19th.</b><br /><br />Spread the word and thanks! The full press release is below.</div><div><br /><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>
EARTH-PRIME #2, Featuring The CW’s Superman & Lois, in Comic Book Shops and Digital Platforms April 19
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The creative minds behind The CW’s hottest DC super hero shows are bringing their talents and the characters they’ve made so popular to comic books in a can’t-miss comic book event!
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EARTH-PRIME is a three-month, six-issue event set entirely in the universe of DC’s popular super hero TV shows. All issues are part of the Warner Bros. Television show canon, approved by CW television show producers. Each of the first five issues spotlights a different CW/DC super hero show, with the sixth issue serving as a cross-over finale.
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EARTH-PRIME #1 (The CW’s Batwoman)
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Ryan Wilder, aka Batwoman, makes her costumed comic book debut in a story co-written by series writers Natalie Abrams and Kelley Larson, plus series cast member Camrus Johnson (Luke Fox/Batwing), with art by Clayton Henry.
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Ever since the tech that created many of Batman’s rogues hit the streets, Ryan Wilder has been running herself ragged trying to contain the new villains popping up around Gotham City. But when Clayface’s (making his CW debut) mud binds itself to a local high schooler, Batwoman will need help from an unexpected source to contain this muddy foe! Also, follow how Luke Fox balances his life as a super hero and a boyfriend!
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EARTH-PRIME #2 (The CW’s Superman & Lois)
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Superman & Lois series writers Adam Mallinger, Jai Jamison and Andrew Wong join DC fan-favorite artists Tom Grummett and Norm Rapmund in a story spotlighting Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s first anniversary. Trying to celebrate their marital bliss is never easy when you’re a super hero husband and news reporter wife; especially when world-saving and creating hard-hitting stories continue to spoil your plans! Plus, the true origins of the evil Superman from John Henry Irons’ world are finally revealed!
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Both issues feature cover art by Kim Jacinto and will feature photo variant covers based on each individual show. Subsequent issues will spotlight The CW television shows DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, DC’s Stargirl and The Flash, all written or co-written by creative talent from the shows. Each issue will also include bonus material created by cast members of The CW shows, as well as “teasers” that will provide clues to the nature of the final crossover in issue #6
</span><br /><br /><br /></div></div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-38353113696295085692021-07-06T12:17:00.000-07:002021-07-06T12:17:37.198-07:00Richard Donner put me on the path I'm on today and I'll be forever grateful<p>Richard Donner's SUPERMAN was the first movie I can remember falling in love with. It wasn't my introduction to Superman - Super Friends, SUPERMAN FROM THE 30s TO THE 70s, and a few stray comics had taken care of that - but it was my first experience with a living, breathing Superman who looked like he could have stepped right off the pages of the comics.</p><p>As a kid, I remember first knowing the film only in segments, as my bedtime meant I never saw the regular ABC broadcasts to completion. At first, the movie ended for me after Superman saved the helicopter. The next time, I saw all the way to just after Superman and Lois's flight together. The first time I saw the complete movie was around the time of my sixth birthday.</p><p>This seems impossible to fathom now, but my family didn't yet own a VCR. We had to rent one along with two movies that were selected to show at my party. My parents knew I wanted to see SUPERMAN but they also knew that another movie was likely to go over bigger with my friends. They agreed to let me put it to a vote - my film versus the other one.</p><p>STAR WARS won. And so it was with some slight bitterness that I experienced my first viewing of another film that would eventually become an obsession of my childhood.</p><p>Of course I finally saw SUPERMAN in full, and soon after that my family got their own VCR and I rented all of the SUPERMAN films obsessively. For some people of my generation, STAR WARS is the movie that made them want to be storytellers. For me, it was always SUPERMAN. </p><p>I began to learn what visual and special effects were by studying that film and the making of it. Donner's dedication to "verisimilitude" opened my eyes to WHY certain stories work. Around the same time I discovered reruns of the old BATMAN series, which could not have taken a more different approach to how it adapted a beloved comic book character. Where that show played up how absurd Batman and his villains were within their world, Donner's movie was reverent. It somehow gave us a Superman who was true to his comic depiction and set him in an approximation of the real world.</p><p>Richard Donner showed us that you could make a good, optimistic Superman without compromising the character or the world he was set in. The post-Watergate era was a cynical one, and Donner ran right at that. He showed us that while the world was becoming more jaded, Superman's continued purity in the face of that made him an even more aspirational hero than ever.</p><p>That's one of those great things you learn about writing Superman. You don't "update" him so much as you change the world around him and much of your conflict comes out of his reaction to that. For instance, KINGDOM COME is a wonderful story about how the world seems to pass Superman's values behind and then when he returns, it's more apparent than ever that his brand of heroism is necessary.</p><p>Donner's Superman is the North Star for many Superman writers across multiple generations. Obviously, a lot of that comes from Christopher Reeve's iconic performance, which I paid tribute to long ago <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2009/10/friday-free-for-all-christopher-reeve.html">here</a>. And much of the power of that film's script comes from Donner's brilliant collaborator, Tom Mankiewicz, honored <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2010/08/tom-mankiewicz-1942-2010.html">here</a>. But it was Dick Donner who was the conductor of it all, the steward of that vision. The theatrical cut of SUPERMAN II (a patchwork of production by Donner and his replacement Richard Lester) and especially SUPERMAN III make it clear how much was lost when Donner's voice was out of the conversation.</p><p>Without Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN, there would be no modern superhero films as we know them. Every successful superhero franchise since has built on his work. It was the CITIZEN KANE of comic book adaptations. He was as much a legend as the character he curated.</p><p>Earlier this year I showed my five year old son Donner’s SUPERMAN. I was worried that after SPIDER-VERSE and LEGO BATMAN he’d find it slow and boring. He was enthralled the entire time, barely even asking questions (usually the more questions, the less interested he is.) 43 years after release, it hasn't lost its magic.</p><p>Something I had suspected but didn't realize until yesterday was that Donner's SUPERMAN is the most commercially successful film adaptation of the character. Per <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/superman-inside-story-director-richard-879894/">this THR article</a>, in 2016 dollars, the film made $1.09 billion. That makes it not only the most successful film to feature Superman, but more successful than any DCEU film except for AQUAMAN. That's rarified air up there with the last two Nolan Batman films.</p><p>Richard Donner’s Superman obviously was massively influential on SUPERMAN & LOIS and an inspiration to those who make it. Our Superman is drawn from a lot of eras, but I think it's fair to say that our Superman compass very often points to Donner's vision.</p><p>Dick Donner made me a Superman fan, a filmmaker and a storyteller. He's as much responsible for where I am today as anyone. And that's why it was especially sad to get the news the same week I'm about to walk into the SUPERMAN & LOIS room as a full Staff Writer.</p><p>Yes, I'm burying the lede. I almost made that announcement its own post, but it seemed fitting to say that here. You can draw a straight line from Richard Donner's work to where I am today, the path I've been on most of my life, and it is so bittersweet to have this personal achievement in tandem with his passing.</p><p>91 years is a long time to be on this planet, but that doesn't make it any less sad to lose him. I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him and my condolences to everyone who was blessed enough to know him and love him in life.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-40377542860623549582021-06-16T08:00:00.001-07:002021-06-16T08:00:00.256-07:00How my first episode of SUPERMAN & LOIS came together and reflected an emotional year<p> "How would you like to write episode 10?"</p><p>That was the way Todd Helbing, my showrunner, told me I was getting to write the next episode of SUPERMAN & LOIS. It was the last week of August and when Todd called me at home, I was in the shower and missed the call. The voicemail he'd left was an ambiguous "Call me back when you can. I'm about to go into a meeting." After cursing myself for missing the call, I returned... and got voicemail. The interval between then and Todd calling me back had given me time to ponder... every other writer had been assigned an ep... was he calling to offer me an episode?</p><p>Having correctly forecast what the call was about in no way diminished my excitement. "Yeah, you know... I, uh, think I could squeeze it in. If you don't have anyone else," I seem to recall saying before going on to thanking him profusely. As with many moments in my life, I recall the meta-reaction of "Remember this moment" right alongside the rush of "Holy shit. My name's going to be on a Superman story!"</p><p>The day before, we'd batted around some ideas for 110 just to see what might fly. At that point, 109 was going to end with Edge's compound destroyed and some of the media insinuating Superman was responsible. It was in the air that 110 might deal with some of the public turning against Superman and part of that idea would also be ratcheting up the tension between Superman and the military, to the point that they might unveil a new super-operative who also becomes a media rival for Superman.</p><p>I was into this idea. I even had a fresh spin on the old chestnut of "the world wonders if it can trust its hero." We didn't need the entire population to turn against Superman, as if they were easily swayed residents of Springfield. All we'd need is 30% or so to embrace that and show how much damage Edge could do by manipulating that small portion of the population.</p><p>In my zeal, I spent the weekend sketching out several acts worth of story for these concepts and sent them to Todd. It was more information than Todd was expecting from me, though I wasn't the first first-timer to get so carried away by his enthusiasm that season. Todd politely told me I could pump the breaks a little. He wasn't quite feeling this story, but at this point, it was the start of September and since we wouldn't start shooting the first episode of the series for well over a month, we were massively ahead. </p><p>Todd basically said he didn't know if this was the right story, but we had time, so give it a few days in the room to see where it goes. We fleshed it out and pitched it to Todd a few days later. Alas, our efforts failed to move the needle. Todd told us to move on to something else. At that point, I couldn't really complain, even though I was very into the idea.</p><p>An important thing to understand about a writers room is that it's not a democracy. To borrow a phrase I learned from my friend Javi Grillo-Marxauch, "you serve at the pleasure of the showrunner." Todd had given me days to flesh out my idea so I could present him the most polished version of it. That was more than fair. When you're in that situation and the showrunner says "no," it's like the Supreme Court ruling. It's settled law - move on.</p><p>We tried a second idea, dubbed in the room "The Frost/Nixon episode." It fared little better than the first pitch.</p><p>For the third go-round, we shifted focus. Episode 108 had ended with Morgan Edge using his mole to take possession of Project 7734, the military's cache of anti-Superman weapons. What if this was the episode where Edge used them on Superman? The brainstorming started with the premise that Superman and Lane could be hunting Edge's mole Rosetti after Rosetti took 7734. Rosetti somehow could get the drop on them and use the kryptonite on Superman.</p><p>At that point someone had the idea, "What if Superman gets hit with Kryptonite and it transfers to Jordan somehow? Being in proximity to Jordan poisons him with residual Kryptonite radiation. Superman takes Jordan to the cabin to help him recover. It’s a story about a father taking care of his sick son." (This is what it says in the notes, verbatim.)</p><p>THAT was when we knew we had gold. In eighty years of Superman history there have been hundreds of stories of him dealing with Kryptonite traps, and hundreds more about him losing his powers. In terms of incident, it's unlikely you're going to come up with something that hasn't been done before. The challenge becomes, what makes "Superman loses his power" into a uniquely SUPERMAN & LOIS story? Answer: have it threaten one of the kids.</p><p>The very next idea we had was to make this the ep where the Kent farm comes under siege by Edge's goons. The first version we batted around had Lois, Jon and General Lane defending the farm on their own while Superman stayed with Jordan. As this developed further, Clark and Jordan would be at the farm when the siege happens, with Clark having to don his Superman outfit and take on a couple Subjekts mostly powerless, showing that he's learned a thing or two about fighting depowered in the nearly 20 years he's been Superman.</p><p>If you watch the show this season, this is about the point where you're saying, "Uh, Adam? You're confused. This is the plot of episode 109." You're not wrong, but that story didn't originate in 109. As for how it ended up there, I'll get there in a minute.</p><p>We spent a little over a week refining this pitch. Todd was in and out of the room and for much of this, when he'd pop in, it fell to Co-EP Mike Narducci to summarize our progress. Todd would give his notes and we'd incorporate them as we developed the story further.</p><p>That same afternoon, we hit on the major emotional runner. Lois's father was running this "Kill Superman" project for the military behind his family's back. Lois and General Lane have had a strained relationship most of Lois's life, but especially in the twenty years since she became a reporter. When something her dad did threatens Jordan's life and he doesn't even have a cure, that's when she's hit her redline. Twenty years of putting up with her father's bullshit finally gets to her and she tells him that their relationship can't come back from this - not when his mistrust has made her son deathly ill.</p><p>At the time we were breaking this, I was in the middle of a conflict with my own father, so all of that went into how I was writing Lois's POV. I was pretty assertive about no matter how pissed and emotional Lois is, that shouldn't be a reason to dismiss the points she makes. Her emotion is justified by the circumstances, not something that should be used to minimize how it pushes her to react.</p><p>There's an easy out here where you could say, "Well, Lois is just too mad to think about this objectively." It was important to me to not dismiss her argument just because she was emotional. She earned that emotion. It's based in history and experience. To say she should take emotion out of that would be ridiculous.</p><p>At one point, we were going to see a little more of General Lane's perspective, just to understand what led him here. Here's a teaching moment for all you aspiring staff writers - I wrote to Todd just to let him know I was concerned that telling too much of the story from Lane's side might leave the impression that we were putting our thumb on the scale for him. I didn't want the takeaway to be that the episode was on Lane's side and Lois just needed to come around to the "right" answer.</p><p>Todd could have said to me "Look, this is the episode you've been sent off to write, just do it." Instead, he did something really smart and said that if I felt this passionate about Lois's perspective, then there was no way that the episode could undercut her because the way I'd write her was guaranteed to make the case for how justified her feelings were. That was going to withstand anything that came out of scenes from her father's perspective.</p><p>In a way, he made me realize I was inadvertently arguing that the only way I could make Lois's case is if it went unchallenged. Todd was right - I should be more focused on depicting Lois's stance so powerfully that it can withstand ANY challenge.</p><p>Eventually came the moment when I had to pitch the episode board to Todd. I did a conscious imitation of my friend Javi, who tends to infuse his episode pitches with some humor, high energy, and engaging with the room. Some people go more sedate, merely reciting the action scene by scene. I try to keep the emotion up during scenes. If you're talking about a scene where Lois tells her father she never wants to see him again, bring some of that intensity to the description.</p><p>Anyway, the pitch went over big and at that point I got sent off to Story Area. Once that got through the network/studio approval levels, I was sent off to write the outline. When you're writing on a show, the way it works is you write your Story Area or Outline, then turn it into the showrunner. From there, they rewrite it and turn it into the studio and network. Your showrunner's rewrites might alter the outline drastically before it's turned in, so you want to always be tracking what's changed and why.</p><p>My recollection is that more than 50% of my outline changed, though the story didn't substantially get altered. Once that was approved, I was sent off to script.</p><p>Our outlines are about 20 pages long... which is pretty long. My job is to take those twenty pages and turn them into a 50-53 page script. The trick to this is that outlines of scenes can sometimes go as deep as "Lois says X and then Clark says Y." It might look easy - surely all you have to do is rewrite everything in Final Draft form? That's the wrong angle to take. The goal is to preserve the thrust and intent of the scene, but bring in your own voice and scene work. Make the scene your own while still accomplishing everything the outline shows.</p><p>Easy, right?</p><p>This process took a little longer than normal because I was sent to Story Area before we'd even started shooting the first episode and then I was writing the outline during production of our first couple episodes, while Todd's attention was focused on launching the show. What this means is that my outline didn't actually get turned in until about two and a half months after my story break was approved.</p><p>I was sent to script just after the New Year. About two weeks later, I had a draft ready to turn in.</p><p>Right about then was when all of the earlier episodes were being rewritten for production. Keep in mind, the first nine scripts or so were all written before we saw a complete episode, before we had a real understanding of what production during COVID was like and how much of a typical script was needed to be cut in order to fit into our timeslot.</p><p>Once Todd and the other upper level writers saw a couple finished episodes, they began adjusting the subsequent scripts for production. In the process, some plot points got affected. Most notably is the fact that we had kept the Cushings mostly out of the genre side of the show early on, reasoning they needed to stay grounded. </p><p>The B-story of my episode took place just after Edge hired Lana. Lois tries to warn her away from the job, Lana doesn't listen. She goes to Edge's corporate offices and is given a physical, during which she realizes something strange is going on. She tries to escape, gets caught and becomes the latest person to be possessed by a Kryptonian.</p><p>If you've watched this season, you know that the rewrites moved up Lana's awareness quite a bit. We now have her in episode 106 agreeing to be Lois's eyes and ears inside Edge's company after she takes the job. (As soon as that rewrite came out, I thought, "Well there goes a third of my episode.")</p><p>The A-stories of the season were mostly unaffected up through episode 108. Lana's family had been siloed enough off from the A-stories that the ripple effect of that change fortunately was not a massive seismic shift right away. Still, with each episode, a few things got reshaped SLIGHTLY differently and the ripple effect grew.</p><p>The original version of 108 built to Rosetti revealing himself as a mole, kidnapping John Henry Irons out of the DOD and delivering him to Edge. Edge was going to interrogate him and then try to turn him into one of his Subjekts. Superman, Lois and Lane would track Edge's Subjekts to their location, fight, and rescue John Henry, who would be left in a coma for a few episodes, following his near transformation. After that, they'd discover while Superman and team were occupied against Edge, other Subjekts raided the DOD for 7734 weapons.</p><p>It was a cool idea, but it was big. To make 108 more producible, it was rewritten so that the action sequence would be contained within the DOD. So how do we accomplish that? How about Rosetti exposes Superman to some anti-Superman measures that weaken his powers? And then Superman has to save John Henry at great risk to himself, even knowing that John Henry might turn on him.</p><p>Honestly, I think the rewrite plays out more powerfully that our original notion. But in moving the kryptonite weapon from 110 to 108, it pretty much ensured that 110 could no longer exist in the form I wrote.</p><p>As you've seen, 108 sets up Superman to lose his powers and then pass the virus to Jordan in 109. Several elements of my story moved up from 110 to 109, though many aspects of the story were altered, meaning it couldn't be a simple cut-and-paste from my draft into the new 109.</p><p>And so we arrive at 110, with everything that once was in there now absorbed into earlier episodes or eliminated entirely. That meant an entirely new story had to be crafted. One notion we had originally earmarked for later episodes was that Edge would possess Lana with Lara, his and Superman's mother. She was the scientist who developed the resurrection process, and though he tries to manipulate her into supporting him, she eventually would turn on him.</p><p>I think the notion of this being the episode where Superman frees all of Edge's Subjekts came first. We were pretty sure no one would see that coming with this many episodes to go, the assumption being they'd be built up for a massive battle in the finale. From there it was a short hop to realizing the way to accomplish this would be to resurrect Lara via Lana.</p><p>Most of the break was me, Mike Narducci and Kristi Korzec going act by act and figuring out the story, with Todd popping in and out to either approve or to redirect us. We broke the first three acts, then Mike, Kristi and I each went off to write an act individually, regrouped, broke the NEXT three acts, and then did pages for those acts, stitching it all together for Todd's approval.</p><p>This process once had a very politically incorrect name, but we now call it a "Voltron."</p><p>There's a certain irony about the process of this episode. When we broke the first version of 110, I was in the middle of a fight with my father and channeled a lot of that into Lois's conflict with General Lane. As many of you may know, after that story was approved by studio and network, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-its-like-when-your-dad-is-going-to.html">my father died of COVID</a>. When this new version of 110 was being developed, it now was a story about a son who resurrects a dead parent for one more day with them.</p><p>Is it coincidence that my story emotionally resonated with what was going on in my life, or was I deliberately working out my issues via the script? The answer... is yes.</p><p>Mike and Kristi were very accommodating in letting me write the acts that leaned on the emotion of Clark getting to know his dead mother. I thought about Dad a lot as I wrote those scenes. Sadly, two of my favorite moments didn't survive into the episode you saw.</p><p>In our first draft, we'd contrived a reason for Lara to need some Kryptonian components from Clark's pod. It justified getting her to see the farm where he grew up and also facilitated an emotional moment when she sees the pod that she designed to take Clark from Krypton to Earth. It was a really nice scene, but it had to go in the rewrite when taking that detour just drained too much urgency from the stakes of the episode.</p><p>The other moment I really missed was a concluding beat with Lois and Clark visiting the graves of Jonathan and Martha Kent. Clark had a moment where he said he hoped somehow they knew what happened today and how proud Lara was of the man they'd helped him become. Clark said that they deserved to be here today for that moment, to know they'd done their jobs right. It was me talking to my Dad through Clark's words. Maybe a little too on the nose, I grant you. Alas, the more we started understanding the handoff between 110 and 111, the more clear it became that there's no way Clark would have time for a cemetery visit in the coda.</p><p>Even though I wasn't able to pay tribute to Dad through Clark, he was there in spirit.</p><p>Dad bought me my first Superman comic book. He let me drag him to local comic conventions three times a year when I was growing up. He was so exposed to the comic world through me that when an episode of LAW & ORDER used the name of Superman artist John Byrne for a victim, Dad immediately recognized the person writing it (who turned out to be ARROW co-creator Marc Guggenheim) was probably a comic book fan. </p><p>It is a mark of how terribly unfair life is that Dad could not be here this week to see the credit "Written by Adam Mallinger" on a Superman story. But he will always be a part of this episode as far as I'm concerned.</p><p>Thank you Todd Helbing for this episode. Thank you Greg Berlanti for championing me for the Writers Assistant position. Thank you to the entire writing staff for your incredible support through the writing of this episode, especially Mike and Kristi for including me in the rewrites, and Max for taking notes so that I wouldn't have to. Thank you to the cast who gave such great performances, to the crew who really made this episode look great, and to Harry Jierjian, who directed the hell out of it.</p><p>I think a lot about that phone call from Todd in late August, and how very grateful I am that he gave me 110 instead of, say, 114, which would have been assigned well after Dad died. He didn't get to see it, but he at least knew I was getting it. It's not everything I would have wanted this moment to be, but it's enough.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-9878341365885661882021-06-02T22:12:00.002-07:002021-06-03T13:21:52.247-07:00Inside that big Steel reveal on SUPERMAN & LOISMost of you know I've spent the last year-plus as the writers' assistant on season 1 of SUPERMAN & LOIS. Last week, our seventh episode "Man of Steel," was built around a reveal that I've spent over a year terrified would leak early - that the man addressed by his armor as "Captain Luthor" was actually John Henry Irons from another Earth.<div><br /></div><div>Superman fans will recognize John Henry Irons as the hero who becomes Steel, first introduced as a replacement Superman back in the REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN story in 1993. Thus far, the character's only live action appearance has been in the 1997 Shaquille O'Neal movie STEEL, but he's long been a fan favorite in the comics. His arrival on the show was a big deal. Just check out some of these reaction videos (conveniently queued up to the moment just before the big reveals.):</div><div><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I8tFmsF318s?start=590" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dokrzBMnRe8?start=484" title="YouTube video player" width="420"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I was extra giddy to see these reactions and to watch our fans on Twitter completely lose their minds for the twist during the East Coast feed. The reason for that is... <b>revealing "Luthor" as Steel was MY pitch.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A little SUPERMAN & LOIS behind the scenes. When we first met as a room in late February 2020, I walked in with a list of about 15 characters I hoped we could use. I've spoken many times before about <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2012/08/breaking-up-with-superman-and-comics-in.html">being a Superman fan</a> and even more specifically, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2012/09/breaking-up-with-superman-and-comics-in.html">a fan of the REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN</a>, so it's probably not a surprise that I came in hoping to introduce elements from the Post-Crisis comics I devoured as a kid.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I saw the deck of characters already approved for us to pull from, three of my biggest hopes were on there. I remember staff writer Jai Jamison got VERY excited when he saw Steel was on the list of people we could use, if so inclined. I remember thinking, "If I don't get a good Steel pitch in soon, this guy's gonna get there first!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Early on, the room was tasked with figuring out the backstory and motivations of the character known in the pilot as The Stranger. His dialogue suggested a knowledge of the multiverse and likely some kind of connection to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. His armor also addressed him as Captain Luthor, but beyond that, nothing was set in stone. We brainstormed a number of pitches and motivations, but nothing really seemed to stick. I tossed out the idea that, "What if he's a Luthor from a world where Superman is evil and Luthor is the only hero?"</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're a comic book fan, you'll recognize that as a premise that originated in storylines from the mid-60s, where the JLA explored <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-Three">Earth-3</a>, a world where all their counterparts were evil. This shift to making "Captain Luthor" less of a villain and more of an antagonist or an anti-hero seemed to open up a lot of doors and the staff latched onto this idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>I do not remember if I also pitched the fact that that Earth's version of Luthor was married to Lois Lane. I have a vague sense that once we started discussing alt-universal possibilities, someone else came up with that independently. With this backstory being developed, we set out to do some broad sketches of the first several episodes and start to fill in how we'd use all of the characters.</div><div><br /></div><div>For about six weeks or so, the Stranger really was Alex Luthor, a good Luthor on an Earth with an evil Superman. The more we filled out how we were gonna use this guy, and how he was going to interact with Lois, the more it became clear that while he presented as an antagonist, he had a very empathetic, honorable storyline, and that his trajectory was more akin to an eventual ally than a recurring foe.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then it hit me. On April 10, 2020, I sent our Co-EP Brent Fletcher my pitch, wanting to test the waters with him before going to our showrunner Todd Helbing with an idea that could upend what we'd been talking about. I proposed we reveal Alex Luthor was actually Steel. Brent got back to me almost immediately. He loved it. He told me either he'd tee me up to pitch it to Todd, or if he saw an opening, he'd pitch it to Todd himself and credit me. </div><div><br /></div><div>The latter scenario ended up being how it played out. A couple days later, Todd came into the writers' Zoom room and said, "I think it's fucking awesome. We're gonna do it!"</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point in the season, we were still breaking the third episode and the script for the second episode had yet to be written. With a big reveal like this, it's not uncommon for the creators to be asked, "When did you know? When did you decide?" So just to be clear about this: <b>every script after the pilot was written with the knowledge that the Stranger was actually another world's John Henry Irons.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>My understanding is that Todd Helbing eventually let our Stranger actor, Wolé Parks, in on the secret in June 2020. We didn't start filming until October 2020, so Wolé had plenty of time to prepare. I'm not aware of if any of the main cast knew before they received the script to 107, so I can't speak to their reactions.</div><div><br /></div><div>So when I say we had to keep this secret a long time, I mean w<i>e had to keep this secret a LONG time</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Amazingly, aside from the occasional odd guess here and there, it remained a completely hidden twist until last week. Writing TV for the online age comes with a lot of hazards. Between Twitter, Reddit and other places for fans to congregate, writers now have to outsmart an entire collective. It often feels like if one person figures out a secret, the entire group mind now knows it. I'm delighted we were able to blindside a ton of the audience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another great joy of this was that once we settled on the Steel reveal, Jai Jamison lobbied hard to get the big John Henry Irons episode. In an <a href="https://ew.com/tv/superman-lois-wole-parks-john-henry-irons-steel/?fbclid=IwAR3jEmDlb4YgOr-bxZrHHHoyWNvJ481CWS2jylplUvo5zYDyUfqZ3qiOz9I">Entertainment Weekly interview</a>, Jai recalled, "I just got so excited. Todd will tell you, I spent so much time thinking about John Henry's Earth and background. I came in one day and was like, 'and then all this happened and then this happened, and then this.' And we're not going to see any of it, but…"</div><div><br /></div><div>Todd interjected, "It's funny because Jai came in one day [after] emailing me [with] just a machine gun of ideas. And I was like, 'Dude, don't take this the wrong way, just pump the brakes a second. We got to slow down just a second. I haven't had this many ideas thrown…' No, but it was awesome, because you want the staff, everybody, to be that enthusiastic about it. So it was fantastic."</div><div><br /></div><div>I have deeply enjoyed working with the staff this season and that interview, as well as every other interview surrounding it, demonstrates the caliber of people I'm working with. Just look at this exchange in full:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start with you, Todd. How early in the development process did you know the Stranger would actually be John Henry Irons?</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">TODD HELBING: It was a little bit of a problem. We knew from day one that we just didn't want to do a classic villain. We wanted to do something cool with Luthor. And then it was pretty early on where it was pitched by our writers' assistant, Adam Mallinger, that we should make him Steel. I mean, that was really early on. And I can't remember when I called you, Wolé. That was in like June or something, right?</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">WOLÉ PARKS: Yeah, it was like June or July. Or something like that.</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">HELBING: But it was just one of those pitches where you're like, "Oh my God, this just takes it to a different level! And then we can do Nat, and we can just expand this family." And it was just one thing after the other. And then the story got so much richer and deeper.</span></div></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SuZe_Doshx8/YLhgN3Uu7WI/AAAAAAAAAsA/X20WkNHytuQ--_NByaavgjrj93SqiIUWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s827/Todd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="827" height="293" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SuZe_Doshx8/YLhgN3Uu7WI/AAAAAAAAAsA/X20WkNHytuQ--_NByaavgjrj93SqiIUWgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h293/Todd.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>In all my years of reading about TV, I can't think of too many instances where a showrunner went out of his way to credit an idea to a writers' assistant - BY NAME - in a national publication. To say I was incredibly touched that Todd did so doesn't begin to convey my gratitude.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jai also dropped my name in virtually every interview he did about his episode. Those are the kind of stand-up people I've been working with and hope to continue to work with for a very long time. I didn't expect them to go the extra mile and it was even more rewarding as a result.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are some rooms where the writers assistants aren't even allowed to contribute, so to be in a room where I was encouraged to speak up, heard when I pitched a good idea, and then singled out as the person who had the initial pitch is incredibly rare. It was a highlight of this year, and probably will remain a highlight of my career.</div><div><br /></div><div>The entire staff had their hands in the Steel storyline and in each episode. It was a delight to work with them and a real thrill to make a contribution to screen Superman canon.</div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-4922884048653284662021-01-19T20:57:00.001-08:002021-01-19T20:57:34.845-08:00I'm a guest on the GEEK HISTORY LESSON podcast!<p>Another podcast appearance (I'm really enjoying these), this time with Jason Inman and Ashley V. Robinson on Geek History Lesson. We're talking about the greatest Superman stories ever. If you ever wondered what my Top 5 Superman Stories are, wonder no more.</p><p>You can access the podcast at any of these locations:</p><p><a href="https://geekhistorylesson.libsyn.com/351-best-superman-stories-w-adam-mallinger-bitter-script-reader">Direct Post</a></p><p><a href="https://apple.co/2PnOQEH">Apple</a></p><p><a href="https://spoti.fi/35A3L6E">Spotify</a></p><p>This was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy it!</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-42800405814524931892020-12-25T13:31:00.001-08:002020-12-25T13:31:11.854-08:00CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS is back for a return engagement until Jan 8!<p>Did you miss <a href="https://houseseats.live/product/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-2/">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> the first time it was released? Did you buy tickets and forget to watch? Did you love it and want to see it again?</p><p>Well, as a Christmas gift to you, we are making CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS available again until January 8th. For only $5 you can watch, though if you're motivated to donate more, you certainly can give more if you want because the proceeds go to two worthy causes.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tGMBqIc0IvQ/X-ZZ5fs-dBI/AAAAAAAAApQ/VBkN1NdTDTMtrBWMNhc6Y051CIFtygU7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Crisis%2Bkey%2Bart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1246" data-original-width="2048" height="244" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tGMBqIc0IvQ/X-ZZ5fs-dBI/AAAAAAAAApQ/VBkN1NdTDTMtrBWMNhc6Y051CIFtygU7gCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h244/Crisis%2Bkey%2Bart.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br />And if you bought tickets for the first airing, those tickets still work at no additional charge! It's like rewatching for free!</p><p><b>1) <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app20122a?idb=386908453&DONATION_LEVEL_ID_SELECTED=1&df_id=3399&mfc_pref=T&3399.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=BED2FB9B53F58B7232EAA6671BD279D6&idb=0">The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund</a></b> - This has been established by the Actors Fund to benefit L.A. based support staffers affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns. I'm a Writers' Assistant on SUPERMAN & LOIS, and I'm very fortunate to have a job right now. Many of my peers aren't as fortunate and I really want to help them out with this show. Please give generously. You'll be helping a lot of future TV writers stay in the game.</p><p><b>2) <a href="https://www.heirsproperty.org/">The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation</a></b> - This is a non-profit that does legal work to protect the land rightfully owned by the descendants of former slaves as well as ecologic and economic work to sustain those properties and their communities. Basically, they help underserved families protect land that the government or rich white people want to take from them and exploit.</p><p><b><a href="https://houseseats.live/product/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-2/">Click HERE to get your tickets!</a></b></p><p><b><u>Related links:</u></b></p><p>Download the script <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/si3lo41o2zv55e2/Crisis_on_Infinite_Teen_Dramas.pdf/file">here</a>. </p><p>Then, for an EXHAUSTIVE list of annotations that list every reference, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">here</a>. </p><p>Links to interviews that I've done about CRISIS can be found <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-couple-crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">here</a>. </p><p>For a roundup of the reactions to the first airing, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-is-hit.html">here</a>.</p><p>And for a little history about how this came together, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/how-greg-berlanti-helped-make-crisis-on.html">here</a>. </p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A Crisis is erasing the world of the Teen Drama multiverse and the only thing that can save it is an all-star cast of teen archetypes assembled by Kevin Arnold and Dawson Leery! The worlds of VERONICA MARS, EVERWOOD, RIVERDALE, ONE TREE HILL, GILMORE GIRLS and 13 REASONS WHY are just a few that collide in this meeting of the angstiest, sexiest and fastest talking teens in TV history.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And in a special treat, this dream team includes Ephram Brown and Amy Abbott from EVERWOOD - played by their original performers: Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp! Yes, it's an EVERWOOD reunion, and that's not the end of the surprises here!</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">From producers Greg Berlanti (Dawson’s Creek; Everwood; The Flash; Riverdale, and many more) and Ben Blacker (Thrilling Adventure Hour; Dead Pilots Society) and writer Adam Mallinger comes a tribute to the classic WB teen dramas of yesterday and an affectionate parody of the CW superhero shows of today.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Starring</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Gregory Smith (ROOKIE BLUE) as Ephram Brown</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Emily VanCamp (THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER) as Amy Abbott</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Melissa Fumero (BROOKLYN NINE-NINE) as Lorelei Gilmore</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Isabella Gomez (ONE DAY AT A TIME) as Rory Gilmore and Brooke Davis</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Emmy Raver-Lampman (UMBRELLA ACADEMY) as Veronica Mars</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Vella Lovell (CRAZY EX- GIRLFRIEND) as Veronica Lodge</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Nick Wechsler (REVENGE) as Archie Andrews and Lucas Scott</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Matt Lauria (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) as Dawson Leery</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Anjelica Fellini (TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS) as Hannah Baker</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mark Gagliardi (BLOOD & TREASURE) as Kevin Arnold</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Caroline Ward (HOST) as Peyton Sawyer</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Jaime Moyer (A.P. BIO) as Sue Sylvester</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Lindsey Blackwell (DAVID MAKES MAN) as Young Veronica Mars</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Autumn Reeser (THE O.C.) as Taylor Townsend</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And Greg Berlanti as The Flash</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-35571482670675392612020-12-21T10:18:00.003-08:002021-03-10T01:41:41.947-08:002020 seemed to give me everything I wanted... and then it took my Dad<p>As 2020 winds down, I'm left with the realization that it's a year I'm always gonna remember as "the year I lost my dad." Considering how much has happened this year, it's sobering that that is what leaves a mark.</p><p>From the time Donald Trump, truly one of the worst Americans alive and easily the worst American president ever, had been elected, I'd spent practically every day counting down to Election Day 2020. In a truly dark turn of events, that day, November 3, 2020, was the first day in 73 years that my father was not on this Earth, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-its-like-when-your-dad-is-going-to.html">having died the previous morning</a>.</p><p>I started the year with so much optimism. Just two weeks in, SUPERMAN & LOIS had been picked up and thanks to prior encounters with Greg Berlanti, I had a meeting with Todd Helbing, the showrunner. Having been up for a Berlanti show the prior season, I knew that nothing was in the bag, so I went in as prepared as possible and managed to walk out with the job.</p><p><i>Holy shit! I'm was going to be working on a Superman show! Produced by Greg Berlanti!</i> It was pretty much everything I wanted from the time I first came out here. When I finally met the staff, they proved to be a great bunch of people and for a month, it was a dream job. As writers' assistant, I was spending my entire day in a room with people talking about Superman, and I got to contribute quite a bit too.</p><p>Then, about a month into the room, the whole world changed. Due to a complete failure on the part of the Trump Administration to contain COVID-19, the pandemic broke out. The room moved to Zoom, and here again, I have to commend the staff I was working with. Working on Zoom is draining in a way that working in a normal room isn't, but I think we adapted about as well as any team could have.</p><p>I think it helped that as a collective, this might be the best writing staff I've been lucky enough to work with. In other rooms, I've watched as animosity brewed between some specific writers, to the point that it was obvious everyone in the room was noticing it too as it led to daily clashes between those two. I've witnessed one writer push another writer so far that the second writer simply walked out of the room at 11:30am, drove home, and didn't return until the next day. I've seen writers not intuit after months in a room which pitches aren't anywhere near viable, or be able to adapt their style when it's clear their personality isn't getting results.</p><p>We didn't really have that on our show. It was a great bunch of writers who all seemed to feel that the best part of our day was getting together and talking story. Most days, you could feel the excitement even across Zoom. I'm not exaggerating when I say that working on SUPERMAN & LOIS kept me sane this year, and helped me through what otherwise would have been an extremely difficult several months where I was isolating with only my wife and son.</p><p>At one point, we took a brief hiatus, and so, with nothing else to do, I found myself writing <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-full-script-for-crisis-on-infinite.html">the teen drama mega-crossover I was born to do: CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a>. I've told that story here, so I won't retread most of that ground again. But as you know, I was as shocked as anyone when - at a point when only four pages of this script existed - Ben Blacker contacted me and told me he wanted to do the Zoom live read of the script. Then, once the script was done and <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/how-greg-berlanti-helped-make-crisis-on.html">I showed it to Greg Berlanti, Greg generously offered to help us with casting</a>. This is how we got Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp to reprise their roles and make it sort of an EVERWOOD reunion.</p><p>As I returned to the show, the summer found me focusing my attention on either SUPERMAN & LOIS, or the production of the live read. Both were welcome distractions and as our amazing cast came together, it was clear that we had something special. At the same time, it was the end of the summer when Todd Helbing called me with a question, "How would you like to write the next episode?"</p><p>I found myself breaking my episode as the last pieces of the live read were falling into place. That all but confirmed to me that it was time for something that had been long delayed - I was going to remove the anonymity from The Bitter Script Reader. And so, once we had filmed and edited the Zoom live read and announced a release date, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-will-be.html">I made that reveal as part of the announcement</a>... on October 11, 2020.</p><p>Mere hours after I made that announcement, my mother texted me with news. My father had symptoms that appeared to be COVID and had gone for a test. 24 hours later, while I was in the Zoom Room, I got another text from my father: "I tested positive for COVID."</p><p>Late that night, I got a call from my mother. Dad had collapsed and hit his head, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. The next day, Tuesday, October 13, he was admitted to the hospital and was being given oxygen to get his blood-ox up. I spoke to him on the phone that day, immediately surprised that he sounded normal. I expected his voice to be weak, or for him to be coughing heavily, or at least sound winded. He didn't. I allowed myself to believe that this was a relatively minor case of COVID, especially when he was released that Thursday.</p><p>Friday night, October 16, he was back in the hospital after his blood-ox remained low. He would not leave again.</p><p>I spoke to him on the phone the next couple of days. Dad told me he was looking forward to my live read. He hadn't watched most of those teen shows, but he knew it was a big deal for me. He was impressed to see it all come together. In what turned out to be one of our last conversations, he said, "I'm most excited to see Greg Berlanti as The Flash."</p><p>I always took that to mean he was very impressed that I was doing something that someone as accomplished as Greg wanted to be a part of. And I think he was very excited for me that I was working with one of my professional idols.</p><p>In that same conversation, I told him that I'd just been on the notes call for my episode story area and that everyone raved about it. I read him the non-spoilery parts of the pre-meeting email, which was "We. Loved. This. Episode." He was so happy for me. I told him that I'd been working on my episode's paperwork, which included applying to the WGA. He asked what that meant. I told him it meant I was a writer. I'd be joining the union, card and everything.</p><p>But there became concern that he was talking too much and it was affecting his blood ox, so on Tuesday, October 20, they told me "no voice calls." The last conversation I would ever have with him was the day before that. I didn't realize for a few days that he had been allowed to keep his cell phone and was receiving texts, but once I did, I sent him a few pics of my son and we had a brief chat that Sunday, October 25. We texted again on Monday, October 26.</p><p>I woke up on Tuesday, October 27 to the news he'd been intubated and sedated. </p><p>This was three days before my live read premiered. The one he'd been so excited for.</p><p>The rest of the week was a series of updates as to his condition, communicated in the forms or numbers and levels and benchmarks that aren't worth recapping. There's be improvement in one area, and then something else would go south. They'd address developing blood clots by using thinners, and then the thinners would cause trouble elsewhere in his body. So they would address that, and the distress then cascaded elsewhere.</p><p>What this leads to is a FaceTime call with my unconscious father on Saturday, October 31. He'd had a bad morning, but seemed to be turning around by the time they put me on the phone. I knew why they were doing this. I knew that this was the call where I was supposed to say goodbye, just in case there wouldn't be any other opportunity.</p><p>I hate goodbyes. I told him that. I told him I knew why they wanted me to talk to him. And then I said to him that I wasn't going to say goodbye. This call would not be goodbye. Instead I told him about everything that was going on. I told him I'd dedicated the live read to him and that since it debuted, so many people were sending well-wishes.</p><p>I reminded him of the line he often quoted from Dumb and Dumber, when Lloyd is told by Mary that his chances with her are "one in a million" and Lloyd says, "So you're saying there's a chance!" I told Dad that I needed him to believe it, and that I believed it.</p><p>The next day, I posted a picture of <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr/status/1322934384450703360">my newly-arrived WGA card to Twitter</a> and spent the day fielding congrats from so many of my followers and peers. This was on the heels of <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-is-hit.html">CRISIS being very well-received just two days earlier</a>, so my feed that weekend had been like a geyser of well-wishes and positivity. It was a lot of kindness at a time I truly needed it.</p><p>Dad did not have a good Sunday. Late in the evening here, I got a call from Mom that his condition was bad. My brother was making the four hour drive to get there because there was a very real chance that he wouldn't make it through the night. I've already told you as much about that night as I can bear, and you'll find that post <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/what-its-like-when-your-dad-is-going-to.html">here</a>.</p><p>What I was left with in the wake of Dad's death was anger, so much anger. His death, like so many of the other 250,000 COVID casualties at the time he passed, didn't have to happen.</p><p>Any competent administration and Congress would have put everything on a true lockdown, paid people to stay home for two months, and then done contact tracing to isolate active cases and prevent a spread. They would have promoted the science aggressively, and let it be known that masks drastically reduce transmission and embraced the necessity of social distancing. They would not have prioritized "the economy" over human lives, and they wouldn't have acted like it was encouraging freeloading to take financial burdens off of people so wouldn't have to choose between going to work and staying safe.</p><p>My father is dead because of Donald Trump, because he chose to fight a pandemic like a PR problem.</p><p>My father is dead because not enough people understood how grossly unqualified and incapable this man was to lead... and that wasn't a hard thing to see. Myself and many others knew from the day he was elected that he would only bring ruin to this nation and we spent four years begging everyone else to see it. </p><p>My father is dead because of every ignorant person who voted for Donald Trump despite all the red flags in 2016, and I promise you that just about all of them voted for Trump again the day AFTER my father died, thereby making it crystal clear their denial that boorish ignoramous completely screwed up the pandemic response. Other countries got a handle on it. We didn't - because we have a sociopathic asshole guiding our response.</p><p>I hold all of those people responsible, even those who once might have considered themselves close friends or blood relatives of my family. I will never be able to forgive them for what they did in putting that man in the White House. And I don't want people to tell me that I need to "understand" why they supported this racist garbage of a human. I have zero interest in salvaging those relationships and I could not have a lower opinion of those who tied themselves to Trump.</p><p>So you can see how all of that tends to overshadow the overwhelming positivity that happened elsewhere in the year. </p><p>I was grateful for the many people who reached out to me as they heard of Dad's passing. One of the advantages of having a robust social media presence is that news travels fast. One of my oldest friends let me know that he felt "like I lost my second dad." A college friend who I first met at a pre-orientation event for Columbus locals attending Denison emailed me to say that he remembered meeting my Dad at that event 22 years ago, and talked about how friendly Dad was to him then.</p><p>A writer I worked with on my last show emailed me to say he spoke to my dad when I dragged my parents along to a cookout hosted by another of the writers earlier this year. Apparently Dad told him all about how we drove across the country together when I moved out here and "You know this already, but it bears repeating: he was damn proud of you. For your hard work, your perseverance, and having landed your dream show. He knew you were starting a new chapter and he was positively beaming. It was clear you and your family were the apples of his eye."</p><p>I wasn't prepared for how hard it hit to hear that from someone who'd only had one encounter with him.</p><p>So many people who Dad met only once or twice, often YEARS ago, emailed me to tell me details of their conversations with him. I have been to so many parties where a friend introduced me to their parents and I promise you, I probably couldn't pick them out of a lineup today. I don't even know if I often had any kind of in-depth conversations with those people... but Dad had such a presence that even in those short encounters, he made an impression.</p><p>These last seven weeks have been about me realizing that this impression is now a gigantic hole in the wake of his passing.</p><p>Again, the people on SUPERMAN & LOIS couldn't have been more wonderful to me. The morning of my Dad's passing, Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing had flowers sent not just to me, but to my mother as well. That night, one of the actors on the show, Erik Valdez, happened to see a RT of my tweets about my dad's passing, noticed that we worked on the show together, and DM'd me to introduce himself and send his condolences. The next morning, I returned from a walk to find more flowers waiting for me and a very kind note from "The S&L Cast." Though he didn't claim credit, I'm sure that was Erik's doing.</p><p>All of the writers were so wonderful to me, reaching out, covering for me, being there to listen when I needed it. And in perhaps the most unexpected kindness of all, the other Arrowverse assistants - many of them, mind you, whom I've not yet met aside from email - reached out with a condolence card and gift card.</p><p>I'm telling you this because I want you to know that contrary to the stereotype of people who work in Hollywood, my co-workers, bosses, and counterparts on other shows are some of the kindest, most empathetic people you could know. Their big hearts made a horrible situation much more bearable than it would have been. All I can do is try to live up to that kindness and pay it forward when it's my turn.</p><p>Everything good about this year was connected to this show and Greg Berlanti. I got to write my first episode of TV. I got to write SUPERMAN. I did a star-studded crossover of my favorite teen shows and got Emily VanCamp and Gregory Smith from my FAVORITE teen show to come read MY words. Because of my job, I didn't have to worry about supporting my family during the pandemic, and because of the attention the live read got, I didn't have to go through the days after it alone.</p><p>2020 took my father from me and it feels like the only way it could balance the scales is by giving me everything else I ever wanted. And yet, as I sit here reliving the past year, I'm left with these thoughts:</p><p>As your parents get older, you confront the reality that one day, they will leave you. That had definitely crossed my mind the last few years. My father was 73, but he looked nearly a decade younger. He'd been taking care of himself. His father passed at the age of 79 and looking at pictures of him, I'm struck by how he looked at least 15 years older than my father did this year. </p><p>Beyond that, my father's mother - my grandmother - had died only four months earlier at the age of 97. I never expected we could lose him so soon after her. Think about that... my father only lived four months of his life without his mother.</p><p>I feel like an entire decade was stolen from him. He should have been here to see my four year-old son grow older. Maybe he'd have even made it to his high school graduation, or at least been around long enough that my son wouldn't only know "Papa" as a distant memory.</p><p>It's unfair and it hurts and it never should have happened.</p><p>I miss him. And I will continue to miss him forever.</p><p>I love you, Dad.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-63947314131451147212020-12-15T00:45:00.002-08:002020-12-15T00:45:54.995-08:00I talk 13 REASONS WHY, spec episodes and CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS on the podcast WHY NOT?<p>I was very excited to make <a href="https://soundcloud.com/whynotthepod/episode-42-the-bitter-script-reader-episode-feat-adam-mallinger">an appearance this week on the podcast Why Not?</a> This is one of my favorite podcasts this year. During the pandemic, David and Taylor launched the podcast as an episode-by-episode recap of 13 REASONS WHY. It was a show that they couldn't stop talking about, so they decided to make the podcast and find other people who couldn't stop talking about it.</p><p>I really enjoyed their examination of the first two seasons, but it was as they dissected season 3 (a lesser effort), that I realized that David and Taylor were examining the show with a fusion of the critical and humorous that I had not seen applied at that level since the glory days of Television Without Pity. When a show takes a ridiculous or an unpleasant turn, it's easy to just say, "This sucks" and rage at it. David and Taylor were great at engaging with what was embedded deep in the DNA of the series. They engaged with an obsession that could only come from someone invested in the show and they were hilarious as they laid it all out.</p><p>If you've been here a while, you know I was <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/writing-spec-episode-part-1-finding.html">deeply invested in Season 1 of 13 REASONS WHY</a>, to the point I wrote 13 posts about it. <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/05/season-2-of-13-reasons-why-is-different.html">My thoughts about Season 2 were also largely positive</a>, particularly with regard to <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/05/clays-downward-spiral-on-13-reasons-why.html">Dylan Minnette's performance</a>, though <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/05/what-is-retcon-and-how-was-it-used-in.html">the heavy retcons</a> left me <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/05/prosecuting-and-defending-big-retcon-in.html">conflicted</a>. So this was the perfect podcast for me.</p><p>What you'll hear is a fun conversation between me, David and Taylor about the series in general before we turn to discussing <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/writing-spec-episode-part-1-finding.html">my 13 REASONS WHY spec episode</a>, which actually is the first episode of an alternate season 3. I wrote it over two years ago as an exercise in how one might write a spec episode. It's sort of a mash-up with the premise of AWAKE. As the one year anniversary of Hannah's suicide approaches, Clay finds himself leaping between two worlds - the one he's known, and an alternate timeline where Hannah survived her suicide attempt and is still recovering. In doing so, this storyline would have explored all the ways someone in Hannah's situation could have sought help instead of trying to kill herself.</p><p>In breaking the story for that one script, I eventually ended up crafting an entire season's worth of story so that I could have a sense of what that first episode needed to put into play. Though I've shared the script before, I haven't posted that full season treatment on the blog. That comes up in my talk with David and Taylor too.</p><p>And finally, we have a little talk about <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-will-be.html">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> and why it was a fun project as both a fan and a writer.</p><p>So listen to the podcast <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-not/id1506079592">here</a> or <a href="https://soundcloud.com/whynotthepod/episode-42-the-bitter-script-reader-episode-feat-adam-mallinger">here on Soundcloud</a>. </p><p>And check out some of their other episodes. Since moving on from 13 REASONS WHY, David and Taylor have turned their insight and humor towards all manner of cultural garbage, including TikTok feuds, Fast Food brackets, Pretty Little Liars, Kid Nation, Emily in Paris, and much, more.</p><p>Notes:</p><p><a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/05/13-reasons-why-side-1-setting.html">My original 13 Reasons Why Posts</a></p><p><a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/writing-spec-episode-part-1-finding.html">My posts on my 13 Reasons Why spec, with "How to Write a Spec Episode"</a><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/d5a23c5y5x38o4r/13_Reasons_Why_Spec_-_Season_3_-_08-05-18_-_Copy.pdf/file">Link to my spec episode</a></p><p><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/dpeve68qkifvv8j/Alternate_Season_3_treatment_-_Copy.pdf/file">Link to my treatment of my alternate Season 3</a></p><p><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/si3lo41o2zv55e2/Crisis_on_Infinite_Teen_Dramas.pdf/file">Crisis on Infinite Teen Dramas script</a></p><p><a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-is-hit.html">Crisis on Infinite Teen Dramas reaction</a></p><p><a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/11/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">Crisis on Infinite Teen Dramas Annotations</a></p><p><br /><b>Note: when downloading the script or the treatment, after you click the link, press only the button that says "Download" next to the title. Ignore all pop-ups and anything that tries to tell you your Adobe Flash is out of date.</b></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-82483751600298890152020-11-27T13:56:00.001-08:002020-11-27T13:56:47.786-08:002-for-1 MasterClass annual memberships with "Give One, Get One Free"<p> <i>Note: this post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after using one of my links.)</i></p><i></i><br />If you've read my MasterClass reviews over the last couple years, but have been waiting for the right opportunity to buy, you might be interested in this Christmas deal. MasterClass is doing a <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1654343&u=1544317&m=62509&urllink=&afftrack=">"Give One, Get One Free" sale</a>. The promotion allows a new customer to purchase an annual membership for someone else and get one for yourself completely free!<br /><br />Each class runs about 5-6 hours and comes with a workbook and often valuable supplementary materials. For instance, if you take <a href="http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=963721&U=1544317&M=62509&urllink=">Shonda Rhimes's class</a>, you get the series bible for Grey's Anatomy, the original 10-page pitch document for the series, and the pilot scripts for both Grey's and Scandal.<br /><br />As I've said in my reviews, I consider the <a href="http://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1097338&u=1544317&m=62509&urllink=&afftrack=">Ron Howard class on directing</a> to be essential for anyone who wants to be a film director. I absolutely will guarantee its value. If there's someone in your life who might find this of value, definitely consider gifting them the All-Access Pass. To help you out, I've included links below to the reviews I've written for the writing and filmmaking-related classes, as well as links to the full roster if that helps convince you that this purchase will be worthwhile for your interests.<br /><br />And best of all, if you use any of these links, I get a commission, so it's like giving a gift to a friend or family member AND me!<div><br /></div><div>To gift one and get one, go <a href="https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1654343&u=1544317&m=62509&urllink=&afftrack=">here</a>. The offer is good until Monday, 11/30 at 11:59 PST.<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Prior MasterClass Reviews:</b><br />Aaron Sorkin's MasterClass on TV Writing (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-aaron-sorkin-masterclass-in.html">review</a>)<br />David Mamet Teaches Dramatic Writing (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/06/david-mamets-master-class-is-good.html">review</a>)<br />Ron Howard Teaches Directing (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/02/ron-howards-masterclass-is-damn-near.html">review</a>)<br />Shonda Rhimes Teaches TV Writing (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/04/shonda-rhimess-masterclass-series-is.html">review</a>)<br />Judd Apatow Teaches Comedy (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/judd-apatows-masterclass-is-decent.html">review</a>)<br />Steve Martin Teaches Comedy (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/11/steve-martins-masterclass-is-as-much.html">review</a>)<br />Samuel L. Jackson Teaches Acting (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/12/samuel-l-jacksons-masterclass-presents.html">review</a>)<br />Dustin Hoffman's MasterClass on Acting (<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2015/06/dustin-hoffmans-online-master-class-in.html">review</a>)<br /><b></b><br /><b>Highlights of the MasterClass roster:</b><br /><b></b><br /><u>Filmmaking/Directing</u><br />Spike Lee teaches Filmmaking<br />Judd Apatow teaches Comedy<br />Malcolm Gladwell teaches Writing<br />Martin Scorsese teaches Filmmaking<br />Werner Herzog teaches Filmmaking<br />Ken Burns teaches Documentary Filmmaking<br />Mira Nair teaches Independent Filmmaking<br />David Lynch Teaches Creativity and Film<br />Jodie Foster Teaches Filmmaking<br /><br /><br /><u>Writing:</u><br />Shonda Rhimes teaches TV Writing<br />Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass on TV Writing<br />David Mamet teaches Dramatic Writing<br />Steve Martin teaches Comedy<br />Judy Blume teaches Writing<br />Margaret Atwood teaches Creative Writing<br /><span id="goog_46809982"></span>James Patterson teaches Writing<span id="goog_46809983"></span><br />R.L. Stein teaches Writing for Young Audiences<br />Dan Brown teaches Writing Thrillers<br />David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor<br />Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Storytelling<br />Margaret Atwood Teaches Creative Writing<br />Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story<br />Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing<br />David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing<br />Billy Collins Teaches Reading and Writing Poetry<br /><br /><br /><u>Acting:</u><br />Samuel L. Jackson teaches Acting<br /><span id="goog_46809997"></span>Helen Mirren teaches Acting<br />Natalie Portman Teaches Acting<span id="goog_46809998"></span><br /><br /><br /><u>Music/Performance</u><br />Christina Aguilera's MasterClass <br />deadmau5's MasterClass <br />Herbie Hancock teaches Jazz<br />Hans Zimmer teaches Film Scoring<br />Reba McEntire teaches Country Music<br /><span id="goog_46810031"></span>Usher teaches Performance<span id="goog_46810032"></span><br />Tom Morello teaches Electric Guitar<br />Carlos Santana teaches the Art and Soul of Guitar<br />Danny Elfman Teaches Music for Film <br />Timbaland Teaches Producing and Beatmaking <br />Itzhak Perlman Teaches Violin<br /><br /><br /><u>Sports</u><u><br /></u>Stephen Curry teaches Basketball<br />Serena Williams teaches Tennis<br /><span id="goog_46810043"></span>Garry Kasparov teaches Chess<span id="goog_46810044"></span><br />Misty Copeland Teaches Ballet Technique and Artistry<br />Simone Biles Teaches Gymnastics Fundamentals <br /><br /><u><br /></u><u>Cooking/Food:</u><br />Wolfgang Puck teaches Cooking<br />Gordon Ramsay teaches Cooking.<br />Gordon Ramsay teaches Cooking Techniques II: Restaurant Recipes at Home<br /><span id="goog_46810055"></span>Thomas Keller teaches Cooking<span id="goog_46810056"></span><br />Thomas Keller teaches Cooking Techniques II: Meats, Stocks and Sauces<br />Dominique Ansel teaches French Pastry Fundamentals<br />James Suckling teaches Wine Appreciation<br />Aaron Franklin Teaches Texas-Style BBQ<br /><br /><br /><u>Business: </u><br />Bob Iger Teaches Business Strategy and Leadership <br />Anna Wintour Teaches Creativity and Leadership <br /><br /><br /><u>Politics: </u><br />Bob Woodward Teaches Investigative Journalism <br />Doris Kearns Goodwin Teaches U.S. Presidential History and Leadership <br />David Axelrod and Karl Rove teach Campaign Strategy<br /><br /><br /><u>Other:</u><br />Jane Goodall teaches Conservation<br />Marc Jacobs teaches Fashion Design<br />Annie Leibovitz teaches Photography<br />Chris Hadfield teaches Space Exploration<br />Daniel Negreanu teaches Poker<br />Paul Krugman teaches Economics and Society<br />Jimmy Chin teaches Adventure Photography<br />Will Wright teaches Game Design and Theory<br />Penn and Teller Teach the Art of Magic<br />Phil Ivey Teaches Poker Strategy</div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-74450096565151941612020-11-10T00:00:00.002-08:002020-11-10T00:00:04.979-08:00SPONTANEOUS, one of the best films of the year, is now out on DVD<p>When SPONTANEOUS hit VOD about five weeks ago, I was preparing for an extremely hectic month, so I opted not to do one of my long reviews then, figuring that by the time it came out on DVD on November 10th, I'd be able to really give it the attention it deserved.</p><p>Ha. If you've read this blog over the last few weeks, you know that my life is WAY too busy to do that, so I've decided to do a briefer, spoiler free review. I'm writing this because I want you to see it.</p><p>SPONTANEOUS is easily my favorite movie of the year. I realize that's not saying much in a year like this, so it might help to add that this would have been in my Top 5, maybe Top 3 of last year, had it come out then. It's one of those movies that I call a "magic trick" film. If someone told you about it, you'd never imagine in a million years that it would work flawlessly on screen. It walks this amazing tonal tightrope between being a dark comedy, and heartfelt, sincere, and heartbreaking. If I saw it as a teen, it's the kind of movie that would have made me want to MAKE movies.</p><p>A number of my early scripts were attempts at mashing up tones and genres that didn't usually work together. The result was a lot of scripts that few people knew what to make of, and if I'm being honest with myself, there probably was a question if the tone worked on the page, let alone was going to be effective on-screen. When I see someone stick the landing with a movie that almost invents its own tone, I take notice.</p><p>The premise is that teenagers start spontaneously exploding. One of the script's boldest decisions is the deaths are played for laughs BEFORE we're asked to care about people whose lives are at stake. Some 45 seconds into the film, a student has exploded suddenly, splattering their classmates with blood. As everyone else in her class is trying to make sense of it, Katherine Langford's Mara reacts to the first death with ironic detachment.</p><p>This is a risk. It's like doing a slasher film where we're laughing at the killer BEFORE he has to be scary. It can be pulled off, but a layer of difficultly has just been added. And the movie has to do that while continuing to absurdly blow up its cast.</p><p>Oh. And it's also a love story. It's a really heartfelt romance that blossoms between Mara and Charlie Plummer's Dylan. He's admired her from afar for a while, but when the exploding classmates make everyone feel like they could go at any time, Dylan takes his shot, and for a while they go through the expected moments of teenage romance, until the pandemic takes over and accelerates their story in a different direction.</p><p>There's a sequence an hour into the film that's balls-out insane - it's comedy, horror and tragedy all in one perfect symphony that would be ruined if any single instrument was off-key. I don't want to say anything about it for fear of diluting the sequence's impact, but I consider it a major tragedy of 2020 that I couldn't experience it in a theatre full of screaming moviegoers.</p><p>I'd read the Aaron Starmer novel upon which the film is based, and as much as it worked on the page, I really wondered if the movie could blow up so many teenagers on screen and maintain the wry tone of the novel, told through Mara's eyes. It's one thing to have her say something like, "Oh, and then they blew up." It's quite enough to put that very absurd image on screen and not have it be too horrifying or too silly to keep the emotional reality going. As much as I enjoyed the novel, I think the film is sharper and more focused. It trims away a few subplots and reshapes Mara and Dylan slightly.</p><p>If you've been here a while, you'll know I've been a fan of Katherine Langford since her <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/05/13-reasons-why-side-3-hannah-baker-from.html">breakout performance in season one of 13 REASONS WHY</a>. That was her first major role, even though I've enjoyed her in every thing she's appeared in since, she's usually been playing supporting parts that have been less challenging than Hannah Baker. SPONTANEOUS is my favorite performance of hers since that first season and she plays Mara unlike any of her other parts. With the curly blonde wig, she's almost unrecognizble as the suicidal teen she became famous for playing.</p><p>Her performance is equally unrecognizable. Langford proved she could do heavy drama on 13RW, but here she's got razor sharp comic timing and is clearly having a ball playing a broader character, one with a more sardonic edge. The best way I can describe her character here is "the love child of Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps." There's an energy to her performance that's completely apart from the shy, withdrawn teens she's played before.</p><p>The film doesn't shy away from dealing with death and the devastation it visits on those left behind. I think the ending of Mara's journey is one that doesn't deserve to be spoiled in this review, but I do want to say that after all the loss, the movie ends up in a very life-affirming place. After seeing so many people around you randomly dying, and knowing you could be next, how do you move forward with your life?</p><p> As timely as these themes feel in a pandemic, I feel like the movie wouldn't even need that extra context to resonate so hard here. I'm not kidding when I say this film deserves to be on a lot of Best of lists at the end of the year. I'm totally available to do the door-to-door canvasing for the Oscars when the time comes.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-43577327832419208372020-11-05T11:46:00.001-08:002020-11-05T12:02:10.943-08:00What it's like when your dad is going to die that morning<p><i>My dad died in the wee hours of the morning on Monday. He'd been in the hospital for about three weeks fighting COVID-19. Up until Saturday, there was never a doubt in my mind he'd be walking out of there, even after he was intubated.</i></p><p><i>The day he died, I didn't know what to do with my feelings. The next day I wrote this and posted it to Facebook. It helped to write it and seeing the responses actually was healing.</i></p><p><i>I'm posting it here in honor of the man who supported me through everything it took to get me where I am, and who really deserved to be here when I finally made it. He was 73 and in otherwise great shape until this. I will never feel like I wasn't robbed of another decade with him.</i></p><p>----------</p><p>You’ve just hung up from the call. The call you’ve dreaded since he took a turn for the worse yesterday. The doctor told you a lot of explanations and reasons and jargon for how we arrived at this moment, but all you really need to understand is this: they’re moving to comfort care. Your dad is going to die that morning.</p><p>Your brother and your mother are with him, but you are not. You’re three thousand miles away. It’s 2:58am. You’re in the living room, waiting for the next call, the one that will come when your mother and your brother are actually by his side. They’ll hold up the phone so he can hear. “Can he really hear you?” you wonder. It will be the last time you talk to him. And then they will let him go. He’ll be comfortable, but he’ll be gone before the sun comes up where you are.</p><p>This is it, so you’ll have to make those words count. But you can’t wing it, because if you fall apart you’ll forget something. You’ll get it wrong and you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life for getting it wrong. It has to be right. Even if he can’t hear you it has to be right.</p><p>The clock in the living room ticks each second as you try to gather your thoughts. Most of the time you don’t hear it, but the house is so still that the sound travels. It just turns up the pressure. How long will it take your mother and brother to put on their gowns? That’s how long you have to figure out what to say.</p><p>There’s no rewrites. No rainbow draft. They’re not even giving you blue pages. They’re shooting the white pages of this script and you have minutes to get them to set.</p><p>There’s so much to say. No, so much you COULD say. What do you NEED to say? Better, what does he NEED to hear? Focus, this is not about you. When you hang up it can be about you. This is about him.</p><p>You figure out what was unsaid. Oh god, when he was in the hospital, did you tell him you loved him? You check your texts with him, the messages that go right up to the night before he was intubated. The guilt comes back. They stopped voice calls a week before that to preserve his oxygen, but somewhere wires got crossed and you didn’t learn until almost a week later that he was still reading and responding to texts. When you realized, you sent him pics of your son to raise his spirits. You convinced yourself it was just a few days missed, that he’d be fine.</p><p>Now you wish you had those days back. But you see the last text you sent that he saw: “Love you too.” You breathe, and then you remember that you said that to him in at least two of your phone calls to him. You’re not sure if you did on that one. The one that freaked you out a little bit.</p><p>It is 3:20am. You think you’ve found the words. Why haven’t they called? What’s taking them so long? You find yourself impatient for a moment you dreaded, only because you’re afraid of losing it all.</p><p>It is 3:35am. The phone buzzes. This is it. Once you take the call it becomes real. You take that last second and put on your game face.</p><p>They put your brother’s phone to his ear. You think about how it’s easier to do this without having to see him and then immediately curse yourself for such selfishness. It’s not about YOU.</p><p>You start by reminding him of your call yesterday. Then one where you knew they wanted you to say goodbye. You’re terrible at goodbyes so you told him you weren’t going to say goodbye. Instead, you told him about your big show. You told him about the dreams coming true. The ones he’d helped nurture in you. </p><p>And then you reminded him of a favorite movie quote – that moment in DUMB & DUMBER when Jim Carrey is told his chances with the girl are “one in a million” and his instant response was “so you’re saying there’s a chance!” Dad loved that quote. He used it all the time. You remember that time when your school was threatened with closure and the odds of stopping it were just as long. Dad was one of the people whose attitude was “So you’re saying there’s a chance.” You reminded him of this. You told him he had to believe it. You told him he had to believe it because YOU believed it.</p><p>But that was last night. Tonight you start by reminding him you said you weren’t going to say goodbye, but this is goodbye. God, this was so much easier in your head. Speaking it outloud, it becomes a incantation that summons all the feelings you’re not ready to deal with. You breathe.</p><p>You tell him not to worry. That you’ll be okay. Mom will be okay because she’ll have us. We’ll take care of each other, you promise him.</p><p>You tell him you were glad you got to talk when he was in the hospital. You say you enjoyed those talks. You know he’ll know what it means – the talk that freaked you out because you could feel him trying to tie up loose ends just in case. The one where he kept saying how much you impressed him and you just wanted him to stop because all you heard was the subtext “I need to say this in case I die.” The one where the only way to deal with it was to become modest and self-deprecating.</p><p>And then you tell him you’ve been thinking about his favorite movie, THE WIZARD OF OZ. Specifically, you’ve been thinking of the quote he used in your grandfather’s funeral 26 years earlier: “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” You tell him, “Dad, you are loved.” You tell him “I love you” and it hurts because you know it’s the last time he’ll hear you say it. </p><p>You tell him goodbye.</p><p>You hear your brother say his goodbyes and the pain in his voice makes you wish you could do anything to comfort him. This is not how you imagined this moment ever going down.</p><p>You expect that your mother will be next, but you can’t hear anything. Is she whispering? Did she speak to him privately? You wonder what’s happening. Eventually you decide this is where they’re making him comfortable. Where your mother and brother will be with him. Should you be with them? Will it help? </p><p>You can’t do this. You’re not there. You can’t see him. You’re a blind phantom, unable to touch or see anything, only hear the silence of a life slipping away. This is not helping. You tell them you have to go.</p><p>It is 3:50am. You go to bed. Your wife tries to offer comfort, but there’s no comfort to be found. This is going to hurt. You toss and turn. How can you not be tired this late? How are you not exhausted?</p><p>Why can’t you cry enough right now? You remember that insane cathartic cry you got watching that ER episode where Anthony Edwards died. The one where his daughter played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for him as he passed. Shit! Why didn’t you think of that an hour ago? Why didn’t YOU suggest playing that song for Dad? That would have been perfect. If you’d given it more thought during those fifteen minutes you were impatient, you might have come up with it.</p><p>You wonder if it’s too late to call and suggest it. You decide to let it go. </p><p>Shit. That would have been so perfect. You kick yourself again.</p><p>It is later. You are still trying to sleep. Suddenly, with your eyes closed you see something that looks like golden starbursts. They’re not afterimages. You know what afterimages look like. This is different. And as they pulse you feel the slightest tapping on your eyelids. It’s not normal. But it has to be normal because you don’t believe in this stuff. You’re not Mulder, you’re Scully. You’re not spiritual.</p><p>But you check the clock anyway, just in case. It is 4:46am. If you don’t believe, then why did you check? Was it him?</p><p>You don’t remember falling asleep, but you must have because now you’re being awakened by the email alert on your phone. It’s Mom. A mass email to spread the word. It says he died this morning at about 8:00am, meaning 5:00am where you are. </p><p>Later you’ll tell your brother about the experience. You’ll feel stupid and silly. You think he’ll see you as a drama queen trying to make it about you, or boasting that “Dad reached out to me!” It’s neither, you just have to know. He tells you Dad died at about five minutes before eight, but that 4:45 was about when they stopped the ventilator. He'll later tell you that was the minute he felt like he saw the spirit leaving his body, even mentioning that to your mother.</p><p>Was it him? Was he telling you he knew what you said? That he knew that you loved him? You think about this until you realize of course he knew you loved him. He’s your dad.</p><p>No, the past tense hits you, he WAS your dad.</p><p>No, you realize, he will ALWAYS be your dad.</p><p>And you will always love him.</p><div><br /></div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-9135404475901978072020-11-01T21:13:00.002-08:002020-11-06T11:55:09.931-08:00CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS annotations<p>Thank you to everyone who has watched <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> so far, especially those of you who were there RIGHT when it dropped Friday night. Reading your tweets all weekend has been fantastic for my mood. I couldn't be more delighted with how it was received.</p><p>It's online until November 8th, so check it out if you haven't already. Tickets <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">here</a>.</p><p>I thought it'd be fun to go through my original script and point out all the inside jokes, references and callbacks.</p><p>In most instances, the hyperlinked text will lead you to a video clip of the reference in question.</p><p>If you have yet to download the script, you can find it <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/si3lo41o2zv55e2/Crisis_on_Infinite_Teen_Dramas.pdf/file">here</a>.</p><p><b>After you click that link, press ONLY the button that says "Download" next to the script title, and ignore any pop-ups you get or any messages telling you that your Adobe Flash is out of date.</b></p><p>-----</p><p>p. 1 - "Turn, Turn, Turn" is a song used more than once on THE WONDER YEARS.</p><p>p. 1 - This opening, and the entire sequence on "Earth-03" is an homage to the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS comic book, which opens with destruction of Earth-3. That Earth is populated by evil dopplegangers of the JLA, known as the Crime Syndicate. Dramatically, it was to kill off some notable characters, and show that Superman, Wonder Woman, et al, would have gone down just as quickly.</p><p>In this case, at the time of writing the script, I had only seen about 6-8 episodes of THE OC and wasn't sure I could capture the voices of the characters. I decided to destroy them early on to up the stakes, though very soon after, I binged the entire series.</p><p>p. 1 - THE OC scene we're dropped into specifically is from the season 2 finale, "The Dearly Beloved."</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/saEzQcayEPM" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 2 - Pariah is a character in the original CRISIS whose role is basically be be drawn to each dying Earth. He cries a lot too. </p><p>p. 2 - Dawson Leery, from DAWSON'S CREEK, is intended to be a Dawson from 2020. The finale of his series was set in 2008, five years in the future from its airdate of 2003. This means he's lived twelve years since the last time we saw him.</p><p>p. 2 - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saEzQcayEPM">Marissa shooting Trey</a> is one of those pop culture moments that you're probably aware of even if you haven't seen it. It was spoofed - with the "Hide and Seek" music - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmd1qMN5Yo0">in an SNL sketch</a>.</p><p>p. 3 - the Narrator is a riff on The Monitor from CRISIS. Harbinger is also a CRISIS character. In that story, she was rescued from death as a child by the Monitor and was raised as his assistant. In the first issue, her role was to gather the heroes.</p><p>p. 3 - We get our first clue to Harbinger's identity when we're told her universe had wild fluxuations in its history. That MIGHT mean she's from a show that tends to retcon its own history, or fails to remain consistent season to season.</p><p>p. 3 - our second clue to Harbinger's identity is when she says to the Monitor, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L29wyj2VVkE">You're an actual nerd.</a>" That's something that the character playing Harbinger says in one of her first scenes in her first episode. I thought this was a subtle clue that no one would catch, but one reader actually nailed that hint pretty quickly.</p><p>p. 4 - The Monitor/Narrator is Kevin Arnold. He's described in his 40s, so you should be imagining a modern Fred Savage. In terms of Kevin's timeline, he's always 20 years behind our present, so that means he would have come from (as he later says) the year 2000.</p><p>p. 4 - On RIVERDALE, Veronica has described her pairing with Archie as "endgame." I don't have a specific point in RIVERDALE's history that they're being taken from, but it's probably the latter half of Season 2.</p><p>p. 4 - "Welcome to your crisis" is one of my less subtle clues about Harbinger's identity.</p><p>p. 5 - And now we're in GILMORE GIRLS, the intent is that we're in Season 3. </p><p>p. 6 - As the script notes, Tristan is the character Chad Michael Murray played on GILMORE GIRLS, mostly in season 1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcxiTvhLmRM">He often called Rory "Mary"</a> (Lorelai explains "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5X6spNJBOA">as in 'Virgin Mary.' It means they thought you were a goody-goody.</a>") Rory notices right away he doesn't, which is a clue.</p><p>p. 7 - Lorelai's Ari Fleisher joke is intended to remind people we're in the early 2000s, when he was the press secretary for the George W. Bush administration. The fact Richard brings up she's been warned about insulting him this means this is set in season 3 AFTER "Let the Games Begin," where Richard chides her, "Ari Fleischer is our nation's mouthpiece, young lady."</p><p>p. 7 - Lorelai's joke about "Jeff Goldblum's transporter" is a reference to THE FLY remake. Rory saying "Help me" is a reference to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6g0SDMJ7A">the most infamous line of the original version</a>.</p><p>p. 8 - Tristan is revealed to ACTUALLY be "Charlie," who was a character Chad Michael Murray played on season 5 of DAWSON'S CREEK.</p><p>p. 8 - Harbinger is finally revealed as Hannah Baker from 13 REASONS WHY. "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwOJfu7K_Fw">It's Hannah. Hannah Baker</a>" is a callback to her first line of dialogue heard in the series.</p><p>p. 9 - We're in EVERWOOD, obviously. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyo6sjEPOU">The Ferris Wheel on the front lawn</a> places us just seconds after the series finale. (which means they're from 2006.)</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/epyo6sjEPOU" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 10 - Ephram's interest in manga is a trait established in the EVERWOOD pilot. Amy pronouncing it that way is also a callback to how Ephram says it in the pilot.</p><p>p. 10 - Gino Chang's (misspelled in the script as Gino Chan's) is the combination Italian/Chinese restaurant established in EVERWOOD's second episode, "The Great Doctor Brown."</p><p>p. 10 - Aside from his interest in comics, there's a bit of an in-joke about Ephram getting the concept of a multiversal crisis, as the actor playing Ephram, Gregory Smith, is now a director whose credits include "Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 5" and "Crisis on Earth-X" part 4. (Both of those are episodes of LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.)</p><p>p. 12 - Amy teasing Ephram about once having purple hair is another callback to the pilot, where that hair style made Ephram a target of teasing upon his arrival in Everwood.</p><p>p. 13 - Kevin references Taylor Townsend, a character from THE OC.</p><p>p. 15 - Archie and Veronica have landed in the middle of the "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iunYmHH0UNI">Donna Martin graduates</a>" episode of BEVERLY HILLS, 90210, season 3's "Something in the Air."</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iunYmHH0UNI" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 15 - Archie thinking that Dylan McKay looks like his dad is an in-joke about how Luke Perry played both parts.</p><p>p. 16 - another doppleganger referencing the same actor having appeared on multiple shows. In this case, Kerr Smith, who was Ryan Thomas on LIFE UNEXPECTED and Principal Honey on RIVERDALE, which is why Archie mistakes the former for the latter.</p><p>p. 18 - Dark Monitor offering literary quotes is a clue to his identity. (And at least two people tweeted a correct guess at me after I originally posted these pages.)</p><p>p. 19 - The prisoners in Dark Monitor's jail are all characters played by actors who've also appeared on genre shows. Chris Wolfe was played by Jason Behr, who appeared on ROSWELL as Max Evans. Cate Cassidy was played by Shiri Appleby, who also appeared on ROSWELL as Liz Parker, and Dean Forrester was played by Jared Padelcki, who was Sam Winchester on Supernatural.</p><p>p. 20 - Kevin again references Harbinger's world having wild inconsistencies in its history. That MIGHT be me taking a small poke at a lot of the irreconcilable <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/05/what-is-retcon-and-how-was-it-used-in.html">retcons in Season 2 of 13 REASONS WHY</a>.</p><p>p. 22 - The "friend" who Hannah says Ephram reminds her of is obviously Clay Jensen. (And I'm really sorry I couldn't figure out a way to do a Clay/Ephram meeting somewhere in here.)</p><p>p. 22 - as we arrive in ONE TREE HILL, the reference to it being summer is meant to place us soon after the season 4 finale, after all the kids have graduated school.</p><p>p. 22 - "Go Brooke Yourself" is OTH slang for "Go fuck yourself." It passed into use after <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4dmjTzcauI">Brooke was caught masturbating</a> and the gang joked about how often they "Brooke themselves" in season 3's "When It Isn't Like It Should Be."</p><p>p. 23 - If you saw the live read, this scene got a rewrite. Haley James Scott was removed in an effort to cut down the characters and streamline the story. (That killed me because Haley was my favorite OTH character and Bethany Joy Lenz was one of my bigger WB crushes.)</p><p>p. 23 - Haley recognizing Dawson is consistent with her being established as a DAWSON'S CREEK fan in the pilot of ONE TREE HILL.</p><p>p. 23 - Dawson references "Clothes Over Bros," the fashion line Brooke started in high school.</p><p>p. 25 - Veronica Mars being 32 indicates the Gilmore Girls are meeting her at some point AFTER the conclusion of the Hulu season. (Which is unofficially Season 4.)</p><p>p. 26 - Veronica references Vinnie Van Lowe, the sleazy PI played by Ken Marino.</p><p>p. 28 - Two famous mother/daughter pairings are referenced: Demi Moore and Rumer Willis, and Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.</p><p><b>Sidebar: With p. 28, we start some sequences that I ended up altering for the live read. The motivation was mostly to reduce the number of characters overall, since it was such a giant cast. I went through to see where we could eliminate or combine some characters just to ease casting and to give some actors more to do.</b></p><p><b>For this PRETTY LITTLE LIARS sequence, I replaced Aria with Taylor Townsend from THE OC. We also added Brooke Davis from ONE TREE HILL to the team of Hannah Baker and Amy Abbott. This was all a consequence of removing the KATY KEENE sequence that begins on p. 37. It meant we could cut Josie and Aria entirely as long as Brooke got captured a different way. By dropping the idea of Aria/Katy as dopplegangers and Aria pretending to be Katy it let the PLL sequence advance the plot a little more on its own.</b></p><p><b>(I had some concerns about making Taylor evil, but I justified it by having her say this was just to get her world back and it's implied that she would have been taken from the point in THE OC's timeline that coincided with the opening sequence, meaning this predates her first appearance on the show in season three, before her redemption arc.)</b></p><p>p. 28 - The Masquerade Ball that Hannah and Amy have arrived in is the second season finale of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS, "Unmasked."</p><p>p. 28 - Amy's line here (and a later joke on p. 29) are meta jokes about how the actress playing her, Emily VanCamp, later starred in REVENGE, in which she often wore expensive gowns and was obsessed with revenge on the people who destroyed her family.</p><p>p. 28 - The significance of Maya being played by Bianca Lawson is that Lawson spent over two decades playing teenagers on a host of teen dramas, including BUFFY, DAWSON'S CREEK, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and TEEN WOLF.</p><p>p. 29-30 - As Amy recounts the drama that spanned the first two years of EVERWOOD, she's unaware that Hannah endured severe bullying and depression (shown in Season 1 of 13 REASONS WHY) before that led her to take her own life.</p><p>p. 31 - Maya's death is revealed in the final scene of the aforementioned season two finale of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS.</p><p>p. 33 - Rory references Lane, her best friend on GILMORE GIRLS.</p><p>p. 34 - Veronica giving her age as 32 confirms that she's from the year 2020, 14 years after graduating high school in 2006 at the age of 18.</p><p>p. 35 - Veronica referring to this year as "pretty outlandish" probably indicates this is happening in Season 2 of VERONICA MARS. </p><p><b>(In the live read, Wallace's role is replaced with Mac.)</b></p><p>p. 36 - Josie would of course recognize Veronica Lodge from Riverdale, but doesn't seem to notice this Veronica is at least five years younger than she should be.</p><p>p. 37 - Katy Keene is played by Lucy Hale, who also plays Aria Montgomery.</p><p><b>p. 40 - Two changes were made to this sequence for the live read: Haley James Scott was replaced with Veronica Lodge, since Veronica's trip to Katy Keene's world no longer happened. Also, instead of taking Santana, Ephram and Veronica grab Sue Sylvester as the world fades out.</b></p><p>p. 43 - Lucas Scott realizing he was "the puppeteer" and that Brooke was one of "my characters" might suggest he has a lot in common with a showrunner. Make of that what you will.</p><p>p. 43 - When talking about <a href="https://youtu.be/fbs0Z1V8WyI">finding Brooke in the back of his car naked after a game</a>, Lucas is referencing the third episode of ONE TREE HILL, "Are You True?"</p><p><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fbs0Z1V8WyI" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 46 - Winnie Cooper is of course, Kevin Arnold's girlfriend from THE WONDER YEARS and her age also indicates she'd be from the same time frame as our adult Kevin.</p><p>p. 51 - Kevin says that Lucas Scott could be an Avatar of his show's creator, which is what gives him the power to bend the rules of the story. ONE TREE HILL was created by Mark Schwahn.</p><p>p. 51 - Kevin observing that "The forces controlling your world have frequently tried to debase and degrade you and the other women you know. They've made so many attempts to destroy your character. But it never lasts - you and the other girls always overcome it. No matter the degradation, your true nature remains intact. Your integrity always wins out" might be an unsublte way of saying that inconsistent plots and out-of-character writing still aren't enough to destroy the female characters of ONE TREE HILL, thanks in no small part to their performers.</p><p>p. 56 - Kevin lamenting he gave up piano playing is a callback to THE WONDER YEARS episode "Coda."</p><p>p. 56 - Ephram has been a piano prodigy most of his life, so he's not wrong to say this song is beneath his talent.</p><p>p. 56 - "I Don't Want to Wait" is, obviously, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9V6x9HLLTY">the theme song to DAWSON'S CREEK</a>.</p><p>p. 58 - This is a pretty obvious connection to make, but if Ephram is an Avatar of his creator, that would mean he's connected to producer Greg Berlanti.</p><p>p. 59-60 - LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, SUPERGIRL, THE FLASH, BLACK LIGHTNING and BATWOMAN are all shows produced by Berlanti Productions and Greg Berlanti, hence, Ephram has access to them.</p><p>p. 60 - Veronica Mars thinking she recognizes Black Lightning is a reference to the fact that the hero's portrayer, Cress Williams, had a recurring role in the second season of VERONICA MARS as Wallace's father.</p><p>p. 60 - Lorelei's "Oy with the froggies already" is a reference to the phrase coined by Lorelei, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urkXoKCKNkk">Oy with the poodles already</a>" in the season two finale of GILMORE GIRLS, "I Can't Get Started."</p><p><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/urkXoKCKNkk" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 61 - "I Don't Want To Wait" was the theme song to DAWSON'S CREEK, at least in the States during the first airing. In streaming, it's been replaced by the international theme song "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWrpV2G2pLc">Run Like Mad</a>."</p><p>p. 62 - On ONE TREE HILL, Peyton Sawyer drove a Comet.</p><p>p. 63 - Joey Potter's line, "People die... and they move away... and they grow up, Dawson. Everything changes eventually" is drawn from the season one episode of DAWSON'S CREEK, "Beauty Pageant." Jen Lindley's quote, "Impossible situations are only made better by doing something about them," originates from the season three finale "True Love."</p><p>p. 64 - Lucas saying "It's you, Peyton Sawyer," and her responding "It's always been me" is a callback to Lucas saying (in a completely different context) "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJwkarPQJl8">It's you, Peyton Sawyer. It's always been you</a>" in ONE TREE HILL's season 4 episode, "Some You Give Away."</p><p>p. 64 - If you want to read some metatextual intent into an adult Peyton Sawyer being the one to vanquish her creator, I won't stop you.</p><p>p. 65-66 - Haley James Scott from ONE TREE HILL has indeed been married since her junior year, as revealed in the first season finale "The Games That Play Us." She also became a pop star the following season.</p><p>p. 66 - Supergirl being excited for a group sing and seeking out Barry/The Flash calls back to the musical SUPERGIRL/THE FLASH crossover in THE FLASH's third season episode "Duet."</p><p>p. 66 - you all know this but "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JseWhrUz9TY">Don't Stop Believin'</a>" is the signature song from GLEE. It's first performed in the pilot and then performed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auqz1kX-oWE">four</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev_1hA097VY">subsequent</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyJ4Gjl1O0">times</a> in the series.</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JseWhrUz9TY" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 69 - Jack Arnold's date of death being in 1975 is consistent with Kevin's final episode narration revealing Jack died two years after the end of the series.</p><p>p. 69 - The events in the Liberty High Gym on April 20, 2018 are shown in the climax of the season two finale of 13 REASONS WHY, "Bye." Specifically, Hannah arrives in the midst of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-c9_mUgCQ">this heartbreaking scene</a>:</p><p><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aw-c9_mUgCQ" width="420"></iframe></p><p>"The Night We Met" is a significant song for Clay and Hannah, as it's the song they danced together to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyj0bDhQsA">a year earlier at the Spring Fling</a>.</p><p>During season 2 of 13 REASONS WHY frequently talked with a Ghost Hannah that only he could see and hear. She wasn't a literal ghost, and was intended more as a dramatization of his own thoughts about Hannah and what he learned about her. He finally lets go of her in a eulogy at her funeral service in the season 2 finale, and that's visualized by her apparition getting up and walking out of the church.</p><p>By noting the resurrected Hannah is wearing the same dress, I wanted to give an open door for the reader to assume that the "Ghost Hannah" was actually Harbinger/Hannah, interacting with Clay while she still existed in some sense.</p><p>p. 70 - In the actual episode, Tyler nearly takes his weapons into school before being talked down by Clay. It sets off a chain of events that reverberates through the next two seasons and destroys a lot of lives. Here, Hannah alters that event, hopefully to Clay's benefit.</p><p>p. 72 - "Katie Couric time" is a callback to Dawson revealing (joking?) in the pilot of DAWSON' S CREEK that he gratifies himself in the morning, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-zyLvAjj4">usually to Katie Couric.</a>"</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xM-zyLvAjj4" width="420"></iframe></p><p>p. 72 - Joey's nephew Alexander was born in season one's "Baby," set in 1998, so this would be his COLLEGE graduation Joey references, just in case you weren't feeling old enough.</p><p>p. 72 - Joey promising Dawson she'll watch his show every week, "At least until you run out of ideas and do something crazy like make all the kids murderers" describes the missteps of multiple teen shows. Take your pick as to what she's alluding to.</p><p>p. 73 - Joey DID turn in her drug dealing father in season 2's finale "Parental Discretion Advised."</p><p>p. 73 - On DAWSON'S CREEK, Joey and Dawson often watched movies together in his bed, and given his Spielberg fandom, it makes sense they would have watched most of them together.</p><p>p. 73 - Dawson saying that INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL "disappoints" calls back to how Dawson described the less successful Spielberg films when showing Jen his room in the pilot. The producers were allowed to use Spielberg's movie posters after Spielberg himself gave permission, and so as to not offend him him, <a href="https://ew.com/article/1998/10/02/burning-question-12/">creator Kevin Williamson decided, "we don't say 'flops,' we say 'disappointments.'"</a></p><p><br /></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-32779748732811423782020-11-01T10:43:00.004-08:002020-11-01T11:06:54.799-08:00CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS is a hit!!<p>Thank you to everyone who watched <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a>, especially those who were there RIGHT when it dropped at 5pm. Your texts and tweets during the show and right after it ended told me that plenty of you tuned in and that really made me feel good.</p><p>If you saw my Outro, you know that I dedicated the show to my father, who is currently battling COVID-19 in the hospital. He's been on a ventilator since Tuesday, sedated, and this is obviously a very difficult time for my family. Your kind thoughts at this time have been much appreciated. Please keep them up in this very rough time for us, either prayers, well-wishes, or whatever is in accordance with your belief system. </p><p>I was glad to see so much praise for Ben Blacker's production and Laser Webber's editing. I hadn't seen the final product until Friday and they gave that Zoom read so much production value. I'm thrilled it didn't go unnoticed by all of you because they busted their asses to make this something special. Ditto for Paul and Storm, who were responsible for that amazing "Don't Stop Believin'" music number at the climax.</p><p>The show is still available until November 8th, so if you haven't seen it, you've still got a week. Tickets are $10 <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">here</a>. All proceeds going to:</p><p>1) <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app20122a?idb=386908453&DONATION_LEVEL_ID_SELECTED=1&df_id=3399&mfc_pref=T&3399.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=BED2FB9B53F58B7232EAA6671BD279D6&idb=0">The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund </a>- This has been established by the Actors Fund to benefit L.A. based support staffers affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns. I'm a Writers' Assistant on SUPERMAN & LOIS, and I'm very fortunate to have a job right now. Many of my peers aren't as fortunate and I really want to help them out with this show. Please give generously. You'll be helping a lot of future TV writers stay in the game.</p><p>2) <a href="https://www.heirsproperty.org/">The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation</a> - This is a non-profit that does legal work to protect the land rightfully owned by the descendants of former slaves as well as ecologic and economic work to sustain those properties and their communities. Basically, they help underserved families protect land that the government or rich white people want to take from them and exploit.</p><p>You can donate more than the cost of the ticket if you want. Just buy more tickets. It's not as if there's limited seating.</p><p>If you saw the show, please keep talking it up. If you haven't seen the show, I can promise you a good time, but don't take MY word for it. Here are some of the reactions:</p>
<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">My nostalgia is on overdrive. Ephram & Amy!!! Mark Gagliardi is nailing the cadence of the Kevin Arnold voiceover. Vella Lovell is pitch perfect as Veronica Lodge. Too much fun. <br /><br />Snaps to <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> for the (post) production, which is VERY impressive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisonInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisonInfiniteTeenDramas</a> <a href="https://t.co/5RTDDIxtxl">https://t.co/5RTDDIxtxl</a> <a href="https://t.co/8e8wjeOseF">pic.twitter.com/8e8wjeOseF</a></p>— Jasmine Evaristo (@swiftlyinflight) <a href="https://twitter.com/swiftlyinflight/status/1322337657913929730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisonInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisonInfiniteTeenDramas</a> was special because of <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>'s script, which delivers on his deep love of the teen drama genre in spades. Thanks to (and bravo!) <a href="https://twitter.com/GBerlanti?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GBerlanti</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/LaserMWebber?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LaserMWebber</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/emosswilson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@emosswilson</a> & co for bringing that script to life.</p>— Jasmine Evaristo (@swiftlyinflight) <a href="https://twitter.com/swiftlyinflight/status/1322347945685999620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> You wrote this in like... a week? Someone get this guy an episode of TV this seas--<br /><br />What's that?<br /><br />Oh. Oh, that's nice. Carry on.</p>— Arlo Midgett (@rlomidgett) <a href="https://twitter.com/rlomidgett/status/1322338646381375491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">um EPHRAM BROWN!! I'm getting way too much joy out of this <a href="https://t.co/VcKVLdZB3D">pic.twitter.com/VcKVLdZB3D</a></p>— Lindsay Grossman (@evianisnaive) <a href="https://twitter.com/evianisnaive/status/1322333970890043392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">omg this teen show ending montage is perfect <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> <a href="https://t.co/5qJRHGwCG6">pic.twitter.com/5qJRHGwCG6</a></p>— Lindsay Grossman (@evianisnaive) <a href="https://twitter.com/evianisnaive/status/1322344688456589313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>'s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas</a> just ended. I had the stupidest grin on my face from start to finish. This was as great as I thought it'd be when I first read the script. Thank you, and thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/GBerlanti?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GBerlanti</a> and everyone who made this happen!</p>— Jeremías MR (@jeremiasmr13) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeremiasmr13/status/1322345803244019717?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> Congratulations. That was amazing, and probably the best Zoom-format table reading thingamajig I've seen.</p>— Aidan "autonomous partial object" Morgan (@palinode) <a href="https://twitter.com/palinode/status/1322346965703688192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Standing ovation, <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a>. That was so wonderful.</p>— Jennifer Kretchmer (@dreamwisp) <a href="https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1322347089242648576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">This was fun. Congrats to all involved. Especially <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> you did a great job capturing the heart of those shows. <a href="https://t.co/aXKogTc1fQ">https://t.co/aXKogTc1fQ</a></p>— Cara-Lynn Branch (@cara_branch) <a href="https://twitter.com/cara_branch/status/1322347146558033922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas</a> question I have now: How did Mark Gagliardi steal Daniel Stern's voice as Adult Kevin Arnold? It was uncanny.<br /><br />Still available to watch for a few days. Great job to <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> & everyone involved - you really outdid yourselves.</p>— KSiteTV (@KSiteTV) <a href="https://twitter.com/KSiteTV/status/1322347192745553920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Dear <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>, Thank you from the bottom of my angsty 90s teen drama loving heart for tonight’s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas</a>. It was everything I needed. When’s the sequel happening?</p>— Sara (@asianleprechaun) <a href="https://twitter.com/asianleprechaun/status/1322347784889159680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Crisis on Infinite Teen Dramas was everything I needed tonight. Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/GBerlanti?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GBerlanti</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> for such a wonderful way to spend my evening. <br /><br />Adam, seeing your words come to live for a second time, was a treat. TV audiences will love your episode of L&C!</p>— Eerie, IndiDANNI (@StanislausFilms) <a href="https://twitter.com/StanislausFilms/status/1322348040196218882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas</a> was such a blast! So joyful and wacky, yet heartfelt, and a nice tribute to a very particular genre. Put me in such a good mood (of COURSE the climax would be a musical sequence!) Also, so impressed with the casting in this. Kudos, <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>!</p>— 🐺WereDareBear💀 (@DerekBGayle) <a href="https://twitter.com/DerekBGayle/status/1322349391290732550?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Not spoiling too much, but the Zoom mastery and manipulation was top notch and so well done for this event. The special effects were cooky and silly and so right for the whole tone of the show.<br /><br />And the musical number. They did an *actual* musical number!</p>— Jon W (@CypherCA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CypherCA/status/1322349883693559808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">So again, mega-kudos to <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> for this amazing, insane script; and <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/GBerlanti?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GBerlanti</a>, and all the actors who partook in this endeavor to bring it to life.<br /><br />Thank you all. I'll definitely be re-watching it a couple times.</p>— Jon W (@CypherCA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CypherCA/status/1322349885539016705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">PS: That opening was perfect!<br />PPS: Melissa Fumero perfectly channeled Lorelei that for a moment I forgot she wasn't the canon actress. Fantastic!<br />PPPS: How could I not mention the Everwood reunion! *claps!*</p>— Jon W (@CypherCA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CypherCA/status/1322354245824253952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Such fun and love put into it, Adam! The Gregory/Emily reunion was icing on the cake!</p>— Justin Scarelli (@Justinscarelli) <a href="https://twitter.com/Justinscarelli/status/1322351763563991040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">…and give moments to, what, 17 different characters while moving thru a Crisis-esque plot except in 1/5th of the time the real Crisis had. <br /><br />I feel the same way I did when I first saw BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. He did the crazy thing I'm often trying to do.</p>— Ghost Machlin (@gregmachlin) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregmachlin/status/1322361944020459520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Just finished <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CrisisOnInfiniteTeenDramas</a>. Seeing Everwood's Ephram & Amy together was such a joy. Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> for transporting me back to a simpler time. Between the writing/casting/editing, it was easily the best pandemic Zoom reading I've watched thus far.</p>— Liam Dacko (@liamdacko) <a href="https://twitter.com/liamdacko/status/1322364936186597376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> That cast was stellar. Crisis on Infinite Teen Dramas live read was so great! (Greg as Flash! The musical numbers! THE FERRIS WHEEL. *chef’s kiss*)<br /><br />Congratulations! (And, sending good thoughts to you and yours. ❤️)</p>— Mike Roe (@MikeRoe) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeRoe/status/1322379132471189504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Oy with the Froggy's already 😄CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS was a great way to start my birthday. Favs from B99, ODAAT & CXG Playing Beloved Gilmore Girls & more in a Teen Drama multiverse.. so awesome!! ❤️<br /><br />Thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> & co <a href="https://t.co/RCHUNK8oZU">pic.twitter.com/RCHUNK8oZU</a></p>— Dannie C (@yopyopo) <a href="https://twitter.com/yopyopo/status/1322380149195706368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>’s CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS table read was at once a heartfelt, funny, & knowing deep dive into the shows of our youth, by a writer who clearly loved each of the shows included. If you haven’t checked it out, make sure you do so!</p>— G.NADE (@gnader) <a href="https://twitter.com/gnader/status/1322391796404531200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Well, this made my day. Incredible writing by <a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a>, lol’d countless times. Check it out if you can. <a href="https://t.co/HeFGfaVWbn">https://t.co/HeFGfaVWbn</a></p>— Daren@hey.com (@darentsmith) <a href="https://twitter.com/darentsmith/status/1322418603233222657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> Just finished watching CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS. Definitely lives up to the hype! Congratulations! And sending good thoughts for your father.</p>— Christina Weir (@CWWeir) <a href="https://twitter.com/CWWeir/status/1322428953353543680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/BittrScrptReadr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BittrScrptReadr</a> just watched your CRISIS! Dude, what a dream to play in those sandboxes & then have it be realized like this! The Everwood reunion was an obvious highlight but watching Vella as V. lodge was *chefs kiss*. Sending positivity to you & the fam concerning your dad ❤️</p>— Will Landman (@WillTheLandMan) <a href="https://twitter.com/WillTheLandMan/status/1322604047262642176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<br />But if I'm being completely honest, this is a tweet I could never have imagined receiving just a few years ago...
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<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Very proud of you — and grateful for you and <a href="https://twitter.com/BenBlacker?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BenBlacker</a> putting this together for some great causes! And to all the actors for doing it and <a href="https://twitter.com/EmilyVanCamp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EmilyVanCamp</a> and Gregory Smith for all they’ve done for me including this! Xo g</p>— Love, Greg (@GBerlanti) <a href="https://twitter.com/GBerlanti/status/1322354206519422977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />Thank you all for your support. It's been an insane year and I'm lucky to have shared it with all of you.<br /><br />The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-1185022075354216612020-10-30T11:30:00.002-07:002020-10-30T12:08:21.620-07:00How Greg Berlanti helped make CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS an EVERWOOD reunion<p>The EVERWOOD reunion in tonight's <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS Zoom live</a> read came about because I broke one of the most unbreakable rules in showing your scripts. With every other script I've ever written, I've never shown it to anyone with any standing in the business until AT LEAST four people have read it - usually many more.</p><p>When I sent <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-full-script-for-crisis-on-infinite.html">CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> to Greg Berlanti, NO ONE had read it in full, not even my wife. It was one of those scripts that was just so dense, and so inside baseball that I couldn't really thinking of anyone in my trusted circle who would "get it." But I was putting it out there publicly and I was playing with some of Greg's most beloved characters. Also, if you go back to <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/presenting-first-four-pages-of-crisis.html">the first day of reactions to the initial pages I posted</a>, you'll see that Jonathan Gabay, an executive at Berlanti Productions was one of the first people to be intrigued by this concept, telling me, "I need this script finished asap." Since I was sending it to Jonathan, there was really no reason NOT to send it to Greg, at least as a heads-up.</p><p>Within days, Greg replied he couldn't wait to read it over the weekend and that it sounded awesome. I'd mentioned that Ben Blacker was already on board to produce this as a live-read fundraiser, and so Greg generously said if we needed help from anyone on his team, we should let him know. When I asked, he said he'd be happy to make a few calls. </p><p>During the planning, I discovered one trait of Greg's that might explain some of his success. It was the first phone call with me, Greg Berlanti, Ben Blacker and Gregory Smith as we were hashing out the best way to do this live read. Greg Berlanti jumps on the call, and very quickly he's saying things like, "I think this could be something really special! You could raise a lot of money with this, do a lot of good! I think it's the kind of thing people need right now with the state of the world and it'd be a really fun show!"</p><p>It felt like he was selling ME on MY script! Obviously I agreed with him, but hearing him say that got me even more charged up to do it - and I think that's the point. It's like a coach giving the halftime speech to the team, it just brings up the energy immensely. If there's one thing I've learned from Greg it's to be the most enthusiastic person in the room. Be that beacon of positivity. Be the one who believes the most in what you're doing because people WILL follow you.</p><p>I've had bosses in this business who seemed to exist in a state of permanent jadedness and world-wearyness. Every move came from a cynical place. Even if they were right, they didn't fire you up about what you're working on. In the entertainment industry, you have to be the biggest believer in what you're working if you're ever going to make something people care about.</p><p>Anyway, within a couple weeks it was official - Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp were onboard. I - perhaps one of the biggest EVERWOOD fans alive - had written something that would be a mini-EVERWOOD reunion.</p><p>As protective as some actors are of their iconic roles, I knew to temper my hopes as far as getting anyone to reprise their role. I really don't think that Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp would have returned without the script having Greg's blessing. It really meant a lot to have three of the most important people in EVERWOOD put their weight behind this.</p><p><b>How did I get to the point of being able to email Greg Berlanti directly?</b> Well, it started with Twitter.</p><p>A quick look at my archives will substantiate that I've been writing about <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/search/label/Everwood">EVERWOOD</a> for a long time, and that it's not the only one of Greg's shows I've raved about. Whenever one of those posts went live, I'd tag Greg on the tweet promoting it. Greg's not particularly active on Twitter, so I never got the kind of interaction I'd had with some other showrunners, but every now and then he'd send a brief reply of thanks.</p><p>Then one day out of the blue, he followed me on Twitter. It was strange because I hadn't engaged or tweeted anything that should have caught his eye. My best guess is that maybe he saw <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/04/breaking-down-pilot-of-everwood.html">my breakdown of the EVERWOOD</a> pilot, which I'd posted about a month earlier. There was no interaction then, but it's important because it meant almost exactly a year later, I was able to DM him directly.</p><p>I was setting up a live read of <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-writers-of-spec-script-making-of.html">THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII</a>, a script I'd written with Brian Michael Scully. The occasion was my ten year anniversary as the Bitter Script Reader and I decided to mark the event by throwing a live read and inviting the many Twitter friends I'd made, and some of the professional contacts I had yet to meet in person.</p><p>To that end, I sent Greg a DM that read something like, "please excuse this one-time intrusion into your DMs, but I'm doing this live read as part of an anniversary celebration. I'm inviting a lot of people I've met via Twitter. Your work's meant a lot to me for a long time. It's part of the reason I want to be a writer and it'd be an honor to have you."</p><p>And then I waited to get unfollowed. But that didn't happen. Four or five days later, I woke up to a DM from Greg that began, "First of all, I'm touched you asked. And by all means this doesn't need to be an intrusion so write anytime." He went on to tell me that he had a conflict with that date - and it was a legit conflict - but he'd try to send someone from his company.</p><p>I wrote back to thank him and that I was glad it wasn't annoying. I mentioned that at the moment, I was working at Warners, so at least now I knew not to be shy if I ran into him on the lot. On the day of the show, Greg sent me a message wishing me luck and saying that since I was on the lot, maybe I could stop by the office sometime and say hi.</p><p>Well, I'm not gonna say no to that, am I?</p><p>What eventually happened was we agreed to meet for coffee on the lot, and I learned something valuable from that. I got to meet Greg outside his office and then within like thirty seconds our chit-chat led me to bring up my son... and we discovered our kids are literally just days apart in age, so as Dad's we were dealing with the exact same things, same TV shows they were obsessed with and so on.</p><p>At this point, I'm pretty good at not being star struck, but I always worry I'll make a fool of myself in front of someone who's work I've really been into. By meeting Greg on neutral territory and having the conversation go the way it did, I didn't feel like I was meeting "Greg Berlanti, most prolific TV producer." I was talking to "Greg Berlanti, fellow dad" and from that moment on, it was like talking to a new friend who I was on equal footing with. When you're taking a general meeting that you're nervous about, try to find some way to get to that place in the conversation.</p><p>And then we went back to the office anyway. Greg said, "I want to know what you're writing now, your two best scripts, and what shows you're really into at the moment." My technique for answering was to make sure there was a thruline that ran through all of these. In other words, figure out how your favorite shows relate to what you've written before, and how all of that informs what you're writing now. As a bonus, if you can make all of that relevant to the person you're talking to, that's gold.</p><p>After I weaved through those answers, Greg said, "Okay, let's skip to the end of the meeting and then we can just chat for 40 minutes. I'm gonna give you my email. Send me your two best scripts. Give me a couple weeks to read them because we're about to work on some pilots, but after that we'll have hired some new execs for staffing and then I can pass what I like onto them, if that's okay."</p><p><i>If that's okay? Yeah, I think I'll be fine with you reading my work personally and then considering me for staffing.</i></p><p>I sent him my teen drama thriller pilot and my <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/writing-spec-episode-part-1-finding.html">13 REASONS WHY/AWAKE spec</a>. Since at least ten minutes of our meeting ended up discussing THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, I also included that, while specifying it was independent of my submissions. I was just sending to him in case he was curious.</p><p>He read all three - which means that even before Greg read CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS, he'd read more of my work than every showrunner I've worked for - put together! </p><p>As it turned out, that staffing season wasn't my year. Had some meetings with his execs and one of his showrunners, but didn't get it. I kept up contact with Greg and ultimately, when SUPERMAN & LOIS came along, I was offered Writers' Assistant.</p><p>That was a no-brainer. My favorite character in a series produced by one of my favorite writer/producers? It felt like destiny that after all the time I waited to break in, THIS was going to be it.</p><p>And this is where I've buried the lede. I can't tell you anything about the episode's plot. I can't even tell you which episode it will be, but <b>by the end of first season of SUPERMAN & LOIS, you will see an episode with the credit, "Written by Adam Mallinger."</b></p><p>(That's me, in case you <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-will-be.html">forgot already</a>. Craig Byrne at KSiteTV was the first to break the news in <a href="http://www.ksitetv.com/interviews-2/interview-the-bitter-script-reader-previews-crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/205922/">this interview</a> with me today.)</p><p>My first episode of television is going to be a Superman episode. This is something like <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2012/08/breaking-up-with-superman-and-comics-in.html">35 years of my life</a> in the making. There are so many things in my life that have led up to the developments of the last couple months that if my life was a TV show, I'd feel like this was the endgame leading to the series finale.</p><p>I hope you all enjoy the show tonight. The entire act of making this program is an experience that has meant a lot to me.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-14227981919676414292020-10-28T20:00:00.002-07:002020-10-28T20:12:17.326-07:00A couple CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS interviews and show details<p> Hi all! I hope you're all excited for the <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">Zoom live-read of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a>, dropping tomorrow at 5pm PT.</p><p>Since some people have been confused about this, I want to make it clear that you don't HAVE to watch it right when it drops. The show will be available until November 8th. If you have Halloween plans for tomorrow, you can watch it any time this weekend or next week. Tickets are $8 + $2 service charge and the money raised will be spilt between two great charities:</p><p><b>1) <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app20122a?idb=386908453&DONATION_LEVEL_ID_SELECTED=1&df_id=3399&mfc_pref=T&3399.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=BED2FB9B53F58B7232EAA6671BD279D6&idb=0">The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund</a> </b>- This has been established by the Actors Fund to benefit L.A. based support staffers affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns. I'm a Writers' Assistant on SUPERMAN & LOIS, and I'm very fortunate to have a job right now. Many of my peers aren't as fortunate and I really want to help them out with this show. Please give generously. You'll be helping a lot of future TV writers stay in the game.</p><p><b>2) <a href="https://www.heirsproperty.org/">The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation</a></b> - This is a non-profit that does legal work to protect the land rightfully owned by the descendants of former slaves as well as ecologic and economic work to sustain those properties and their communities. Basically, they help underserved families protect land that the government or rich white people want to take from them and exploit.</p><p>You can donate more than the cost of the ticket if you want. Just buy more tickets. It's not as if there's limited seating.</p><p>I've done a few recent interviews about taking the mask off as The Bitter Script Reader and hyping CRISIS in general. Here's a round-up</p><p>1) Over at <a href="https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/the-bitter-script-reader-revealed-623ae8079e8d">Go Into the Story</a>, longtime blog buddy Scott Myers and I had a chat about how The Bitter Script Reader came to be, what the deal was with the Bitter Puppet, what it takes to be a good writers' assistant and more.</p><p>2) I appeared on video at Pendemic TV to hype CRISIS and also talk a little bit about my career as a reader. You can go <a href="https://youtu.be/LpwAqgosY-k">here</a> or just watch the embedded video.</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LpwAqgosY-k" width="420"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>3) I was a guest on <a href="http://transporterroom3.blogspot.com/2020/10/DS9-Take-Me-Out-to-the-Holosuite-Review.html">Transporter Room 3</a>, a Star Trek podcast. Again I was hyping CRISIS and then we turned to a discussion of one of my favorite DEEP SPACE NINE episodes, the baseball comedy "Take Me Out To The Holosuite. And we also get into how DS9 radicalized me against the George W. Bush Administration. Go <a href="https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/2/2/0/220fdabb063fc5b9/TR3-198.mp3?c_id=87152174&cs_id=87152174&expiration=1603945401&hwt=d2e4207dbe268663d277990f38a8da96">here</a> to hear the episode.</div><div><br /></div>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-15397682329146184902020-10-23T00:00:00.013-07:002020-10-23T00:00:02.443-07:00My "big break" that wasn't<p>I'm about to talk about something that I imagine a lot of fellow Writers Assistants can relate to - the close calls with what should have been your "big break."</p><p>The current way of making TV has changed the way one advances quite a bit. Fewer shows do 22 episodes a year, which in the old days, would have been enough to keep one employed for almost the entire year and also meant many more opportunities for an assistant to get a script assignment.</p><p>Today, shows are getting shorter order. Those 22 slots are shrunk down to 13. Or 10. Or 8. When you couple that with the size of the staff and the fact that many upper levels come onto a show with a contractual guarantee for a certain number of scripts, those extra slots that went to assistants in the past have disappeared.</p><p>Another reality that assistants have to deal with is that in general, you advance upwards on the same show. It's rare to advance laterally by moving onto a new show. This means that if you put in enough time on Show A, you might be rewarded with an assignment in a later season. But what happens what that series is a 10-episode order for streaming? That means it's only about 4 months of work and the show won't reassemble the writers room until as much as a year later, IF it gets picked up. Odds are, that assistant is going to have to jump onto a different show, and then another show. It how you get stuck at the same level.</p><p>This is why I beg you that if you run across a writers' assistant who's been at this for 7, 8, 9 years, DON'T ask them, "So why haven't you gotten a script/been staffed yet?" with the implication that if they were any good, it would have happened.</p><p>There was a moment where I was convinced I'd gotten a winning lotto ticket. Jeff Lieber hired me as the Writers' PA on the second season of NCIS: NEW ORLEANS and one of the first things I learned was that Jeff wants all the support staff to get writing credits. This was something I could verify by looking at the credits on his prior shows. Jeff's episodes would always be co-written with an assistant, usually with them earning co-story credit the first time around. Two assistants had gotten their chance on the first season of NOLA in season one, with one of them being advanced to Staff Writer for season two.</p><p>So as I came onto the show that season, that meant that I was third in line for a co-write with Jeff - the Script Coordinator and the Writers' Assistant were ahead of me. Looking at how the schedule shook out, it was extremely likely Jeff was going to write at least three eps in a 24-episode season and so I started on that job thinking, "Holy shit! By the end of this year, my name's going to be on an hour of television seen by millions of people."</p><p>Obviously, that didn't happen.</p><p>Jeff wrote the season premiere solo for reasons not worth getting into here. His second script was a collaboration with Katherine Beattie, our Script Coordinator. She eventually got a much overdue promotion to staff a couple seasons later. Alas, before a third episode could come up, Jeff and the show had parted ways. The new showrunner arrived after mid-season and at that point, had little interest in following through on any kind of mentorship that Jeff had established. Bye, bye episode.</p><p>And by the end of the season, bye, bye job. Here's the thing about TV, as my friend and mentor Javier Grillo-Marxuach is prone to saying, "You serve at the pleasure of the showrunner." That's the gig. It's the showrunner's prerogative to choose his own staff. When you sign on for the gig, you have to accept that. The point is that after 24 episodes of TV, I was out looking for a new job.</p><p>All I have to say about how I was let go is that it came in the form of a phone call on the first day of hiatus - after many conversations had specifically led me to believe I was going to be back the next season. This also was less than three months after I became a father.</p><p>Completely within the showrunner's prerogative to do that... but a heads-up might have been nice. A conversation a few weeks out to the effect of, "Hey, I know you just had a baby, but I'm going to be making some changes next season. I wanted to let you know so you're not blindsided" would have been a stand-up way to handle it.</p><p>I might add that if someone was an upper level writer/producer on the show and found out, say six weeks earlier that the showrunner was going to make this change, the honorable thing to do would be been to pull the WPA into your office and say, "If you repeat this, I'll kill you, but they're not bringing you back next year and they're not telling you until hiatus. After all you've done this season, I feel like you at least deserve to know."</p><p>I'm saying this because TV assistants work hard, and I think they work harder now than they used to with a much smaller chance of that script assignment coming soon. They have to change jobs more often, "play their dues" longer, and then even after they get the assignment, find it harder to be promoted to staff on these shorter-running series.</p><p>The absolute least thing that the people they're working for can do for them is to treat them honorably and be straightforward with them. They've earned that.</p><p>I should add that the showrunner reinstated the policy of assistants rewriting the following season. As far as I can tell, everyone who was on the support staff after me got a writing credit. This means I have the distinction of being the ONLY assistant on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS who never earned any kind of writing credit or script assignment.</p><p>The "big breaks" don't always turn out the way you imagine. You just gotta pick yourself up and move on to the next one.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-8631314403591912882020-10-22T00:00:00.124-07:002020-10-22T00:00:00.376-07:00More lessons I learned as a showrunner of my college TV show<p><a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-how-doing-live-read-of-crisis-on.html"> Part 1</a></p><p>In Part 1, I alluded to scheduling issues. It's important to realize that Denison University was providing no support at all beyond letting us use the closed circuit channel. Cameras had to be borrowed from the Library Resource Center or - as became more common as the season went on - from the personal equipment of cast and crew. This also meant that everything we did for this was on our own time and we were asking our cast to participate on THEIR own time.</p><p>My fellow writer/producer/directors on the show were Adam Ziegler and Jeff Grieshober. We wrote episodes in a round robin rotation with a fourth writer. For season one, the gimmick was that it was an "exquisite corpse" method of writing. I wrote the first episode, established the characters and storylines, and made sure several of them ended on cliffhangers. I then passed it off to Jeff, whose responsibility it was to resolve those cliffhangers how ever he wanted, and then write Ziegler into a corner before passing the script on, and so on.</p><p>Ziegler and Jeff were directing their own episodes and briefly I left the responsibility for scheduling and shooting up to them. Very quickly, it became apparent that this wasn't the best way to go. Given the challenge of wrangling some actors for the same open windows in their schedule, we realized it made more sense to try to shoot scenes from two, even three episodes at once, if they were in the same location with the same characters. (We had a lot of scenes in dorm rooms, with consistent parings of characters.)</p><p>That meant I took it upon myself to schedule everything. My method became using different colored cards for each episode, and assigning each scene a card, listing the actors involved. Then I'd group all the cards by location and pin them to my bulletin board. Right away I had an immediate visual representation of which locations I'd need and for how long. Thus, if I had to schedule something in a friend's room that had been established as one of our character's dorms, and this spanned five scenes across two episodes, I'd probably aim for a weekend shoot, first clearing the location and then locking down the actors.</p><p>Visitors to my room would see this meticulously organized board of color coded cards and find themselves treated to my enthusiastic explanation of how this made production possible. Shockingly, none of them were as impressed as I was.</p><p>Nearly 15 years later, when I was working on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, I walked in on our showrunner Jeff Lieber using one of our large white boards as he laid out the schedule for the next several episodes breaks, scripts, and production. Quite proudly, he showed me how each episode had a color and how he had staggered each stage and lined them up so that at a glance we could know EXACTLY what the room and the staff should be concerned with on a particular day. I started laughing and said that some people who worked on my college show would be very amused to see me on the receiving end of someone's ecstatic worship of their board.</p><p>You can have a laugh about this, but the truth is that this taught me an incredibly valuable skill - organization. Once we established this method, that show ran like a Swiss watch, particular when in our second round of scripts, we started writing to the things we knew were issues. Scenes with five characters became less frequent, as we focused on pairings of characters. Shorter scenes let us shoot things in oners, making post-production easier on us too. And as for the actors who were pains in our asses? We killed or sidelined them - at least until another writer would resurrect them as a twin for spite.</p><p>During season 1 of the show, I had a great idea when my second episode came around in rotation. The character we'd created to be the boyfriend of our female lead just wasn't working out. He was coming off as an asshole and it was starting to make her look bad for being with him - so I killed him off. And as that idea came to me, I had a vision for what I'd do if there was a second season of the show, one where I abandoned the round robin approach and tried being a showrunner for real.</p><p>I should explain I was writing this episode in January 2001. At that point, one of my favorite episodes of television was an episode of THE WONDER YEARS called "The Accident." It's about Kevin seeing Winnie fall in with a new group of friends and how it changes her. They're older, and it's hinted they're into drugs. There's a lot between the lines here, but there's the implication that even years later, she's not dealing well with the death of her brother and late in the episode, she's injured in a car crash. Kevin immediately rushes to her house and waits into the night for her to come home, only to be told Winnie doesn't want to see him. Later, he goes to her window and tells her he loves her, a sentiment she returns.</p><p>I'm not doing it justice, but it's a powerful, emotional episode.</p><p>Another emotionally intense episode I admired was an episode entitled "<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2013/01/happy-birthday-homicide.html">Crosetti</a>." In it, the body of Steve Crosetti, one of the detectives, is found in the water. The immediate assumption is suicide, but Bolander is assigned to investigate, even as Crosetti's partner Lewis remains convinced that the man he worked with every day would never have killed himself. He even goes so far as to mess with Bolander's investigation, earning him an aggressive rebuke from the elder detective. But in the end, the autopsy tells the sad tale - Crosetti had taken so many pills before going into the water that he was "a walking drug store." Lewis tries to cling to denial for a moment, and then completely breaks down in tears. The first one to pull him into a bear hug... is Bolander. It's a powerful moment, and one I wish was on YouTube.</p><p>Anyway, my thoughts of a season two all led to this idea: "I get to write my 'Crosetti' or my 'Accident!'" I envisioned a storyline where Katherine, our female lead, deals badly with the murder of her boyfriend and slips into depression over the first half of the season, culminating with her friends having to come together to stage an intervention that goes badly and almost provokes a suicide attempt. I wanted to show I could write and direct something big, dramatic and emotional. I was also certain our actress was up to the challenge. So right there, that became my secret agenda for Season two.</p><p>I mentioned that this struck me in January 2001. Well, guess what hit the airwaves the very next month? An episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer called "<a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2010/08/buffy-vampire-slayers-body-how-to-write.html">The Body,</a>" which deals with Buffy coming home to find her mother dead of non-supernatural causes. It's a grounded, emotional tear-jerker of an episode. I was a known acolyte of Buffy's creator, Joss Whedon, and so since it wasn't until May that I started sharing my season two plans with my team, IMMEDIATELY their reaction was, "Adam wants to do 'The Body.'"</p><p>Anyway, that led me to lay out a more concrete plan for Season Two. Since season 1 had proven we could do essentially 10 half-hour episodes in a semester. I decided that we'd take our time in Season Two and produce 15 episodes across two semesters, intending eight each semester. I staked out episode 5 as the intervention episode and told the other writers that they could pitch anything they wanted, but it had to fit into that plan. Since I was getting my indulgence, I was determined to let the others indulge themselves too - mostly because I was afraid they'd quit if I didn't.</p><p>To make a long story less long, I didn't realize just how much my artistic ego was going to cost. Five straight episodes of someone falling further and further into depression makes for bleak viewing, especially when it culminates in an episode so heavy that the darker tone ripples through other episodes around it. I went too far - people enjoyed the first season of the show because it was fun and here I was giving them something heavy and depressing. It was apparent once I saw the results, but I was blind to this as I was creating it.</p><p>And do you want to know what was really funny? About a month after we started shooting, the sixth season of Buffy debuted. The storyline for that season dealt with Buffy being resurrected and dealing with depression and PTSD because her friends pulled her out of Heaven, where she was at peace. She spends essentially the whole season in varying states of depression until she claws out of it. With apologies to any writers who worked on that season, it was a very bleak and occasionally unenjoyable season to endure, particularly in the middle third.</p><p>So I'm watching one of my favorite shows, shouting at them that "How could you go so bleak? This isn't what any of us watch the show for! We don't enjoy seeing Buffy like this!" while realizing that the thing I'm screaming at them for doing is the EXACT SAME mistake I made when my artistic pretensions got away from me. I was watching my idols commit the exact same missteps I was learning from in real time. It was a weird bit of synchronicity.</p><p>This also probably explains why I so connected with the first season of <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/05/13-reasons-why-side-1-setting.html">13 Reasons Why.</a> As I watched it, I realized what they achieved there was in many ways what I was striving for during that season of my TV show. (Though obviously, I was nowhere near a good enough writer to achieve what they did.)</p><p>I wish I had a really good ending for this story, but here's the truth: while we wrote all 13 episodes of season two (two episodes of the grand plan ended up being eliminated along the way), we only ended up completing eight of them. Commitments and other projects started taking everyone's attention during our senior year and ultimately, we pulled the plug. It killed me to not finish what we started, but as I look back, the experience of making the show was its own reward far more than the completed episodes ended up being.</p><p>And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spent more time working on the show than I did on all of my other classes, probably combined. It galvanized for me that working in TV was something I wanted to do and in a weird way, proved to me that I had kind of the head for it.</p><p>Would I have stayed in the game so long if someone told me then that 20 years down the line I'd still be trying to "make it?" I don't know, but looking back, I'm glad I didn't give up.</p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-86116743171011238952020-10-21T00:00:00.001-07:002020-10-29T21:40:24.628-07:00On how doing a live read of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS with Greg Berlanti brings twenty years of my life full circle<p>Last week I finally ripped off the Bitter Script Reader mask with <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas-will-be.html">the announcement of a live read for my script CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a>. The project unites cast members from about a dozen different teen shows - including EVERWOOD's Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp in their original roles - and is <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">produced by Ben Blacker and Greg Berlanti</a>.</p><p>Twenty years ago this November, I was sitting in my dorm room at Denison University, writing the first episode of a TV show I was producing for the college's student-run cable network. The university was providing no support to the network, beyond letting us use the close-circuit channel for broadcasting. The production of the programs was completely the responsibility of the students making them. The university was providing neither funds nor resources. If I was going to make this show, it'd have to be on my own time, with whatever cameras and editing equipment I could scrounge up.</p><p>But I was very interested in getting to be a showrunner. I'd spent years reading the answers that STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE writer Ron Moore gave to fans who chatted with him on the AOL boards. A lot of what he talked about related to crafting story and how to make producible TV. It was sort of like showrunner school for someone who knew nothing about how writing for TV worked. Where I had huge gaps, they'd been partly filled in by a wealth of interviews from Joss Whedon, who often spoke at length about crafting genre TV with meaning and developing story and characters over long distances.</p><p>I decided to make producing the show easy on myself and set it on a college campus, revolving around the lives of students in a slightly heightened version of our school. That squarely put this in same genre of TV as much of what The WB was producing. More specifically - I was clearly showing the influence of DAWSON'S CREEK, which had just started its 4th season and had had a drastic upswing in quality about a third of the way through the previous season. There's no doubt that the character dynamics and conflicts had imprinted on me and were finding their way into the script I was working on.</p><p>The man who took over DAWSON'S CREEK and who was responsible for that creative resurgence? Greg Berlanti.</p><p>You probably begin to see how having Greg involved with the live read of a script of mine that's a valentine to the entire teen drama genre really felt like an instance of things coming full circle. There might be a couple of full circles there, to be honest. My good friend Matt Bolish - who I got to know at Denison when creating the show - called CRISIS "The script you've been meant to write for as long as I've known you."</p><p>To add to the layers of surrealism, I've been working for Greg for the better part of this year as the writers' assistant on the forth-coming SUPERMAN & LOIS.</p><p>This all has made me very reflective over the last several weeks, and so I hope you'll indulge me as I share some memories.</p><p>Casting the show was a humbling experience. We'd announced an open call across two days. On Day 1 only four people showed up. Fortunately, one of the students heading up DTV had some ties to the theater department and he made sure that Day 2 had many more actors. Even then, there was a lesson to be learned - you can't cast people who don't show up. Though some actors walked in and were more or less perfect for a part, there were a number of critical roles where no one fit the characters in my brain. Tailoring those characters to their performers would be a season-long effort. </p><p>For instance, I'd written our villain as a pompous, verbose young Lex Luthor type. The guy we cast didn't have any obvious menace, but we found a way to make that work. The bigger issue was that he just wasn't used to memorizing paragraphs of dialogue, as we discovered in shooting the first episode. So immediately he was rewritten to be "more terse" (the actor's words) in later eps.</p><p>On the other hand, I learned that one effective technique was to scare the hell out of the actors about needing to know their lines for one big scene. The first episode had two such scenes. One was an EXTREMELY rare scene where we had eight of the ten regulars assembled at the dining hall for a scene that established everyone's dynamic with each other. Because of the difficulty in finding an open window in everyone's schedules, that didn't get shot until the end of the second week of production. That meant I had two weeks to warn everyone that they had to be ON because everyone was there and we'd have a lot of coverage to get. As a benefit, by then, most of the cast had settled into their roles.</p><p>We had three cameras rolling for this and my memory is that everyone nailed every line on the first take. It was like watching a play, even though everyone knew this scene would have a lot of cuts, and thus opportunities to pick up missed or blown lines. With three cameras going, my memory is that we only had to do it three or four times in full.</p><p>Threatening your cast works.</p><p>Right after that, we shot one of the most self indulgent scenes I ever wrote, where five of the characters are playing risk, and my avatar Owen Beckett sizes up everyone's strategies, using them as a way of psychologically deconstructing his opponents. It was over two pages where the actor, the aforementioned Matt Bolish, was doing most of the talking. Again, threatening physical harm got the job done because Matt nailed it perfectly. (There's a blooper reel where, during shooting of another scene where Matt keeps dropping his lines, he points at me and says, "you know who I blame for this? I blame you, because I've been up all week going "...and that's why he doesn't make alliances," quoting the cursed scene.)</p><p>This week I'm gonna take a few looks back at this project. It was the thing that really made me feel like I should pursue TV writing, and I definitely learned some lessons on it that made me not only a better writer, but probably better prepared to be a showrunner (someday.)</p><p><a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/10/more-lessons-i-learned-as-showrunner-of.html">Part II</a></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-20347995420413913172020-10-11T10:00:00.001-07:002020-10-11T10:18:37.900-07:00CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS will be a Zoom live read for charity AND feature an EVERWOOD reunion!<p>You read <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-full-script-for-crisis-on-infinite.html">the script.</a> You told me I should do it as a live read. Well, guess what? I listened, and thanks to Ben Blacker and Greg Berlanti, you are at last getting the teen mega-crossover you deserve<b>!</b></p><p><b>Coming Friday, October 30... <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">a Zoom live read of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a>! </b>An all-star cast will bring to life this unprecedented crossover event featuring characters from nearly a dozen teen dramas and a few surprises!</p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A Crisis is erasing the world of the Teen Drama multiverse and the only thing that can save it is an all-star cast of teen archetypes assembled by Kevin Arnold and Dawson Leery! The worlds of VERONICA MARS, EVERWOOD, RIVERDALE, ONE TREE HILL, GILMORE GIRLS and 13 REASONS WHY are just a few that collide in this meeting of the angstiest, sexiest and fastest talking teens in TV history.</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And in a special treat, this dream team includes Ephram Brown and Amy Abbott from EVERWOOD - played by their original performers: <b>Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp! Yes, it's an EVERWOOD reunion, and that's not the end of the surprises here!</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">From producers <b>Greg Berlanti </b>(Dawson’s Creek; Everwood; The Flash; Riverdale, and many more) and <b>Ben Blacker </b>(Thrilling Adventure Hour; Dead Pilots Society) and writer <b>Adam Mallinger </b>comes a tribute to the classic WB teen dramas of yesterday and an affectionate parody of the CW superhero shows of today.</span></p><p>Who's Adam Mallinger, you ask? That's me! That's right, this project is so huge, I HAD to have my real name on it, so after over 11 years - the mask has totally fallen.</p><p>Most of you are going to keep calling me "Bitter," and I'm totally fine with that, btw.</p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Starring</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Gregory Smith (ROOKIE BLUE) as Ephram Brown</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Emily VanCamp (THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER) as Amy Abbott</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Melissa Fumero (BROOKLYN NINE-NINE) as Lorelei Gilmore</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Isabella Gomez (ONE DAY AT A TIME) as Rory Gilmore and Brooke Davis</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Emmy Raver-Lampman (UMBRELLA ACADEMY) as Veronica Mars</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Vella Lovell (CRAZY EX- GIRLFRIEND) as Veronica Lodge</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Nick Wechsler (REVENGE) as Archie Andrews</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Matt Lauria (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) as Dawson Leery</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Anjelica Fellini (TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS) as Hannah Baker</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mark Gagliardi (BLOOD & TREASURE) as Kevin Arnold</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Caroline Ward (HOST) as Peyton Sawyer</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Jaime Moyer (A.P. BIO) as Sue Sylvester</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Lindsey Blackwell (DAVID MAKES MAN) as Young Veronica Mars</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Autumn Reeser (THE O.C.) as Taylor Townsend</span></p><p><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And Greg Berlanti as The Flash</span></p><p>Tickets available <a href="https://houseseats.live/2020/10/30/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas/">here</a>. The cost is $8 plus a $2 fee, but you're allowed to donate more, and I hope you do, because the proceeds are going to two great causes:</p><p><b>1) <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app20122a?idb=386908453&DONATION_LEVEL_ID_SELECTED=1&df_id=3399&mfc_pref=T&3399.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=BED2FB9B53F58B7232EAA6671BD279D6&idb=0">The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund</a> </b>- This has been established by the Actors Fund to benefit L.A. based support staffers affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns. I'm a Writers' Assistant on SUPERMAN & LOIS, and I'm very fortunate to have a job right now. Many of my peers aren't as fortunate and I really want to help them out with this show. Please give generously. You'll be helping a lot of future TV writers stay in the game.</p><p><b>2) <a href="https://www.heirsproperty.org/">The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation</a></b> - This is a non-profit that protects heirs’ property and promotes its sustainable use to provide increased economic benefit to historically under-served families<span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></p><p><b>The show goes live on Friday, October 30th at 8pm ET / 5pm PT and will be available until midnight on Sunday, November 8th.</b></p><p>I'll have more to say about this in subsequent posts, but getting to be a part of this live read, seeing this script come to life, has been one of the great thrills of my career. Getting to do it with people whose work I've not only enjoyed, but admired and emulated is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that I'm going to cherish for a very long time.</p><p>If I start gushing about this amazing cast, I'll end up leaving someone out, but just LOOK at that list of people and tell me that's not a show you'd kick in a few bucks to watch.</p><p>If you want to read the first draft of the script (which is not EXACTLY the draft we're performing) and get a little history behind the script, go to <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-full-script-for-crisis-on-infinite.html">this post</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-38120905602887141632020-06-05T17:40:00.000-07:002020-06-05T17:45:33.251-07:00The full script for CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS is now available!You guys were here at the start of this less than two weeks ago when I dashed off <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/presenting-first-four-pages-of-crisis.html">four pages of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS</a> as a joke. It was basically taking the format of the big comic book mega-crossovers (and the Arrowverse crossover that the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS inspired) and applying it to some of the biggest teen dramas of the last 30 years.<br />
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The reaction was so good that I wrote <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/part-2-of-crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">another four pages</a>. And then <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">another</a>. And <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-4th-post-of-pages-from-crisis-on.html">another</a>.<br />
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By then it was becoming clear to me that I'd have to finish this script I had no plan for when I started. It makes sense that I'd be drawn to something like this - teen dramas are among my favorite shows. Three years ago, when I listed the <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/06/16-great-tv-shows-part-1-wonder-years.html">16 Great TV Shows</a> that made an impact on me as a writer, <a href="https://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/06/16-great-tv-shows-part-1-wonder-years.html">THE WONDER YEARS</a>, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/07/16-great-tv-shows-part-12-gilmore-girls.html">GILMORE GIRLS</a>, <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/07/16-great-tv-shows-part-13-everwood.html">EVERWOOD</a> and <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2017/07/16-great-tv-shows-part-16-13-reasons-why.html">13 REASONS WHY</a> all made the list. Two years ago, I wrote an alternate season 3 premiere for 13 REASONS WHY, using it as an example of <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/writing-spec-episode-part-1-finding.html">how to write a spec episode</a>.<br />
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This script went from idle joke to completed spec in about eight days. I've held it for a few days because with all the protests happening across the country, it didn't feel appropriate at all to say, "Hey guys! Check this out!" It's now clear that several days into this, there IS going to be no golden time to be silly. The next five months until the election (and probably several months after) are going to be marked by continuing tragedy and aggression from Donald Trump and his party as they terrorize a nation to distract from their terrible pandemic response - and maybe make an undemocratic power grab as a bonus.<br />
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The world sucks, and things are bleak right now. Take joy where you can find it. If this script is in line with your interests, I hope it can make you smile for 75 pages. It's a loving tribute to many of the shows and creators whose work has inspired me and healed me throughout my life.<br />
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You can download the full script <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/si3lo41o2zv55e2/Crisis_on_Infinite_Teen_Dramas.pdf/file">here</a>.<br />
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<b>After you click that link, press ONLY the button that says "Download" next to the script title, and ignore any pop-ups you get or any messages telling you that your Adobe Flash is out of date.</b><br />
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Some credit where credit is due:<br />
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BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 created by Darren Starr<br />
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DAWSON'S CREEK created by Kevin Williamson<br />
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EVERWOOD created by Greg Berlanti<br />
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GLEE created by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk & Ian Brennan<br />
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KATY KEENE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa & Michael Grassi, based on characters by Archie Comics<br />
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PRETTY LITTLE LIARS developed by I. Marlene King, based on the novels by Sara Shepard<br />
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GILMORE GIRLS created by Amy Sherman-Palladino<br />
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ONE TREE HILL created by Mark Schwahn<br />
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RIVERDALE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa, based on characters by Archie Comics<br />
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THE OC created by Josh Schwartz<br />
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VERONICA MARS created by Rob Thomas<br />
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13 REASONS WHY developed by Brian Yorkey, based on the novel by Jay Asher<br />
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THE WONDER YEARS created by Neal Marlens & Carol BlackThe Bitter Script Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16575166527272639709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4706282221761427996.post-55918102502026853252020-05-24T09:53:00.004-07:002020-06-30T21:31:58.418-07:00The 4th post of pages from CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMASFor Part 1, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/presenting-first-four-pages-of-crisis.html">here</a>.<br />
For Part 2, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/part-2-of-crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">here</a>.<br />
For Part 3, go <a href="http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2020/05/crisis-on-infinite-teen-dramas.html">here</a>.<br />
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With today's pages, we've reached that point in the story where it becomes necessary to have plot and exposition that will justify why everything is happening. I felt a little guilty about that, so instead of four pages, it turned out six pages as a bonus for the holiday weekend.<br />
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Enjoy and start your speculations on who Dark Monitor is.<br />
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