Archive for the 'TV' Category

Would anyone have thought that a year ago Kathryn Bigelow would be directing a hot pilot for HBO?  Not me.  No way.

Here’s the breaking news headline I got in my box Sunday from The Hollywood Report:

HBO snags Kathryn Bigelow:
HBO has snagged the hottest film director at the moment, Oscar nominee for “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow.

Hottest Film Director of the Moment- and they are talking about a women!

Seems that she is venturing out of her comfort zone (i.e. no action) and directing the light drama Miraculous Year by John Logan which is: “an examination of a New York family as seen through the lens of a charismatic, self-destructive Broadway composer.”

This is her third venture to into TV having directed some episodes of Homicide and Karen Sisco.

What a difference a year makes.

HBO Snags Kathryn Bigelow (Hollywood Reporter)

So Friday Night Lights ended its fourth (and I think best) season this week and they closed the loop on the abortion storyline that has been a focus of the last several episodes.

When we last left it, Principal Tammy Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) was being forced to make a public apology for her actions (which was written by the school board.)  Now, Tammy Tami loves her job, is a great principal and also quite frankly needs the money so she was put in a very difficult position. She got up to make the apology under duress, opened her folder and began to read and then stopped.  She stopped.  She did not apologize for what she did.  She said she did what was in the best interest of the student and that’s her job and that’s always what she will do.  And then she walked off the stage to screams of disbelief from the crowd.

She stood up for her convictions and did not apologize for giving a young girl in distress the LEGAL options available to her.

But Tammy Tami knew that by not apologizing she was probably going to get fired.  The head of the school board called her to a meeting on the Saturday (of Thanksgiving weekend) and told her she had been put on paid administrative leave.  It looked like that was going to settle it but the writers gave her a way out and she told the head of the school board that she was willing to relinquish her position as principal at West Dillon High to head up the counseling program at East Dillon (the upstart school on the “wrong side” of the tracks where her husband is now the football coach.)

This is about the classiest show on TV I think since My So Called Life.  I know that next season will be the last, but it is going down as one of the best and not just because of how it handled the abortion storyline.  This show is so full of what can best be described as “heart,” and because that is missing from most of TV nowadays when you see it and feel it, it kind of takes your breath away.

On a lighter note (just so you all don’t think I am serious all the time) I’m on the BBC talking about how they are taking Friends off the air on Channel 4 in England after 16 years.  They’re going to have to watch it on cable now.

Friends interview

I’m a little behind on my 24 watching.  I was actually excited for the season because Katee Sachoff was going to be on and I thought she would be kicking some butt, but no, she’s being abused by her ex-con of a boyfriend.   EW has also recognized that things are sucking for the women on 24 no more so than agent Renee Walker who is dealing with PTSD from a sexual assault that happened several years ago on assignment.  This year things went a bit farther.  Adventures of a Young Feminist has kept up to date and is kind enough to let us cross-post a piece she wrote about 24:

Connie Britton as Tammy Taylor

It’s been a couple of weeks since both Private Practice and Friday Night Lights had their pivotal abortion episodes and I wanted to give an update on the fallout.

Bottom line – Friday Night Lights (FNL) walked into the minefield with the storyline and didn’t shy away like Private Practice did.

The fallout on FNL has not been focused on Becky, the girl who had the abortion, it’s been on Tammy Taylor, the high school principal, who listened and gave Becky her options.

The baby daddy’s mommy got herself into a religious fervor and called the school board and tried to have Principal Taylor fired for encouraging Becky to have an abortion.  The school board had a hearing and both sides were heard and Tammy was cleared of any wrong doing.

But the issue did not go away quietly as the school board wanted.  Picketers showed up at her school, she started getting nasty phone calls at home, and she was basically told that if she did not release a statement of apology that she will lose her job.  She went to see a lawyer who was clear that she would probably win a wrongful termination lawsuit, but he also said that then she would be virtually unemployable.  The lawyer said: “there’s the law and there’s life.”

So she’s screwed.  She’s screwed for doing the right thing which I know happens to people all the time.  And the question the show poses so brilliantly is how is it that doing the right and legal thing can lead to such grave consequences.

The season finale is this week and in the preview it shows her practicing her apology in the bathroom mirror.  Can’t wait to see how it winds up.

As for Private Practice…I am embarrassed to say they took a big pass on the issue.  After getting all the medical issues so right, they handled it so wrong.  Fifteen year old Maya is going to have the baby, and get married to baby daddy Dink.  Of course they are going to   finish high school and live happily after ever.  They have parents with means, haven’t been kicked out of the house, and could probably even get a nanny to raise the kid while they finish high school.  I’m sure she will have a miscarriage soon and the whole ugly thing will be over.  I just don’t understand why they went to the precipice and then just backed so far off.  Makes no sense to me.

Those of you who don’t have Direct TV can see the full season of Friday Night Lights on NBC beginning on April 30.  Please watch.

I have been waiting impatiently for about a decade now to see the spark in Claire Danes’ eyes that I saw way back when she played Angela Chase in My So Called Life. She’s been in a bunch of movies and has been lovely and usually very good, but no where near great.

Finally, she has a found a role where she is beyond great, she is stupendous.  Claire Danes is revelatory as Temple Grandin animal behaviorist, best-selling author, autistic and expert in autism.  This is a fascinating movie and I learned so much about this woman and about autism.  Temple did not speak until she was four and if not for her mother would have probably ended up spending her life in an institution.  What a loss that would have been.

I was riveted in many ways by the film especially the scenes about how Grandin related to animals, especially cows.  I couldn’t believe it when I learned that she has designed over 50% cattle slaughterhouses in the country and they are all designed to promote humane treatment of the animals.

But it is Danes who is a revelation, and I really hope that this will convince her and others that she has the range to dig into meaty roles in the future.

Temple Grandin spent a couple of minutes on the phone with me talking about the film, her work and her life.

W&H: First I want to talk a little bit about your mother. The film shows how your mother never gave up on you. And it’s almost a love story between the two of you.  What was your father’s role?

Temple Grandin: Mother was the one who kept me out of an institution. My father, like a lot of dads, had very little input. He would have gone along with the doctors. Back in the 50’s you sort of did what the doctors did. In a lot of families where they have a severely handicapped kid, it’s the mothers that take care of it. I go and do a talk and autism meeting and there are a few dads there. But for every dad there are ten mothers.

W&H: What was so magical for me was your relationship with animals.

TG: When I was in high school I thought everybody thought in pictures like I did. The movie showed how I thought in pictures brilliantly. The other thing that I really liked about the movie was that all my projects that were in the movie. They were all actually done and they were all made.  The squeeze machines were built off the drawing. Those were all built exactly the way I did them.

Continue reading ‘Claire Danes as Temple Grandin Tomorrow Night on HBO’

Guess David Letterman is feeling the pressure cause he FINALLY hired a woman writer on his staff.

Her name is Jill Goodwin and she has been on the staff since 2001, started first as an assistant to the executive producers and most recently as a writer’s assistant to the staff.

Here’s what a spokesman said to the NY Times about the promotion:

For some time, Ms. Goodwin has been considered to be next in line for a writing job at “Late Show” as soon as there was an opening.

I want to know exactly what some time is and I want to know if there has not been a single male hired in the time she was “next in line.”  I’m gonna bet that some guys were hired.  If I am wrong I will apologize.

I just think the Ms. Goodwin should be giving my friend Nell Scovell a phone call of thanks cause had she not put herself out there and talked about the Letterman work environment I bet this news would still not have happened.

Additionally, Neely Swanson who did development for David E. Kelley and is now an adjunct professor at USC also counted the pilots for next season.  Here’s what she found:

Of the 66 pilots I documented, 13 pilots had at least one female writer as part of the “created by” team; however, of those 66 pilots, only 7 of them were written entirely by women.  You can do the math yourself, but this works out to a high of 20% involvement by women when writing alone and/or with men; and just 11% when written by women without male participation. A closer look at the all the names will reveal one writer of Hispanic origin, three Asian-Americans and an entire absence of African American writers.

As she says this:

This isn’t a glass ceiling, it’s a White Boys’ Club brick wall.

So all of you who think things are hunky dory out in la la land, really need to get a sense of the reality.

Letterman Show Adds a Female Staff Writer (NY Times)

Women Can’t Create and White Men Can’t Jump (Research Wrap Blog)

It’s pilot time in Hollywood.  The time of the year when all the networks look at the submitted scripts and decide which ones to take to pilot.  Then after they see the pilots, the networks then decide which shows to put on the air next season.  It is a cut throat and difficult process.

One thing we started this year on the blog is to track the scripts and pilots written by and about women.

Clearly I missed the bigger picture.

While there are a fair amount of pilots about women, the story here is the lack of women who are writing and creating the shows. The only way I know about this is from a very disturbing email from a reader who sent me info that came from a high level female TV executive.  This is an industry wide problem and 2010 is way worse for women creators than it was in 2009.

Now remember, TV is supposed to be better than the movies.  Why?  Because TV people know that women watch TV and advertisers want women viewers because they want us to buy their products.  Simple.  So wouldn’t it make sense to have more women creating shows?  I guess we are now going to have to be as vigilant about our TV watching as we are about our moviegoing.  Deliberately supporting the women created shows so they are successful so that more get made.  What also pisses me off is that there are women at all levels of the decision making structure at the TV networks.  So again the question is, why are women being passed over?

Here are some stats about women in the business:

According to the Center for Study of Women in TV and Film, in 2008, women made up 25% creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and directors of photography working on situation comedies, dramas, and reality programs.

Women make up 23% of executive producers.  Usually all creators get an executive producer credit and there are always other executive producers besides the creator.  While I know of no comprehensive list that lists all the creators and executive producers by gender, extrapolating from the data above you could probably guess that women maybe make up around 10% of show creators and showrunners (and I’m probably being generous.)

Here’s the info I got about this year’s pilot season:

In 2010 – 3 out of 33 comedy scripts that went to pilot were written by women. That is 9%.
In 2010 – 6 out of 36 drama scripts went to pilot were written by women.  That is 16%.

In 2009 – 9 out of 43 comedy scripts that went to pilot were written by women.  That is 20%.
In 2009 – 10 of 44 drama scripts that went to pilot were written by women. That is 22%.

The numbers are getting worse.

NBC had no comedies written by women and Fox had no dramas written by women
HBO had one female written pilot in two years. FX nothing. Lifetime nothing.  USA nothing.

Here is the list of scripts that are being made into pilots (and some that have already been picked up for series ) written and created by women:

ABC Drama Series

Scoundrels – Richard Levine & Lyn Greene

ABC Pilots

Comedy: Awkward Situations for Men – Jeff & Jackie Filgo; Untitled Goldberg-Meehan Shana Goldberg-Meehan; Women are Crazy, Men are Stupid – Howard Morris & Jenny Lee

Drama: Cuthroat – Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters; Off the Map – Jenna Bans; Untitled. Yuspa & Goldsmith Cathy Yuspa & Josh Goldsmith

CBS Pilots

Comedy: Open Books – Gail Lerner

Drama: I, Witness – Pam Veasey

CW Pilots

Drama pilots: Betwixt – Liz Chandler; The Wyoming Project – Amy Sherman Palladino & Dan Palladino

Fox Pilots

Drama: Daylight Robbery- Karyn Usher

NBC Pilots

Drama: The Chase- Jennifer Johnson; Love Bites- Cindy Chupack

A&E Pilots

Drama: The Quickening- Jennifer Salt

ABC Family Pilots

Drama: Pretty Little Liars- Marlene King; Huge- Savanah Dooley & Winnie Holzman

AMC Pilots

Drama: The Killing- Veena Sud

Disney Channel Pilots

Comedy: Janet Saves the Planet- Billy Van Zandt & Janet Milmore; Smart Alec Ellen Byron & LIssa Kapstrom

SYFY Pilots

Drama: Being Human Ellen Byron & LIssa Kapstrom

Showtime Series

Comedy: The Big C- Darlene Hunt

TNT Series

Drama: Rizzoli – Janet Tamaro; Delta Blues Joshua Horto & Liz Garcia

Good news, no great news.  Winnie Holzman creator of My So Called Life and book writer for the Boradway musical Wicked is getting back into TV.

She and her daughter, Savannah Dooley have penned the show Huge based on the YA novel of the same name by Sasha Paley.  The show has just gotten a 10 episode order from ABC Family.  Wolzman will executive produce the first episode and consult on the remaining ones.  Savannah will serve as the show’s executive producer.  Hopefully, Savannah will be as awesome a writer as her mom.

Here’s the description:

The project, described as “Glee” meets “Ugly Betty,” explores how young girls deal with body-image issues. It is set at Wellness Canyon, a weight-loss camp, and revolves around two girls from different backgrounds who fall for the same guy.

Ok, I’m not sold on the description.  Hate that it’s set at a weight loss camp, and hate the the leads fall for the same guy (been there, done that), but I will give Holzman the benefit of the doubt since she basically created the best drama ever, which I still kind of miss.

ABC Family eyeing ‘Huge’ drama (Hollywood Reporter)

ABC Family Order Dramas (Variety)

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.  While I don’t know if this is coincidental, two shows this week — Friday Night Lights and Private Practice — both had major storylines that tackled abortion worthy of a look.

The stories were about two very different young girls both about 15 and in high school:

One white, Friday Night Lights; one black, Private Practice

One rich, Private Practice; one poor, Friday Night Lights

The outcome (spoiler): one abortion, Friday Night Lights

I’ve said many, many times how big a fan I am of Friday Night Lights.  It is one of the best shows on television, hands down.  If you don’t watch the show because you think it is about football I say you are an idiot.  This is the second season that the show has aired on Direct TV first and will run on NBC in the spring.  I beg you to watch it.

The storyline revolved around Becky (Madison Burge) a beauty queen singer desperate to be loved realizing she is pregnant from the first time she slept with Luke (Michael B. Jordan Matt Lauria) one of the football stars.  She does not want to have the baby, especially because her mother had her when she was very young and she believes that she is her mother’s mistake. Continue reading ‘Roe v. Wade Anniversary: Friday Night Lights and Private Practice Tackle Abortion’

I don’t watch late night TV.  The best I do is Tivo John Stewart and watch him when I get a chance.  I don’t watch because I don’t stay up late, but more than that, I don’t watch because the shows don’t interest me.  One of the big reason why they don’t interest me is because late night is still a bastion of testosterone and men swinging their dicks around.

This week’s insanity just brought it out into the open more.

I really don’t feel bad for any of them.  It was a stupid, yet at the same time bold idea to try Jay out at 10.  I was pissed because I like scripted shows and have missed NBC’s 10pm shows which not too long ago were really good.  Jay’s move has damaged Law & Order SVU which suffered in the 9pm Wednesday slot against Glee and ABC’s great new comedies Modern Family and Cougar Town and CBS’ Criminal Minds.

Please tell me what is it about late night that brings out the insanity in people?  This has been going on for a long time since David Letterman was passed over for The Tonight Show and moved to CBS.

I know it’s all about money.  These shows are easy to produce and make money for the networks.  They also provide a great venue for upteen amount of stars wanting to promote their new shows, films, books etc.  Also,now in the age of You Tube you don’t even need to see the show when it’s on, you can watch you favorite actor’s appearance whenever you want.

But I can’t help but think that because the late night business is still such a male business (with all due respect to Chelsea Handler on E! and Wanda Sykes on Saturday nights) that it is made into much a bigger deal than it should be.  My god it’s been on the front page of papers everywhere! Anyone who watches gender issues in TV knows, late night TV shows have virtually NO female writers as Lynn Harris reminded us just last week in Salon.  I would imagine that David Letterman is not complaining too loudly about NBC’s late night implosion, it puts all his sexual harassment and affairs in the rear view mirror.

I’m sorry but I just can’t get my pity potty out for any of these guys.

If NBC hadn’t been such a bone headed network last year in wanting to put Jay Leno in the 10pm slot (we know how that worked out) virtually eliminating all the cutting edge dramas.  One show that got caught up in the disaster was Southland created by Ann Biderman.

The show made its debut last night on TNT.  It’s starting with the couple of shows that ran on NBC last spring and will soon air new episodes.

I’m a big fan of Southland.  I love that a woman created a cop show that is more than just the shooting, it’s about the people.  I was able to have a conversation yesterday with the amazing Regina King who co-stars on the show as Detective Lydia Adams.  Regina started her career on 227 and is probably best known for her great work in Jerry Maguire.  She has a long resume of great work which you can see here.

(Major thanks goes to W&H reader Stephanie Webster for volunteering her transcription services.  I guarantee you there is no way I would have had this done as fast as she did.)

Women &Hollywood: Tell me why you wanted to do this show?

Regina King: A number of reasons. First, I wanted to do TV because I wanted to do something where I wouldn’t have to travel. Two, it was a John Wells production. And three because Ann Biderman created an incredible show and even more specifically a great role for an actress to sink her teeth into. As actresses we are always wanting to play roles that are complex and have many dimensions. They’re hard to come by and Lydia Adams represents so many women that I know in the thirty-five, forty, age range. Women who are successful but have probably gone through bad relationships. She’s gun shy and hasn’t really allowed herself to be available to be in a relationship let alone foster a relationship. And she’s kind of in a position where something’s missing in her life and so many women today are like that.

W&H: You spoke of Ann creating the show. Do you know if the character was written as an African American?

RK: No, she was not. She was just written as a woman.

W&H: There aren’t many shows that women create, especially ones that seem out of type like this. Is there a notable difference to you in terms of scripts you read and the things that you’ve experienced and that made this standout maybe because there was a female creator and also from John Wells who is so good on the girl stuff too.

RK: Ann is a smart woman and she is a brilliant screenwriter who’s done awesome characters for both men and women. The first that comes to mind is the one she did for Sigourney Weaver in Copycat. When you watch that movie, it was a woman that could have easily been a one dimensional character and she put layers on that.  She made her have to overcome something and force her to have to come out of this box.  I don’t know.  I just think that when you have a woman that is a champion of women… There are some women who don’t really call themselves lovers of other women. They’ll say, ‘All I have is male friends I don’t have any female friends.’  So when you have a women as a friend and likes being a woman, your lucky as an actress because get someone who’s  not going to write on the surface. Every episode is not about Lydia. You see other sides and personality characteristics in Lydia in every episode. The one similar thing in every episode is that Lydia is a smart cop.  You can believe that when you watch this show that Lydia has not decided to be a cop because there was nothing left for her to do. Sometimes those are the reasons why a lot of people delve into law enforcement because it was either this or down another alley.

W&H: Lydia feels like the heart of the show. She just seems to be a life force in that show. Do you feel that?

RK: Now that you’re saying it maybe you could regard that character as the heart of the show because she has the most emotional weight. But I think just as the show unfolds you’ll start to see more of the emotion in all of the characters, the men included. I know Arija has a really great episode that comes up. I think it’s like episode ten or eleven where she’s really challenged with whether or not she’s still a good cop. And she has a really awesome moment where she makes a discovery. I don’t want to give it away.  I think every single one of the characters have emotional weight but it just so happens that so far we’ve gotten an opportunity to see Lydia’s more. I think you have a character like Cooper, Michael Cudlitz’s character.  You know I think we’re going to see him crack. He’s trying to hide behind this tough guy character because he’s a training officer.   But he’s emotionally deep and emotionally damaged as well and you’re going to see that as well. And that’s what’s so great about being an ensemble piece. We’re not going to run out of stories. It’s not going to all be out there on the table in the first week. We get to peel these layers away. We get to see people in and out of their elements. You get a wonderful opportunity to see C. Thomas Howell. He is totally a broken man. It’s refreshing to see him in a character we don’t normally see.

W&H: How have you avoided getting into some of the things that happen with actresses today getting pigeonholed or playing roles that are not as necessarily as fulfilling as some of the parts that you’ve played? How have you avoided that pitfall?

RK: You know, I think luck. And they say luck is where preparation meets opportunity.  I’ve always regarded what I do as an art form.  I’ve never gravitated to the roles that were based on how you look.  For example in Ray, I think all the women were great characters and I was asked to audition for any of the roles. My agent thought I would immediately go for the wife because obviously she has more screen time. But for me I just felt like there was more to Margie.  I just think that I have been lucky enough to be able to pass on some things and still pay the bills. It’s not always people are making choices that are really shallow. I think it’s sometimes they’ve got to pay the bills.

W&H: I was devastated when the show was canceled. I think you would still be on NBC had they not gone into the whole Jay Leno thing. Is the TNT the right place for this show?

RK: I think that TNT is the perfect place for it. Sometimes when things are happening you’re like why is this happening? What’s going on? And then you get on the other side you realize wow I’m so glad that it happened.  Not every situation is like that but we’ve all been in situations that have played out that way. And I just feel like that.  It’s so unfortunate what is going on over there (at NBC). They were such an iconic network. And I have a special connection because I started out there.  And I started out there in a time when they were doing things. When people were planning there nights around TV. Must See TV. Saturday night was not like a huge TV night. But it was for NBC with 227, Golden Girls, Amen. People stayed home to watch that. Now people don’t do that anymore unless it’s a cable network.  NBC coined the phrase “Must See TV,” TNT coined the phrase, “We know drama.”  Southland is a dramatic show.  It is gritty. It’s not forgiving and I think people want to see that. People want to see stories that aren’t candy coated or scared to push the envelope. And that’s the show that we are. And that is what NBC signed on for.  But we ended up someplace that is marketing us well. It’s just unfortunate.

W&H: Any advice you could give to women, specifically African American women, who are thinking about getting into the business?

RK: I would say that if it’s something that you truly want to do – then go for it.  Especially since you’re saying be specific to black women. We so often in our community are taught to have a dream but you’ve got to be able to fall back on something.  What happens with us is we’re so busy working on the fall back plan that we don’t nurse the dream. And if this is your dream and it really is what you want to do – make a real solid plan to execute your dream.  And if you’re focusing a hundred percent on that – it’s going to happen. The universe will allow it to happen if all the energy your putting towards it is to that goal – it will happen. But have a plan. You need a plan. The plan can change but start out with a plan.

Southland airs on TNT, Tuesday nights at 10.

Transcription by Stephanie Webster

Or I guess the better question is why did Oxygen never happen?

When Oxygen was born in 1998 I was psyched.  The founders were stellar: Geraldine Laybourne, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach as well as Oprah. What could be better?

Well I have to say that my hopes for the network never really came to fruition.  I remember at times watching reruns of Kate & Allie and Roseanne but I never really got into the original programming.  Most of it was low brow and trite (even for me) but then when it morphed into the “girls gone bad channel,” and I just completely lost interest.

I’ve always wondered why Oxygen never got off the ground.  It makes Lifetime seem like the greatest network ever and we know Lifetime’s track record is very mixed.

So why?  I know the network wanted to attract a younger demographic and distinguish itself from other cable stations, but how can something that had such promise become a network that is know for Girls Behaving Badly and the Bad Girls Club.

What is it about these shows that make them successful?  Is it the whole raunch culture thing?  NBC Universal bought the network in 2007 to add to its female brands, and the impetus for the story this morning was the announcement of this year’s development slate at the annual TCA convention.

The current successful shows are: Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood and Dance Your Ass Off.

Those in development include: Fashion Drop, Hair Battle Spectacular, House of Glam, Russell Simmons Project, When Charlie Met Sarah, Jerseylicious and Jersey Couture.

As a person who watches a lot of TV, I can guarantee that I won’t watch a single one of these shows.

I know that NBC is in trouble, but yikes.  What’s going on?

Oxygen Sounds Off on Development Slate (Variety)

Here’s the link to the radio show from this morning where we talked about women’s box office successes of 2009, can a woman get a best director nomination and win, with three amazing creative artists, playwright Theresa Rebeck, TV writer and director Nell Scovell, and feature writer and director Katherine Dieckmann. about how we shift the conversation about getting more women into creative positions on power in Hollywood (and other areas of pop culture.)

Would love to hear people’s thoughts on the conversation.

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Bios on the Guests

Theresa Rebeck is one of the most accomplished playwrights in America today.  Her newest work The Understudy is currently playing in NYC through January 17th.  She is also a novelist.  Her first book Three Sisters and Their Brother is now available in paperback and her newest novel Twelve Rooms with a View will be published in May by Random House.  She is also writing a pilot for USA TV.

Katherine Dieckmann has written and directed three feature films most recently Motherhood starring Uma Thurman.  She was also a journalist and a director of music videos.  She currently is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, where she teach screenwriting.  She also directed music videos for R.E.M., Aimee Mann, Wilco, and Everything but the Girl, among others.

Nell Scovell is a TV writer and director who created the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  She caused a bit of a stir with a recent piece on Vanity Fair’s website about her experience as a female writer on Late Night with David Letterman.

The Early Show on CBS hosted the cast of Murphy Brown for a reunion.  God, I loved that show. Can we please get another show like this? Pretty please. Maybe we can convince Diane English to create a new show. I promise to get everyone I know to watch it even if it is only half as good as Murphy.

Here’s an interesting tid-bit I picked up. CBS wanted Heather Locklear to play Murphy. Can you believe that? No offense to Heather but she would have sucked as Murphy Brown. Thank god that Diane English fought for Candice Bergen. Seems that none of the cast members were at the top of CBS’ list. Glad the suits didn’t win that argument cause that cast rocked.

Is it out on DVD?

Here’s the reunion

And part of the birth episode

Juliet Stevenson

I stumbled upon Val McDermid’s work in a bizarre way.  I was watching the latest MI-5 on DVD and there was a new female lead Hermione Norris.  I liked her so I looked to see what else she was in and stumbled across Wire in the Blood a British series that starred Norris and Robson Green.  In the last months I have been making my way through Wire in the Blood on DVD.  Next, I’m going to start reading her books.

The good folks at PBS sent me a screener for a Place of Execution which airs tonight and next week starring Juliet Stevenson (A Previous Engagement and Bend it Like Beckham) and Greg Wise (Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility.) When I opened it I was excited to see that it was based on an original novel by Val McDermid.  I knew immediately it would be good.

A Place of Execution tells two parallel stories, the first a 40 years old murder investigation of a 13-year-old girl from the small town of Scardale in the north of England, and the contemporary investigation by a journalist of that same unsolved murder that nobody can seem to forget.  Stevenson plays Catherine Heathcote a workaholic journalist who can’t seem to find time for her troubled daughter, but her investigation into the murder opens up a new opportunity for mother and daughter to find a path back to each other and at the same time reveals a whole load of other personal issues that Catherine had no idea were a part of the story.

I submitted some questions to Val McDermid and she was kind enough to take the time to answer them.

Women & Hollywood: You write such strong female characters do you feel closer to any one of them in particular?

Val McDermid: It’s hard to choose because whenever I am in the thick of it with a book, those characters are always particularly immediate. But if I had to pick, I suspect I’d choose Carol Jordan. There’s something about the way her tenacity, her fierce commitment to justice and her intelligence all drive her to overcome her damage and her vulnerabilities that is very attractive to me.

W&H: I just read today that Jessica Mann has quit reviewing books because she feels that the content has become anti-woman and that women are equally responsible for creating this situation because they write graphic violence in order to sell books. Do you agree with Mann?  Have crime novels become too graphically violent against women?

VM: I’ve grown so tired of my words being misquoted and manipulated on this subject, I’ve actually blogged on it this week for The Guardian.

Val McDermid

W&H: I have been obsessively watching the Wire in the Blood series on Netflix here in the states and love the relationship between Tony Hill and Carol Jordan- mutual respect with a little bit a sexual tension thrown in.  How did you create such a real, respectful partnership?

VM: When I first wrote The Mermaids Singing, I didn’t intend it as the start of a series. So setting Carol and Tony in professional collusion but emotional opposition to each other was just another way of creating narrative tension in what was supposed to be a stand alone novel. But when I reached the end of that book, I realised that I had generated a dynamic between them that offered interesting possibilities, both personally and professionally. The more I’ve written about them, the more I’ve managed to find extra dimensions to their relationship, which is one of the reasons I keep returning to them. To me, what I did with them is no different from what I always do when I’m developing characters and relationships – I trawl through my mental database of friends and family and lovers and strangers overheard in bars and train carriages till I find some clues that offer me a way in. I’m a vampire, sucking all the life out of everyone I come into contact with so my creations can live!

W&H: You said this in an interview: “Women write about violence in a different way from men. While men may be victims of violence more often than women, they are still uncomfortable with the notion of themselves as victims. So they write about violence from the outside.”  Can you elaborate on that?

VM: From being little girls, women are warned about the possibility of victimhood. ‘Don’t walk through the park alone.’ ‘Don’t stay out after dark.’ ‘Never talk to strange men.’ Our brothers and our male classmates get to do things and go places that we are warned off because unspecified “Bad Things” will happen to us. As we get older, elements of society are eager to point out to us that female victims of assault and rape ‘were asking for it’ and somehow contributed to their own downfall by not behaving ‘properly’. We are aware of the threat of dark alleys, the danger of men who have had too much to drink, the hazards of late-night car parks. Our experience of the world is very different from that of men.

It is ironic that most violence, statistically, is visited on young men. But those crimes are generally explosive moments that flow directly from confrontations fueled mostly by drink and drugs. It may sound callous, but this sort of crime isn’t very interesting to writers or readers.

What fascinates us as readers and writers are the dark crimes, the psychological impulses to violence, the corruption of the killer, the fear and terror they engender and the excitement of the chase to bring them to justice. Those are the crimes where the victims tend to be women, children or gay men.

When women write about that kind of crime, we write with the empathy of people who have been raised in an environment of potential victimhood. It doesn’t take much imaginative effort to put ourselves in the shoes of the victims and so we write from within the violence. When we do it well, that has the power to frighten all our readers. For male writers, who have been raised with a different mindset about their place in the world, it’s a much tougher journey to get to the same place.

W&H: Do you feel that your female characters are feminists?

VM: That begs the question of what a feminist is. I’m sure there are people who think my women are radical feministas and others who consider them to be hopelessly lily-livered and in thrall to the patriarchy! As far as I’m concerned, any woman who is determined to live her life on her own terms is a feminist. I would say that applies to my female protagonists. Of course there are other characters in my books who epitomize everything that would make a feminist tear her hair out…

W&H: The British seem to show strong women detectives on screen more than we do here in the US. For example Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.  Patricia Cornwell’s books have not yet made it to the screen and Sarah Paretsky’s one film based on her books was a disaster.  Only Kathy Reichs has managed to get a very good series based on her books on the air.  Why have you and other British crime authors been more successful getting your material translated.

VM: I don’t know why that should be. Perhaps it has something to do with the long tradition of adaptation on British TV. Agatha Christie’s work led the charge and her success led producers to see the detective novel as fertile ground for adaptation. It’s hard to think of a long-running British mystery series that they’ve not had a stab at. (And you should remember that what you see are the best of the bunch – you don’t get the slew of truly terrible turkeys that show up on our screens…)

W&H: Juliet Stevenson plays your female lead who is a workaholic mother whose daughter is desperate to find some connection to her mother.  Yet Catherine has a fractured relationship to her own mother.  First how great was it to have Juliet in the cast, what did she bring to the role, and second talk a little bit more about the character and what it might say about the state of women and mothers today.

VM: I’d discussed casting with Sandra Jobling, the executive producer, and Juliet’s name came up early. But neither of us really believed we’d get so lucky. So when we got the news that she’d agreed, we were literally screaming down the phone at each other. Juliet’s an intelligent, empathetic actress. Everything I’ve seen her in has grown in stature because of her presence. I love the intensity she brings to Catherine Heathcote. When you’re watching her, there’s never a moment when the suspension of disbelief even wavers.

Patrick Harbinson’s adaptation gave her a mother and daughter she lacked in the book, and by doing so, he found an extra twist to the story that works brilliantly in TV terms but I suspect would not have come off in the book. It’s one of those examples of how storytelling works differently in the two forms. I think he’s generated another dimension to the relationships in Catherine’s life, and it does raise interesting questions about modern women’s lives.

W&H: Do you have any advice for writers just starting out?

VM: Two things.

Make a space in your life for writing and do not compromise it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an hour every morning, one evening a week or an hour after the kids have gone to bed. Make that time sacrosanct. The words will soon pile up. I wrote my first four books on Monday afternoons between 2pm and 7pm.

Don’t get bogged down trying to write the perfect first chapter. You’ll never succeed. Just hammer on to the end. Get that first draft down. Then go back and make it better.

Prior to the airing of last Friday night’s Law & Order episode entitled “Dignity”, newsday.com presented it as providing an “intelligent hearing” on the late-term abortion debate.  What can be determined after watching it however, is that the episode is rife with medical inaccuracies and anti-abortion propaganda.  And the true experiences of women who face complex decisions of whether or not to continue pregnancies with serious abnormalities are severely undermined.

The episode began with the point blank shooting of Dr. Benning, a doctor that performed third trimester abortions, while he was praying with his wife in church.  Regardless of Law & Order’s disclaimers to the contrary, this is a direct reference to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed while ushering in his church on May 31 of this year.

The dialogue of the officers who investigate the murder initially appears to reflect stereotypical pro-choice vs. anti-choice rhetoric, which seems to be the writers’ attempt at presenting a “balanced” viewpoint.   But the recurring messages throughout the program are clearly anti-abortion biased.

More often these days when (it’s usually more like if) a female character in primetime contemplates abortion, she is portrayed as contemplating her own moral failure.  And ultimately, she usually either continues her pregnancy or has a miscarriage – she will almost never have an abortion.  More importantly, if she does cross that forbidden media barrier, she will never feel good about doing so.  This is what we see here – in the character of a young woman who is denied her abortion because her father confided in a protester who ultimately murdered her doctor.  In this young woman’s case, her fetus was diagnosed with a rare skin condition that is potentially fatal and requiring constant medical care.   She is presented as a helpless and selfish woman for not wanting to care for a sick baby on her own, while her father is portrayed as a hero – willing to work 3 jobs and find the money to provide the round-the-clock medical care his daughter’s child would need.

The writers created an even less balanced plot by throwing in an unrealistic and medically inaccurate story of a doomed baby born alive in the process of an attempted abortion, who was then (according to the assistant D.A. on the show) murdered by the doctor.  Thus the plot shifts away from blaming the anti-abortionist who murdered the doctor to placing blame on the doctor who was murdered, and suggesting that he deserved it.  This throws the female assistant D.A. into confusion about her belief in the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.  The fact that the jury ended up convicting the man accused of murdering the doctor was completely lost in this extremely dark “Law and Order twist”.

So we are left with a message that the woman who decides to continue her pregnancy, go through labor, give birth and watch her baby die is noble and good, but the woman who ends her pregnancy when she realizes it will not have a viable life outside the womb is immoral and selfish.

There were so many opportunities for the writers to present the humane side of women faced with complicated pregnancies.  But instead we see respected characters on a beloved TV series cast aspersions on women.  This is deeply stigmatizing, even worse than how anti-abortion protesters shame women in front of clinics every day in this country.  This show did nothing to enhance the complexity of depth of women’s true experiences and only added to the sensationalism and stigma that already exists for women facing these decisions.

NBC should be ashamed for dishonoring the memory of Dr. George Tiller, a man who embodied principles of goodness, kindness, respect, and faith; and for dishonoring the women he helped, whose values told them that the best way to honor themselves and to spare suffering to the doomed life they carried in pregnancy was to end that life.   There was no dignity for either of them in this program.

Jennifer Boulanger, M.Ed., the Executive Director of the Allentown Women’s Center, an independent abortion and reproductive health care center in Pennsylvania and member of the Abortion Care Network.

If you want to make a complaint here is a place where you can lodge one.

I have been watching Law & Order SVU since its inception.  Since Jay Leno began screwing up TV as we know it SVU has suffered since it is now on at 9pm on Wednesdays up against many strong shows.  I’ve been tivoing it when it repeats on Saturday nights.

I have been big fan of Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni and love all the supporting case around them.  I especially liked Stephanie March as ADA Alexandra Cabot who in my opinion was the best ADA on the show and it that role has never worked since her departure. SVU has always cast a woman as the ADA since all the detectives surrounding Hargitay and Meloni have been male.  Good decision.  I am always happy to see a strong, smart woman in a role on TV especially one with passion who tries to put nasty people in jail.

So I was excited when I read that Christine Lahti was joining the show for several episodes as the new ADA, Sonya Paxton.   I would watch Lahti in basically anything and still remember what a great show Jack & Bobby was from a couple of season ago.

It seems that Lahti finished up her arc last week and I must say that I was extremely disappointed and angry.  From the moment Lahti came on screen she was mean and bitchy to everyone in such an extreme way so much that it kind of made me anxious.  I dismissed it for one week but then it kept on happening.  Why must they make a strong older woman so horrible that she alienates everyone around her?  Haven’t we moved beyond that?

But the kicker (and why I am writing this) is that on last week’s episode she gets paid back for her bad behavior in spades.  (For those of you who still haven’t watched the episode stop reading now.)  Lahti is turns out has a drinking problem and a case with a guy who killed a woman while drunk sets her off too.  She completely devolves in court, shows the wrong evidence (maybe inadvertently), gets tanked and shows up the next morning still drunk.  They humiliate her by making her take a breathalizer test in the courtrom (is that even constitutional?) and then remove her from the case.  The capper is that she is forced to go to rehab.  Bye bye Sonya.

I expected way more from SVU.  The fact that the whole arc was leading towards the destruction of a woman with a long and solid career protecting victims pisses me off.  Why did she have to play a raving bitch from the get go?  And were we supposed to feel good that she got her comeuppance?  I thought the whole thing was just so sad and illuminated the lack of imagination when writing about strong, comptent women.

They got it right with Alex Cabot.  She was strong and passionate but never alienating and mean.  Isn’t it just time to bring her back?  I know it would make my mom very happy.

There are so many shows that get developed each year, some make it to the pilot stage and very few make it to series.

This year I’m going to keep track and see the progress.  I’ve created a pilot watch section and will list by studio shows by and about women that are announced.

The CW is up first (remember the CW’s audience is younger women):

“Spy School for Girls,” which revolves around female spy trainees at a CIA facility.

“Nashville,” a drama that revolves around a young female singer destined for stardom — and a male songwriter whose career isn’t as certain.

Confessions of a Backup Dancer,” about a woman who scores a gig as a backup dancer for a major pop star- Ilene Chaiken (The L Word) will write and executive produce.

“The March Sisters,” – “Little Women” meets “Sex and the City,” about working-class siblings who try to make it on Park Avenue. Jill Gordon is writing and exec producing.  Meryl Poster is also an exec producer.

Untitled drama based on the life of socialite Sloan Barnett and set in Manhattan’s Early Case Assessment Bureau to be written by Julie Martin.

CW Drama Slate (Variety)

Something’s fishy over at Sterling Cooper.

It’s not too often that a newly minted Emmy winner leaves the show that earned her an Emmy, but that’s what seems to have happened to Kater Gordon.  Nikki Finke reported on Deadline Hollywood yesterday that Gordon has departed the show.  It’s not clear whether she was fired or quit, but in general people don’t leave hit shows and double that in this economy.

Kater held the title of staff writer which is the entry level position in the writer’s room.  According to reports she first started out as Matthew Weiner’s (the show’s creator and executive producer) personal assistant.  She was then made a writer’s assistant, and then got her a big break when Weiner tapped her to co-write the last year’s season finale.  Matthew Weiner is no idiot.  I’m sure he knew the woman could write even if she got the gig unconventionally.  Do you think this man would sacrifice his show and hire someone to co-write an episode who couldn’t write?  I don’t think so.

Now she has an Emmy and no job.  Some people on the Deadline Hollywood message board are saying she got her writing gig by sleeping with Weiner.  That’s insulting, demeaning and degrading to all women writers who have worked hard to be taken seriously.  They never say the same stuff about male writers, but when a young woman gets a break, she has to have earned it through sex.

I’m still torn about Matthew Weiner.  On the one hand he’s involved with this project I have become familiar with called the Good Men Project which is about men trying to be better dads and men in our culture.  On the other hand, even though the writer’s room at Mad Men is populated by women we’ve already explored that they don’t hold high level positions.  Maybe the Emmy win pissed off Weiner?  Maybe Gordon wanted a promotion?  Maybe she got another gig?

There are a lot of maybes in this story and nobody has the real answer.  All I know is that is looks horrible for the show that a young, successful female writer is now out of a job just a couple of weeks after getting the most coveted award in television.  It makes no fucking sense.   I wish Kater Gordon the best of luck and hope she gets a great next gig.