LOOKING FORWARD
Cuz' the right now ain't a lot a fun. More strikey stuff at United Hollywood.It seems to me that AMC is effectively positioning itself as the next cable drama destination (assuming we still have TV, wow is that an apocalyptic outlook or what?). I'm going out on a limb with this, as only Mad Men has aired, but they're starting to look like FX did in 2002/03 with a season of The Shield having mad it's appearance on the scene, Nip/Tuck coming out and Rescue Me just over the horizon.
AMC's follow-up is Breaking Bad. I'm going to go ahead and assume this will rock because Vince Gilligan is the guy behind it. He wrote a delightfully odd flick called Wilder Napalm and he was on The X-Files for a good long while. From when it was at its best all the way on down. In fact, if you liked any episodes in the final two or three seasons of X-Files, there's a damn good chance it was his.
It's got Bryan Cranston (already more points in it's favor) as a high school chemistry teacher who, upon learning he has terminal lung cancer, stops living by the rules of society and, among other things, sets up a rolling meth lab to provide for his family.
I'm just wondering why AMC didn't push the hell out of this while there were still eyes on Mad Men (not a tremendous number, but...you know).
Now if they wouldn't mind getting Warren Ellis' Dead Channel going, I'd be a happy camper.
And here's a little weekend weirdness. A brief concentration of the scribosphere when I was meeting one noted scribospherian at an obscure non-industry screening of an equally obscure (but good) documentary feature and just happened to run into another noted scribospherian.
5 Comments:
Well, not sure how "noted" I am as a Scribospherian, but it was a funny and strange coincidence! Good to see you bro.
So you serious like the concept for "BREAKING BAD"?
A few months back I got a call from a marketing group testing folks to see which of their three possible series projects folks would most want to see on AMC. I went ahead and donated the ten minutes to go through the phone survey, and clearly recall grinding my teeth as the guy gave me the phone pitch for BREAKING BAD> I let him descibe teh show for about 80 seconds, then interrupted him.
"OK, that's enough-- you can stop now."
"But I'm not done, yet!"
"Oh, but you are. If I was flipping around AMC and saw that crappy show taking up space that might have been used for an actual, ya know MOVIE, I'd probably pull a thumb muscle in my haste to change channels."
He pitched THREE equally awful sounding concepts for AMC shows, and at the end of the call I had to pick which one of the three I'd be most likely to watch.
"None. They all sound truly dreadful."
"You have to choose one."
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do-- that's how the survey works. There's not an option for 'none of the above'."
"Oh yes there is. It's called the 'OFF' button, and it works like this--"
And I hung up.
TCM uber alles, baybee.
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Well, let's qualify this.
What DO you like?
What DON'T you like?
And do you remember anything of the other series descriptions?
Heh-- I found some refs to the three shows in the transcript to an old chat session from August.
Here were the three shows they pitched:
GONZO -- dramedy about a bunch of gonzo journalists trapped in some unnamed central American country in the early 80s, kinda like MISSING meets MASH
COOPER -- drama about a detective in NYPD in 1865 who teams with a black civil war doc who is just developing some early forensic medical ideas. Think CSI meets DEADWOOD
BREAKING BAD -- a teacher is forced to work as a car washer in his spare time to make ends meet is humilated when his students see this, and he is diagnosed with cancer and has two years to live, so he tracks down a former pupil whom he knows is The Cooker, the street's most notorious meth cooker, and blackmails Cooker into letting him partner with him to cook and sell meth.
The marketing guy pitched all three shows, one at a time, and I was asked to rate both my interest in the concept, and my likelihood to watch. I rated all a zero and zero -- no interest at all, no likelihood that I'd ever watch.
he then said "if you had to choose one, which would you watch?"
I said "none-- I would actively avoid all three of those shows. They sound totally awful."
He tried to force me to pick one of the three, and I refused, explaining that I always have the option of just changing channels-- that I don't HAVE to watch anything, and if AMC insists on loading their schedule with programs their longtime subscribers are sitting here telling them THEY DO NOT WANT AND WOULD NOT WATCH, then obviously I'm not a customer they value.
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Who DO I like?
Good writing, good acting, interesting stories. Nothing about the descriptions of those three shows struck me as interesting or something that I'd have any desire to see once, much less routinely. I accept that others might feel differently. And I don't care.
My life (for now) is such that I just don't have the time to invest in any sort of long term episodic show. If I find myself with 90 minutes to burn on a Friday or Saturday night, I'd love to have some cool standalone movies to choose from.
What DON'T I like?
The suggestion that I need some silly damned "high concept" attractor in order to have interest in characters or situations. I can't think of a single series in recent years (aside from SCRUBS, perhaps) which has caught and won my sustained interest and attention. I'm finding myself far more interested in great old movies from the 40s 50s 60s and 70s.
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I would give all of those a shot.
To me the suck is not in the premise. SUCK comes from execution.
For instance, based on a pitch, I wouldn't likely watch Gilmore Girls, but it's an amazing series and that's because of the execution.
Gonzo gets bonus points for being something far and away from the typical cop/lawyer/doctor fare and Cooper gets points for being a new twist on the cop show.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this, I think. Obviously I am a TV guy and, obviously, you are not.
I sense there may be some concern over AMC possibly coming to a day where it doesn't live up to it's name. Like MTV plays anything but music videos.
I really want to see Gonzo.
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