Lost Pages (aka that time I tried to write for TV)
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Every once in a while, I start working through a new idea only to realize that it's one that I have developed before. I had a blog idea and then realized it was a TV pilot I tossed around a couple of years ago. So I yanked out some of my writing from my files and discovered: Supporting (terrible name. It was between that and "Minor" both equally blech). My writing life has been a late blooming one, so understandably I always feel like I'm engaging in one epic game of catch-up. When I first moved to LA, thinking that TV writing must certainly be my calling, I wrote a ton of pilots. Tons. Pilots, Bibles, episode maps, the works.
I even wrote a spec script for Castle called "Spare Change." It visually referenced The Wizard of Oz, it centered on the death of prostitute, and at some point had the supporting male characters taking a personality quiz in a girly mag. Blah. I was so very, very naive. Still, the exercise was a good one. I learned a lot about the structure and expectations of television. I wrote 3 pilots that (sadly) would have only found an audience on the CW; one very Gilmore Girls, one very Joss Whedon in Buffy, and one very Joss Whedon in Firefly (though nowhere near as brilliant).
And then, utterly frustrated by the lack of quality roles for Asian Americans in TV, I wrote a pilot called Supporting. It was an hour long dramedy (on ABC, me thinks) about a group of prominent Asian American actors in Hollywood and their lives.
It opens with a mock-musical montage on the Warner Brother's back lot that actually takes place in the imagination of wide-eyed, Hollywood hopeful Samantha "Sam" Cho; 20s, girl-next-door pretty, duck on the pond kind of energy. The pilot introduces a range of characters, all simmering below their projected personalities, who come together for the funeral of a prominent Asian American actor. In typical pilot fashion, the episode ends in a very public, but utterly cathartic brawl of the stereotypically model minorities.
My thinking was this: Because we don't have a shared language as a minority group, our own stereotype becomes our "mother tongue," so to speak, that brings us all together. But if the racial stereotype is what unites us, then the characters can work within that frame to deal with their own personal issues of family, sexuality, morality, religion, etc. The stereotype of "supporting roles" can work as both the basis for the comedy and the point of the tragedy, but whatever. It was just one of those creative distractions...
Obviously, I wrote it merely as a no holds barred kind of exercise born out of my frustration with the restrictive nature of TV. This show would never be made, never be bought, green lit, no episodes would be ordered, but that's the point I guess. I still think it was one of the better things I've written. Or rather, the best thing I've never finished. The pilot ends on page 17. I put it aside to "do real work."
Hence, two years later this is my the partial product of my "writing hours":
A dozen short stories, half a dozen TV pilots, a couple spec scripts, a couple new movie scripts, 3 novels (courtesy of NaNoWriMo), and a bajillion drafts of work. One of my screenwriting profs once said that in order to produce one good page of writing, you need to write 1,000 first. So in this stack, there might be about fifty pages of worth while reading, if that.
My work has been rejected from magazines everywhere. My applications for every program, refused. I have amassed one, count them (I mean "it"), one small accolade and... This was supposed to end in something encouraging... Oh right.
I've loved every minute of it. I've felt purposeful and alive and nurtured and I've been fed and helped by so many new friends, old friends, and ever loyal family members. It's not the "one day," but the every day and in the end, isn't that what any artist wants to feel?
Maybe Supporting will work its way back onto the top of my desk pile, but for now it creeps around my brain space, growing, growing, changing, twisting until one day it will no longer be able to remain just a tiny seed of an idea.
Happy Weekend Folks. I hope to post my Betty Suarez party for Labor Day.
kris
I even wrote a spec script for Castle called "Spare Change." It visually referenced The Wizard of Oz, it centered on the death of prostitute, and at some point had the supporting male characters taking a personality quiz in a girly mag. Blah. I was so very, very naive. Still, the exercise was a good one. I learned a lot about the structure and expectations of television. I wrote 3 pilots that (sadly) would have only found an audience on the CW; one very Gilmore Girls, one very Joss Whedon in Buffy, and one very Joss Whedon in Firefly (though nowhere near as brilliant).
And then, utterly frustrated by the lack of quality roles for Asian Americans in TV, I wrote a pilot called Supporting. It was an hour long dramedy (on ABC, me thinks) about a group of prominent Asian American actors in Hollywood and their lives.
It opens with a mock-musical montage on the Warner Brother's back lot that actually takes place in the imagination of wide-eyed, Hollywood hopeful Samantha "Sam" Cho; 20s, girl-next-door pretty, duck on the pond kind of energy. The pilot introduces a range of characters, all simmering below their projected personalities, who come together for the funeral of a prominent Asian American actor. In typical pilot fashion, the episode ends in a very public, but utterly cathartic brawl of the stereotypically model minorities.
My thinking was this: Because we don't have a shared language as a minority group, our own stereotype becomes our "mother tongue," so to speak, that brings us all together. But if the racial stereotype is what unites us, then the characters can work within that frame to deal with their own personal issues of family, sexuality, morality, religion, etc. The stereotype of "supporting roles" can work as both the basis for the comedy and the point of the tragedy, but whatever. It was just one of those creative distractions...
Obviously, I wrote it merely as a no holds barred kind of exercise born out of my frustration with the restrictive nature of TV. This show would never be made, never be bought, green lit, no episodes would be ordered, but that's the point I guess. I still think it was one of the better things I've written. Or rather, the best thing I've never finished. The pilot ends on page 17. I put it aside to "do real work."
Hence, two years later this is my the partial product of my "writing hours":
 |
| Cleaning out the files. And this is just the hard copy stuff. |
A dozen short stories, half a dozen TV pilots, a couple spec scripts, a couple new movie scripts, 3 novels (courtesy of NaNoWriMo), and a bajillion drafts of work. One of my screenwriting profs once said that in order to produce one good page of writing, you need to write 1,000 first. So in this stack, there might be about fifty pages of worth while reading, if that.
My work has been rejected from magazines everywhere. My applications for every program, refused. I have amassed one, count them (I mean "it"), one small accolade and... This was supposed to end in something encouraging... Oh right.
I've loved every minute of it. I've felt purposeful and alive and nurtured and I've been fed and helped by so many new friends, old friends, and ever loyal family members. It's not the "one day," but the every day and in the end, isn't that what any artist wants to feel?
Maybe Supporting will work its way back onto the top of my desk pile, but for now it creeps around my brain space, growing, growing, changing, twisting until one day it will no longer be able to remain just a tiny seed of an idea.
Happy Weekend Folks. I hope to post my Betty Suarez party for Labor Day.
kris
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