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2017 Oscars (1 Viewer)

Kimmel killed it.  I could watch the ongoing Matt Damon feud bits forever.  I was hoping he'd close out with his usual apology to Matt Damon but I guess the cluster#### at the end kinda ruined whatever sign off they had written.  

 
Casey Affleck comes off as fake to me.  Come on dude you were the screwball brother in Good Will Hunting jerking off into Damon's little league glove.  Know he's so tortured?

 
Daywalker said:
Casey Affleck comes off as fake to me.  Come on dude you were the screwball brother in Good Will Hunting jerking off into Damon's little league glove.  Know he's so tortured?
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you have no clue how any of these people are in real life.

 
Eephus said:
I agree w/ this.  There's artistry and craftsmanship in the ability to tell a story around three-dimensional characters within the 90-130 minutes allotted for a feature film.  This is particularly true for the screenwriting categories.   Serial TV stories are a different challenge--the long format gives the writer the ability to show everything but the audience needs to be entertained and not overwhelmed.
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Yep, a lot differences for the same craft. 

As I thought about it more today, I think a lot of it comes down to me being on the director side of the director vs. actor debate as far as what I would gravitate to more.  I do have favorites for both of course, but given the choice I would much rather know that it's a PTA movie than it's a DDL movie.  I think that is what extends to my preference of movie vs. TV too.  Sure there is an overall goal for the show and core group of writers, and you get to follow great actors, but for me even the best TV shows suffer a little because of the way they have to shoot and they don't have the same director and writer for each episode.  You get a lot of ebbs and flow in the seasons as they go on and sometimes the characters seem "off" in the way they act and speak vs. what has been established.  It's no surprise that usually the best episodes from a series are the ones written and director by the showrunners. 

 
Matthew McConaughey comes off as fake to me.  Come on dude.  Your were the creepy teacher in Dazed and Confused that dumped paint on Scott Baio.  Now you have AIDS?

 
Walking Boot said:
Honestly, though, TV writing isn't written by the writer (in general). I mean, so-and-so may have the script credit of "written by", but, that's mostly meaningless in the TV world. At best, that writer is the one assigned to write the first draft of a script. But, often, the entire thing is re-written by committee with all the writers on staff together, in a conference room, going through the script line-by-line and page-by-page.

What usually happens is that a series is picked up for a certain number of episodes in a season. Say, 13 for the year. The writing staff is assembled, with a show runner and seven or eight other slotted writers (when I say slotted writers, a writing duo is counted as one writer. They work as a team, but are paid half-shares each and share half credit equally. They are noted with "&" between the names. When a script might share credits, such as: Written By Tom and **** & Harry (usually Tom on one line, then "and", then **** on a line, then "&" on a line, then Harry on a line) that means that Tom gets 50% of the pay and credit as one individual writer, and **** & Harry are a duo that split the rest 25-25). By WGA rules, one of 13 episodes and 2 of 22 are automatically farmed out to non-staff writers. This is for new writers writing on spec or otherwise not part of the staff.

Of the 12 episodes left, the showrunner will probably claim 3 "Written by"'s for himself, with his choice of which stories of the season he wants (the structure and plot of then entire season is laid out first (or, "broken") before any single script is written, so he knows which are the episodes he wants most to have his name on). The co-executive producers (probably 2 have that title) will get 2 scripts each, and each co-producer will get 1. So you've got the show runner, co-executive producer slot #1, co-executive producer slot #2, and co-producer slot #3 accounting for 8 of the 12 scripts, with four left for the remaining four slots, which range in title from 'producer' down to 'staff writer' and 'story editor'. They are basically getting the stories assigned in draft format, the show runner making all the picks, with your story editor getting the lamest story of the season all for himself.

Anyway, these are just handed out on personal politics and thank yous more than anything. Each writer does his first draft but there's no obligation to use it. It's all re-written by committee. Some showrunners do all the re-writing themselves, some let a co-executive producer run "the room" and manage things without him. But it's really hard to say who actually deserves the credit for any one script.

There's a great bit in Permanent Midnight, Jerry Stahl's memoir of being a Hollywood TV writer and drug junkie, where's he's farmed out one of the non-staff scripts for Northern Exposure, and spends his whole advance on heroin. So much so that he loses all track of time and never actually gets around to writing the script. Weeks fly by and he's too high to tell time. Finally, a PA knocks on his door to pick up the script he hasn't written, and he says "OK, just wait a sec" while he panics, closes the door on the kid, and hurries to his desk to start banging out some kind of script on the back of takeout menus. He turns over six soiled pages of dialogue, apologizes, and sinks back into his junkie hole. He gets full credit (and pay) for the script, of course, and his agent immediately sells him on another project. "He just wrote an episode of Northern Exposure!"

Directing is a little different in TV. The director does have a lot of influence, but, still, not that much as in features. Kevin Smith talks about this a lot now that he's guest-directing CW superhero shows like Supergirl. The job of a TV director is to match the tone of all the other episodes so that it's invisible (although, it isn't always, I used to have a pretty good eye for TV directors and could correctly identify who directed each episode of The West Wing by just watching the first few minutes and getting it right before the credit came up on screen). He does have some freedom for camera shots, and making things interesting, but, it's more to manage actors and be the leader of the team, rather than be an innovative creative person trying something new and different.
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In my experience in tv the director picks the shots and manages the guest cast. Most regular cast members wouldn't give the director the time of day unless it was the show runner or creator.  

 
Reg Lllama of Brixton said:
Matthew McConaughey comes off as fake to me.  Come on dude.  Your were the creepy teacher in Dazed and Confused that dumped paint on Scott Baio.  Now you have AIDS?
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I meant the way affleck acts in public.  Guy is doing that phoenix/leto/depp schtick.  Where they act like they cant string a sentence together nor look at the camera.

 
The old Matt Damon look a like accountant is to blame. He ####ed up the easiest gig there is because he was too busy posting pictures on Facebook and Instagram :lol:  

 
Huffington Post posted article two days before Oscars asking "What would happen if a presenter announced the wrong winner at the Oscars?"

They interviewed Brian Cullinan, the man at fault, who said: "We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly. Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signaling to the stage manager -- that's really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen. Again, it's so unlikely." 

 
I thought Kimmel did a nice balancing act of taking a couple jabs (or 50 if you are Matt Damon), but not going over the the edge uncomfortable like Ricky Gervais tries to do.  Just like all of them, there were some highs and lows for the show.   Seeing most of the complaints, I think it's more that either this was the first time watching The Oscars, or you are just watching them to complain anyway.  Trump jabs? Stuck up celebs? Boring movies nobody has seen?   Seems to me the show was just about what every other one of them I have watched were.  :shrug:

 
Walking Boot said:
Honestly, though, TV writing isn't written by the writer (in general). I mean, so-and-so may have the script credit of "written by", but, that's mostly meaningless in the TV world. At best, that writer is the one assigned to write the first draft of a script. But, often, the entire thing is re-written by committee with all the writers on staff together, in a conference room, going through the script line-by-line and page-by-page.

What usually happens is that a series is picked up for a certain number of episodes in a season. Say, 13 for the year. The writing staff is assembled, with a show runner and seven or eight other slotted writers (when I say slotted writers, a writing duo is counted as one writer. They work as a team, but are paid half-shares each and share half credit equally. They are noted with "&" between the names. When a script might share credits, such as: Written By Tom and **** & Harry (usually Tom on one line, then "and", then **** on a line, then "&" on a line, then Harry on a line) that means that Tom gets 50% of the pay and credit as one individual writer, and **** & Harry are a duo that split the rest 25-25). By WGA rules, one of 13 episodes and 2 of 22 are automatically farmed out to non-staff writers. This is for new writers writing on spec or otherwise not part of the staff.

Of the 12 episodes left, the showrunner will probably claim 3 "Written by"'s for himself, with his choice of which stories of the season he wants (the structure and plot of then entire season is laid out first (or, "broken") before any single script is written, so he knows which are the episodes he wants most to have his name on). The co-executive producers (probably 2 have that title) will get 2 scripts each, and each co-producer will get 1. So you've got the show runner, co-executive producer slot #1, co-executive producer slot #2, and co-producer slot #3 accounting for 8 of the 12 scripts, with four left for the remaining four slots, which range in title from 'producer' down to 'staff writer' and 'story editor'. They are basically getting the stories assigned in draft format, the show runner making all the picks, with your story editor getting the lamest story of the season all for himself.

Anyway, these are just handed out on personal politics and thank yous more than anything. Each writer does his first draft but there's no obligation to use it. It's all re-written by committee. Some showrunners do all the re-writing themselves, some let a co-executive producer run "the room" and manage things without him. But it's really hard to say who actually deserves the credit for any one script.

There's a great bit in Permanent Midnight, Jerry Stahl's memoir of being a Hollywood TV writer and drug junkie, where's he's farmed out one of the non-staff scripts for Northern Exposure, and spends his whole advance on heroin. So much so that he loses all track of time and never actually gets around to writing the script. Weeks fly by and he's too high to tell time. Finally, a PA knocks on his door to pick up the script he hasn't written, and he says "OK, just wait a sec" while he panics, closes the door on the kid, and hurries to his desk to start banging out some kind of script on the back of takeout menus. He turns over six soiled pages of dialogue, apologizes, and sinks back into his junkie hole. He gets full credit (and pay) for the script, of course, and his agent immediately sells him on another project. "He just wrote an episode of Northern Exposure!"

Directing is a little different in TV. The director does have a lot of influence, but, still, not that much as in features. Kevin Smith talks about this a lot now that he's guest-directing CW superhero shows like Supergirl. The job of a TV director is to match the tone of all the other episodes so that it's invisible (although, it isn't always, I used to have a pretty good eye for TV directors and could correctly identify who directed each episode of The West Wing by just watching the first few minutes and getting it right before the credit came up on screen). He does have some freedom for camera shots, and making things interesting, but, it's more to manage actors and be the leader of the team, rather than be an innovative creative person trying something new and different.
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Great post.  I didn't even know how much of a jumble the writing on the shows was.  Is that for just about every show?

So basically it seems like the high production TV shows are just another great choice for actors.  You get a steady paycheck and get to explore your character for longer.  It's no surprise that you see a lot of bigger name actors spilling over into TV.  Movies are still the way to go for more of a singular voice for the director/screenwriter.  Trouble is, there is a shorter leash if you don't win some acclaim or make a movie that makes a bunch of money. 

 
Walking Boot said:
Depends on a lot of factors. While movies are a directors medium (auteur theory and all), mostly TV is the show runners medium. But even then the structure of some shows can be guided by other forces. Some of the 70s-80s run of great TV was out of one production company, MTM studios, putting their stamp on everything (through their handpicked showrunner). But I would say that the bulk of scripted TV is made like the above. John Barlow pretty much nailed it when he wrote about the committee approach: "I imagined this was how prime-time TV gets written: lots of witty, divergent opinions slowly converging on a highly predictable and uninspiring concept. "

It's a little different (and, a reason it's so much better) with the 'prestige' shows, in that, they know going in they have 18 months to do only 13 episodes. It allows more writing time and more time for the showrunner to be fully involved at all levels. On a 22-episodes-a-year production, it's impossible for one person to oversee everything fully. Give the guy more time to do fewer episodes, and he can write them all out before rolling the cameras. Standard 22 episode TV is referred to as triage, you're on a tight schedule (you wouldn't believe how tight) where any delay any time in the year is nearly fatal. So there are a lot of compromises and cut corners. 10-13 episode prestige shows are way more carefully planned at the start and it shows in production value. 

Sometimes I do kinda wish I could get you and jdogg embedded on some movie & TV sets for a few months to see if it changes your opinions on the medium after. 
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Change my opinion on what? 

 
Buzzbait said:
NY Daily front page. Ouch.
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Unfair, totally judgmental, and hot takeish as I have read all of a paragraph about this ####### - maybe the guy is a saint. But he comes across as a total doosh and deserves a tremendous amount of ridicule.

He messed up the cushiest, most meaningless job there is in such an amazing way. 

 
The General said:
Unfair, totally judgmental, and hot takeish as I have read all of a paragraph about this ####### - maybe the guy is a saint. But he comes across as a total doosh and deserves a tremendous amount of ridicule.

He messed up the cushiest, most meaningless job there is in such an amazing way. 
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It was probably a sweet working vacation with oodles of perks . I blame the guys fascination with twitter 

 
The General said:
Unfair, totally judgmental, and hot takeish as I have read all of a paragraph about this ####### - maybe the guy is a saint. But he comes across as a total doosh and deserves a tremendous amount of ridicule.

He messed up the cushiest, most meaningless job there is in such an amazing way. 
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Can't wait for Melissa McCarthy to play both him & Sean Spicer on SNL as Russian agents sent to destabilize American institutions.

 
Walking Boot said:
Just curious if seeing how the sausage is made would affect your thoughts on film.
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I probably don't want to know.  Let me believe the sausage is 100% natural, not filled with rat ####, lips, and #######s.  ;)

I guess are you saying that I am wrong about my assessment of how movies vs. tv shows get made (at least the general premise)?  I am sure both are filled with #######s and backstabbing and favors, I have no illusions about that.  I am not saying that one is better or more of an art form or anything either, just talking out loud about why I still gravitate to movies more vs TV. 

 
KarmaPolice said:
I thought Kimmel did a nice balancing act of taking a couple jabs (or 50 if you are Matt Damon), but not going over the the edge uncomfortable like Ricky Gervais tries to do.  Just like all of them, there were some highs and lows for the show.   Seeing most of the complaints, I think it's more that either this was the first time watching The Oscars, or you are just watching them to complain anyway.  Trump jabs? Stuck up celebs? Boring movies nobody has seen?   Seems to me the show was just about what every other one of them I have watched were.  :shrug:
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Agreed.

Whenever I tune into the oscars I know what I'm getting into and it's not Richard Pryor level of standup. 

 
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