I ran out of space in my head...the net seemed vast enough so I decided to lump it all here.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Yep, It Looks Like Up From Here

Sometimes, some things in your life make you stop and take inventory of the things you have.

Going hungry for weeks is one. Talking to my friend Jason about how frail life can be in a very positive (and he is one of the most positive people you will ever meet) is another. Editing the footages that came in from Leyte, is the latest one.

Life is beautiful. It's fucked up, but it's still beautiful. And sometimes you have to see the bad to reflect on the good, and hopefully wake up thinking "My life is shit...and today is the day I start fixing it".

So, as I start looking up again in my life, I am remembering--and appreciating--all the small things that makes me happy...or occupied...or just amuses me.

A bit of warning though, a lot of them are terribly MUNDANE.

1. Brangelina and their much awaited bundle

Not quite an obsession but c'mon, have you ever seen a more perfect celebrity couple?! Not only do they look good together but they're activists. And as is the case when two beautiful people get together, you just can't wait to see their offspring.

2. Keyword searches on dating sites
This cures my writers block. Popular words are "Star Trek", "Star Wars" and "Monty Python". Believe it or not, the word "Pickle" actually generates more than one profile, and in a Catholic website! Who the hell knew.

3. Videoke Videos

Do they have direction? Who the hell makes them? Why do they never make sense? Why are the women always rolling on some bed and the men all look fucking gay? And with considering the overwhelming amount of unemployed but incredibly talented, not to mention DROP DEAD GORGEOUS actors out there, why do they have to use people who look so damn plain?

4. Buffets

Especially free buffets. That come with dessert. Usually also comes with the money to pay for the cab ride home many hours later.

5. The 4400

Specifically, Chad Faust, the latest addition to the constantly expanding collection of Templates.

6. Clark and Chloe fanfiction (a.k.a. "chlark)

C and C. Not that I don't like Lana. I just have a soft spot for unrequited love.

7. Kitty-watch

"Kitty" is now past the four week mark and also has a name: Scheherazade. Besides having a taste for gold and a penchant for getting into anything electrical, she is--after many hours of hand-feeding--in the process of being weaned (THANK GOD).




After getting up every four hours for feedings, and coaxing her to try something besides milk, here she is finally eating solids for the first time. I am so proud! (and it's about damn time.)

Monday, March 06, 2006

Wag The Dog

It's been that way for a long time. In fact, it's an "unwritten rule". The Philippine Cinema makes movies for the masses.

I have a hard time determining what exactly "the masses" are.

Economically speaking, it's that big chunk of the pie chart that's well below the poverty line, with a small slither of the lower middle. They represent about 60 to 75 percent of the population: the underfed, underpaid, and under-educated.

Survey says that they also like to watch a lot of television and even, on occassion, spring some of that hard earned money for a movie or two.

So it makes a lot of sense that huge portion of the industry caters to them.

What doesn't make sense is this beliefe that the industry has that they are stupid, because here's the thing: they're not.

Yep, here ye comes the new generation of masses. The public school kids who grew up with camera phones, the internet and the Knowledge Channel in their classrooms. Somewhere along the way, they got smarter. Too bad The Powers That Be got stuck in the upgrade, because we are still batting out the same tired plot-lines to pacify the people.

I once got locked into a debate at my union office about what exactly the masses wanted.

Technically, we couldn't make a TV show like The Practice because no one would watch it. You're Honor came out and it flopped. It's too brainy, and the upperclass is already busy watching...well, The Practice.

Damn.

You have to give Richard Gomez some credit for pitching something new, and maybe ABS-CBN for actually letting him do it.

Now here's the deconstruction: You're Honor flopped because it spent most of it's time focusing on the courtroom drama. It's aim was to show passionate lawyers and titillating cross examinations. Judges aghast at clients' hysterias...

The thing is...there is no such thing as courtroom drama. It's all bullshit. Lawyers stutter, clients rattle off answers like robots, and some judges sleep if they're not fining the lawyers for excessive dialectics.

In real life, court cases are boring, that's why the lawyers from The Practice only spend about 5% of their time there. And even then, it's always in a direct one minute closing argument/speech.

Poetic license be damned, there's only so much that you can make up.

The real drama happens behind the scenes, with the clients and among the lawyers. It's not the court cases that make the story, it's the people that make the story. A case is a piece of drafted paper, it's the people mentioned in it that bring the conflict.

And for a country that usually handles it's cases by settling out of court, it would have made for a lot more interesting stories, not to mention shed light on the process.

The writers of the show should have made it more episodic than serial, writing each one like a stand-alone movie with a snippets of courtroom drama.

That doesn't mean though, that the show and the format couldn't have worked. I think the network dropped the ball too early, way before the writers could've re-tooled and improved.

Writers are dynamic, they would have re-worked it. Writers aren't stupid and neither is the audience. The only people dysfunctional in this system are the people who make the decisions.

I understand that network TV is scared to lose their money, we're not like Hollywood that can afford to pop out pilots the way they do Vicodin pills.

But for Kahless sake, grow some balls dammit. Try and match the growing independent movement done by cinema.

Yes, we get the fact that soaps work, but do they all have to be soaps? Take a risk and stop coddling your audience! They aren't monkeys in bars, they've long ago started thinking.

A great example of this are the Hong Kong OFWs. Karen recently marketed our TV show there and it was--surprisingly--well accepted. We had hoped they would love it, but we never actually thought that they really would, especially that much. Their reason?

"We're sick of watching movies with the same stories over and over. We'd like to see something new, and even see some documentaries in there."

We're a country that has a basic literacy rate of 96%, but a functional literacy rate of 86%. That's a sad number.

So dog darn it people, we already know we can bite, now give us something that we can actually chew.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

The Upside of Pissed Off

1. Caught a very good writing break.

2. Am 1/4 done with my first pilot/pitch script.

3. Donning battle armor as I pitch--or is it re-pitch since he's heard this--my (first) feature. If he likes it, then it's onto the next step: writing.

4. Have new cat. It's now 14 days old. Rescued it when it was 3 days old. Kitty has no name in case it dies on me.

5. Due to the drastic reduction of meat products to my diet, my skin has gotten better...

6. A really cute guy that I saw that matched "The Template"