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FOR TV LAND
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When Writers Walk Out
of TheColumnists.com
Okay, you're telling yourself, let's face it: The 2007-08 TV Season is toast now that the writers have walked off the job in a strike over income from "new media." If the writers don't get a bigger share of the revenue from online distribution of programs, DVDs, streaming video and other stuff like that, they'll stay off the job so long that those ladies on "Desperate Housewives" will be getting to their liasons with walkers and there'll be resort hotels built on that "Lost" island.
Not to worry. The networks and studios just need to consult more often with me. I've got quite a few backup plans that will keep America entertained while the writers and their employers get everything worked out.
Here, for example, are 10 really low-cost ideas I have for keeping things going:
1. FOX SHOULD TURN "24" INTO A REALITY SHOW.
Fox has announced that only about a third of the episodes for "24," its top-rated serial action series, were written before the strike was called. Rather than go on with the first eight chapters, then make us wait months for the final 16, Fox has postponed the scheduled January return of "24" indefinitely.
Here's my plan: "24" star Kiefer
Sutherland is serving time for a DUI bust earlier this year.
Why not keep him in jail for an additional 24 weeks and film
what happens to him while incarcerated. No writers needed. And
there'll surely be lots of cliffhangers each week as one big,
brute-faced convict after another calls out,"Hey, Kiefer-baby,
I've got a big undercover assignment for you tonight!" And
so on.
 Kiefer-baby tonight? Okay, but unless you're on cable, I don't think any of it will make it on the air!" |
2. CBS AND NBC SHOULD FORCE
LETTERMAN AND LENO TO AD-LIB
THEIR OPENING MONOLOGUES.
Jay Leno and David Letterman actually survived and prospered during their salad days by writing most of their own material and ad-libbing lots of their comedy bits. Why not shove them both on stage each night and force them to stay there until they recover that neglected skill? Meanwhile, ushers could provide the audience with rotten tomatoes to hurl at them if they started stinking the joint out. It would either bring about a major boom in their comic creativity--or else provide the audience with a tomato-stained source of old-fashioned pratfall-style slapstick.
3. START MAKING NEW EPISODES
OF "LAW & ORDER" BY BORROWING
SCENES FROM EARLIER EPISODES.
In the late 1940s, so goes a Hollywood legend, an inventive movie producer made an all-new western movie by simply stringing together stock footage from earlier westerns featuring the same players and same locations. The westerns of that period were so repetitive in content that nobody ever noticed. There are now about 18 seasons of "Law & Order" in the vaults. There's so much footage there that all you would need to do is put about two dozen film editors in a room and tell them to start mixing up detectives, lawyers, suspects, victims, then sort them out into new stories.
4. A NETWORK COULD BUY
UP ALL THE OLD USED TELEPLAYS FROM
ENGLAND'S "THE AVENGERS" AND START RE-SHOOTING THEM
WITH
NEW ACTORS.
This isn't such a far-out idea. During one Hollywood strike, ABC commissioned a remake of "Mission Impossible" that was filmed in Australia with non-striking Australian writers. "The Avengers" was a great show that modern audiences would love if you could remake all the old episodes with today's digital technology and special effects and today's actors. Those scripts didn't come under rules of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and they're already paid for anyway. Why not cast Larry Hagman as a kind of seedy Texas version of John Steed and Paris Hilton as the new Emma Peel? (I hear she comes cheap these days!)
5. INSTEAD OF DOING ANNUAL AWARD SHOWS, WHY NOT DO THEM WEEKLY?
Award shows draw big audiences and don't require much in the way of prepared scripts during the parts of the program where they hand out the awards. Just drop all the other stuff and just have people introduced, come up and get their awards, then talk for awhile. If you did the Grammys or the CMA awards weekly and didn't give the winners time limits for their speeches, you could fill up a lot of unscripted airtime.
6. PRODUCE ONE LIVE CLASSIC AMERICAN DRAMA PER NETWORK PER WEEK.
It wouldn't be that difficult for each
network to find a suitable classic American play
to do each week. ABC could take Monday, CBS Tuesday, NBC Wednesday,
FOX Thursday, The CW Friday and PBS could have the whole weekend.
Each network could burn off a whole night of prime time each
week with pre-written entertainment not subject to the strike.
ABC could do something aimed at its own demographic, like "Tea
and Sympathy" with Ellen DeGeneres as the teacher's wife
who has sex with a teen boy troubled about his sexual orientation.
("Years from now," Ellen might quip, "when you
talk of this--and you will--please don't rat me out to GLAD.")
Over at Fox, I'd suggest something like "Inherit the Wind"
with Bill O'Reilly as William Jennings Bryan and Al Franken as
Clarence Darrow.
7. SOMEBODY SHOULD REVIVE "CIRCUS OF THE STARS" AND "BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS" AS WEEKLY PRIME TIME GAME SHOWS.
On the original "Circus of the Stars," celebrities rode on elephants, swung on trapezes, tamed lions and stuff like that. On the original "Battle of the Network Stars," networks put their best "athletes" out to compete in running, jumping and doing other crazy non-Malibu suntanning events. Why not combine them into a weekly event show in which network stars compete in non-scripted, circus-style events? How about Larry King as Ringmaster? Personally, I'd like them to start with the ladies from "Desperate Housewives" locked in a cage with hungry lions, but then I'm kind of nasty because I used to be a TV critic.
8. WHY NOT PUT ON AN UNSCRIPTED REALITY SHOW CALLED "PAPARAZZI DEATH ZONE."
Granted, most really notable television stars would not want to take part in any program that could possibly make heroes out of those awful tabloid press photographers that haunt them day and night. But the gimmick here is that celebrities would be hidden all over a large outdoor set built to resemble a typical Los Angeles neighborhood and armed with custard pies and various gooey, but harmless missiles. The paparazzi, each team member sponsored by his or her own tabloid, would have to follow a dangerous route through the neighborhood and reach Home Base with at least three printable tabloid photos. Meanwhile, their usual victims could pelt them unmercifully with various items of messy material. The winning photographer would get one year's exclusive posing by the participating celebrity of choice and his or her entire family.
9. ABC, NBC AND FOX SHOULD
GET THE ACTORS FROM "GREY'S ANATOMY," "ER"
AND "HOUSE" JOBS AT REAL HOSPITALS AND FILM HOW THEY
FIT IN.
True, there could be some risks in such
a concept. I'd expect 90 percent of the actors to be pinkslipped
during the first full shift because they complained about having
no lines to speak. Also, if the hospitals gave the actors physical
exams so they could safely work with patients, more than half
probably would be admitted as patients and sent to either detox
or the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. But it would
be fun to see how many real doctors would succeed after trying
to hit on the Hollywood nurses.
10. WHY NOT HIRE OPRAH WINFREY TO DO A SEASON-LONG MARATHON ON JUST ONE NETWORK?
Is there any television viewer who doesn't
love Oprah? She is so consistently popular that I'm surprised
this hasn't been tried already: Put Oprah on the air doing her
usual thing, live, from sign-on time to sign-off. She could promise
to stay on the air steadily until the strike was settled. America
would become fixated on watching her try to live her life and
entertain us hour after hour after hour. Gamblers would lay odds
on how long she could stay awake each day. Cameras would record
her while she was sleeping. Suspense would be great (Would she
break wind during her sleep? Would she have a "wardrobe
mishap" while bending over to put on her stockings.) and
many mysteries would be solved (Exactly how much does Oprah eat
and when?).
Negotiating network bosses and union officials would be under
tremendous pressure to settle the strike, so they could be free
to watch Oprah finally crumble into fatigued pieces on camera.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 12, 2007.
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