Like Denis, I was at the Playback Innovation Forum yesterday.  Denis has got some valid criticisms of the event in his post, so I’ll go straight to the content.

James Manos Jr.

Bill Brioux interviewed James Manos Jr, who developed Dexter for television but left the series sometimes during the first season.  Manos is a bit of an excentric, funny, profane and forceful in his opinions.

He didn’t get to Hollywood till he was 36 and did a mini-rant on the need for writers to get some experience before moving to LA.  He told the Humber student who questioned him from the front row to quit school and go out and live.  No one can teach you to write; there are some techniques — but you can learn those by reading great writers.  What you need is something to write about.

Another thing on Manos’s mind is creative collaboration.  Following the Dexter experience, he says he’ll never work again work with people he doesn’t know well.  He’ll never work with people who are new to show business.  He will only work with people he knows and who will protect him and he’ll protect them.  He says life is too short to work with assholes… no matter how genius they are.

Manos seems to be a very collaborative guy.  He wanted to invite every single member of the crew to the read-thru of the Dexter pilot.  He doesn’t believe in the proprietary credit because everyone contributes to the finished product.  He said it’s the most collaborative art, and then added as a sort of throw-away, “that’s why it’s so hard to make anything good.”

Manos described the ideal life in production:

Shoot 12 hours, have a drink, screw someone, wake up, do it again.

Writers Panel

This was a strange group.  Robin Veith of Mad Men, Tassie Cameron of Flashpoint and Tom Chehak of The Listener.  It was very hard to get a cohesive discussion going between writers who have such different roles on their shows, such different shows and different levels of experience.   Each of them was fascinating in his or her own way, but there was little energy between them.

Where the differences between the writers’ experience was most evident came when they discussed the stories their series tell.  While AMC gives Mad Men creative freedom, the Canadian series are very much shaped by their networks.  Veith was adament and clear.  On Mad Men, “we tell the stories we want to tell.  We do it our way.”  Cameron aknowledged that her two networks knew their audience and the time slot and it was up to her to find the stories that worked for that audience.   Chehak said “I’m a writer for hire.  I’m working for a network that wants a hit.  We still want to tell a good story.   But we have to be aware of what time we’re on and who’s watching.”

Veith pointed out that they try to make the Mad Men characters as deep and real as possible.  Almost every character story they tell comes from someone’s real life experience.  Remember Betty shooting at the pigeons?  Veith’s mother really did that.

Thanks to the CFC for sponsoring this event and getting me there.