clarkblog

GET THE MESSAGE

THE MESSENGERS premieres on Friday, April 17th on the CW.

I had a blast writing on this show. I hope you tune in and see why.

ANTI-LIFE? I LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT!

TRUTH

THANKS FOR THE FUTURE

Steve Jobs, Rest in Peace.

I first sat down at a Macintosh in 1986. Prior to that, I'd worked on early PCs and Commodore machines. The Mac blew me away. It still does.

Here's a pic of the first Mac I could actually afford. I've owned several since the venerable Mac Classic, but this one holds a special place in my heart because it's the first one that actually lived with me and became part of my personal space. The way my other Macs do. And the iPod. And iPhone. And iPad. And AppleTV.

THAT'S A WRAP

ABC has officially cancelled V. We hate to end the saga on such a game-changing cliffhanger, but them's the breaks.

After being on the viewer-fan end of many an unfair cancellation (hello Firefly, Karen Sisco, Threshold, etc.), it's interesting and enlightening to be on the creative side for a change. No matter what the show's about, or who's involved, it all comes down to money. And while V did respectable numbers and gave the network one of its few shows with a strong male viewership, it was in the end too expensive to continue.

While I can see the reasoning clearly from the other side, it's no less frustrating to experience. There were so many cool tales left to tell. We'd opened up a new world of stories that would've been fun to explore. Now we'll never see Erica shattered and vengeful over her murdered son. We'll never find out what Bliss is doing to the troubled soul of Father Jack. And we'll never see the all-out global war as humans use every weapon they've got to take back their planet.

Many fans have written to ask: Can V continue on another network? If another network's interested, then sure, it's possible. Other shows, like Medium, have jumped networks to survive. But the major networks have already committed their budgetarty war chests to the upcoming fall slate of new and returning shows. None of them have any room or money for V right now. In another year they might ... but the actors' contracts will be long expired by that time.

Is cable an option for V? Sadly, no. Cable shows are produced for a fraction of the budget of a network show, and there's just no way for an effects-heavy show like V to scale down the numbers.

I had a great time on my first TV writing gig. I worked with and learned from some amazingly talented people, and was thrilled whenever something I'd written made it to the final cut. The actors and crew and everybody else flat-out rocked.

If you are one of the millions of people around the world who watched what we made: thank you, deeply and sincerely.

Now it's off to the annual merry-go-round known as staffing season. When I emerge on the other side, either with or without a new gig, I'll report back on that singular experience.

MOTHER'S DAY

Be sure to tune into the Season 2 "V" finale airing tonight. Lots of crazy things are being hatched ...

 

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

The great actor Charles Laughton directed only one film: The Night of the Hunter, a surreal adaptation of Davis Grubb's best-selling novel about two Depression-era children on the run from a murderous preacher.

You can see the bold influences of silent film in Laughton's visuals. Some of the landscapes are nothing but backlit cardboard cut-outs, the kind you'd see in a low-budget stage production. These effects heighten the fairy tale-gone-wrong atmosphere of Grubb's dark vision. It's a movie unlike anything else out there: nightmarish, creepy and dreamlike and, thanks to a great performance by Robert Mitchum, often perversely funny.

The new Criterion Blu-ray release of Hunter is astonishing. Unlike MGM's no-frills DVD issued over a decade ago, this Blu-ray shows the movie's light and shadow scheme in crystal clarity.

The disc also includes a stunning supplement that I saw screened at UCLA several years ago: rare footage of Laughton directing his actors. During the making of the movie and for many years after, there were rumors that Laughton and Mitchum didn't get along, and that the director loathed Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce, the remarkable child actors who carry much of the film. But this supplement reveals a thoughtful and caring director working with wisdom, grace and verve. The inclusion of this fascinating supplement, a must-watch for writers and directors everywhere, makes this one of the must-have discs of the year.

To Laughton's dismay, The Night of the Hunter was a flop when it premiered in 1955, probably because of the vast stylistic liberties it took from the well-known novel. James Agee's script follows Grubb's story fairly closely, but Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez transport this murderous tale to a shadowed expressionistic realm that is anything but realistic. Audiences expected one thing, and were given some quite different entirely.

Although it's since been recognized as a landmark film by scholars and critics, Hunter is so strange and offbeat in its storytelling approach that some modern audiences still don't know what to make of it. I showed this film to a university-level screenwriting class a few years ago, and was stunned that most of the students (all in their 20s) gave it a big thumbs-down. Their major gripe: it felt "old-fashioned," a criticism with which I agree, but don't see as a detraction of any sort. I suppose a lifetime of watching frantically-edited CGI-laden fare (which will certainly feel "old-fashioned" in fewer years than we might guess) might numb one to this movie's slow but brutal charms. I sincerely hope those students revisit this one later in their lives. It holds up. A classic.

THANKS FOR THE V MEMORIES

So my staff writing gig at V has come to a close. Work continues for another month at the studios in Vancouver, but as far as the writers go, the final script has been written and our work is done.

I was lucky enough to work with some amazing and talented people, and I learned a lot from them. I'm thankful and exhausted and taking a bit of time to recharge and regroup for whatever comes next.

The second season is set to premiere Jan. 4th on ABC (and the first season has just been released on DVD and Blu-ray). I hope you check it out.

Inside the writers room, probably late in the evening.

Step right this way ...

Morning view of Burbank and Warner Bros. Studios from the writers room.

Who watches over Starbucks? The Watchmen!

Bugs asks tourists: Where is your messiah now?

If you park here, you risk a shotgun blast to the butt.

HAPPY SAMHAIN

This year's pumpkin: zombies from Dawn of the Dead.

Or Tea Partiers.

Whatever scares ya the mostest.

NINE YEARS ON

Nine years ago today, I was in a state of panic and fear and the Twin Towers hadn't even been attacked yet.

I had just quit a safe and secure full-time job to return to graduate school to see if I could be a writer. I've always made my living as a writer, but often the work was anything but creative. I'd lost touch with the spark that had driven me as a child to write stories and draw comics and pass them around to my friends. Maybe I was simply meant to be a journalist, an ad man or a technical writer -- and there's nothing wrong with any of those jobs. But storytelling had once been my passion. I'd lost that and I wanted to find it again.

Less than two weeks into an esteemed writing program at the nation's oldest drama school, I found the pace, workload and creative demands so intense and challenging that my failure seemed all but inevitable. I wasn't hacking it. My hardest efforts resulted in work so poor I felt certain I was going to be kicked out of the program.

So reading was not just a big part of my curriculum, but a thankful solace. Whenever I couldn't sleep, I had a shelf of new theater texts to reach for. The assignment for September 11, 2001, was Aeschylus' incredible play The Persians, written circa 472 BC. And this is what we were discussing in a History of Drama seminar at the exact moment the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil took place.

The play is told from the point of view of the Persians, whom the Greeks had defeated years earlier. I believe this to be the only surviving Greek play based on an actual historical event. It's remarkable because it asks the audience to feel pity for the invading army seeking to topple the Greek empire.

The play asks: Why did the Persians lose the war? They were a great army led by Xerxes, a powerful leader, and they believed the gods were on their side. They fell, we learn, because of their unmitigated pride. Hubris. This is a play about wars and the fools who lose them. Aeschylus served up this tragic and chilling cautionary tale to an audience that would've felt freshly the wounds of this conflict.

When this play was first performed, it wasn't long after the Greeks had defeated the invading Persian army, maybe just a generation or less. As my wonderful professor Brian Johnson pointed out, the audience was probably filled with war veterans, some of them horribly scarred and maimed, as well as families mourning lost loved ones. In fact, there's a very good chance the audience was still sitting amidst blood-stained rubble, their very own Ground Zero.

Aeschylus sought to dramatize this defeat from the Persian perspective, but he didn't want his fellow countrymen to gloat or revel in superiority. He believed such things were fatal flaws. So he portrayed the Persians as being defeated not so much by the might and valor of the Greek army, but by their own corrupt values.

The play's theme -- warning against hubris, against the foolishness of believing one's nation is invincible and divined by supernatural higher powers -- has, sadly, become more relevant with each passing year.

Whenever anyone invokes a higher power in the name of war, you have reason to be very afraid, no matter what their religion.

When my classmates and I emerged from class that morning, we instantly knew something was wrong with the world. People everywhere on campus were hugging each other and crying in disbelief. As we learned of the attacks, each of us began to wonder: what the hell good is freakin' theater on a planet where something this catastrophic can happen? Like everyone in the days following the attacks, my fellow storytellers-in-training (actors, directors, designers, etc.) questioned the paths our lives had chosen. We wondered if we were wasting valuable time.

It took me a while but I finally realized that, when catastrophe reared its ugly head, I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing. The poetry and vision of The Persians informed and validated that feeling like nothing else. Even today, whenever I need motivation to write (or even just to get out of bed each morning), I think of Aeschylus and how his words speak to us across the centuries. This is why I write. To speak. To communicate. To  let others in the world know that we share the same dreams and blessings and curses, no matter who -- or when -- we are.

Storytelling binds us as a species. It is one of the most hopeful things we have. Sometimes I dwell on the thousands of Greek plays that are forever lost to us and it's enough to drive me to tears. All those writers and the stories they hoped to pass down to us -- gone. Just gone. We are incredibly fortunate that this particular play has survived the ravages of time. It is a warning, an admonition, a plea for peace and humility in the face of violence. I hope that one day we will truly hear its message.

(Above: bust of Aeschylus; photos from production of "The Persians" mounted in 2006 by the National Greek Theater; bottom photo from 2005 production by Washington, DC's Scena Theatre)