August 2008 Archives

Good afternoon, everyone.  I guess.  Who gives a shit, really?  If it sounds like I'm depressed, I am.  It's almost Labor Day and the office is a ghost town.  It's just me and Tomoko and we're doing Kamikaze shots.  I'll tell you why I'm depressed in just a minute.  First, as f'ing usual, I have to apologize for last week's remarks.  Like a mother-f'ing pussy.
 
I got calls from former Mannix and Carter Country staff writers, who apparently are still alive.  I also received vitriolic e-mails from them.  In the hopes of not receiving any more, I hereby retract my description of them as "hacks".  I sincerely apologize to TV viewers 55 and older for calling them "less than desirable" (my mom's entire trailer park shut down my voice mailbox).  My apologies go out to ABC, CBS, Disney, Fox, NBC Universal, Sony, and Warner Bros., all of whom vociferously admonished me for referring to them as "age-ist sons-of-bitches".  Rah-rah old writers.  Woo-hoo.  You f'ing win.
 
I've been in a funk since hearing the news that Kara DioGuardi would be added as a fourth judge on American Idol.  My concern is twofold: from a financial standpoint and on a personal level.  First of all, it's no secret that the Idol juggernaut has been destroying the competition on Tuesday nights.  Now they want to "young-ify" the show to increase their already monumental ratings.  The word is they seek a 20% increase in their market share.  If that transpires, it will virtually sound the death knell for MBS' Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which is already hanging by a thread with its 1.5 average rating.  The Wednesday night edition of Idol is also kicking the ass of MBS' Corporate Veal, which at least pulls a 60 share among viewers employed in the Macro-robotics industry.
 
Secondly... ok, deep breath here... c'mon, Kurt get it together... alright.  Kara and I used to be roommates/lovers.  (Wait, I have to do another Kamikaze... Tomoko's bringing it over now... yeah, that's good...)  We met while taking classes at a Hollywood songwriting academy in 1991.  I had an apartment, was low on cash and was looking for someone to share the rent, but it was just a one bedroom with a bunk bed.  Kara thought it would be fun, so she moved in.  We'd stay up late drinking wine coolers, then crawl into our respective bunk beds, where I would regale her with poignant stories from my youth.  About lost love, April rain and emotional black holes.  These stories touched her deeply.  So much so that one night she climbed down from the top bunk and threw herself at me.  We enjoyed unprecedented passion.  Over the next six weeks, she wrote 243 songs based on the things I told her.  She'd sing them to me like an angel.  We'd hold each other and weep, pledging to stay together forever.
 
Then one day she told me she'd run out of ideas for her songs.  I tried desperately to come up with more stories from my past, even fabricating a few.  But she saw through the artifice.  That night, as I lay in the bottom bunk, I could hear her in the bunk above, boning some guy who had the saddest f'ing love stories I'd ever heard.  I had to wrap the pillow tightly around my head.  Worst night of my life.  He didn't seem so sad the next morning when I was making them breakfast.  As a matter of fact, when Kara left the room, he winked at me, grinned and said, "Oh yeah, baby..."  Then he strutted out of the kitchen, stroking his crotch.
 
Thanks to Kara, I can't listen to pop radio.  I'd have a nervous breakdown.  No Jonas Brothers, no Ashley Tisdale, no Bo Bice, no Nick Lachey.  All of whom sing about the pain that I literally experienced.  Now I'm going to have to disconnect my TV, because every Tuesday night I would know she's there, she's right there.  On Fox.  Killing me softly.
 
Whoa, the Kamikazes have really kicked in.  Shit, Tomoko's gone.  I may need someone to drive me home.  Is Lloyd Grohl still on the lot?  Maybe he could drop me off in Van Nuys on his way to Bel Air...
 
Oh, nobody's f'ing here!  F you all!  F Paula and Randy and that gay limey judge!
 
But Kara, come back to me.... please... I'll give you more of my pain....

Kurt Barnet

Huzzah, my wild blogs.  This week, it has been relegated to me to report to you some disturbing news:  A legal settlement agreement has just been reached between Manka Bros. Studios and TV writers age 40 and older in the age discrimination class action lawsuit filed in 2000 by the writers.  As the kids say these days, this news is hot off the presses.
 
The amount the defendants agreed to compensate old-timey writers: $4.5 million!  To hacks who used to write for Mannix and Carter Country!  According to the consent decree filed today, the settlement talks began in November 2007 after both parties reviewed and evaluated demographic data including television writer employment by age, earnings, and studio representation during the liability period.  And get this:  Manka Bros. must now provide training on a biannual basis to recognize and prevent age discrimination to all its personnel involved in screening potential TV writer clients.  We even have to take attendance at each training session!  Like traffic school!
 
The settled case, Edwards, et al v. Manka Bros. Studios, Inc. alleged that the more than 150 named plaintiffs and others like them - television writers who were aged 40 and older after October 22, 1996 - were victims of systematic age discrimination by Manka Bros. TV executives, who allegedly passed around blacklists, or "geezer meters", featuring the names of 63 writers whose "fucking endless stories about the good old days of TV would bring us the fuck down, so don't fucking hire them!"  The existence of this document clearly damaged our case.  Didn't shredders exist in the late 90s?
 
Everyone I've spoken with here at the studio is hopping mad about the settlement.  Most say we should have gone to trial and "mopped the floors with these typewriter-using, Metamucil-taking, bald-but-with-mullet headed bastards."  Now they need to represent 25% of our writing staffs!  Most feel that this will bring the quality of our primetime programming way down, and cause our viewer demographics to shift to the less-than-desirable 55+ age bracket.
 
Conor Teegan, age 24, staff writer on the upcoming MBS medical examiner drama, Severed Fingers, went on record as saying, "Old dudes can't write for our show.  They don't know dick about the latest in forensic technology.  They'd never be able to capture the essence of the blossoming love relationship between Dr. Patience Gordon and Vander Quince.  Would they use the word 'Yo' in their dialogue?  Or have one of the characters say, 'I'm down with that"?  No.  They'd write shit that Stephanie Powers might say.  Or Susan Saint James.  We'd be laughed off Sunday nights at 10!"
 
I spoke briefly with Scott Finkleberg, age 33, Executive Producer for MBS' sitcom Five Kids, Five Dads & One Mom, who had this to say:  "Writers over 40 just don't know funny.  They've lived too much life.  All the ones I've encountered are bitter pricks.  Our show needs writers who can make husbands funny, make kids funny, make dogs funny.  Old people don't remember those things.  Only young, white, Jewish males are truly tapped in to that sensibility."
 
A Key Grip on the reality show, Forensics, said this on the condition of anonymity:  "We've got nothing but hot babes running around our set.  We are constantly having sex with hot babes.  If old guys are gonna be hangin' around, we might all get less tail.  I see a significant decrease in chick banging."
 
Well, bottom line is, when it comes right down to the end of the day, we could be entering dark times for young, enthusiastic, fresh-from-cinema-school sparkplugs who, for my money, make this industry what it is.  Young writers write words that young viewers want to hear.  And that's music to the sponsors' ears.  Ask any one of them:  All young people really want to do these days is watch broadcast TV!  If I am asked to attend one of these "training sessions", I will boycott it.  I swear to Christ.  I'll call in sick, or lock myself in the Senior Exec washroom, or chain myself to Tomoko's desk.  I shall overcome.
 
ABC, CBS, Disney, Fox, NBC Universal, Sony, and Warner Bros. face pending class action suits.  I say, Fight on, you noble, ageist sons-of-bitches!

Kurt Barnet

Salutations, Blog-heads.  First off, after I received a summons informing me I was being sued by "Space Chimps" director Kirk DeMicco for defamation of character, the legal department here at Manka Bros. advised me to address the misstatements I made in last week's entry.  Upon further investigation, I have discovered that my old girlfriend Tangie actually left me for a guy named Kirk DeMucci, a stage manager for the 1998 production of "Camelot" at the La Mirada Civic Light Opera.  She's now a lesbian living in Prague.  Kirk DeMicco is unmarried and there is every indication that "Space Chimps" is his own, original intellectual property.  My apologies go out to him, his family and the creative team behind the film.  Tomoko and I have dropped our plagiarism lawsuit.
 
Receiving a summons from a process server got me thinking about my own mortality.  What's the meaning of life?  Why are we here?  Why wasn't "ER's" final season six seasons ago?  And when I read about all the untimely celebrity deaths last week, I got very contemplative.  After industry legend Bernie Brillstein passed, then Bernie Mac died of pneumonia, the questions that came to my mind were, "Who's killing all the Bernies?" and "Are other celebrities named Bernie scared out of their minds?" 

So Monday morning I got on the horn and contacted every famous person named Bernie I could find (fortunately, I have access to Manka's database of private celebrity phone numbers).  And just this morning, I had a round table discussion with "The Love Boat's" Bernie Kopell, Grammy Award-winning lyricist Bernie Taupin, and former Yankee center-fielder Bernie Williams.  We met at the Hillcrest Country Club, and the following is a transcript of our discussion: 

KURT BARNET:  Thank you all for meeting me here on such short notice.  I'm sure there are lots of other things you could be doing.
 
BERNIE KOPELL:  Not really
 
BERNIE TAUPIN:  Me neither.
 
BERNIE WILLIAMS:  Not a whole lot going on with me.
 
KB:  So, it's been a rough week for Bernies.
 
BK:  I'll say.
 
KB:  When you see two prominent Bernies die within days of each other, what goes through a Bernie's mind?
 
BK:  Well, utter fear and abject terror.  I'm no spring chicken!  By the way, spring chickens don't have much of a life expectancy, what with all the nuggets kids eat these days.  My grandkids have got nuggets comin' out of their asses!  But, yeah, I was trembling with fear.  I could be the next to go...
 

BT:  I awoke in the morning with ambivalence, riddled with trepidation, like a bird who'd lost its way.  There's a path we travel called innocence, scarred by hesitation, like a word we cannot say...
 
KB:  Which means...
 
BT:  Someone saved my life tonight.

KB:  Who?

BT:  Sugar bear.

KB:  What about you, Bernie?
 
BW:  I was at a Baseball Card Convention in Tulsa when I heard Bernie Brillstein died.  My immediate thought was, "The guy who executive produced the Garry Shandling movie, 'What Planet Are You From?' is dead?  Man, I loved that movie!  I hit 30 home runs the year it came out."  So his death hit me hard.

BK:  I'll tell ya, after I heard about Bernie Mac, I got right on the phone and called my dear friend, Bernie Casey.  Poor guy was hiding in his poolhouse, half out of his wits.
 
KB:  I heard Isaac Hayes' nickname was Bernie.
 
BK:  Oooo... spooky...
 
BW:  I ran into Bernie from "Biggest Loser 5" at the airport.  He's put a lot of the weight back on.  I think he's the next to go.
 
BT:  Get this, I e-mailed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whom I had met at a fundraiser last year, telling him to watch his back, that the grim reaper was on his tail.  Later in the day, the FBI showed up at my ranch.  Talk about seeing your life flash before your eyes.
 
BK:  (affecting German accent)  Ze Nazis showed up on dein porch?!  Du stumm songschreiber!!

KB:  But it's times like these that give you pause, you know, make you ponder.  Will you guys now be changing the way you approach your lives?

BW:  Well, I'm gonna go out there every day and give it 200%.  You drop the ball, don't worry, your friends will pick you up.  Life is 50% mental, and 50% physical, and 50% mental.  Just gotta step up to the plate.

BT:  I think I'll stop riding my horses, because it's only a matter of time before one of them Christopher Reeves me.  I think lyric-writing is giving me bone cancer, so perhaps I'll stop that as well.  All that really remains is to divorce and marry again.  It's what keeps me vital.
 
BK:  Well, I should probably stop playing so much racketball with Gavin McLeod.  That son-of-a-bitch cheats anyway.  Cut back on the corned beef.  No more guest starring on those fucking Zack and Cody shows, damnit.  (saluting, smiling)  That's what the ship's doctor orders!
 
KB:  Aye, aye, doc!  (we all laugh)  Thank you so much for meeting me today, guys.
 
BW:  Hey, Kurt.  What movie studio you work for again?
 
KB:  Manka Brothers.
 
BW:  Oh.  What movies you guys put out?
 
KB:  You see Spinners?
 
BW:  Uh-uh.
 
KB:  How about the Magpies movies?
 
BW:  Nope.
 
KB:  You need to get out more.
 
BW:  Can you get me that Garry Shandling movie on DVD?
 
KB:  I don't think so.  Thanks Bernies!

Kurt Barnet

This week has been mind-bloggering!  I've been ripped off!  Ripped off, I tell you!  (More on that in a bit). 

First, I'd like to thank our temp Tomoko for rescuing me from my office after last week's earthquake toppled beams and left me trapped, screaming for help.  Tomoko is only 4'8" and 86 pounds, but she's Yao Ming to me!

Second, my gratitude to Carl Yang for taking over the blog last week, reporting his Comic-Con exploits very colorfully.  As a matter of fact, hats off to all the Asians on my floor.  Domo aregato, Mr. Roboto, you industrious sons of bitches!
 
This week's focus:  Theatrical Box Office Anomalies.  I had breakfast Monday with my counterparts Dustin Edwards from Disney and Jay Kaplan from Fox, and judging from their mass consumption of Bloody Mary's, their weekend cumes were clearly not through the roof.  We all found it ironic that Starz/Fox's "Space Chimps" may end up grossing more than Disney's "Swing Vote" and Fox's "X-Files: I Want to Believe" combined.  Combined!  Apparently, Americans hate Kevin Costner, have had enough of Kelsey Grammer and his heart, equate Nathan Lane with gay marriage, and are sick of presidential cam-PAINS, paranormal activity and Amanda Peet.  But monkeys in space?  Bring it on!  Not that "Chimps" is a blockbuster; we just found it curious that an innocuous monkey movie with virtually no marketing is outpacing star-driven vehicles with brand recognition.  But the presence of this film in the marketplace has a personal resonance for me, and after doing some research, I'm hopping mad!
 
As many of you know, I was once an aspiring screenwriter, and one of my unproduced screenplays from the 90s is called "Apollo: Primates!"  It won honorable mention in the 1998 ASPCA International Screenplay competition.  It chronicles a group of ragtag, flight-obsessed monkeys who soar toward the stratosphere in a cardboard box attached to helium balloons.  A team of resourceful orangutans on the ground do everything they can to save the chimps before they disintegrate. 

Back when I wrote this, I was living with a woman named Tangie (Angie with a T).  Tangie was a nurse with a foot fetish who worked for a podiatrist.  She had pale skin, flat, long red hair that covered one side of her face, and she dressed like a shopgirl from the Depression.  I would crack jokes and she would just stare at me, eyes at half-mast, slowly chewing gum.  I thought she hated me, but in bed she would completely devour my feet.  I mean, just gorge on them like a lost hiker on a chicken leg.  And loudly growl while she was doing it.  The growl became a howl.  The neighbors would pound on the walls, and more than once they called the cops on us.  It was a wild time.
 
Tangie read my "Primates" script and suggested I focus more on the monkeys' feet, gripping the cardboard box for dear life.  When I told her monkeys don't have feet, they actually have four hands, she turned ashen (if such a thing was possible) and locked herself in the bathroom, weeping, breaking glass objects in the tub, and shouting, "No, no, no, no, no...."  After that, our relationship was on thin ice.  When I got a raging case of athletes foot from the contra-dance class I was taking, she wouldn't come anywhere near me.  One day, she left me a letter saying she was moving in with a guy named Kirk who was writing the animated film "Quest for Camelot".  Apparently he didn't contra-dance and his feet were pristine.
 
Fade out, fade in.  2008.  I check the credits for "Space Chimps", and who wrote and directed it?  A guy named Kirk.  Kirk DeMicco.  ALSO the writer on "Quest for Fricking Camelot"!!!!  Clearly, Tangie told him my story and it stuck with him all these years.  Come to find out, Tangie is now Tangie DeMicco, and she's all miss Pacific Palisades.  Apparently, you can even see the other side of her face!
 
Well, don't think that Mr. Kurt Barnet is going to take this lying down.  Why, it's plagiarism, libelism... any kind of "ism" you can get your hands on.  I knew America was ready for monkeys in space before Starz/Fox did!  If Manka Bros. Films was smart, they would snap up the rights to "Apollo: Primates!" while the monkey-getting is good.  I see "Apollo Primates 2: Mars Mission!"  It's lucrative, I tell ya!
 
I've decided my lawyer in the plagiarism suit will be... Tomoko the temp.  If she can move a 200 pound beam, she can kick Kirk DeMicco's thieving ass.  I'll keep you all posted...

Kurt Barnet