Bloodhounds

In the time leading up to the festival, I’ve been reading a non-fiction book titled The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a former writer for The Washington Post and currently a contributor to The New Yorker. It’s about that moment in time when a particular idea, trend or social behavior reaches the point where it suddenly spreads to a much larger population. Gladwell writes that he’s interested in exploring “this possibility of sudden change.”

So what does this have to do with us and the 2006 New York Television Festival? For a long time the television industry had excluded independent producers like the pilot makers featured this year – and last year – making it quite difficult to present their productions with any hope of seeing them aired. Then, thankfully, this festival surfaces and attempts to provide the step needed to possibly get the industry to change – to open its arms a little more to those of us who do not currently have a track record in television. Could the festival be the vehicle to provide that “tipping point” that television needs to welcome fresh voices into its fold, much like film festivals did in the 1980s that heralded a vast array of new artists who continue to flourish – like Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith and Jim Jarmusch, just to name a few?

When I was a kid, there were only three networks – ABC, NBC and CBS – and public television’s PBS, along with some small independents like WOR and WPIX here in New York City. That was it. No cable TV at the time with hundreds of channels. So job opportunities in TV were very limited as was the variety of programming. It remained this way until the 1970s when cable TV arrived. But that took some time, too. So in the span of approximately 30 to 40 years the change was very gradual.

That pace accelerated in the last six years for the television industry, which  has experienced tremendous change, especially in the areas of the types of programming – such as reality TV – and content distribution. This latter point is evident with the festival’s association in 2006 with MSN.com. Online content, podcasts, TV series on DVDs, etc., are just s few examples. Gladwell writes that “the world of the Tipping Point is a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility.” It is now the norm to be thinking of additional and alternate routes for generating TV programming revenue. So if the distribution channel can experience such change, then can the ways content is originally brought to studios and networks experience just as drastic a change?

If so, then the timing is right for us and the festival, as we do our very best to provide the highest quality content possible for such an event in the hope that this festival – this radical new vehicle in the TV industry -- becomes the “tipping point” needed for us pilot makers to succeed and for television to willingly and confidently seek alternate avenues for content.

One of the experiences I'm looking forward to at this year's festival is meeting my fellow pilotmakers. I see that they come from a number of different states and they have brought with them a wide array of programs. One of the most common questions I get from people who meet me is "Where do you get your ideas?" So I'd like to ask the pilotmakers that same question when I meet them. What gave you the idea?

 

When I get asked, I first respond by looking around. The individual usually doesn't know what I'm looking for (perhaps the answer?!). But then I say simply "From all over." I tend to collect little bits and pieces of "interesting things", which can be something someone said, something I read, something I overheard. (A former girlfriend used to be paranoid around me, wondering if anything she said or did would end up in one of my stories. The relationship didn't last; but the character sure did!) Then, when the timing's right, those little pieces come together. I don't see any particular patterns in my stories, other than the always-present newspaper journalist. That comes from my journalism background in newspapers (amazing power the press pass gives reporters!). And, yes, there is a newspaper reporter in "Bloodhounds." The other pattern might be stories from smaller towns as opposed to big cities. I thought that was one of Stephen King's strengths: Finding interesting, scary stories in his beautifully horrific little town in Maine. Mine's in New Jersey, where the Big Apple is always in sight but never overshadows the big idea.

 

I look forward to hearing what spawned the other pilotmakers' creations.

It’s just three weeks until the NTVF – and I’m in full marketing mode. The press release is completed and proofread, production stills with captions are done, promotional cards are created. I always wondered how my years employed in corporate marketing would prove useful. But now I know. This is great to be able to create some really creative materials to help promote not only my pilot, but the festival itself. I have individuals who are so thrilled about our entry that they have been coming at me from all directions offering to help. Graphic artists, public relations people, etc. It's the same camaraderie that I feel when I'm in production; many people want to be a part of it in some way.

This experience as a whole will no doubt be one of those moments that serves as another piece of the puzzle that illustrates my life. I think of the 1969 movie titled "The Sterile Cuckoo" with Liza Minelli. I believe there's a line of dialogue in it that says something like "Life is a series of images." What a great line for a visual medium like TV and film. It meant that our lives can be summarized by certain moments that occured -- high times, low times, whatever. The past couple of weeks -- and into September -- will undoubtedly provide me with one of those high time moments for storage in my memory bank.

I hope there will be many more.

At the end of the day, after the many congratulatory handshakes and hugs, I thought about the rather ordinary sequence of events had brought me and Bloodhounds to this rather extraordinary point. Working many years ago at an independent cable TV station where I created a character – a young TV producer wannabe who would stop at nothing to make his dream come true.  And not come true over years; he wanted it overnight.

And then that one morning – more than 10 years later -- I was sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast and reading the local morning newspaper. I read an article about a local missing woman whose husband had hired a psychic to help find her. I felt for the husband – and the two daughters mentioned in the article – who so desperately wanted to find his beloved wife that he spent his hard earned money on a psychic, individuals who hold little credibility with law enforcement. In fact, in tests conducted by Los Angeles Police Department researchers, reported in the Journal of Police Science and Administration, showed that information generated by psychics was no better than chance would allow.

Desperate measures in desperate times, I guess. And I remember saying to myself, “If someone is desperate enough to hire a psychic, how much further would they go? Would they consider a reality TV show of amateur detectives looking for the missing loved one?

During the time before the BTK killer in the Kansas City areas was apprehended, I remember reading about a huge online presence of amateur detectives trying to uncover the serial killer’s identity. They’d share information, debate the evidence. It was like the old board game of Clue being played online. I thought I’d take it off line and make it smaller, creating a reality TV show for my fictional TV producer wannabe to make.

I finally had my show … and his.

Upon hearing about my entry in the 2006 New York Television Festival, someone asked me how come I started shooting TV shows while my first two productions were movies. In fact, two of my close industry friends suggested I make a movie instead of a TV show because a movie would be “easier” in which to get some interest. They knew a TV show was a much tougher to sell than a movie.

When I first began writing “Bloodhounds,” I actually began it as a full-length feature movie.  I had the first hour completed and gave it to my close friend and reader, Mike, to look over. His first response was “You’ve got too much here. This isn’t a movie. It’s a TV series.”

Damn, he was right. But the liberating factor about his feedback was that I now knew for what medium Bloodhounds was best suited. So I went back and rewrote the Bloodhounds script as a pilot for a TV series. I was off and running – and it felt so right. I was able to dig deeper into the lives of each of the contestants, uncovering the degree of each one’s own desperation to win, to accomplish something in their lives. What made any accomplishments they experienced so important was that they were doing something without any professional training. “Bloodhounds” to me became a metaphor for what we go through each day of our lives when searching for something, whether it be love, happiness, etc., with absolutely no training on how to find those things.

Already knowing about the NYTVF, I finally had a reason to shoot the script myself and know exactly what to do with it once I was done.

Getting into the NYTVF was my goal with “Bloodhounds.” I wanted it to premiere there, on a big screen in NYC. And when it got selected, it was truly amazing. My close friend, Scott Schiaffo, a multi-talented actor (from the original “Clerks” cast) who composed the music for “Bloodhounds, “ gave me the biggest compliment when he observed one day, “Most people shoot something and then throw it out to all these film festivals and hope for the best. But you had a specific festival in mind with Bloodhounds and you did it!”