series Salman Rushdie's New Sci-Fi Series

Salman Rushdie says TV drama series have taken the place of novels

Booker-prizewinning novelist to write sci-fi drama for television (Showtime), citing The Wire, The Sopranos and Mad Men as an inspiration.

This should be VERY sweet.

One point he makes in the article I find very interesting:



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The idea that Rushdie might create a television show came from his US agents who suggested that he would have more creative influence than with a feature-film script.

"They said to me that what I should really think about is a TV series, because what has happened in America is that the quality – or the writing quality – of movies has gone down the plughole.

"If you want to make a $300m special effects movie from a comic book, then fine. But if you want to make a more serious movie… I mean you have no idea how hard it was to raise the money for Midnight's Children."

"In the movies the writer is just the servant, the employee. In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist."


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Good point and something for anyone writing feature scripts to consider.



-Charles

Serious dramatic television has replaced feature films as one of my favorite sources for new storytelling. My favorite dramatic vehicle is the 4-6 episode mini-series. The BBC's "State of Play" and Sky's "Mad Dogs" are two foreign examples that come to mind, and the US has several great programs on any given day of the week.

I'm looking forward to this. Rushdie is right...

Serious TV is entering a great age.

I don't think it's the fault of the feature market so much as it's a problem of distribution. Getting their grimy little hands into the creative process, film executives with no experience in film but holding degrees in marketing, decide key changes in the film for what they consider marketing improvements.

TV writers, or the main one often called the showrunner, is the main man on set but he/she still has to deal with the same marketing execs at the networks and studios. It's no fun however you look at it and you must be ready to collaborate (hollywoods word for compromise) on every part of your project.

I hadn't heard of the film adaptation of Midnight's Children! Awesome! Even more so that Rushdie is doing a series. I have often thought that television is better suited for "long format" storytelling (a novel rather than a short story), though even that is not without problems. Pacing for a season (or several) long arc can miss with the viewers (writing for the DVD rather than for an episode) if not done right. And there's always a chance that your story will be orphaned if not a big hit. Sometimes you get lucky (Serenity coming out of Firefly). Sometimes the network really really cares (The Peacekeeper Wars being funded by SciFi, despite Farscape not being popular/profitable enough). Sometimes "greater creative control" isn't always for the best (Carnivale could have kept going if the creator could have scaled back the budget to 2 million an episode, most of the 4 mil that was being spent went into extensive location shoots; different for each episode. Looked awesome, but way too expensive for what the show was pulling in). And as an addendum, find me one person who prefers the Stephen King supervised Shining mini-series over the Kubrick film...

I agree with the "Long Format" used by television to tell stories (I STILL think "The Watchmen" should have been done ala HBO, and I Hope/pray/beg that if Gaiman's "The Sandman" ever sees light of day PLEASE let it be a tv series).

I feel that trying to cram an epic storyline into 1 2.5 to 3 hour movie (LOTR had to use 3 just to get a basic telling of the story-well done at that ), I myself would rather see poured into a longer HBO type series where everything can be explored.

And as an addendum, find me one person who prefers the Stephen King supervised Shining mini-series over the Kubrick film...

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Oh, I know this one...Stephen King himself!

Pacing for a season (or several) long arc can miss with the viewers (writing for the DVD rather than for an episode) if not done right. And there's always a chance that your story will be orphaned if not a big hit.

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This is why I prefer what I call the British model, where each season tends to be its own self-contained arc, and seasons are often only 6-8 episodes, or 14, but rarely 24. Shows like Flash Forward and The Event and Lost I can never get into, because they throw so much stuff at you that won't mean anything until several seasons on, and more often than not won't mean anything at all when the show is done. Weeks will go by where nothing happens! It's all exposition. I like the longer form storytelling of television series, but I prefer each season to have a definite beginning, middle and end. One of the biggest sins of television series cancellations is John from Cincinatti, which spent an entire season setting up what would have been one of the coolest science fiction/fantasy plots imaginable. Cancelled after one season; I'll never know what any of it was about (though I enjoyed the ride.)

But if it were done via the British model, the season would have resolved itself as its own story.

Sounds pretty awesome. But it is the premium cable networks that seem to be putting out the best content (in America) like the Sopranos. Though SyFy (is it now?) has put out some excellant stuff like Far Scape and BattleStar Galactica.

Has anyone who has read Pillars of the Earth and seen the TV adaptation care to tell what they thought of the adaptation?

The concept of the TV series replacing the novel is fascinating. Novels used to be serialized in newspapers. A good example is Dickens, many of whose novels were first published in that manner. A kind of print soap-opera.

The problem with television, whether network dramas or premium pay-to-view channels like HBO and Showtime, is that the run-time is open-ended. That is, the writer(s) often have no idea how long they've got to tell the story. They never know for sure if they'll be canceled mid-season, or after one, two, three seasons, etc.

One solution is to make a single season self-contained and plan on it being all you've got. But if the show is wildly successful, the temptation is to continue it of course.

I see there being three story arcs. The grand arc, which includes all the characters and their lives. The middle arc is the season, and the small arc is the episode. The episode (or chapter in a novel) has to tell a satisfying story in itself, to have a beginning, middle and end which nevertheless moves the middle story forward. The middle arc or season corresponds to the novel itself. The grand arc is the universe in which more novels involving the characters and their world may or may not come to existence.

Interestingly, the series I've watched, like Deadwood, Spartacus, Damages, etc., the main writer pens the first couple episodes and the last few episodes in the season. Each episode in between is written by a guest writer who takes the characters and world created by the primary writer and develops a sub-story. My assumption is they're given an outline by the main writer of what needs to happen and told to fashion a satisfying story within those restrictions. I notice Rushdie will be writing every episode himself. If the series is open-ended, that kind of writing schedule can be brutal.

I haven't had the chance to watch HBO's Treme, unfortunately. Does anyone know if David Simon writes all the episodes himself?

-Charles

One solution is to make a single season self-contained and plan on it being all you've got. But if the show is wildly successful, the temptation is to continue it of course.

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see: Mad Dogs, now shooting season 2.

Does anyone know if David Simon writes all the episodes himself?

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I don't believe so. He is credited as "Creator" each episode, but not always as writer.

Treme is excellent...