- Last night I had a strange and marvelous dream.
-
- In the dream, I was back in Los Angeles, in show business
again.
-
- The Vice President of some TV network was taking me on
a tour of the studio that housed my new office as head writer of what the
V.P. said was, "Our longest running show. It's been on so long it
might as well be forever."
-
- The show was a soap opera. In my dream, I was very taken
with the idea that I was now in charge of such a venerable, and intense
operation.
-
- Soap operas run every day, five days a week, and the
pressure is on because you can't stop or falter in any way. You've got
to have a new episode ready, no matter what.
-
- The Larry B. I was in this dream welcomed the pressure
and the challenge. I couldn't wait to get started, even after the V.P.
told me the extra added obstacle I would face.
-
- "As you know," she said, "we've recently
been through a long, debilitating writers' strike. Our usual writers weren't
allowed to work on the show so we replaced them with writers who had no
experience and, frankly, didn't know what they were doing.
-
- "Those writers," she went on, "changed
the storylines so that things that were supposed to happen didn't. And
things that weren't supposed to happen did. Many of our most important
and interesting characters were relegated to minor plots or written out
altogether. Weak and inappropriate characters became the leads.
-
- "The changes hurt the show creatively and financially.
They drove much of our audience away," the V.P. said. "Everything
is topsy-turvy, and ratings are way down. And you know what that means."
-
- "You're losing sponsors," I said.
-
- "And that means our very survival is at stake. This
whole enterprise, with all its history, its glorious past and its wondrous
potential is about to to pffft!"
-
- The Vice President took me into the biggest office in
the place. It stretched to the horizon and beyond. She pointed to a mahogany
desk covered with mile-high stacks of papers. Scripts, they were. The entire
continuity of the show, dating all the way back to - to whenever it had
begun.
-
- "The first thing I need you to do is restructure
the storylines and characters," the V.P. said. "Give us something
worthwhile. Something the audience can relate to. Bring back the people
they want to see. The heroes and heroines who understand truth and beauty
and justice and hard work and love. Put them in the spotlight."
-
- "I'll do my best," I said.
-
- She smiled. "We're counting on you to save us. Now
go. Go. Go!"
-
- Then she was gone, and I was alone in the infinite room.
The stacks of scripts swayed above me. It seemed as though they would fall
any second and bury me alive.
-
- "Wait!" I cried out at the closed door. "You
never told me what this show is! I don't know what's happened already!
I'm not even sure I'd know the good from the bad! Wait!"
-
- I grabbed the doorknob to yank the door open and run
after the V.P. But the knob wouldn't turn. It wouldn't even rattle. I was
locked in. It was time to sit down at that desk and get to work.
-
- First, though, I needed a script. Any script. Just to
see what everything was all about. No way could I reach the top of any
of those stacks, and trying to pull one out from the bottom would be suicide.
So I clambered up onto the desk and walked around it carefully, looking
for the shortest pile.
-
- I found one a little shorter than the others. Bent my
knees. Pushed up.
-
- And made the kind of leap you can only make in a dream.
Higher, higher - a mile-high jump that felt like flying. My extended arm
reached the top of the stack. I snatched the topmost script and fell back
down to the burnished wood.
-
- I looked at the cover page.
-
- There it was, the title of this long-running, beautiful
but heart-breakingly messed up story:
-
- "The History and Culture of the Planet Earth."
-
- The story of our world. Gone terribly wrong and entrusted
to me for fixing.
-
- I woke up in a heart-pounding sweat. My chest ached as
though weighed down by an elephant of responsibility.
-
- "Earth: The Rewrite" awaits.
-
- What should I do?
-
- What should we do?
-
-
- Copyright 2008 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
-
- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
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