HBO

Mosugu teribi no kaerumono o shimashite. Consumer choices let's talk about that. I've been writing a TV script for the past 9 months now, I'm sitting on a TV script that I wrote in two weeks and was submitted to the ABC open tender period. I got a non form letter in response to that and had it pinned on my wall for several years before I packed up and left. My cowriter of more than that time has held the ball and run with it building networks, producing plays, earning rep as a professional while I seem stuck in the draft literally and figuritively waiting to explode onto the scene.
And you know I have dreams and I got faith in myself too. I firmly believe Bryce and I can be a team like Shaq and Kobe in their threepeat playoff champion run. Or as he would have it Bert and Graham.
While I jump through hoops for the man and cultivate an air of arrogant confidance, Bryce is the Shaquille O'Neal. A giant of the game, worthy of a double team even after so long in the big leagues, coming from an unassailable position where back boards have needed reinforcing since he introduced his style of play.
If we teamed up I am sure we would be unstoppable, apart from the inevitable ego clashes.
Personally I'd like to think with all the introspection i've undergone and the cathartic experience of writing again I'm more the Dwayne Wade than the Kobe Bryant.
Anyhoo you can tell how much Basketball has eaten into my unskilled posterior, what I really thought about was Mr Show.
Mr Show, Garth Merenghis Darkplace, Big Train. All shows I badly want to write, would aspire long term to be writing in their calibre. Even painting pictures that as neatly express the placenta of ideas they do. But when I watch them a malaise creeps over me.
Australia would never pay for shows like that to be made. Instead we have neighbours and more to our detriment it spins off mediocre talents like Delta Goodrem as profit spinning salable goods to crappy britain.
Similar to my bitch the other day the most likely place you would hear a sketch about a school excursion up the teachers mom's ass or a preacher declaring God king dick of fuck mountain' all whilst in the context of social commentary and clever satire. Infact the most mainstream of these shows Southpark is still a better social commentary and more thought provoking than most newspaper columnists. How do I know, because I quote it sometimes and it blows peoples minds which I can't believe. I mean you'd have to pretty much never have thought about anything to get such an impact.
Cest d'accord, I know plenty of talent too. Some talent even sweetcheeks mcbryce I worry is a generation of something as fresh and vibrant as inserting a new colour into our visable spectrum I feel are crushed into a stifling mold of TV that must not offend the anzacs.
I remember being interviewed by Deborah and some kiddy fiddler for Race Around the Corner and they said 'we want the show to be an insight into teenage lives' so long before the voyeurism of big brother we filmed a sleep over with my friends at a farm, went down the street trying to pick up chicks and the other contestants did stories from the piss weak 'homesickness' [though the more I think about the prospect of living long term in Sydney vs say somewhere sane like Bangladesh the more i think he may have had a point] to teenage suicide or death or something with equal impact, I forget. And it was real but what was our biggest obstacle? Cutting back the swearing, the timeslot demanded infrequent use of course language.
Anyone else spot the paradox? Here they want an insight into teenage lives and yet foul language must be infrequent. What do they want teenagers in school? in the school yard maybe you'll capture something resembling life but you better be able to use: fuck, shit, anus, cunt, slut, arsehole, fucktard, cunteyes, motherfucker, dicksmoker, faggot, felcher, bulldyke, feotus, gunt, cumbucket, axewound, buggery, assrape, skullfucked, rimjob, fisting, pearl necklace, dirty sanchez, donkey punch, pink sock, cocksucker, dickhead, fuckeyes, inbred, snowballing, spunk and the magical rainbow kiss.
I mean fuck cosmo sealed section right off. I heard girls craved it as the girl with the most sexual savvy was the ringleader generally. But I mean at 15 I had friends smoking pot listening to Anal Cunt's 'your dad robbed the sperm bank coz he's a cum guzzling fag' a band that's only warning on their website was that it wasn't a porn site.
Compared to anything in that, anything I wrote is really quite tame, and unclever, unshocking even. I don't think such subject matter would really spark a loss of innocence. Infact innocence isn't even that good, much better than ignorance of right and wrong is the ability to choose right from wrong.
It's why I'm nervouse around teenagers today. I dropped the f word the s word and both c words when I fell of a slide in front of my dad in grade 5. I'd hate to think how not with it I am amongst teenagers these days.
Admittedly putting such things on television creates an acceptability by the community but surely kids using foul language and disrespecting elderly people on trains has far less social cost than them disrespecting themselves and their bodies thanks to Video Hits and Big Brother role modelling (is one the product of the other?)
I mean something with a script aside from soapies has to be in some part intellectual. I mean you have to be able to use some kind of typing machine for one thing.
So I sit and think about the contents of my script, the most tame elements alude that maybe there's some dissagreeable elements about religion (nothing remotely new by SOuthpark or even Simpson standards) or suggest that someone may masturbate in a public area in a sharehouse situation. (not even scratching the surface)
And I can't rap and shit.
So why am I made to feel like I'm taking on the pentagon by making anything more offensive or challenging than neighbours (but possibly less challanging than sex in the city).
'It's not HBO, it's just regular ass tv' quips one Dave Chappelle sketch.
It seems I'm stuck with regular ass tv here. still it won't stop me writing (although this blog might instead of it) and thanks to community tv there is a network of people my age that by now is numerous and skilled enough to churn out decent quality.
So get to it, look out for the Shaq attack and Flash to the rescue. GO the white hot heat.