Jimmy Kimmel did what journalists wouldn't do.

During the last week or so, everyone who follows news has heard about Jimmy Kimmel. This late-night talk show host has been active in the media when it comes to the proposed new healthcare bill in the U.S. senate. 

As a host of his talk show, Kimmel has been spending his opening monologues speaking against the unpopular Cassidy-Graham bill. This legislative piece, if implemented, would hurt most americans and would make the U.S. health care system worse.

For those who haven't paid attention to the case, the whole thing started several months ago, when Kimmel talked about his newborn son's health problems. The heart defect that his son had was potentially lethal and had to be operated immediately.

Kimmel talked about how lucky he was that doctors and nurses at the hospital noticed the problem and took care of it. He talked about how deeply upsetting it was that not everyone in the country had the means to deal with healthcare issues like he did.

So not long after Kimmel's original monologue became popular, Lousiana's senator Bill Cassidy (r) thought that it would be a good thing to get free publicity. He went on the show to proclaim that every future bill would have to pass the 'Jimmy Kimmel' test. 

What this 'test' basically meant is that no child would be denied care because of a pre-existing condition like Kimmel's son had. Any bill that would replace the Affordable Care Act would have to address the issue sufficiently.

Kimmel, understandably enough, felt fairly good about these assurances. He perhaps even thought that he had made a bit of a difference and that his heartfelt speech about his son's medical problems would make politicians care.

After the publicity for the case eventually waned, it more or less looked like we were done with the whole thing. It seemed as if from now on, Kimmel's show would just try to be mindlessly funny and concentrate on comedy.

However, in late July, the republican controlled U.S senate tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Republicans tried to get rid of the Obamacare, which stated that no person would be denied a health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

Even though the initial repeal effort turned out to be a failure, that wasn't the last word on the issue. It didn't take more than a month before a new, even stealthier bill was introduced, by none other than our 'Jimmy Kimmel test' senator Cassidy.

The problem with this bill was that it didn't pass the 'Jimmy Kimmel' test at all. Not only were there cuts in the bill to medicaid, but the protections for patients with pre-existing conditions were more or less thrown out too.

Once all these facts became available, it didn't take more than a day before our late-night host started going after senator Cassidy. Kimmel was merciless in the way he went after the republicans and their odious plans.

In his opening monologues, he openly called the 'honorable' senator a liar and a fraud who couldn't be trusted with this new healthcare bill. Again and again he went after the senator's empty promises and lies that he told us.

Pretty much no one else in the media was willing to say that Cassidy & Graham were completely full of it with this new bill. Almost all of the establishment media was trying to tap-dance around the fact that the legislative piece was a massive scam to hurt the poor.

In the end, Kimmel's reaction and the massive publicity that it created managed to make a difference. Kimmel's outrage and opposition is one of the main reasons that the Graham-Cassidy bill wasn't even brought to the senate floor for a vote.

In that sense, when you look at the whole thing, we can only be grateful that he was willing to talk about this issue with such honesty and integrity. We can only be grateful that he was willing to take a brave stand here.

After all, by doing what he did, he showed that just because you're a late-night host, that doesn't mean that you can't have a voice of your own. Being an entertainer doesn't mean that you can't make a difference when it comes to political matters.

On the contrary, Kimmel showed that if you have a platform like he has, there's nothing wrong with using it for a good cause. There's nothing wrong about rising up to the occasion, when no one else in the establishment media is willing to do that.

In that sense, by exposing these guys, he was clearly doing God's work here. By exposing them, he helped to make sure that millions in the U.S. are still going to keep their health insurances and that they won't get hurt for no reason at all.

Why are so many television shows so bad?

It's not exactly a secret that when it comes to television, most of the shows that you see on tv aren't good at all. Most of the shows don't have good things going on in them and there isn't anything in them that could keep us entertained.

The biggest reason that these shows don't work is because they aren't about anything real or meaningful. The premise and the basic idea in them isn't strong enough, so that the series could have something to build on.

Especially when it comes to most comedies that are out there, it seems as if the writers behind these shows had no idea how to write good stuff. It's as if they had no clue about how storytelling is supposed to work.

 
Nevertheless, when it comes to creating good stuff, it shouldn't at least on paper be impossible to pull off. Even though it's not easy by any definition, creating good shows should be doable, as long you pay attention to the basics.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this creation process, most of the time producers and writers don't seem to pay attention to these things. It's as if they had no idea about the craft and about how they're supposed to do their jobs.

For example, when it comes to creating a solid premise, they don't spend enough time coming up with a decent idea for their series. They don't pay enough attention to their idea, so that they could have a premise that might actually work.

When it comes to creating likable characters, they don't seem to think that those things are needed either. They seem to think that you don't need to have likable, honorable characters that people could actually root for.

This same, lazy approach to the craft also applies it comes to coming up with decent storylines. These writers aren't worried about coming up with storylines that would have substance, idealism or things that mattered.

Instead, what these writers and producers try to do is to obfuscate and throw off their audience. Things like spamming weak jokes, obsessing with empty popular culture references or using ridiculous amount of swearing is the way to go.

For example, 'comedy' shows like Community, Family Guy and Rick & Morty are pretty much all about using pop culture references. They're all about catering to the lowest common denominator with their pointless references.

When it comes to the overuse of 'jokes', pretty much all the multicamera sitcoms are guilty of this. Showrunners like Chuck Lorre are known for using jokes as a crutch when they have no clue how to make their storylines work.

In order to throw off the audience, if these showrunners can't come up with a solid storyline, they try to write in as many jokes as possible. By doing this they try to confuse us, so that we wouldn't notice that there's no real story in these episodes.

Still, perhaps the most heartbreaking of these cheap stunts has to be the overuse of cursing. This kind of behavior is especially true on HBO, where there are no limits on how much profanities or cursing you're allowed to use.

In reality, the only thing that a supposed 'comedy' series like 'Veep' has going for itself, is that it's completely filled with profanities. This Emmy winning comedy series that has unlikable characters and weak storylines has nothing else going for it.

In that sense, when you consider all these things, it shouldn't really surprise anyone that there are so many bad shows out there. It shouldn't come as a surprise when you consider how disrespectful most of the writers and producers are towards their craft.

In the end, the truth is that when it comes to creating quality shows, it's about paying attention and respecting the basics. It's about having a solid premise, having likable characters and making sure that you write storylines that make sense.

It's not about ignoring the fundamentals of storytelling. It's not about thinking that instead of respecting the fundamentals, you can just spam pop culture references, write cheap jokes and swear like a drunken sailor.

Unfortunately for us, as long as these writers and producers keep trashing their craft, things won't change. As long as they think that it's okay to cut corners and that you don't have to take your job seriously, we're not going to get better shows on tv.

What should we think of the 'Zootopia' lawsuit?

A couple of weeks ago I read about a lawsuit concerning Disney's animated film Zootopia. I read about how a writer claimed that Disney had stolen his idea for the film and that the company should have to pay punitive damages as a result.

According to this writer, Disney had stolen the title of the film, 'Zootopia'. The company had also stolen the basic premise and the basic character designs in the film, which the lawyer for the plaintiff tried to argue in court.

When I started reading about the case, at first it seemed like there was a decent case against Disney. As long as you focused on the company stealing the title and you had your focus on the character design, it seemed like the writer was on to something.

However, once you dug a bit deeper and started to pay attention to the case a bit more, things started to get more complicated. Even though there are a lot of similarities, these similarities tend to be too generic and even deceptive.

When it comes to the original film, 'Zootopia' (2016) is an animation that tells a story about a hillbilly bunny called Judy Hopps. This bunny, who becomes a cop and moves to the big city of Zootopia, is what the movie is about.

When it comes to the film, at least 80-90% of its success has to do with our likable bunny. Bunny Hopps is the biggest reason that the movie works so well and that it was such a success both critically and at the box office.

Almost every emotionally meaningful story beat in the film is derived from this character. The character's idealism and her underdog situation is what makes the story work and what makes us care about what happens in the movie.

What this all has to do with the lawsuit is that in the plaintiff's treatment, 'Zootopia' apparently isn't about the 'Bunny'. In the plaintiff's version, the squirrel (that isn't even a cop) doesn't seem to be at the center of the story.

Instead, the plaintiff's version revolves more around the 'fox' character that we see in the produced film. This character (a hyena in the plaintiff's concept), isn't that likable and isn't someone that you can easily relate to.

The big problem with this is that if the plaintiff's story had a protagonist that wasn't particularly likable, that concept wouldn't have worked. There were going to be so many problems with the story, regardless of how the treatment would have looked on paper.

Incidentally, Disney admitted that they tried to write a script that revolved around the 'fox' character. They spent almost a year writing different drafts and tried everything to make the story work and to make it worth producing.

Eventually, they gave up and decided that the movie simply shouldn't and couldn't be about the Fox. They decided that they needed to start from scratch and thought that the film should instead be about the Bunny character.

What this means is that if Disney actually did steal the concept or the treatment from plaintiff, in that case they also ditched it. Even though the concept might have worked in theory, when they wrote the script, it didn't work anymore.

So as a whole, when it comes to this lawsuit, I think it's safe to say that it doesn't seem to be completely outlandish or frivolous. It seems to be likely that Disney in some ways tried to 'steal' the concept from the writer.

After all, the company is infamous for having stolen other people's material over the decades. They have clearly played fast and loose with copyrighted source material before (for example The Lion King / Kimba The White Lion).

Still, even though this wouldn't be the first time that they stole from other writers, when you consider what we know about the case so far (possibly different, unlikable protagonist / other stuff), the lawsuit is walking on a fairly thin ice.

As far as I'm concerned, even though I don't like siding with a corporation against an individual, in this case one might have to. It might be that in this case the writer didn't create a concept that was strong enough to be protected by copyright laws.

In that sense, if Disney took the idea and made it work, that isn't automatically their fault. It isn't automatically their fault if the plaintiff didn't come up with a story that was good enough and if the story didn't have merit to stand on its own.

Why is writing movies harder than writing for tv?

A couple of days ago I read some articles, in which television writers compared movie screenwriting to television writing. They wondered why tv writers aren't usually good at writing movies and why it can be so hard to transition to films?

These writers had their own theories about why this tends to happen. According to them, writing for tv was either too lucrative, or they thought that since they had somehow 'mastered' the art of tv writing, they were now 'too good' to write movies.

Not surprisingly, I didn't find these explanations to be particularly convincing or plausible. None of these writers, in my opinion, had the insight or the courage to admit why transitioning to films is so incredibly difficult and demanding.

In reality, the biggest reason that most television writers can't switch to writing films is that most of them just aren't good enough as writers. Most of them don't have the talent nor the craft to be able to write full length movie screenplays.

As far as I'm concerned, writing film scripts is a lot more demanding than writing television scripts is. Whether we like to admit it or not, it's a lot more demanding in almost every aspect that has to do with the writing process.

For example, movie scripts require a lot more ideas than your average episode for a sitcom or for a drama series. You need to come up with a lot more ideas that have to do with your premise and your characters throughout the length of the screenplay.

With movies, you need longer arcs that require more thought than those vignettes on tv shows. A twenty minute sitcom episode or a forty minute drama episode simply isn't as demanding storywise as is a full length movie screenplay. 

When it comes to this writing process, we shouldn't also forget that most television writers in the business aren't actually that experienced either. They haven't mastered their craft, even though they might think that they have done that.

As unfortunate as it is, the truth is that most of these writers did not create the shows that they have been writing for. The overwhelming majority of these writers were not in charge of creating the characters in the pilots of their respective tv shows.

This means that there's a very good chance that most of them have no clue about creating original material from scratch. They don't know how to create original material that would be good enough to be produced on its own.

In that sense, whenever I read someone writing about how they don't write movies for this and that reason, we should take their explanation with a grain of salt. There's a good chance that the person is not being honest about the issue.

After all, at least in my case, the reason that it took so long for me to write a movie script is that it was really that difficult to come up with one. It was that hard and I knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn't be able to write one.

In the end, it wasn't because I thought I had more important things to do than to write movies. It wasn't because I was 'too good', that I had 'mastered' the art of television writing or that I was somehow above writing film screenplays.

On the contrary, it was because I was afraid that I was going to fail as a movie writer. It was because I was scared to death that I wasn't good enough, that I didn't know what I was doing and that I wouldn't be able to take my craft to the next level.