You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Newsman.
It’s a demo I put together in 2005.
How is the sausage made? What does it take to get the story, and what goes into acquiring the elements?
Newsman was a demo my cameraman and I created to show just that. The idea was to entice a network to take a chance on us.
I wanted to bring a camera crew into the morning meeting. I want to introduce the audience to the idiots, the savants, the superstars, the grunts.
Hey look. There’s the news director. He thinks he’s an emperor, but he’s really a guy who use to get knocked into his locker in high school.
That woman there? She’s the executive producer who is in way over her head. Why does she constantly write down everything in that yellow note pad? Because her brain is so saturated, like a soggy sponge nothing more can get in.
There’s the photogs. It’s morning and they are worrying about lunch.
There’s the reporters, they are bitching cause they wore slacks on a rainy day and the boss wants a live shot.
Yes, I wanted to pull back the flap to the news tent and show you the bearded ladies junk.
Then I wanted to take viewers to the streets and show them the high and mighty and lowest of the low.
How do we find the same mutant every tornado outbreak that says “And then it sounded like a freight train!”
From the gum on the bottom of my boot to the champagne spilling out of a golden brothel on Broadway, I wanted the viewers to feel dirty. I wanted to show how we decide what stays in the final package and what gets cut out. Newsman was not ready for prime time material that I think would make your toes curl and your senses wince.
Newsman.
It never happened. Selling a pilot is hard. So many moving parts. So much money.
In the end it takes vision and balls and a producer who isn’t looking for the next Kardashian saga.
I came across the tape and I watched it and I laughed. I’ve aged a little in 12 years, but not as much as some.
My basic mannerisms and style haven’t changed all that much.
“It all starts with a little something I like to call the beat check,” I spew into the camera.
The video montage is a high caliber bullet piercing time. Fragments of sound and sight that cause me to remember the decade gone by. I see the live shot where the women were shot and the cop was pushing me out of the crime scene on live tv.
“Get back,” he said, unaware we were live and his actions looked neanderthal like.
and then there was the prisoner kicking me and spitting at my camera man.
There was the crying crack momma telling me to F-off outside the motel that the CSU raided with a battering ram and some bad attitude.
News is definitely a high intensity neutron burst, and what I captured reflects that.
I was telling someone the other day “But what am I going to do that curls my toes like this?”
“I want to get out. But do what?”
“Become a fireman at a nuclear facility,” she responded.
I laughed.
You are an adrenaline junkie and equanimity is a four letter word.
Newsman. The idea is still more than a burning ember in my mind.
It could happen. Why not?
If people will watch housewives in Beverly Hills, why won’t they watch trailer park douche bags in Columbia?
Newsman.
Life’s Crazy™