here was this not-bad TV movie that aired on CBS several years ago, starring Jodie Foster and Peter O'Toole, titled Svengali. I don't remember much about it, aside from the fairly obvious storyline suggested by the title (older male mentors young female artist, depending on what you mean by "mentor").
But one line from that movie has always stayed with me. Peter and Jodie have started a clandestine relationship that Peter is about to expose. Jodie wants to know why. Why can't they go on seeing each other in secret? "Because," Peter O'Toole proclaims from a stairway, in that Peter O'Toole way, "lovers need witnesses!"
You could say the same thing about art, which, for our purposes here today, means sci-fi and fantasy television, movies and books. (Games, too.) The experience of sci-fi is a transaction of sorts—not just between artist and viewer—but among viewers themselves.
Some experiences are best shared.
The coolness of water-cooler moments
I think this is a point worth making, as I see more of my entertainment hours, and those of every human being I know, eaten up by computers and by the pernicious Tivo, which are largely solitary activities, things you do by yourself.
Which is fine, for reading e-mail, surfing the web, curling up with a good book, sipping vodka on a cold winter morning before heading to work— (Strike that last one.)
Some art just works better with other people. Take feature films—especially comedies. Which is more fun? Watching them at home on a small screen by yourself, or on a screen that is larger than you are, in a group of several hundred fellow human beings? Have you ever really laughed out loud while sitting in the privacy of your den—alone?
Do you declaim a play to yourself? Or is it more satisfying to see a performance?
Even though basic television watching seems to be a solitary experience, or, at most, something you share with your immediate family, it is actually shared with millions who are seeing the same program on the same evening.
In fact, the main reason I got into television was to have the chance to write and produce something that millions of people would see in a single night—that people could talk about the next morning. (This is what television execs call the "water cooler" effect.) I can still remember the pleasure of taking part in conversations about what had happened on last night's episode of Moonlighting—and this while I was working on a different television series.
Books are designed for solitary reading (I hate it when anyone reads over my shoulder), but they can still benefit from a shared audience. The whole One Book, One City idea (Los Angeles' selection was Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451) acknowledges this.
When I say shared experience, don't think I mean mass-market entertainment—though obviously mass-market movies, television and books necessarily provide that. Babylon 5 was a shared experience for the 2 million or so viewers who obsessed over each plot turn, each nugget of revelatory backstory. That series provided its viewers with a community.
You don't have to have 20 million viewers to have a worthwhile shared experience. The minimum figure could be two or three.
A community speaks in shorthand
For a writer working in film or television, there is also a practical value to the shared experience.
Like any collaborative creative work, film and television rely on verbal shorthand. Pitches are the worst, or best examples. I've been (falsely) credited with coining the ultimate (bad) television pitch: "She's the pope, he's a chimp ... they're cops." A better example might be Gene Roddenberry's original description of Star Trek: "Wagon Train to the stars!" For the execs at Desilu and NBC, the venerable Wagon Train was a shared experience, common vocabulary, useful shorthand.
I've worked from time to time in a writers' room, where the need for such touchstones is critical. If one writer is describing a potential character as "a little like Milo Minderbinder," it's essential for you to know that Milo is from Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22. If another writer says that an action sequence "feels like" Tarantino's Kill Bill ... well, it really helps if everyone knows the movies.
(Which is not to say that shared experiences should be an excuse for plagiarism. I once worked with a producer who would begin meetings by saying, for example, "Today we are ripping off Ghost!" And he wouldn't be using verbal shorthand.)
There are benefits beyond the practical. For example, not long ago I attended a performance of Mr. Wm. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at my daughter's high school.
Two days later, my daughter and I happened to be watching the twisted, yet somehow valuable, new Fox comedy Arrested Development, where two high-school-age kids take part in their school play. It happened to be Much Ado About Nothing. The sequence involving the two teen characters was funny on its own, but it was much richer for us because we knew the play, and how it was being mis-produced.
My son recently had to read The Joy Luck Club. Imagine our amusement when that book was the punchline to a joke on Everybody Loves Raymond, which we happened to be watching together. Shared experience.
I've had shared experiences standing in line at the Egyptian Theater for a Sunday morning screening of The Empire Strikes Back. While rooting for the Red Sox and Cubs to make it to the World Series. (OK, we'll wait, again, until next year.)
These experiences link us—a noble goal, I think, in a world where people often find any excuse to separate themselves from others. They allow us to bridge languages, cultures, generations.
Now if I could only find some way to arrange the world so my work is that shared experience—
Meanwhile, it's time to pack up the wife and kids and get in line for Return of the King.
Michael Cassutt is currently executive consultant on USA Network's The Dead Zone. He is also a novelist whose new techno-thriller, Tango Midnight, has just been published by Forge.
