January 06, 2006 |
How The Book of Daniel Came to Be
By Jack Kenny, series creator, The Book of Daniel
I'm pretty sure I'm still dreaming. As far as I can tell, this dream started a year and a half ago, so it's actually still June 2004, it's 3:30 in the morning, and I "wake up" with the first scene vividly playing out in my head: His daughter's been arrested. This guy (I hadn't even come up with names yet) has to go pick up his teenage daughter at a police station, way down in Riverdale, in the middle of the night. What the heck was she doing in Riverdale?! He's worried to death. He's angry. He's scared. But more than anything... he's uncomfortable. He is a WASP, after all — they don't go to police stations. And certainly not in the middle of the night! By the time he gets her and his wife home, it's dawn; they have to get ready for church. As he sits alone in his car, he reaches for the biggest obstacle in his life right now — his Vicodin. Then... Smash Cut to: the Pulpit. He's a priest! That's it. That's my way in. I finally found my way into a world that's been kicking around in my head for a couple of years now.
I stumble down the hall to my office and start to write. Daniel. Daniel Webster. A priest with a family... so he's got to be Episcopal. He's a WASP, so that goes without saying. And it's great visually. I can still have the pageantry of the High Episcopal Church. And I've always loved the world of the WASP. I'd better love it. My other half's family is the inspiration for all this. (Except there are no priests or drug-addicts in his family... that I know of.) We've been together almost 24 years — yeah, we'd wreck the sacred institution of marriage.
Michael's family. The most wonderful, loving, generous, inclusive Republicans I know. They love each other deeply, unconditionally, and — this is key — privately. What's attractive to me about the world of the A.R. Gurney WASP is what's not said. What's most fascinating is not what's on the table but what's in the closet... under the rug... up in the attic. "Let's not talk about that, dear. Eat your peas." But we can see it on everyone's faces, on everyone's lips, in everyone's eyes. And it's magnetic.
So I start writing — at 4 o'clock in the morning — and the whole thing just falls out of my keyboard. The characters start talking to me. Daniel, Judith, Grace... Peter, Adam, Victoria, Bishop Congreve, Roger, Lorraine. I can hear each of them individually. I think most writers will agree — that's when they know it's right. When it's effortless. When the story just pours out of your hands. When the struggle is not how to fill the page but how to keep it to just 50 pages.
I finish in a day and a half. (Yeah, right. Like renovating your house, it's never finished.) I show it to Michael:
"You've written really funny, interesting, wonderful Jews... (substitute Italians, Latinos, Blacks, Irishmen, etc., any ethnicity that has no trouble saying what's on their minds). Now go back, and remember this isn't your family — it's mine. They're WASPs. They don't talk like that."
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L Word Newbie Is a Gender Bender
By Ileane Rudolph
These days gays, lesbians, drag queens — even male-to-female transgender characters — are almost as common in movies and on TV as the "bitch diva" and "fat funny guy." But except for the tragic Boys Don't Cry, women who yearn to be all man are rarely seen. Showtime's look at L.A. lesbian life, The L Word (returning for Season 3 on Sunday at 10 pm/ET), remedies that with a new character named Moira/Max, nutty Jenny's (Mia Kirshner) latest squeeze. We interviewed Daniela Sea, an actor active in New York's downtown art scene, about playing a girl who wants to be a boy.
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Curb Star Is Now Big Girl on Campus
By Matt Webb Mitovich
Curb Your Enthusiasm player Cheryl Hines is going back to school — the fictional University of the Midwest — as executive producer of Oxygen's new improvised comedy series, Campus Ladies (premiering Jan. 8 at 10 pm/ET). Starring Carrie Aizley and Christen Sussin as Joan and Barri, two middle-aged housewives in search of the wild college years they missed the first time around, Campus Ladies represents one of Oxygen's most daring endeavors ever. TVGuide.com spoke with Hines about the series' origins, May-December sex and whether Curb fans should perhaps rein in their enthusiasm for another season.
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Book of Daniel Mixes Dope and Faith
By Matt Webb Mitovich
Aidan Quinn's Daniel Webster sees and talks to Jesus in NBC's new (and controversial) The Book of Daniel (premiering Jan. 6 at 9 pm/ET, before settling into its Fridays-at-10 time slot). Then again, maybe the good reverend is simply stoned on all the Vicodin he's taking on the sly. Or stressed out about having a gay son or a pot-dealing daughter. Yes, it's that kind of "religious" series.
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Is "Bumped Joey" Now on Earl's List?
By Matt Webb Mitovich
Tonight, Earl Hickey claims that which is rightly his: a berth on NBC's Must-See TV slate, as the freshman hit My Name Is Earl relocates from Tuesday to Thursday at 9 pm/ET, where it will be followed by the equally worthy tagalong The Office. The shake-up also shuffles Will & Grace to the 8 o'clock slot, begging the question — and TVGuide.com wasn't afraid to ask it — of whether Earl will be adding "aided and abetted the bumping of Joey from NBC's lineup" to his famous list of wrongdoings.
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