THINGS I'M WATCHING

So, there’s this club in Hollywood, just up from the famous Hollywood and Vine, on Franklin Avenue. The Magic Castle. A very exclusive club. Members only, and their guests (I’ve been fortunate to get entry as a guest three times). Membership is limited to Magicians. And the test for membership is to get up on their stage and perform an act of magic that everyone in the audience knows how to do, knows what to look for, won’t be distracted by your patter or any of the other stage tricks to distract the audience so “magic can happen.”

And you have to do something that none of them spot.

And when you do, you are admitted to membership without limits.

I’ve always liked magic and magicians ever since my cousin got into it and showed me ther basic tricks. My knowledge of what to look for once saved my life, when I saw the “guru” of something I’d gotten involved in, because my ability to not be distracted and see what was happening led me to realize he was a fraud. I walked out of the event and never looked back. I ran across the “guru” six years later, and in front of his acolytes, I told him never to perform that trick again, because it was really simple and so elementary that even I could spot it. The look on his face told me I had speared him in the gut. Within two years, that cult fell apart under the cold light of publicity. So much for “spiritual leaders.”

As a screenwriter, I learned that I was a member of the Magician’s Guild. I can write a screenplay that works. Not every writer who claims to be a screenwriter can actually do that. The fact I can recognize the frauds has led to me having far fewer friends who are screenwriters. But all of the friends I have ARE screenwriters. The real deal.

I’m very fucking picky about what I like, because I know how to pull the rabbit out of that. The script has to pass my “Magic Castle” test. The magic in the story has to be so good that all I can do is say “I like that!” Which means that at no point in the script of a movie, or a script of a series, do I ever say “That’s bullshit.”

The end result is, I don’t watch that much. But what I do watch is GOOD.

And after just watching Episode 2 of the adaptation of one of my favorite series of horror novels, and being absolutely wowed by it, I’m going to give you a list of shows to watch that are guaranteed not to bore you or insult your intelligence.

The series I reccomend that I have watched are available on streaming, so you can catch them.

Let’s start with what just knocked me on my ass tonight.

“The Mayfair Witches”- AMC: adapted from Anne Rice’s novels. There are scenes in these novels that scared the fuck out of me to read them on a bright warm day, and this adaptation lives up to that. All you “wise women” (which is what a witch was) I am so lucky to write for will love this. Also the wiseguys here. Episdes 1 and 2 have really lived up to the books. You can catch up with it on AMC+ and I promise you it’s well worth the effort.

Sticking with Anne Rice, if you didn’t watch “Interview With The Vampire” this fall, you NEED to pick it up on AMC+. An “updating” of the story that totally works, and even makes all the “issues” the novels dealt with even more prominent. My only complaint is you won’t see my name in the screenplay credits. I would have loved to be involved with this.

“So TC,” you say, “why are you recommending all these horror stories?”

Horror stories are popular because they allow us to spend a couple hours subliminally confronting all the things that scare us in the daylight (and there are plenty of them) and see the scary things conquered. They’re valuable for that.

I was once at a conference with Stephen King, who is as nice a guy as Vincent Price was (I had the privilege of getting to know Vincent through my work with Roger Corman, and a more delightful, charming, interesting, intelligent, engaged person you couldn’t find - and he scared the hell out of me as a teenager). We were talking over drinks after the presentation, about writing. King told me his favorite moment as a writer was when he’d written a sequence, and went back and read it, and when he was done he sat back and said, “Yeah, THAT’LL scare the hell out of ‘em!”

On to non-horror stories.

Last summer I highly recommended the Tony Hillerman adaptation of “The Dark Wind.” It lived up to all my hopes, a really good adaptation. And they got renewed for another one. Worth tracking down and watching on AMC+. All the Native American characters are played by Native American actors. Which matters.

PBS Mystery has a great little show, “Miss Scarlett and the Duke.” The set-up is she’s first female private detective. In 1860s mid-Victorian London. “Miss Scarlett” is the daughter of a private detective who was killed, and she’s sharp as a well-honed knife. “The Duke” is Detective Inspector William “the Duke” Wellington of Scotland Yard. Think “Moonlighting” (the good seasons) set in 1860, with characer show are more eacho ther’s equals. The third season is on now (three-episode seasons) but you can get the whole thing on PBS-Plus. If you like English mysteries, and the idea of a woman confronting everything a woman had to confront back then (successfully), you’ll like this. The rule thatb “all drama is conflict” is well-served by putting a woman in a man’s world where she needs to be taken seriously, which will give you more drama and conflict than you were expecting. Always. Any era

While I was watching Mayfair Witches, I saw a trailer in the ads for “That Dirty Little Bag,” coming January 24. A western that looked so different that I immediately went to “search” and brought up the show and hit “record series.” I can’t find anything on it with Der Google, but it just grabbed me. I’ll apologize if it turns out the magician can’t pull the rabbit out of the hat without being spotted, but it sure seems to have the magical “it”.

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