Mad. Busy.

Working on an extensive redraft of the pilot script for Slingers. Could be seen as an odd move as the current version has been so well received, but I think we can give it a little more oomph. Been knee deep in great movies and TV shows recently  (none of them particularly new which is sort of telling) and quite a few meetings. Felt we were treading water for a while there, but things continue to head in the right direction and have picked up speed again.

Also getting my New York head on for the trip in a week or so. Staying here, but not sure where we’ll be shelved yet.

Speaking of New York and great (older) movies…

Hell. Yes.

Now back to crossing the streams in Final Draft.

The new Sleepydog website and blog launched today. I’ve been working with Sleepydog for maybe a year now. First with the social media stuff and more recently with the TV stuff. I consider myself lucky to be part of a team who has had so much success in creating so much cool content. Best of all, whether its working on Amplified, joining in at CreativeCoffeeClub or figuring out the perfect crime for our new show there’s never been a day I haven’t enjoyed.

I only work on a couple of the projects that come out of the office – in lots of ways it reminds me of the Googleplex setup, just without the creepy Stepford Wives atmosphere – but there’s always a lot more going on than I know about. Well worth adding the new site to your RSS reader to keep up – these guys tend to move fast.

Oh and I’ll be blogging over there too.

Also a good place to see some Slingers concept art:

Our heroic Mech Five, Junior, does his best to protect Marti
from a next generation Mech in episode 1.10 “Six“

Short hop to Ireland to talk to one of the guys behind The Tudors.

Seems the little buzz we created at Cannes and LA has spread to Dublin. Slingers, although made for American TV initially, will be a Canadian/Irish co-production so this is really good news that we get to go out there early and learn a few things.

A lot of things probably.

Pretty pictures and more news when I get back. In the meantime, go watch Star Trek.

Speaking of those two:

Didn’t get better than that did it?

I have a few of these kinds of things squirreled away for my talk in June. Not sure how long I have yet, but I will be talking about how Twitter (and the platforms that work so well with it) allow you to pull a few barriers down without the aid of Palitoy.

And speaking of set visits, following my day with Centurion, I just got invited to meet Hideo Nakata on the set of his new movie. More about that later…

I had an interesting discussion this afternoon about gender in science fiction in relation to one of the new characters in Slingers. What it boiled down to was an issue of the male default role – it’s brought into sharp relief as soon as you start dealing with robots (of all things). The majority of them are perceived as male even if they are not conventionally named as such or even have obvious male anatomy.

For example, both C3PO and RTD2 are male. It seems obvious with 3PO, but R2′s sex is projected on him by those around him. It usually takes a female outfit, name or a set of metal breasts to provide the audience a cue that a robot should be perceived as anything but male. Of course, this is all nonsense because they should be genderless. And yet we live in a time were female robots are being designed and built. It’s lead to a lot of discussion in the last month. Interesting stuff which no doubt I’ll come back to.

Taking a break from writing this afternoon I dipped into some old issues of 2000AD from 1979 and stumbled across this suggestion from the editor:

Haven’t seen any subsequent reader response yet, but two progs along I did spot this letter:

Awesome. I take it that Judge Anderson was just about to leave the drawing board. I couldn’t resist the temptation to skip forward to 1984 and see my favourite Joe Dredd and Casandra Anderson story, City of The Damned, kick off:

There’s a good reason I have Steve Dillon’s work on my arm. To me it was here that 2000AD really grabbed my attention and never really let go.

I wouldn’t be writing a TV show if it wasn’t for this comic. In particular, Slingers came from a direct response to the decline of the 2000AD. The story was originally called Rat Packers and owed a lot more to Robo Hunter and Rogue Trooper in those early drafts than the concept it’s now evolved into.

I’m also glad to say it has a whole bunch of strong female characters and that show #2, De-Tech, has a female lead. I may well have to rename her Casandra…

There’s another issue here about the gender trap of course. Some of my favourite later 2000AD writers and artists started out as readers and went on to influence yet another generation of readers. None of them are women.

I do remember Jan Shepard getting a mention in David Bishop’s Thrill-Power Overload. She was one of the original art editors on the comic. Her assistant at the time, Kevin O’Neill, went on to co-create  Nemesis the Warlock, Marshall Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

What became of his boss  after she left for Starlord I have no idea…