By GILBERT WONG
There's a new game in town. In television circles it's called spot the actor/scriptwriter/network executive, and is prompted by a play Serial Killers, a satirical look behind the scenes of an almost familiar soap opera.
Set around the "table of pain," writers and storyliners let their psyches run wild as they explore the creative tension between writers and actors; writers and network executives; writers and television.
We learn things that we're not sure we want to know. As the character and writer Simone says, "We writers write stories that lead to actors becoming famous which means they have way more sex than we do. Hence ... The War."
These writers call actors "warm props"; they refer to the editors of women's magazines as "the trash bitches"; and they see audience demographics, a key tool television programmers rely on, as " ... the stealth bomber of television. The least exact science in the world."
First-time playwright James Griffin can write from experience. For more than a decade his name has scrolled down in the credits of programmes from Gloss and City Life to Plainclothes, Marlin Bay and Shortland Street where he is script supervisor.
Griffin, whose natural state seems to be ironic detachment, is quick to put in the compulsory disclaimer: "You write characters. The views expressed by the characters are not necessarily the views of the playwright, that's what you do as a writer, isn't it?
"I will confess that I have stolen snippets of dialogues and stories of people's lives. But if people are going there who know the telly world and say that's so and so, they should know the characters come from a different place than reality."
People think writing is a lonely job. Not in television. Writers sit around a table debating ideas, characters and plot. For Griffin the play led to the rediscovery of a solo pleasure. He could sit down in the evenings and write. By himself. No producers. No script editors. No network executives. No meetings. No input.
"Theatre is something where there is no committee involved. The nature of television is group writing which is what the play's about. To be able to bury yourself in your office at home and tap away is a rare pleasure," he says.
Griffin, 38, was born in Whakatane and grew up in Hastings. He finished a degree in political studies and a diploma in broadcast communications at Auckland University before taking on a job in 1985 as a trainee script editor at TVNZ's drama department.
Despite nostalgia for the Hawkes Bay, Auckland is now home. He lives in a Grey Lynn villa with wife Tania and their children, Ruby and Max.
Since 1989 he has earned a living as a freelancer. He has a contract as script supervisor on Shortland Street for South Pacific Pictures in Henderson. Of the skills he has practised, storylining, the process of plot development which lies at the heart of Serial Killers, was the most fun, he says.
A prolific writer, Griffin's main problem has been the length of his scripts. His first versions of Serial Killers would have added up to more than three hours of stage time. With director Colin McColl, who has directed Shortland Street, Griffin trimmed it to a more digestible two hours.
It was fun. He could luxuriate in a scene that could run for up to 15 minutes, a leap in focus from the average Shortland Street scene of 90 seconds.
After reading the play, it is easy to accuse Griffin of letting off creative frustration. He jibes that I should see what was cut.
Then adds: "There's nothing wrong with a good vent now and then. I guess my views on television will come across. We don't have the television we could have. Once you become a senior writer in television you see everything from every side and understand why the programmers and network executives make the decisions they do ...
"But they're just wrong." He is emphatic here.
"Sometimes they're so wrong and they underestimate the audience so much. They have this amorphous mass view of the audience and they dictate what you need to fill the precious few gaps you get to put our own culture and drama on screen."
Griffin believes the ideas should come before the need to satisfy a particular audience. "I'd rather see television that stirred me and made me go 'Ohh, that's nice.' It doesn't need to be elitist or drive away an audience."
He cites classic television like Seinfeld and Hill Street Blues which broke the formulae for sitcoms and cop shows. With strong creators who were able to maintain their ideas, the programmes became popular and critically acclaimed.
Griffin says local television need look only at the great successes in American television. Ally McBeal, The Practice, ER are shows that win ratings and please critics because, argues Griffin, creators like David E. Kelley and Steven Bochco have maintained their control of what is screened.
Perhaps, then, Serial Killersis a first, a play about the most pervasive medium we have and what's wrong with it. For writers it can be a bruising place.
Griffin: "When you write for television you have to put up such a strong shell. You're forever giving your work away. You do things for money rather than creative satisfaction. You deal with that by taking professional pride and keeping some distance from your work. If you put emotion into it, that's when it will get ripped away from you, and that's when it hurts.
"Maybe that's what's missing from television. Quite often you don't have that emotional input, you get well-told stories, but without a kind of love in it."
Griffin, who affects amused irony in conversation, catches his tone and swiftly returns to flip self-mockery: "Not that I want to go all hippie or anything here," he says, smiling.
* Serial Killers, directed by Colin McColl for the Auckland Theatre Company opens on Friday at the Herald Theatre.
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