Writer's block, an owner's guide: Californication

Something else I told you about months ago was the upcoming cable show (cable in the US, where human bodies, and the everyday things people use them for, are so obscene that we pay to watch) Californication.

It was going to feature David Duchovny as a blocked writer. And now it does.

It’s an entertaining show. I laughed quite a lot. Many of the smart remarks are smart. Possibly, as Duchovny told the Houston Chronicle, “at its heart this is a drama that plays as a comedy.” I haven’t decided whether to watch episode 3 but I’ll be recording #2.

It’s not about writer’s block. No reason it should be. Nobody said it would be. But it earns a place on this website anyway. Why’s that?

Because of how it came to be written. Its “creator” Tom (Dawson’s Creek) Kapinos says he wrote the pilot as a way of dealing with his own writer’s block. Isn’t that interesting?

“I came off Dawson’s Creek and was completely miserable, and all anyone wanted for me was the very same thing,” he told the Chronicle. He wrote pilots for four or five proposed shows, “and each of them hit the wall at the last second. So I wrote this as an exercise.” And he decided to write something that he would want to go see.

Paratelic, you see.

Published on August 14, 2007 at 8:30 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/175.html