Authors: Jay Onrait
We also hired two local stand-up comedians, Hunter Collins and Dini Dimakos, to gather our Canadian TV clips, and two up-and-coming young producers, Dave Grunier and Kate Morawetz, to handle the day-to-day production. We finished off our crew with Marla Black, who was responsible for “clearing clips,” shorthand for “begging TV networks to let us use funny clips from their shows.” In other words, she was the lynchpin for the entire operation. If Marla was unable to convince networks like Global to eventually let us use clips from
Recipe to Riches
on the Food Network, then in the long run the show really would look like a half-hour advertisement for CTV programming. No time to worry about the long run, though: We had two weeks of rehearsals before our first set of four shows. All I was worried about was making sure the show was
funny
.
The first week of rehearsal went well. We had some kinks to work out, but all in all I loved the content we had to work with. But four days before we were set to tape our first real show, things began to fall apart, and it was an innocent comment from Marla that made me realize how much trouble I was in, and how pitching the show had been a horrible mistake.
W
E USED PLENTY OF CLIPS
from CTV’s entertainment show
etalk
during our pilot and first week of rehearsal. We discussed at length that we would probably need to use plenty of
etalk
clips in the early stages of production and beyond, because CTV would likely not want to promote
Entertainment Tonight Canada
or other entertainment shows on other networks. It really didn’t matter to me because
etalk
host Ben Mulroney was a one-man comedy factory. At one point during a rehearsal show we used a clip of him dressed in drag while he interviewed someone for the Toronto stage version of
Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
. Ben was, quite simply, the ugliest drag queen any of us had ever seen. He was also a very gracious guy who seemed to have no problem with us poking fun at his persona on our show. Something told me Ben had developed a thick skin over the years. The only concern among us was that we might be tempted to use too many clips of Ben from
etalk
.
After our second rehearsal week it was time to prepare for the real thing, and I made my way to the Masonic Temple. It was a Monday and we were supposed to tape our first show that Friday.
The previous week the entire staff had met to go over the rehearsal show and hash out any concerns about content or presentation or, frankly, anything that needed to be corrected before we actually went on the air. We started to discuss content for our first program, and the first thing I asked about were those clips of Ben dressing in drag. They were a week or so out of date, but we weren’t concerned with little things like that at this point. We were just trying to make the show as funny as possible, so if the clips weren’t 100 percent fresh, so be it. Who cared if the show was called
The Week That Was
?
“So if we’re going to use the Ben drag queen clip, should we try to write a better joke for it?” I wondered casually.
“We don’t have the rights to use
etalk
clips,” said Marla matter-of-factly.
I tried to digest what exactly this person was saying to me.
“What do you mean,
we don’t have the rights to use etalk clips
? That show is on CTV, it’s a CTV show, don’t we have the rights to all CTV shows?”
Marla’s answer was a slow, deliberate shake of the head. I was concerned. I was very, very concerned. I asked Michael MacKinnon, our day-to-day show producer, to explain to me why I was just finding out now that we didn’t have the rights to use clips from a show that I thought were a mere formality to use. Were other shows like this? Other CTV shows? Turns out the answer was yes.
“So
Marilyn Denis
? We can’t use the clips to that show?” I asked.
“Not unless their executive producer gives us the green light,” replied Michael.
“So let me get this straight …” I was trying to remain calm in front of the entire staff, who likely would not have been surprised
had I started throwing things. “You’re telling me that in addition to trying to get other networks to let us use their clips, we now have to go to each individual executive producer from each individual in-house production here at CTV and beg them to use their clips as well?”
“Yup, that’s pretty much the case,” said Michael.
I felt completely duped.
In the previous regime, when Susanne Boyce and Susanne Boyce alone was making programming decisions, the use of such clips would have been a formality. When Susanne or Ivan Fecan green-lit a show, everyone at the network parted the seas to make sure it got on the air the way they wanted.
But I didn’t have Susanne in my corner now, and little did I know that Mark and Ben were soon on their way out as well—they no longer had a place in the new Bell world. I had pitched my concept to a regime that was heading out the door, and now I was beginning to realize how truly fucked I was. After the meeting was over I pulled Michael and Brendan aside and asked them to meet with me in an empty office nearby.
“Perhaps,” I wondered aloud, “we should consider postponing the show until we have more clips cleared and actual content to write about.”
“We can’t do that,” reasoned Michael. “All of these people will lose their jobs. And besides, we’ve already started to promote it.”
“No one has promoted anything,” I replied. “I alone have mentioned it on my Twitter feed. But that’s it. That’s our promotion. Forget about billboards and radio ads, there aren’t even promos for the show running on the actual network the show’s appearing on! If you were a regular viewer of MuchMore, you wouldn’t even know the show existed. We can easily pull the plug on this.”
“But people’s jobs …” Michael trailed off.
I was so fucked. I was being put in an impossible position. I
had pitched a stupid little show that I hoped would develop a cult following over time; now I was being told that about half a dozen people’s jobs rested in my hands, and if I backed out now they’d have to find other work. Not to mention the fact that I
really wanted to do the show
. I was at a loss for what to do. My bosses at TSN, Mark Milliere and Ken Volden, were concerned.
“What’s going on over there? Are you all right?” Ken asked on the phone one day.
“Not really, I’m kind of fucked. But there’s nothing I can do about it because I don’t want anyone to be out of work here, and I think eventually we can make a great show. The question is: Will we be given the necessary time to do that, and the resources we need to acquire the content? I’m starting to wonder.”
“Keep us posted. We’ll pull you off that show if you want.”
My lingering Catholic guilt about putting people out of work was too great to pull the chute now. We were going ahead with taping the first show on Friday and airing it on Sunday. The good news was we had a few days to convince
etalk
executive producer Morley Nirenberg to allow us to use clips of Ben. Michael had a great relationship with Morley, and eventually Morley came on board with the idea. I also had a great relationship with
Marilyn Denis Show
executive producer Nan Row, even after I turned down a spot on her show, and I was able to convince her to let us use clips from that show as well.
I took Tuesday off as per usual and planned to be back in the office on Wednesday to go over the script Brendan had written. I was very frustrated that it had taken until four days before the show for me to be told we didn’t have access to clips I thought were in the bag, but I needed to maintain a positive front. I wanted everyone on the staff to feel good about the show, and besides, it wasn’t as if things could get any worse.
Things were about to get worse. Much, much worse.
I
ARRIVED AT THE
M
ASONIC
T
EMPLE
offices of
The Week That Was
on Wednesday afternoon with a smile on my face. The weather was sweltering hot, and I loved working downtown instead of making the trek all the way out to Scarborough to work at TSN every night. The Masonic Temple was at Yonge and Davenport, right in the heart of downtown. I envisioned many wonderful years of working there.
But when I walked into our offices that afternoon, it was clear that something was amiss. Michael and Ben were huddled up in an office with Mark McInnis, and they all looked to be discussing something very serious.
I went to say Hi to Brendan and everyone else on the staff. We chatted casually about an Internet clip we had planned to use about a Filipino cook named Hot Rod Cantiveros who used to appear on
The Big Breakfast
with me in Winnipeg. Rod had posted a failed pilot on YouTube in which he would “ambush” people at the grocery store, follow them back to their homes with fresh produce, and
cook for them and their families. It was just bizarre and unintentionally hilarious and very Canadian. In other words it was exactly the kind of clip we wanted for the show, and lo and behold, Marla had reached Rod’s son and gotten approval to actually use the clip! Things were looking up for
The Week That Was
.
It was about that moment when Michael called me into Mark’s office. I sat down and saw a look on the faces of those three men that I had never seen before. It was a look of exasperation and defeat. Michael informed me that an executive at another network who had previously agreed to let us use clips from a ton of Canadian reality shows had changed their mind and was now refusing to give us access. These clips made up half of our content and, more importantly, prevented the show from looking like the advertisement for CTV that I had feared it would be.
“We don’t have any content!” I screamed, surely getting the attention of the rest of the crew in the offices nearby.
I could not believe this was happening to me. We were scheduled to shoot the first show
in two days
and we had lost
half the show
. It would be like having only the “police” portion of
Law and Order
and not the “district attorney” portion to wrap up the story. We were, to paraphrase a French Revolutionary,
royally fucked
. But I refused to give in.
“What if I went and personally spoke to that executive? I’m really charming in person. This is
not
over yet.” I sounded as if I was trying to convince myself.
I was so desperate that I knew I just had to make this work for the sake of the show and for the sake of everyone’s jobs. We
needed
those clips. We were too deep in it to quit without a fight. I understood perfectly the position the executive had taken; if I were in charge of that network and someone asked permission to show clips of “funny” moments from their shows, most of which had occurred by accident, I’d have concerns as well. But once we met face-to-face
and the executive realized our intention—to celebrate the comic side of Canadian television and not ridicule it—surely, they would agree to let us use those clips. Especially since so many of the clips we had intended to use were brought to my attention by the talent hosting those shows. I was so sure of my ability to convince the executive I was still not yet that discouraged. Ben agreed to accompany me to the executive’s office the following day. But first I had to complete my Worldwide Media Tour.
I felt that I had to get the word out somehow, so my friends in the TSN publicity department contacted someone in the MuchMore publicity department. I was paired with a lovely young publicist named Alison Salinas, and we hatched a plan for a quick media blitz with no promotional budget whatsoever. I reached into my own pocket and spent $72 on a monogrammed T-shirt from a store in Kensington Market. I had the guy behind the counter use the old-school 1970s felt letters on a purple T. The front said “JAY ONRAIT WORLDWIDE MEDIA TOUR 2011” and the back said “THE WEEK THAT WAS SUNDAYS ON MUCHMORE.” It probably would have been more effective for me to walk around Toronto just wearing that T-shirt like a sandwich board. I intended to wear the shirt during all my interviews. If CTV wasn’t going to give me any promos, then I might as well wear one.
Alison booked a few interviews for our worldwide media blitz. The blitz would not in fact be worldwide but consist only of CTV-owned and -produced shows:
CP24 Breakfast, Canada AM
, and
etalk
. Yes, the irony was not lost on me that I was about to promote my show on other TV shows whose clips I wasn’t originally allowed to use on my own show. We would also make a quick stop on
Off the Record with Michael Landsberg
on TSN before I went across town to try to beg the TV executive to not kill half our show content. This was all going to happen within the space of a few hours.
Meanwhile, back at
The Week That Was
offices, Brendan was
busy trying to write sketches, and the other show producers were searching frantically for usable clips that could fill time if we weren’t successful in convincing the executive to change their mind about the clips. We were scheduled to shoot at noon the next day.
I should have walked away right then and there. Before I even went on the Worldwide Media Tour I should have politely explained to the entire staff why this concept could no longer work. The show I had conceived and pitched was not the show we would be putting on MuchMore that Sunday. But a combination of (a) my stupidity and (b) my blind confidence that I could convince anyone to give me what I wanted kept me going that day and kept me encouraged as I prepared for the meeting.
My interviews on
CP24 Breakfast, Canada AM
, and
etalk
went extremely well. The hosts could not have been more kind about the project and seemed genuinely enthusiastic. I performed some bizarre pratfall on
CP24 Breakfast
and pretended to hit on
etalk
correspondent Danielle McGimsie for laughs.
Off the Record
was an even better experience. Michael Landsberg is, in many ways, my hero.
I had met Michael years before during my very first year at Ryerson, two years before I started at the network. I was given an assignment to contact someone in the Canadian broadcast industry whom I admired and wanted to interview. Michael came to mind right away because he was hosting the show I wanted to host someday:
Sportsdesk
. I called the TSN offices, then located on Sheppard Avenue in North York, and was amazingly put through to Michael’s voice mail. Keep in mind this was pre-Internet, so a cold call was the only way to go into this situation, just like
What Color Is Your Parachute?
had taught me all those years before.
Unbelievably, Michael called me in my dorm room at Pitman Hall in Ryerson the following day. He was
very
Michael Landsberg, which I mean in the best way possible. I probably get asked about
Michael more than any other TSN personality, and the questions about him are usually posted in a negative way: “Is he a jerk in real life?” “Is he as arrogant as he seems?” The answer is always no. In fact, Michael has always been one of the most kind, generous, and supportive people at TSN. On the phone that day back at Ryerson, he invited me to shadow him at TSN for an evening while he worked, and he said we could complete the interview while he was preparing for the show. I couldn’t believe it. The experience was truly amazing. Michael had also attended Ryerson, and we talked about how he managed to land at TSN. He let me watch the show live from the studio and offered to help if I ever wanted to apply for work there someday. I never forgot how kind he was.
That afternoon when I went to be interviewed by Michael for my fledgling little TV project, I was once again reminded that not everyone working in the Canadian TV industry was trying to keep me from reaching my goals. Before we sat down for the interview, I explained all the issues I had been having trying to clear clips for the show and the roadblocks in front of me. He immediately gave me permission to use any clip from
Off the Record
that I wanted. He flat-out encouraged me to make fun of him and his show for the sake of my own show, though he pointed out that he would be sure to give it back just as good. I honestly wanted to hug him. I thought I might break down and cry. For a moment, I thought everything was going to be all right.
Then I walked into the meeting with the executive.
I knew the entire fate and future of our show was probably riding on this meeting. I had yet to meet the executive with whom we would be meeting that day. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m withholding the name of that executive and will continue to do so as I describe this meeting that fateful afternoon. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that I am not ready to take on another profession. As Mike Bullard learned the hard way, this is a
small industry. I’m not interested in burning bridges. I don’t want to get overly dramatic, but for the purposes of this account I will refer to this executive as “the Dreamcrusher.”
I met my executive producer, Ben, in the lobby of the Dreamcrusher’s building, and we went over our plan. Ben was not confident that we could get access to all the clips we had intended to use, so our strategy was to try to get the least offensive ones. I also mentioned that I would offer to personally travel up to the Dreamcrusher’s offices at least once a week to go over clips that we intended to use, even offering scripts and jokes for approval. It was a deal I didn’t think any reasonable human being could turn down.
But I wasn’t dealing with a reasonable human being. I was dealing with the Dreamcrusher, and I knew we were in trouble as soon as we walked into the office.