About ten years ago I had an office in the basement of CBC Vancouver. I had been co-producing a television series about cars called Driver’s Seat and our production office was located within the broadcaster’s building at Hamilton and West Georgia Streets. Both the hours and the schedule were normally quite long, so it was easier being inside, it just made sense.
There have always been battles over government funding for CBC, not unlike battles everywhere when it comes to public television – PBS is another good example. But toward the end of my days within the bowels of ‘Mother Corp.’, as it is so ineloquently called, the cuts to CBC’s budgets had gone from surgical slices to out and out butchery. I won’t weigh-in on which camp – for or against the cuts – that I fall into, but suffice to say the public outcry against the cuts was NOT as vociferous as those within the CBC might have hoped for.
The reason…? Well, the answers are many and varied and would likely take up an entire website to address. At the core was — still is — the issue of distinctly Canadian programming, specifically drama. (more…)
History would be a wonderful thing, if only it were true.
- H. L. Mencken
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I’m not what you would call a ‘conspiracy theorist’ - that term is colloquially reserved for nutbars, wingnuts and those with a tendency towards wearing tinfoil hats. No, I’m more of a ‘conspiracy factualist’ I think.
Conspiracies, by and large, are based in truth: THIS happened - THIS is what, or what may have, caused it. People argue, several options are debated, a conclusion is reached, and eventually a decision is rendered that satisfies almost no one. A conspiracy is born.
The question, ‘Do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?’ presupposes that he acted at all and lies at the heart of the mother of all conspiracies - the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It’s the murder that won’t die.
It seems there’s rarely been a week or a month that’s gone by in the last forty-three years where someone, somewhere hasn’t weighed-in on the events of November 22, 1963. Who really did it? Why did they do it? How did they get away with it? I’m sure there’s a website dedicated to the ‘theory’ that Kennedy didn’t really die at all and is in fact holed-up somewhere in the tropics with Elvis drinking Bud Light and schmoozing the ladies. Apparently Jimmy Hoffa was spotted just before Christmas outside a Dairy Queen in Nashville trying to get change for a hundred… an OLD hundred (nudge, nudge, wink, wink!)
Occasionally, though, something serious does crop up. Sometimes it’s nothing but a tidbit - a line in an otherwise unrelated newspaper story. A comment from a former high-ranking official who just happened to be in Dallas that day; a long-forgotten photograph found in an attic steamer trunk; or a death-bed confession revealing new details. It’s all happened over the years. Each piece of ‘new’ information adding to the already Byzantine puzzle that has become a cottage industry.
That all being said, the release in Washington last week of a few interesting documents could generate renewed scrutiny of a man that has been on the periphery of the assassination dialogue from the beginning, and a family that can scarcely abide more controversy. This could be a ticking time bomb. (more…)
And so 007 begins with a bang! At least for me.
While some might refer to my present life outlook as a ‘middle-age crisis’ or ‘middle age crazy’, I prefer my own ‘middling’ interpretation: ‘mid-course correction’. Allow me to explain.
The year just passed was in many ways a watershed for me… literally and figuratively with the floods in my apartment on Christmas Day! Many of my television productions saw their completion, broadcast and even an award or two - always a nice recognition, though not necessary in the slightest. (more…)