Doodle Comes to Visit

No writing yesterday.  Sprout TV was filming scenes from two episodes of the children's show Noodle and Doodle right in front of my house.  I camped out at my front window with iced tea and munchies.

I hadn't heard of N & D so I Googled it.  It's an online show for preschoolers,  featuring Noodle, a muppet who teaches kids how to cook healthy meals. The other title character is Doodle, sort of a cross between an Etch-a-Sketch and an iPad (really he's a hand-held blue screen that's later animated back at the studio). Driving these two stars around in a double-decker bus is human host Sean.  The bus and Noodle were absent.  Too hot for them perhaps. It was humid and 88 degrees in the shade where my thermometer hangs. They were filming in the sun.  They hung white scrims overhead to diffuse the light, and had cases of bottled water and a big fan, but it must have been stifling out there.  But Sean and Doodle were present, along with a production crew of about 30 people.  I have to say, they were all very nice and friendly, apologized for making us all move our cars and closing off our street, and at the end of the day, they cleaned the whole block so it looked better than when they began.  In my prior experience with film companies (I was an extra in Twelve Monkeys), this isn't always the norm.

They use different preschoolers on every show, and yesterday's certainly weren't seasoned actors (what 4 year-olds are?).  The directors both deserve Emmys just for coaching the tots through take after take (for instance, fifteen minutes of shooting them saying "Bye, Sean!" and waving, when their attention spans lasted no more than 5 minutes). One little boy simply stopped doing anything.  One little girl relieved her rising boredom by getting more creative, running into the street instead of stopping on her mark, waving her stuffed animal instead of her arm (and hiding her face in the process).

Here are some of photos of the shoot:

Setting up scene 1.  More interesting than actual shoot.

Sean holding Doodle. Sean spent a lot of time down on that knee.

 

 

The Writer on TV

Next week a new season of network TV begins. I admit to an addiction to a few good shows: Chuck, Bones, and Castle.

I grew up watching a slew of great mystery/spy shows--Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen (photo), both the Man and Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (why was he a "man" and she a "girl"?), Get Smart, The Avengers, MacMillan & Wife, Burke's Law, Ironsides, The Rockford Files, and later on, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Magnum P.I., The Scarecrow & Mrs. King, and Cagney & Lacey.

What did they have in common? A good story, a little (or a lot of) humor, characters, directors and writers who didn't take themselves too seriously, who knew how to play. How to be creative.

But today's blog isn't about those old shows. It's about how mystery writers are portrayed on TV.

In Castle's opening, we always hear how writing pays better than crime. I'm always tempted to hit "mute" on that part. The writer lives in an apartment or condo bigger than most houses, presumably in Manhattan, since he never seems to be late because of being stuck in a tunnel or on a bridge. In Manhattan, living space that size probably doesn't exist, but if it does, you'd run through a cool million each quarter renting it. Even that I can overlook--maybe Castle inherited his bucks from his family--but what's most unbelievable is his lack of books. The writers I know (self included) have books lying around everywhere. Boxes of your own books for promos, stacks of novels other author gave you, stacks of freebies brought home from conventions, stacks of research books, and stacks you actually want to read for pleasure. The realistic thing about him is that he hangs out with other authors. He plays poker while he talks shop. My writer friends and I eat.

Jessica Fletcher and Ellery Queen are probably most like writers I know. Their wardrobes were (for the most part) modest. I don't remember much of the Queen household, but Jessica's digs were small and cozy. But I don't remember stacks of books with either of them, or piles of research materials, or even a handy dictionary or thesaurus next to their typewriters. I do recall Jessica standing in front of a bookshelf for one of her author photos, but the books behind her? No modern mysteries, no torn, sensational jackets, no paperbacks, not even a tome on forensics or bullet calibers or undetectable poisons.

Most true-to-life about all TV mystery writers is how they avoid writing. Of course, they do it by solving murders--the rest of us avoid writing by, say, cleaning out the garage. But the sentiment is the same. Said best, perhaps, on one Castle episode where he answers the phone with something like "Please tell me there's been a murder or I'll have to write."

Happy viewing,
Elena