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Date Posted: 14:14:48 08/15/02 Thu
Author: trish lyn
Subject: August Update: Inside Section One

Chris Heyn has posted at the HHCR MB an August status report & preview for his forthcoming book Inside Section One -- the preview is an excerpt of a portion of the interview with Michael Loceff -- I will post the update in the reply ...

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[> Re: August Update: Inside Section One -- trish lyn, 14:16:53 08/15/02 Thu

Topic: **MONTHLY BOOK UPDATE - AUGUST '02**
ChristopherHeynLFN
created at 08.13.2002 01:06
------------------------------------------------------------
Back again with another update! Let’s jump right in...

STATUS REPORT – AUGUST ’02

I know that many of you are eagerly anticipating the release of the book, while others are understandably frustrated with having to wait so long after pre-ordering last year. Through these series of updates, I hope that many of you are getting a clearer idea of the scope of this project, and a better understanding of why Inside Section One seems to be taking so long.

To those who are frustrated, all I can say is that I am doing my best to make this book the most comprehensive exploration of La Femme Nikita that will ever reach the market and more than worth the money you’ve invested. It sucks to wait, but it’s even worse when you’re the author who feels the pressure of getting the project finished in a reasonable amount of time, while at the same time keeping the quality high. And when you’re essentially a one-man shop, it makes it all that much more difficult. Yes, I have some wonderful people to help me like Lone Wolf and others, but when it comes to the writing, it’s just me. That’s why I started these updates a few months ago, in order to give each of you an ongoing look at the writing and production process so no one will feel left in the dark or ignored.

Which reminds me. If you have any questions regarding ordering or being on the waiting list for when the book is released, please add your name to the already existing thread on that subject. That’s what Lone Wolf is here for, and she’s doing a great job. If you ordered, or were placed on the list, or moved, or whatever, she’s on top of it. You won’t be forgotten! I’m still hoping for an end-of-year release, if everything outside of the writing goes smoothly.

But this month I finished a few important things:

--I sat down and spoke with Adam Haight from Fireworks who just happened to be in Los Angeles two weeks ago, and it was an even better interview than I could have hoped for. Not only did he provide much-needed insight into the often-confusing nature of "Canadian content" productions, but he also had a hilarious story about the first time that Roy Dupuis met Joel Surnow. Adam was the final piece of the puzzle in my chapter on the six-year development of La Femme Nikita for television. Although I plan on interviewing two other people for this very important chapter which will kick off the book, I can at least get started on it this month. It was a long road to get to this point, but I’m excited that I can finally get started.

--I spent some additional time going over the interviews with Roy Dupuis, Matthew Ferguson and Lawrence Bayne before sending them to their agents. I’m glad I did. Whenever I get that vaguely unsatisfied feeling, I know the job isn’t finished yet. Well, with those three, it’s finished. It just took a few more weeks before I was satisfied.

--Kevin Ryan and I have started preliminary discussions about the book design, and I’ve sent him off six episodes that should give a good sense of the overall series, with an emphasis on the look and feel of the standing sets. They included "Nikita," "Simone," "Rescue," "Spec Ops," "Third Party Ripoff" and "On Borrowed Time." (I had already shown Kevin "I Remember Paris.") I also included the 8-minute trailer for Season Five, just to show a glimpse of where the series ended up. I have warned Kevin to be careful in showing any of the tapes to his wife, because she may be hooked for good after these and want more.

By the end of the next four weeks:

--Some legal approval processes will be underway. Once they’re all finalized, I’ll have more details and (hopefully) good news to share.

--I will be writing the interviews with Jon Cassar, Jamie Paul Rock and editors David Thompson and Richard Wells.


PREVIEW – AUGUST ’02

Speaking of interviews, I have mentioned several times that detailed interviews with the writers and producers of La Femme Nikita will be featured in the book. Now that all of them are approved for publication, I can excerpt a piece to show you just what they will be like. For this month, I decided to excerpt a portion of the interview I did with Michael Loceff, someone who hasn’t been interviewed too many times regarding the series. I believe you’ll find his thoughts very interesting. Enjoy, and I’ll be back next month with another update.

_______________________________________________


MICHAEL LOCEFF
EXECUTIVE STORY EDITOR – SEASON THREE
STORY EDITOR – SEASON TWO

"There are two similarities between math and creative writing. One is that there’s usually a certain tactical way that you need to get through an episode: a plot to get from point A to point B and necessary steps toward solving a problem. And if any one of the steps doesn’t work, you can’t find a solution to the problem. So, you’re using a part of your brain--the left side of your brain--that analytically gets you from point A to point B to point C. If the story doesn't make sense because the logic is faulty, then you won’t want to write it, [and] people won’t want to watch it. So, it’s a very analytical process.

"But mathematics, unlike physics and some of the other sciences, is more of an art in some ways than a science, much like creative writing. In mathematics, there are issues about whether a particular theorem is actually even worth proving because its value might be qualitatively insignificant. It wouldn’t be interesting, even if you could prove it; it’s not an interesting theorem. So art and taste [are] involved in mathematics, the same as they are in a [television] show. You can choose to write something which makes perfect sense, but who wants to watch it [if] it doesn’t cover any interesting human issues? That's where the right side of the brain is involved. I’ve always felt the same when I was working on a math theorem [as when] trying to write a script."

Michael Loceff’s theory on writing is not the standard explanation one would expect to hear from a successful television writer. If it sounds especially academic, that’s because it is. Loceff’s background is in education, and he fell into writing for television quite by accident. As a Stanford-educated professor of mathematics and computer science at Foothill College south of San Francisco, Loceff’s main focus, other than teaching math--his long-time love--was rethinking and advancing the educational process. "I had been one of the faculty who was instrumental in taking the curriculum and putting it online. I had all my courses in an email format, [and] in 1997, we switched to Web format. It just happened that [this] was perfect [timing], because by the time I had been teaching my classes online for a couple of years and had the whole thing down, that’s when the opportunity arose to join La Femme Nikita. So I was able to literally go anywhere I wanted to and teach my classes while I did something else." Loceff’s classes were the first accredited college courses in the U.S. to be taught online, and his creation of the software to do so led to the founding of Jamboa Learning Systems, a company dedicated to online education. The company’s software is currently used by over 20,000 students worldwide and has won a number of awards. One of the founding partners in this venture was none other than La Femme Nikita Executive Consultant Joel Surnow.

Loceff’s working relationship with Surnow stretches back many years before La Femme Nikita or Jamboa, however. One of Loceff’s main creative outlets is songwriting, either solo, or with his more famous cousin, artist/producer Don Was. As one of Loceff’s other cousins, Surnow was long aware of Loceff’s creative talents. In the early 1980’s, Surnow was writing a feature called The Move and was under the gun to get it finished, so he sought Loceff’s input. "His usual collaborators were unavailable, so he turned to me," Loceff recalled. "I think it was a total long-shot, but it was just immediate chemistry." Although the film never did get produced, their partnership on the script was successful enough to keep the project alive for ten years in several different incarnations.

For a period of time after this, the two men went their separate directions, Loceff back into education, and Surnow to The Equalizer. However, Surnow would still approach Loceff from time to time for his technical assistance on scripts, and it wasn’t long before this once again expanded into a creative partnership. "When he was writing a scene that involved some sort of computer terminology or techno-babble, he would call me and I would love doing it, and then we’d go over the techno-babble part, beyond it, and into the creative part," Loceff said. "And so, over the years, I guess I became sort of his go-to person when he got into a pinch or when he wanted to write."

By the time Surnow was involved with the development of La Femme Nikita for television, Loceff’s partnership with Surnow had become even more substantial. "When he was actually pitching the idea to USA [Network] with the various players who were involved at the time, I was here in L.A. with him, and I was helping him draft the letter to the network," Loceff said. "Even the office memos I was helping him co-write. So I was kind of involved in it from the very beginning with the idea that if it turned into a show, I would actually take part."

So, in early 1996, USA Network greenlighted La Femme Nikita for 13 episodes. Loceff’s participation was guaranteed. But there was the small issue of the college courses he was teaching. Weren’t the responsibilities of writing for a new TV series and being a math professor at the same time a bit overwhelming? "Not really, to be honest," Loceff says. "I always have done a couple things at once. At the beginning of Nikita, I was really just crunching out scripts with Joel. I didn’t have a lot of massive production work, casting work, [or] story work to do. My role in the show grew, but not until toward the end of the first year and more so in the second year. So at the beginning, I wasn’t trying to do any more than work right on the page itself. There were times when I was called to go to Toronto and work with the directors or do some editing. But that was a concentrated period of two or three weeks here, and then two or three weeks there. Other than those times, my role was pretty much focused on the writing, so it worked very well. Teaching didn’t, and doesn’t, take as much time online as it used to when it took place in the classroom." In La Femme Nikita’s first season, it wasn’t unusual to see Loceff exit a lengthy story-breaking session and retreat to his office in order to review homework and grade tests. In fact, the office staff, including the author, were once used to beta test a new Java-based virtual classroom, complete with a live "chalkboard" that both students and instructor could work on together in real time.

To long-time La Femme Nikita viewers, however, Loceff will always be known for the sheer number of seminal episodes he wrote, each of which contained something "educational" about it. Whether the episode was "Love," "Simone," "Hard Landing," "Not Was" or even "Four Light Years Farther," each of Loceff’s episodes taught something new, and often surprising, about the show’s main characters, primarily Michael and Nikita. However, Loceff is refreshingly self-effacing, preferring to share credit for this with Surnow and Executive Consultant Robert Cochran. "Joel and Bob are excellent at writing story, better than many in the business," Loceff says. Surprisingly, he adds, "I’ve never claimed or thought of myself as a creator of story concepts. I always thought of myself as someone who worked on the page, once the story was broken. But I did learn and contribute a bit more in the second and third years, and at the end of first year to some of the stories, to a lesser extent than Bob and Joel. I always felt that the stories were mostly cast in these group sessions, and by the time it came to writing them, the emotion and the characters would be there and the theme would be there." However, don’t be fooled by Loceff’s modesty. By the time a script reached this stage, it often became even more of a challenge to pull off successfully. "I’d say at least half of the time, when you get to working on the page and start putting the characters into these plots, the plots don’t work," Loceff points out. "Then you have to go back into the group and say, ‘what do you want to do, do you want to keep this plot or do we need to modify it,’ because it’s not working the way it is. And even though in theory the plot gets set up in the group and then the script goes to an individual writer to fill in the scenes and make it work emotionally, a lot of times you end up really doing some major foundation work when you’re at this later stage on the page." At times like this, Loceff’s other passion, juggling, would emerge whenever he was trying to work through a complicated part of a script. Letting a different part of his mind tackle the problem while attempting to keep several balls in the air, it was ironic that the real life exercise would eventually accomplish the same thing on the page. Because this became such a frequent activity, Loceff taught everyone else in the office how to juggle as well.

Complex plots certainly played a role in the success of La Femme Nikita, but the one aspect most consistently mentioned by long-time viewers is how emotionally compelling the series was, even when it took directions that were unexpected or even disliked. Although the emotional component of a story was the most important thing to Loceff when tackling a script, he believed the most effective stories were generated by conflict between the main characters, not from an outside source. "The thing about [La Femme Nikita] is every one of these characters--despite the fact that there was some bond between them--had some reason to be at conflict with every one of the others," Loceff points out. "Sometimes guest writers or actors or people who wanted to write a script would hand in a story and it would be about the bad guys versus the good guys. And, inherently that’s totally boring. What’s really interesting is when our good guys are fighting against each other, and very early on, that's what I learned was important. Their emotions are sort of at odds with one another, and each one is different and they can’t seem to get [what they want], because the other [person] wants something else that’s in conflict with that. I learned that even before Nikita in working with Joel, and that’s one of the things that has always been paramount in our writing. It certainly came to a high level when we were working on Nikita."

To be continued in Inside Section One...

Edited by ChristopherHeynLFN at 08.14.2002 18:28


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[> [> Wow, it really looks like it's going to be good. Thanks, trish lyn! -- Shirleym, 01:30:17 08/17/02 Sat


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