Can we all agree that a TV show about history is not real history?
Filtered through different sets of eyes and different books, written years after the fact, and under production and budget restraints?
Can we all agree that the people making the TV show might even change things on purpose? For whatever reason?
Can we all agree that real history is different from TV?
All right then.
The CBC should have stood behind the production and its creators. End of story.
They shouldn’t have apologized to anyone. They shouldn’t have pulled it off the air. They shouldn’t have stopped selling the DVDs.
The CBC may be the only broadcaster in Canada that can afford to stand up for its artists in a case like this. We set the precedent. The Director’s Guild and Writer’s Guild are justified to demand apologies. What we did was inexcusable.
Even stranger is that it’s tough guy Richard Stursberg who is doing the caving. The man has cojones aplenty when it comes to locking out employees, but is strangely devoid of same when it comes to sticking up for them. Then again, his disdain for the show has always been pretty transparent. It wasn’t his, after all.
We get it. You fancy yourself a gangster. Like from the 20’s.
We get it. It’s fine with us.
We just wish you’d shoot at the other side sometimes.
1 Comment
Wish that this fallout made sense to me.
I just know that I liked the movie when I first watched it. I’ve talked with friends about it, and their main beef with it was that it tried to cram too much into four hours’ air time(after commercial breaks). I can’t say that I completely disagree with them on this, but at least the creative team — from writers to actors — put in the work on what they did choose to put on tape and disc.
I think Shelagh Rogers is right on this point: keep selling it as aired…but slap a huge “this is docudrama” label on it IF that isn’t already being done, and then sell it as a lesson on the difference between real history and docudramas from now on.
I bet we get a whole new generation of solid talent out of the whole debacle.