FED #62: The D&D

Status: FED

Pizza X 4:
-anchovies & hot peppers

-pork belly

-chorizo

-feta & rapini

Yep, we played Dungeons & Dragons. It was a fun, late night. It brought back a flood of teenage memories, not all of them good. But it was worth it, remembering how my adolescent friends and I scratched, blindly, at the foundations of socializing. I’ve seen dogs in the park who learn quicker how to interact with each other.

Not too many quotes this week. I was sick at the time of transcription and only typed up the essentials.

Guest #63.1: Jim Zubkavich

Occupation: Project Manager for UDON Entertainment, Professor at Seneca College in the Animation department and

Writer/Creator of the action-comedy series Skullkickers published by Image Comics.

Contributed: Hobgoblin beer, DM’d our session, a set of clear dice (which I not-so-secretly fetishize)

Sent thank-you: FB email + tweet

Guest #63.2: Robyn D. Laws

Occupation: Writer (Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, Honour of the Grave and Freedom Phalanx) and game designer (Feng Shui, The Dying Earth, Heroquest and the various GUMSHOE games, including The Esoterrorists and Mutant City Blues). Co-designer of the Shadowfist collectible card game, contributor to the King of Dragon Pass computer game.

Guest #: Tory Woollcott

Occupation: writer and illustrator of graphic novel Mirror Mind.

Contributed: Jackson Triggs 2008 Meritage

Sent thank-you: tweet

Guest #: Stacy E. King

Occupation: Marketing Manager at UDON Entertainment.

Contributed: see above.

Guest #: Ray Fawkes

Occupation: Writer of, "Possessions

Book One: Unclean Getaway", contributed to eleven volumes for the White Wolf "World of Darkness" game series.

Contributed: Dalva Porto 2004

Distinguishing characteristic:

Sent thank-you: tweet

ZUBKAVICH

When we were growing up, playing D&D, it was always just a fun get-together. It was the only time I felt, when I was with my brother and most of his friends, those were the people I played with the most. They were all older. It was the only time I could feel equal to them. ‘Cause in everything else I wasn’t. But there on the table, my character’s just as tough as they are.

D&D vs Video Games

ZUBKAVICH
No matter how complex a video game is, it’s linear. There are only so many endings or storylines. And if one of you blows out a really funny piece of dialogue and we decide to focus on that, the whole game shifts on that moment in a way that a board game wouldn’t do and TV’s definitely not going to do, or passive entertainment like a video game. Yes, there may be a multitude of choices.

FAWKES
Nothing ends up matching the hog-wild mayhem of five people at a table. You’ll never predict what they’re all going to do.

Live and die by the die roll.

MINTZ
The conflicts that I recall came from one person wanting to follow a train of thought. And the people sitting around the table with me are in excruciating pain.

ZUBKAVICH
The difference I’ve found, when I was a teenager, when I was in high school, running a game, you always felt like you were limited by the rulebook. Someone would say, well it’s in the rules so I’m going to do it. Now that I’m an adult I feel much more comfortable going, ‘you know what, nobody’s having fun when you do that. Fucking quit it. Let’s bring it back to, there’s six people sitting around the table, we’re going to have fun. Whereas when I was in high school the book was your defense.

MINTZ
Because you hadn’t developed the social mechanisms.

ZUBKAVICH
Yes. But you realize that no one’s having fun.

LAWS

But also the advice in the game books has evolved over the thirty-five years of the form. Initially the guys who came up with D&D in the first place were kind of doctrinaire perfectionists.

ZUBKAVICH
Live and die by the die roll.

LAWS
And the idea of, oh well, you know, you’re there to have fun and it’s a collaborative experience. They didn’t realize that they’d created a story form. They just thought they’d created a new form of war game where the unit size decreased from the size of a platoon to a dude in a funny hat.

Date of publication: Saturday, January 8th, 2011

FED #61: The Spy Who Infiltrated Dinner (Mubin Shaikh)

Status: FED

Lamb Stew + Dates + Couscous

[braised lamb shoulder, shredded, with cumin & coriander, over Israeli couscous & medjool dates]

Brussels sprouts + Fennel + Mandarin

[julienned & blanched brussels, shaved fennel, cilantro, mandarin segments, cilantro]

Beef Shanks + Barley + Beans + Cabbage?

[braised shanks & jus over beans, barley & cabbage]

Cookies

Guest #61.1: Mubin Shaikh

Occupation: Former undercover informant/agent for CSIS/RCMP, grad student, freelance military training (how many resumes do you see like that?)

Distinguishing characteristic: Unguarded

Sent thank-you: email

Guest #61.2: Michelle Shepherd

Occupation: National security reporter for Toronto Star, author of Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr

Contributed: Niagara Mist black cherry pinot noir, saffron from Yemen, #G20 maple syrup

Sent thank-you: Email. First guest to ever ask for transcripts. Glad to share them.

Guest #61.3: Beth Palmer

Occupation: Grad student (but how do we know she’s not an undercover agent sent to infiltrate MY secret society?)

Contributed: Perrin Reserve 2007 Cote du Rhone

Sent thank-you: Email

Guest #61.4: Paul Terefenko

Occupation: Writer and Photographer

Contributed: Jim Bean black cherry whiskey

In some cruel twist of fate, both Michelle and Paul brought me black cherry flavoured booze. I had tasted Paul’s “Red Stag” before. Or rather, I’d placed Jim Bean’s black cherry cough syrup flavoured bourbon in my mouth before spitting it out. It came with the receipt and was returned to the liquor store. Michelle told me that hers was “really, really disgusting. And I would really like you to serve it seriously one night to guests.” It now sits on my shelf, gathering dust with the arcane collection of my grandmother’s sugary liqueurs.

Note to future guests: I do not live with my folk-rock band in a Queen West hovel. I do not collect joke drinks.

And now, because you asked for it, some terror-talk:

Yemen

MINTZ
(at the tail end of explaining dish) … And then saffron at the last moment.

SHAIKH

Yemeni saffron. Probably from thousands of years ago.

MINTZ
How was Yemen?

SHEPHARD
Yemen was great, fascinating. It was, when I went it was pre-Fort Hood, pre-underwear bomber. So it was, there was no attention there.

TEREFENKO
No Wikilieaks, no missile strikes.

SHEPHARD

Exactly.

MINTZ
You had tried to go to Yemen, hadn’t you?

SHAIKH

Yeah.

MINTZ
How old were you?

SHAIKH

In July, 2005.

MINTZ
And at the time, what did you want to go there for?

SHAIKH

(laughs)

SHEPHARD
(laughs)

He’s good. Where’d you pull that out of? That was a good segue?

SHAIKH

I think I can say it. (to Shephard) Can’t I?

SHEPHARD
Well, Corey obviously knows it from somewhere. (to me) But you know it from somewhere, not me. So you must have read that somewhere.

SHAIKH

No. There was only one instance in which that tidbit of information was publicized. And it was very quickly disappeared.

SHEPHARD
Interesting. So Corey, how did you know that he’d gone to Yemen?

Coffee Time

MINTZ
It shocked me how much Coffee Time there was. Coffee Time and Time Hortons.

SHEPHARD
I always sort of want to elevate the coffee meetings to Starbucks. But it just doesn’t happen.

SHAIKH

The thing about the Tim Horton’s especially is that we would have audio transcripts of intercepts from the vehicle, and we’re all pulling up to the Tim Hortons, a bunch of terrorist wannabes, “yeah, I’ll have a french vanilla”. So it’s playing in court.

MINTZ
Any lattes?

SHAIKH

No lattes. But the joke was that, if you want to deal with terrorism, set up a Tim Horton’s.

MINTZ
See, I think that if you’re willing to sacrifice your life to destroy people, if your agenda is terror, that you would drink your coffee black.

Terror & The Media

MINTZ

The underlying motive, or objective, of all those things, is …

SHAIKH

To kill a bunch of people.

MINTZ
Slash, have the effect that action creates, which is terror.

SHAIKH

That’s right. Because media will dutifully respond.

SHEPHARD
Well, but that’s …

SHAIKH

I know …

SHEPHARD
No, no, that’s a good point. Because we, the latest edition, three, of Inspire (the terrorism magazine), they do have this kind of, the more you write about it, the greater prominence you give it.

SHAIKH

“Media coverage gives terrorism a longevity it might not otherwise enjoy.”

SHEPHARD
There’s a point to that. You have to find a balance. You obviously have to report on …

SHAIKH

You can’t censor. And you can’t put everything down. So what do you do? What’s a halfway point of covering terrorism? How do you do that? It’s pretty messy. It’s just that they sit there and that’s what they think about. How do we get this kind of message out to people, killing a bunch of people all at once. How do we do that? And my whole thing is that, these guys will move away from the large scale spectacle attacks. They’ll just realize that they just can’t pull it off. And they’ll just, they’ll go with your regular old mass shooting. Which in the US, happens every week.

Religious Justification

SHEPHARD
I still don’t know how you go from, this is the story I can never, ever get at, what’s that point? In every case it’s a different point. How do you actually justify what you’re doing?

SHAIKH

Yeah, how do you do that?

SHEPHARD
Well, you watched them do it.

SHAIKH
Well, I mean, y’know. I think they’ve come to a point where they want to do something. They want to hurt people. They want to do bad things. And they already know that that’s what they want to do. So whatever justification they’ll find, they’ll use it. So it’s kind of misunderstood when people say, “oh, religion is used.” People will use anything. They’ll use partisanship. They’ll use clothing labels. You name it. If people want to exploit other people, manipulate the situation, they’ll take whatever they have. Any tools that are available, they’ll use it. Whether it’s religion, politics, whatever. Now, you have environmentalists, radical terrorist groups. Look at this. The growing nexus between environmentalists, the native youth movement, first nations militant groups and Hezzbollah. And when asked, Hezzbollah, what are you doing with environmentalists and first nations terrorist groups, say, “oh, we like their politics.” That’s it. There’s a utility in there.

photo by Paul Terefenko

Yemen PT. 2

SHEPHARD

So, you’ve really dodged Corey’s question.

SHAIKH

I actually thought, in the back of my mind …

MINTZ
It was part of a larger question of, what led you to all this. What I’m saying is, I can let you off the hook now, but I’m just going to ask you again later.

SHAIKH

Well, I’m already resolving that I’m going to answer it directly.

I’ll give a little bit of back story to that. I lived in Syria, from ’02 to ’04. And while I was in Syria, I had learned that a lot of western students had been going to Yemen also. Yemen was known as a place for learning traditional Islam. And they have two elements, the militants, and they’re totally extremists and terrorists, and a whole other side, very suffi, like Al Habib Ali Al-Jifri. So I was looking to go to some of those places down there. While I was in Syria, I though, ok, I’m hearing a lot of stories about studying in Yemen, this and that, ok, great.

MINTZ

And at this point, you were pursuing your own spiritual education?

SHAIKH

Yeah, I went to learn Arabic and Islamic studies. It was after 9/11, identity crisis. Like, oh god, what do I do now. And I’m, like, I have the look, the long beard and the robes… I just felt the need to leave. I said, you know what, I’ve had it. Y’know, the west and this and that. I was a spoiled, naïve, idealistic Canadian boy. I went to Syria, in early 2002 to study Arabic and Islamic studies. I was doing a religious studies degree by distance through Waterloo University. Saudi wouldn’t let me in with the books on the bible…

I was there from ’02 to ’04 and that’s when I really realized how good we have it here. That’s what did it for me. People say we’re getting closer to a police state. Buddy, you haven’t lived in a police state…

So while I’m there I’m realizing how good we have it here, in the west, for muslims especially. I come back and Momin Khawaja? Gets arrested. So I phone CSIS …

SHEPHARD
You guys know Momin Khawaja? He’s the one that was in Ottawa. They arrested him in part with the British plot. And he actually was our first terrorism case using the anti-terrorism laws. Just shout if you need names or cases because once we get going …

SHAIKH

But, I grew up with him, when I was younger. I phoned CSIS up and basically said, hey, I know this guy. There must be a mistake.

SHEPHARD
Ok, how do you phone CSIS up?

SHAIKH
That’s what the judge said.

MINTZ
I was wondering about that too. It’s hard enough to reach somebody at the City of Toronto …

SHEPHARD

Exactly. In all honest, how …

SHAIKH

I probably just looked it up. So the guy was like, somebody will get back to you shortly. And sure enough the next day is when the guy came and saw me. This is now 2004.

SHEPHARD
So you’re back from Syria?

SHAIKH

Yeah, March, 2004. I’ll never forget that date. My brother had a Time Horton’s coffee ready for me.

MINTZ
Sort of a, “thanks for not getting radicalized …?”

SHEPHARD
With Timbits.

SHAIKH

Chocolate glazed. Please.

SHEPHARD
Seriously, your brother came to the airport with the Tim Horton’s?

SHAIKH

Oh yeah. I told him in advance. Dude. So anyways, the CSIS guy came. For them it was just, oh, we want you to consult for us. We have access in the community. We will direct you to certain people. We want to know what they’re up to. You tell us if you think they’re a problem or not. So I thought, yeah, that’s not a bad idea. I think you guys need that. You guys need somebody who knows the community, but at the same time, I understand both sides. So then it turned into, ok, different tasks.

MINTZ
You understand both sides because you had already been in the army?

SHAIKH

Yeah, I was in the army cadets, when I was a young boy, from I think, thirteen to nineteen. I think that’s what laid the foundation for the pro-Canada stance and also the militant aspect. So I was doing taskings for them. And in July 2005, they said to me, do you want to go to Yemen? I said sure. I’ve always wanted to go to Yemen.

SHEPHARD
But why did they want you to go to Yemen?

SHAIKH

Well, because there are Canadian students, or Canadian citizens, who are at a “religious school” getting “religious training” and I think it’s well within the right of Canadian government to say, well, who are they, what are they learning, when are they coming back?

Big Decision?

MINTZ
Was it a big decision or was it, ‘sure, why not’?

SHAIKH
It was, yeah, sure, why not. I had just come from a horrible place.

I had this utopian, Isalamist world view, like a lot of these young kids have. They think there’s like this perfect Islamist state out there, somewhere in the middle east. Well it ain’t in the middle east buddy, let me tell you that. It was simply me realizing how good we have it here. So I signed right up man. I had no qualms about it.

SHEPHARD
Because you wanted to defend it?

SHAIKH

I didn’t want people to be doing things whereby the government would have responded in such a way that they would take away a right, religious rights and what not.

Goofball Terrorists

SAIKH
However unattainable, I’ve always been of the position that they could not have possibly pull of what they wanted to pull off. The Toronto 18. They could not have possibly achieve what they wanted to achieve

MINTZ
Because they were inept?

SHAIKH

Well, because it is next to impossible to storm a parliament building, be able to get to the MPs, grab Steven Harper, behead him. That is just impossible.

SHEPHARD
Those were the fanciful ideas.

MINTZ
But if you’ve got a wish list …

SHAIKH

That’s the thing …

MINTZ
You’ll go one step down.

SHAIKH

That’s right. And so this is the problem. As unattainable and unrealistic as it was, that’s what their goal was.

Not Hiding

TEREFENKO
You seem more than just casually available. You just seem completely open. Almost as if you’re … are you trying to get a message out?

SHAIKH

That’s the literal meaning of my name. Mubim. Perspicuous. No beating around the bush. I just realized that I had to do that because it was going to get public and that’s exactly what happened. Everything was laid right out. And if I had tried to hide and dodge, how long was I going to do that for?

Money

SHAIKH

That’s what really set them (the RCMP) off, that I went public. They didn’t like that. Because for them it’s like, we control the story.

MINTZ
But didn’t you hold out for more money before testifying?

SHAIKH

Not hold out. It’s a very important part. Because I was waiting for this in court. And my statement was, I never once said to the RCMP or CSIS or anybody, if you don’t pay me I’m not going to testify, not one time. And they tried. They tried everything.

If you knew then what you know now…?

SHAIKH
For a year and a half I was doing that and I didn’t know what I was getting in to. For me it was just another tasking.

MINTZ
and if you had known from the first request that CSIS had for you, how deep the whole thing was going to go, if you’d know what it was going to cost you, would you have done it?

SHAIKH
Hard to say. I probably still would have gotten involved because I’m just one of those idealistic types. I just think that you’ve got to do the right thing. But it’s so over rated.

SHEPHARD
Doing the right thing is so over rated?

SHAIKH

Yeah. Big time.

SHEPHARD
But come on. Your life now …

SHAIKH

That’s true. I am definitely happier in my skin now, than I was even at the height of my religiousity. That’s what I gained the most out of it. But I lost a lot of standing in the community, instant ostricization. And not just that, but people posting on blogs , I hope you’re found dead in a ditch, your kids, may they all go to hell, curse be on you. It gets depressing when you’re reading that.

MINTZ
It’s not a nice thing to be hated. But you don’t feel in danger though?

SHAIKH

I don’t feel in danger. No. I’m just kind of hoping that nobody’s that stupid.

Halal vs Vegetarian

SHAIKH

My polish wife keeps saying, polish sausages are so good. Before she was Muslim, catholic polish, ate pork. Then became vegetarian, then became Muslim. Now is a completely committed tree hugger hippie Muslim. Organic.

MINTZ
Vegetarian?

SHAIKH
Yeah.

MINTZ
I’d rather, for dietary rules, I’d rather go halal than vegetarian.

PALMER
Corey, you’d rather go anything than vegetarian.

Detox (not the Dr. Dre album)

MINTZ
What’s the detox program?

SHAIKH

Here we go. Theological deprogramming of extremism. It’s taken from social work, cognitive reframing. All it is, is that if you have a particular world view, you’ve shaped it on the basis of particular assumptions and ideas. So with kids who have become radicalized and they’ve taken on, let’s say, extremist thought, you can use Islamic sources to counter their extremism. So to prove to them using the same sources that they misuse, that what they’re doing is not right.

MINTZ
You’re talking about un-brainwashing.

SHAIKH

It assumes that the person is brainwashed. And perhaps the person has just sold themselves on a flimsy method of reason, if you want to call it that. Because they’re rational people. They read and they arrive at an argument. …

MINTZ
So who is a candidate for this?

SHAIKH

My dad runs the mosque. We actually started off doing crime prevention programs. The foundation is, to be a good Muslim is to be a good citizen. We make that synonymous with each other.

photo by Paul Terefenko

Guns For Terrorists

SHAIKH

The RCMP are very particular about that. There’s a whole process. They show me the letter. We’ve given you, basically, permission to commit these criminal offenses. But it’s only for this circumstance and it’s highly controlled.

MINTZ

What’s an example of that?

SHAIKH

Participating in a terrorist activity.

MINTZ
No, I mean like, you can j-walk, but don’t murder someone.

SHAIKH
Well, it was, you can be a participant of a terrorist group.

MINTZ
Which is itself a crime.

SHAIKH

But you cannot destroy property. You cannot kill anybody. Or commit grievous bodily harm.

MINTZ
So what were you supposed to do if you were put in a position where …

SHAIKH

So here’s what happens. So while I’m still with CSIS, Zakaria Amara, the main guy, I have a gun license, so, he calls me to Tim Horton’s, of course, on Overly Boulevard, down from Iqbal foods, the one right at the corner there. He says to me, we need you to buy us a gun. I’m like, ok. He goes, so you gonna buy it. I’m like, sure. He sits back and says, good, that was a test. Now, I’ve just agreed to buy a rifle for this guy. And CSIS is like, holy crap.

MINTZ
Are you wired?

SHAIKH

No. With CSIS I’m not. So it’s like, what do I do? If I would have said no, that’s like, this guys an agent. See you later.

MINTZ
But if you say yes … ?

SHAIKH
You’re now purchasing guns for…

(We digress here. But yes, buying guns for terrorists before finding a way to get it back into law enforcement hands.)

Chocolate Bomb

SHAIKH

The Toronto 18 guys used chocolate as the codeword for home made explosives.

MINTZ
As in, “so we got the chocolate in the truck”?

SHAIKH
As in, “so we gonna make some chocolate?”

CSIS vs RCMP

SHAIKH

CSIS, they’re people with degrees, usually in anthropology, sociology, political science, whatever, so you can actually have a conversation with them. RCMP, not so much.

Tapped Phones

MINTZ

Do you have good relations with anyone at CSIS now?

SHEPHARD
It’s always a dance, with what you do. Definitely, I know people. But it’s a really hard beat, in that you’ve got a balance a lot of …

SHAIKH

Your phones are tapped, left right and centre, always. All your emails …

SHEPHARD
No, I don’t think …

SHAIKH

Are you kidding me? They illegally do stuff all the time. They really do.

SHEPHARD
You’re going to make that accusation?

SHAIKH
You know what? It’s well known that, if they have the technical capabilities to do it, they’ll do it.

MINTZ
So, your phone and email … ?

SHEPHARD
(to SHAIKH) Yours probably are. But yours probably aren’t illegally. I’m sure they have warrants to do that.

SHAIKH
Now?

SHEPHARD
With all due respect.

TEREFENKO
Maybe they’re spying on this meal.

SHAIKH
I understand that they need to make sure, just in case, who’s calling who …

SHEPHARD
I know. But there are laws to govern that.

SHAIKH
Yeah? I don’t have that much faith anymore.

photo by Paul Terefenko

Date of Publication: Saturday, December 18th, 2010

FED #60: The Degrassinators

Status: FED

Pork Belly + Broth

Lamb Ragu + Tagliatelle

Cassoulet

Cookies (recipe by Eric Vellend)

Guest #60.1: Linda Schuyler

Occupation: CEO of Epitome Pictures, Executive producer of Degrassi

Contributed: Coudoulet de Beaucastel 2008 Cotes du Rhone, Degrassi Umbrella

Distinguishing characteristic:

Sent thank-you: See below

Guest #60.2: Stephen Stohn

Occupation: President of Epitome Pictures, Executive producer of Degrassi

Contributed: See above.

Distinguishing characteristic:

Sent thank-you: Email. Also sent an umbrella for Andrea and insisted that we visit the set.

Guest #60.3: Andrea Yip

Occupation: Among other things, Degrassi Super-Fan

Distinguishing characteristic:

Guest #60.4: Eric Vellend

Occupation: Writer & Cook

Contributed: Tawse 2009 Riesling, Saint Chinian 2007 Syrah

Distinguishing characteristic:

Sent thank-you: Email “…and I'm totes jealz of your new bowls.”

Guest #60.5: Monica Kalmanovitch

Occupation: TV producer

Contributed: See above.

Distinguishing characteristic:

Sent thank-you: See above.

SNAKE & LUCY

My room mate Andrea felt that the most important detail of the night was which characters the two creators identify with most: Lucy for Schuyler, Snake for Stohn.

SUICIDE AND ABORTION

MINTZ
Any topics you’ve had to shy away from?

STOHN
The most difficult topic is …

SCHUYLER
Suicide.

MINTZ
Copycat fears?

…

Re: Claude’s Suicide

VELLEND:
Was there fallout from that?

SCHUYLER:
Oh yes. There was a lot of fallout. And there was a lot of anger. It is the hardest topic. But we took on a hard topic this year. We took on transgender. We’ve got a young character who’s a female to male transgender.

VELLEND:
What about abortion? I thought that would be, with the states, untouchable.

SCHUYLER:
That has been…

STOHN:
It’s so easy in Canada. People don’t blink an eye. And in the states, there was an episode that was never shown. They paid for it. Well, it was shown four years later. And now they show it. But they never advertise it.

MINTZ
And the US distributor just said, we’re not running it?

STOHN:
Yeah. They just didn’t run it. They paid us for it. But didn’t run it.

SCHUYLER
And it was very interesting. Because the very last shot, now we really tried to be even handed in our storytelling. Because it was the Manny character who was pregnant and wanting to go for the abortion.It was Emma who’s Spike’s child who was giving her the argument, if my mom had an abortion when she was your age, I wouldn’t be born. So we really tried to give a balanced argument. But at the end of the day, our character Manny, with her mom, went to the abortion clinic. And the final shot is her walking through the door, going to get the abortion.

STOHN
Resolute.

SCHUYLER
And she was determined. She had done the research. This was the right choice. Here she goes. And it’s very interesting. Because in the states they said, we could have shown that show, IF, at the very last shot, she showed remorse. She can’t be resolute. She has to be remorseful. If she was remorseful, we could show the shot.

MINTZ
So, if you cut to her crying … ?

SCHUYLER
Exactly. And we wouldn’t do that.

MINTZ
Really?

SCHUYLER
Absolutely not. What kind of message is that for young girls?

[there’s more abortion dialogue here but I don’t have time to transcribe it all ... ok, enough people have asked for it, so I transcribed the rest of this bit.]

STOHN
But even in Degrassi Junior High or High, when one of the twins had the abortion, PBS cut off the end of the show.

VELLEND
The twins. It’s all flooding back now.

SCHUYLER
Remember the twins?

MINTZ
That’s right. There were the two sisters and one of them did have an abortion.

SCHUYLER

That’s right. In the show.

MINTZ
In the show.

SCHUYLER
And again, we made the family catholic, and the twin sister said, “you can’t do this.” You’ve got our beliefs in god and you can’t do it.” And she says, “I can’t be a mom at this age.” So, at those times, protests were really big, I mean this was in the Morgetaler years, when protests were huge outside of abortion clinics. And, so when she decided to go for the abortion, she had to go through a line of protesters to actually get into the clinic. And it was quite a gruesome shot. Because we had one of the protestors, had a little plastic fetus and she was holding it up and she said, “this is your baby you’re going to kill it.” And her sister at this time, had decided to go with her. And they walked in, again, they walked in resolutely into the abortion clinic. When the PBS ran it, they stopped the shot back when the one twin joins the other and says, “you’re my sister, I can’t let you go alone.” And they just exit frame and they didn’t have them going through the protestors …

WRITERS

SCHUYLER

They’re engaging audience online. They have younger brothers and sisters. They’re just very connected.My writers now are as connected with young people as I was when I did the first generation, what we now call the classic.

I want to do something on human trafficking and I don’t know how to bring that into Degrassi.

I’m always grabbing at the big picture stuff. And then I just sort of throw it at my writers. I don’t tell them how to write it. But I say, can we at least put this on the boards, can we at least try to explore?

PROMOTING BROGRAN

STOHN
Stefan did a brilliant job.

KALMANOVITCH
So you took a gamble. Did you feel good about it?

SCHUYLER
Well Stefan had been writing and directing a lot of our web content. And the web has turned out to be an incredible training ground where you can let people loose and you don’t have to worry so much. So he had really proven himself. And Kevin, who follows everything Degrassi, he had seen what Stefan had done, he said, this guy needs an opportunity to direct. And it’s worked out really well. Because Stefan is now a co-producer. Wow, Corey, this is brilliant.

MINTZ
It’s nice to hear about people blossoming and rising within a company that could be insular.

SCHUYLER

It’s interesting because everybody says to us, oh, what about Drake. Aubrey Graham has gone off and made it really big. That’s great. We’re very proud of him. And we’re very proud of the fact that we got Nina Doughbread (sic) on the Vampire Diaries, (90210). But we’re equally, if not more, proud of Stefan, who started with us as a child actor and has become a writer, director, producer. And not just doing it.But doing it extrodinarily well.

KALMANOVITCH
Good for him. But also good for you for taking a chance on him. Not everybody does. I have employers now who are certainly doing that. But there have been other times when people just, they see you only as one thing.

STOHN
Well our head writer now, Brendon Yorke, started out writing web content for us back in 2001. Never even thought about writing a script in his life. He was just writing little things on the web. And one day, in about second or third season, he came to us and said, I’d like to write a script. We sort of patted him on the head and said, that’s fine Brendan. You don’t understand. It’s difficult to do that. So he wrote a script. And it was not a very good script.

MINTZ
What was it about?

SCHUYLER

It had promise. It was about Toby becoming an anorexic. We didn’t give him the best storyline.

SEASON 11

MINTZ
What happens in season eleven?

SCHUYLER
Most people don’t believe us but we don’t know until we get in that room. We don’t have a plan. All we know is that halfway through season eleven, the current gang that are in twelfth grade are gonna graduate at the end of our twenty-four part telenovella. At that point we’ll bring in a whole bunch of ninth graders who will be new to the school.

MINTZ
That’s a good idea.

STOHN
It’s interesting that you pick up on that. Because we were going on, I’ll use the ratings for the united states, the first six years, were just going like that (makes upward motion). We were always the number one show on the network. It just kept going higher and higher. Seventh year, it started to go a little bit like that. But we were, we had characters who people loved, but they were graduating. So what do you do with characters who are graduating. Well they love the characters so much. So let’s follow them into university or whatever they’re doing afterwards. So we had all sorts of conversations. We’ll follow …

MINTZ
That’s the direction you’d gone with the original show.

STOHN
And our ratings started to go down a little bit. And the network came to us and said, we still love you. You’re still our number one show. But you know what, we’ve got to prepare for a soft landing. All our research shows, seven years is it. So let’s start developing some other things. And finally, Linda and I, and I’ll actually in this case give credit to both of us on this, because the writers loved writing for those characters. So the thought of bringing in new characters, they would say yes, but they wouldn’t do it. And we finally just said, no, these characters are gone. We are not writing about them again. There’s a whole bunch of new characters. You’ve got to bring in six new characters. And then all the sudden the ratings started to go back up like that. You realize, that the way, Linda, you put it, is, first of all, there are different metaphorical ways you can say it, that the school is the main character. And so we were losing that by going beyond the school.

SCHUYLER
Much as they love the characters, they weren’t that intrigued with them after they left high school.

GENERATION GAP

KALMANOVITCH
How do you learn how to speak to teenagers

STOHN
Linda and I are thirty years older than anybody else in the building.

SCHUYLER
When I was doing the first generation, I was fresh out of eight years of teaching at the junior high level.

KALMANOVITCH

So you’re familiar with …

SCHUYLER:
I taught all through my twenties. So I was in my thirties when I was doing Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High. But now it’s more, I rely on my writers, to be in touch with what’s going on out there.

BEST SEASON EVER

STOHN

This past year was the most fun, well probably, you go back to he very first, Kids of Degrassi, when nobody, sort of knew what they were doing.

It was one of those challenges that could have been a total disaster. We were no longer fitting on the CTV schedule. So they were basically saying, we love you but nine years is enough. So all good things must come to an end. And in the end, we ended up producing twice as many episodes. Which helped us to reduce the per episode budget. Switched to another network, which was Much Music, which is owned by CTV. So everybody was happy there. But we had less money. We produced it twice as fast. We delivered it twice as fast. And it was higher quality in every respect. And the ratings have doubled or tripled.

SCHUYLER

But Steven, you’re missing the important part too. The N (previous incarnation of TeenNick), who’s our American broadcaster, they wanted to get onto the new way of broadcasting. And they said, rather than doing this once a week, they wanted to run this like a telanovella, four times a week. So they wanted to burn off, in six weeks, twenty-four episodes. And twenty-four is normally what we do in a year. So we had to start at the beginning of this year … [segue into talk about Red Camera]

CONSEQUENCES

STOHN
We had to change the writing style, just do more two-hander scenes. But Degrassi, and you would have seen this in the old show, the rule that networks gave us was, you have to have the consequences. I mean, anything can happen. There can be oral gonharea. There can be from the sublime to the ridiculous. But the consequences have to happen within the same episode. Now, that’s problematic if you’ve got somebody who becomes addicted to crystal meth and is in rehab twenty-two minutes later. So what we said to the networks was, listen, if you’re going to be broadcasting once a day, we’ve got to lift that rule.We’ve got to be able to, over six weeks, resolve, and we’ll have the consequences. So that, suddenly the writers felt empowered. It’s so much easier, so much richer. So they are now, I mean they stopped writing a few weeks ago. And now they’re back at it next week. And they’re energized and ready to go.This is for next season. In past seasons, after thirteen episodes, they’ve been, oh, I’ve got to take a holiday. Now this is after forty six episodes.

KALMANOVITCH
Why did the network ask for that? What’s the benefit?

SCHUYLER
It’s driven by our American network, that is, TeenNick. And they really specialize in teenage viewing patterns and whatnot. And they found, it’s really hard during the week to get these young people to make an appointment even once a week. Because they’ve got their homework. They’ve got all these other commitments. But in the summer, they’ll come daily. So it was really a matter of them … we would never have dreamt this one up on our own. But this was really a matter of them having plotted the viewing habits of their audience. So it was a huge experiment for all of us.

STOHN
IF I can just backtrack for a litter bit. A few years ago we did a soap opera for three years called Riverdale, which was modeled on Coronation Street. And it was cancelled by CBC. CBC were idiots to cancel it.

SCHUYLER
That’s not true.

STOHN
However, thank god they did.Because if they hadn’t cancelled it we wouldn’t be doing Degrassi: The Next Generation. So we’re very thankful that they did. But they truly were idiots. But it gave us a picture, or a peak in to the world of soaps.

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

MINTZ
Kids are still the same, right?

SCHUYLER
How they get their information is very different. Over the thirty years we’ve seen a real evolution of that. And actually, in terms of our storytelling, it’s become quite freeing to know there is an internet out there. Because when we started on classic show, there was no other way kids, teenagers, could get information, other than going to a health centre or the guidance counselor. So we actually felt that we had a strong mandate on Degrassi to not only raise the issues, but to give a lot of information about it. And as we’ve gone on, and we know that kids have a lot of access to information, we don’t have to load the show with so much educational content. We still have to be responsible and we still have to have consequences.

MINTZ
It helps with exposition too.

SCHUYLER
Absolutely. It’s been freeing.

…

SCHUYLER
I still think the consequences to actions are a big part of our storytelling. The mandate has shifted a bit. But it’s not been a 180. It’s just a tilt.

…

MINTZ
A lot of characters skype with each other. Which, exposition-wise, is so helpful, because, a thing that people do in TV a lot that we don’t do in real life, is knock on each other’s doors to have two-minute long conversations.

SCHUYLER
Yes. It’s so awkward. And Skype actually helps us out a lot. It’s not … you have to use it sparingly because it’s not that visually interesting.

MINTZ
It’s still talking heads.

SCHUYLER:
Exactly.

RIVERDALE

STOHN
When we did Riverdale, we wrote a mission statement that would be very embarrassing to pull out now. The mission was, essentially, to change a generation of Canadians for the better, to save the CBC, to do all these wonderful things, through the medium of a television show.

MINTZ
Do you still have that document?

STOHN:
I probably could dig it up.

MINTZ
To have a Charles Foster Kane moment, where someone sends it back to you.

STOHN
But interestingly, we didn’t succeed in Riverdale. And we were devastated when it was cancelled. But sort of, Degrassi, the new Degrassi in combination with Degrassi Classic, has sort of carried on being the training ground that we wished Riverdale would be, and connecting with people.

MINTZ
What you wanted to do was create that involvement with the community, beyond just having a successful show. But you wanted to do it with a grown-up show.

STOHN

We wanted to do it with a grown-up show. Well, with a family show.

MINTZ
Should have called it Parkdale.

ADAM

YIP
you mentioned the transgendered character who was introduced this season, and I’m also thinking back to Jimmy too. Have you had a lot of feedback from viewers or different groups about representation of diversity on the show, in terms of who the actors are representing?

STOHN
The interesting thing about the transgendered character, it was a very compelling pair of episodes, when he came out and the school realized, fully, who he was. The character has had a tremendous appeal. And I don’t think it’s primarily because he is a transgendered character. I think it’s because he has a secret or he feels alienated or he has a difficulty. And …

VELLEND
Everyone relates to that.

STOHN
Everyone can relate to that. It happens to be an FTM. There’s a tremendous following to that character.

YIP
Did you consider an MTF?

SCHUYLER
You know what? You have to find the best actor for the job. If they were, that would be fantastic. But you can’t just limit it to that. It’s like saying, only women can write for women, if you’re doing a women’s story you can only hire women, if you’re doing a native story, you can only have native writers. It’s true you have to be very respectful and you want to hear the influence. You can’t just box yourself in, otherwise …

STOHN
But I think the question was, we ended up choosing FTM rather than MTF. And it could have been either way.

SCHUYLER
No, we had developed the character to be, the story had been developed to go female to male.

DEMOGRAPHIC

STOHN

One unknown thing about Degrassi, even from the earliest days, is the biggest audience is 18-34 females.

STOLEN SIGNS

STOHN:

Apparently, we’re told this is true, the city of Toronto budget has a line item every year for a thousand dollars that reads “replace Degrassi signs”. Because the signs are stolen from Degrassi Street.

[I checked with the city. They said no.]

ONLINE CONTENT/TRAINING

MINTZ
You’ve engaged your army to flex their creative muscles

SCHUYLER
Absolutely. And you know what, it’s turned out to be a brilliant training ground. Cause it used to be, now that everything is so unionized, it’s really hard to get people a foot in the door. But on the webisodes it’s a much more loose frontier …

STOHN

It’s still unionized. But the first AD on the show may become the director.

MINTZ
Within the regular show people can’t hop tasks like that?

SCHUYLER
It’s hard. It’s really hard. And that’s the one thing that disappoints me. Because you really want to reward ingenuity

WHAT THEN?

MINTZ
If the show, for some reason, came to an end, what would the two of you want to do?

STOHN
You and I would answer that differently. I would carry on doing, because I’ve got the law firm and I worked on the Junos for a while. I would just want to carry on doing other things, in the music industry or television, doing other shows. I would just carry on.

SCHUYLER
But you’re doing a lot of that anyway

STOHN
I keep saying, it drives Linda crazy, I want to work till I’m ninety-nine and then slow down to maybe three days a week, then carry on until I’m a hundred and twenty. That’s my life plan. Linda?

SCHUYLER
Well, I think that’s a very selfish theory. I think we have to make room for younger people. So my theory is, I don’t want to stop working but I would like to work less. And I’d like to be in a position where by, there’s no question that Degrassi is a very special project to me. I started it thirty years ago. And I’m just … they’re not going to get rid of me. I’m just going to be there until we’ve run our natural course. but even with that said, most Fridays now, I don’t go to the office. Tomorrow I won’t go to the office. I’ll drive out, tomorrow morning, to our farm. Which is out Coburg way.

The reason I can do that is because I’ve had people that I’m starting to train, Stefan being a key person right now, but I want people who I think are going to be making good decisions in the editing room and whatnot when I’m not there. So my goal is to sort of faze out from the complete active side of the business. But then I would be very happy to sit on boards. I want to remain very active. Out our way there’s a Brookside Young Offenders detention centre, out by where the farm is. If I spent more time at the farm I wouldn’t mind seeing what volunteer opportunities there are at Brookside or wherever. I don’t want to just keep clogging the works. Because we’ve got to make room for the young people. But at the same time, I don’t want to feel like I’m put out to pasture either.

MINTZ
So you would like to see the show continue without you?

SCHUYLER:
Ohhhh. I don’t know if I’d ever let that happen.

Date of Publication: Saturday, December 11th, 2010