"You can fool everybody but the Bull."

That's a line from the very first blog post I ever published over on Will Dixon's site. It's an adage I learned as a kid hanging around the rodeo ring. It means that for all your cowboy swagger, no matter how big the silver buckle on your belt, there's somebody who knows who and what you really are.

The Rodeo Bull has always symbolized the audience for me. Wily and unpredictable, capable of being downright mean or taking you for the most exhilarating ride of your life.

Something every actor quickly learns is that the Audience always "knows". They can sense that you haven't really learned your lines or done your homework on the character. Like a wild animal, they can smell stage fright and easily recognize that "Two Gentlemen of Verona" should not be set in upstate New York circa 1919 because the director had a new take on the material.

Somehow they always KNOW. And being Bulls, one thing they know better than anybody else -- is Bullshit.

Late Yesterday, History Channel announced it would not air the multi-million dollar, star studded, eight part movie it had just completed called "The Kennedys". According to the press release, this was because "While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand".

When you work in this business and blog regularly about television, it's very easy to get so far up inside the self-performed colonoscopy which begets that writing that you believe (or come across as believing) that you're the only one who knows, who really knows, what's going on in the business.

But you're not. The Bull knew it from the first soft sound of plopping Bullshit. Knew it before the odor even began to tickle anybody else's nose.

Around the blogosphere today and in the weeks to come, there will be reams written about how such a catastrophic reversal of network intention came to be. The tens of millions this will cost History Channel in actual dollars pales by what it has done to the industry perception of both the abilities and ethical worth of its executive class.

Some will argue that the Kennedy family or those who have built careers around the original legend got to somebody.

Others will wonder why a far from quiet about his conservative political views and eager to remove any remaining candy coating from the Camelot story producer like Joel Surnow and his "24" team were ever put in charge of such a project. Given his track record, even a complete idiot knew he was going to go for the throat on some level.

Some in TV would call it a gutsy move, putting yourself out in the unexplored territory you need to inhabit to create compelling television.

From the moment the project's first scripts were available, noted Historians and others who had been part of the real life story all claimed the production was a "smear campaign" . History Channel countered by saying any excesses or inaccuracies in the first drafts had already been corrected by their own highly regarded in-house historians and adjusted by the Production.

With the signing of a stellar cast that included Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper and Tom Wilkinson, the promise of a remarkable "first ever for the network" scripted drama seemed likely. The addition to that cast of Katie Holmes (Mrs. Tom Cruise) assured that the media could be counted on to deliver a wealth of free publicity, vastly increasing awareness of the offering.

According to friends of mine who worked on the project, History minions from those with suede elbow patches to those without sox in their loafers were all over the production, seeming to be a party to every decision and revised creative nuance from last minute script changes to the push of each edit suite button.

There's no way anybody at History did not know exactly what they were getting or going for from the get-go.

This had the makings of a major television event. The kind that can be a game changer for a network and create lifetime careers for the executives in charge.

Now it's going to become -- something else entirely.

History Channel claims it will sell the project to another network so that it can be seen by the American people. "Nothing unusual at all here. No buckling to political pressure. No hot potato or smelly turd of a final product. Just not our style." And it insists that the series will air as scheduled in Canada beginning March 6th.

I'm sure History Television here or whoever else had first dibs on "The Kennedys" broadcast is heaving a huge sigh of relief over that.

Despite being a completely American owned and operated show, it does pass as Canadian content and will keep endless channels in the Shaw constellation operating within the terms of their Canadian licenses for decades to come -- or at least until they sell off that part of the empire and get into something more lucrative like timber futures.

But given that most US nets long ago locked schedules far past March, it means that the huge public desire to either see the advertised production or simply get a look at what has wrought such controversy will only find its needs met by the bit torrent world.

When a project that will cost any network millions to acquire can be picked up for a song on DVD from a street vendor outside their own NY office months before they can air it -- well, just how valuable is it going to be…?

Some are already claiming that Tom Cruise will ride to the rescue, saving his fair damsel from any snide gossip about her possible contribution to the debacle by having his friend Oprah Winfrey buy the series for her new channel OWN.

Not a completely ridiculous concept, since many say Oprah owes Tom for past much discussed appearances. And adding this kind of jewel to her net's debut season could ensure a tsunami of new subscribers.

Others darkly hint that Rupert Murdoch is conspiring to buy it for Fox, counting on the cross-pollination of Kennedy "haters" like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly over on FOX News to net him Superbowl level ratings.

Its fascinating the way we all use our own base political beliefs and personal cultural bugaboos to map plausible futures.

The Bull doesn't do that. He just sniffs the wind and paws the ground, getting those horns ready.

One of the reasons I give Glenn Beck a little more leeway than most is because he used to be a stand-up comic and is a self admitted Rodeo clown. If you ask me, his success is mostly due to being personally familiar with the Bull.

He's seen it at its most frightening, eye-rolling, nostril flaring, head full of buzzing angry bees glory and he knows that while you can't tame it you can at least wave something to take it in a different direction.

In looking for some insight into this story last night, I surfed the net and discovered one of the best online personifications of the Bull I've ever seen.

It's a site called "Oh No They Didn't" established for no other reason than to give internet trolls the opportunity to vent on celebrity and cultural antics. When you enter the comment thread on the History/Kennedy story, you cross through the Looking Glass into a Looney Tunes World created not by the purveyors of entertainment but by those who consume it.

It is Bullshit being called on an epic scale.

And in addition to being revealing, it is funny as hell.

"Seriously, 'Ancient Aliens' passes their strict criteria?"

"This from the channel that runs "The Mummy" at least once a month."

"Maybe if they threw in some wizards and more conspiracy theories it would be more appropriate."

"Oh yeah, why show a mini series on the Kennedys when you can show another season of "Ice Road Truckers" fucking douche nozzles."

And…

"Backwoods jackasses shooting alligators and people driving over ice are fit for the History brand, but a series that might actually have something to do with history isn't going to work?"

And those are just from the first page...

If I had my way, this site should be required viewing on every hearing table laptop open before a CRTC Commissioner whenever Canadian broadcast executives come around to argue for rule changes and financial assistance.

It would just be so incredibly refreshing to witness one of those shameless, talentless yet enormously entitled empty suits from History Television try to justify how "NCIS" or "Pawn Stars" is a worthy and culturally important component of their preciously protected genre while juxtaposed with what the audience the Commission is supposed to represent pointing out what it really is.

Konrad von Finckenstein might stir from his professorial slumber enough to realize how publically he's being boned every time he hosts one of these Gatineau Charades.

And it would be good for us Creatives to take a step back from our own self-importance and wooly brained examinations of where the culture is going and "what it all means" in the grand scheme of things and look the Bull straight in the eye for a change.

Because they "get" us far more than we ever give them credit for doing. They know we're the guys who think we can get the better of them for a whole eight seconds in our fevered desire to attain our allotted 15 minutes of fame.

They KNOW what we really are. And maybe if we stop lying about what's going on among ourselves, we can finally give them the honesty they're looking for, and deserve -- and maybe most important -- can respect.

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I took my dad to a New Year's Eve matinee of "True Grit". Ordinarily, it wouldn't have been my first choice. But he loves "Dusters", so that's where we went.

I was in my teens when the John Wayne version came out in 1968, so I knew the basic story and I didn't have a positive memory of it.

I didn't see it in a theatre when it came out, John Wayne being an ultra-conservative supporter of the Vietnam war and representing (to me) much of what was wrong and right-wing about Hollywood at the time.

In fact, the strongest memory I have that's related to it is of Richard Burton, nominated for "Anne of the Thousand Days", sitting in his seat at the Academy Awards and shaking his head in bewilderment as the Duke hurried past him to collect his award, also beating out Peter O'Toole for "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" and both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight for "Midnight Cowboy".

I saw the movie sometime later on TV and found it pretty much forgettable, with Glenn Campbell struggling badly to act in the part of the Texas Ranger and Kim Darby working equally hard to come across as a girl barely in her teens.

That's just the way John Wayne movies were made back then, some eye candy for the youngsters and a guy who could sing the theme song.

So while I like Jeff Bridges a lot and have an ultimate respect for the Coen Brothers, this felt like it had the makings of another "Hudsucker Proxy" or one of those studio projects "A" listers seem obligated to do now and then in order to get a project more to their liking off the ground.

My perspective on the future of filmed entertainment wasn't much buoyed by the pre-film trailers which included a seasonal greeting from the head of the Famous Players theatre chain promising 2011 as the year I'd get to see "Hangover 2", "Kung Fu Panda 2", "Cars 2", "Sherlock Holmes 2", "Transformers 3", "Scream 4" and "Harry Potter 8 - Pt.2".

Added to this were remakes of "The Mechanic", "Arthur", "Fright Night", "Footloose", "Straw Dogs" and "Poltergeist" as well as reboots of several well worn franchises and at least a dozen new comic book super heroes not much different from the ones we already have.

It didn't help that Harvey Weinstein had just announced a deal to make the entire Miramax Library available for sequels, remakes and reboots, promising to deliver "Shakespeare in Love 2", "Rounders 2" and "Swingers 2" among others.

I was happy to have the lights dim, since it signaled my first remake of this "New Movie Order" would soon be over.

"True Grit", however, turned out to be quite impressive, filled with fresh ideas, actors who could act incredibly well (as well as plausibly play a 14 year old) and maybe the best script currently available onscreen.

So I got to thinking that when Harvey Weinstein said "Shakespeare in Love 2 will be better than 90% of the films out there" he might not be too far from the truth.

Maybe his words were just standard fare Hollywood bravado. God knows nobody rushed to see the almost-a-Shakespeare-in-Love-sequel "Stage Beauty", despite brilliant performances by Billy Crudup and Claire Danes and absolutely nobody has had any time for any of the "Rounders" copycats that now fill the D2DVD and remainder shelves at whatever video stores still manage to keep their doors open.

Some of those who write extensively about the business have looked at the upcoming release slate and bemoaned the studio addiction to sequels and remakes and reboots, suggesting that it reflects "the end of creativity".

I've never been one to latch onto the recurring "conventional wisdoms" of Hollywood where "insiders" share secret knowledge of what will get made and why. Most of the time they're dead wrong or no better at prognostication than the average movie fan.

I'm also not big on the "End of…" anything crowd. Remember the "End of History" -- or "Irony" or "TV Comedy" or "The Republican Party"? Somehow they're all still with us.

But for a guy who makes his living thinking up his own stories, there still was a lot of room to wonder what the future might hold.

If the 2011 release schedule and the Miramax plan suggested anything it was that the big players were seeing DVD sales shrink, movie sales to television decline and distributors like Red Box and Netflix offering less than send-your-kids-to-Harvard deals.

They were hedging their bets and going with the known over the unknown.

And then my dad started talking about the movie on our way home in the car.  He'd liked it a lot too. We even laughed in the same places which is saying a lot since his Alzheimer's is kicking in pretty good now.

Most days he's not really sure who I am anymore or where exactly we are on his life's journey. And on the bad ones I become some guy named Chuck he used to hang with after the war.

He'd been feeling well earlier in the day, so I invited some of his air force buddies over for lunch. They're all in their 80's and none was staying awake until midnight, so they used the time to reminisce about New Years past.

It was going well until the conversation ebbed and my dad said, "Chuck, you must remember a special New Year's from your time in the service."

A couple of the guys eyed their drinks, saying nothing, the way they all do when a friend falters. A couple of the others waited intently for my reply.

I felt like Michael Crawford in that episode of "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" where he attends his deceased father's regimental reunion and most of the guys only notice that "Old Spencer has aged well".

But in the car, after the movie, whether I was me or Chuck, my dad recalled going to see Tom Mix movies back in the 1930's. He recounted the experience in incredible detail, right down to the kind of wood and velvet seats you found across Saskatchewan in the combination movie/vaudeville houses that used to stand in almost every village and town.

I knew his memories were accurate because I can remember being in a couple of those before they all disappeared not long after the arrival of television. One was a place where I saw my first live show sometime in the mid 1950's, believe it or not, a travelling minstrel show.

Some things apparently take much, much longer to die than most imagine.

But as my father recalled one of the Tom Mix adventures he'd seen as a boy, I started to realize that for all our vaunted admiration of the new and the groundbreaking and the game-changing reimagining, pretty much everything we do is built fairly solidly on what came before.

Tom Mix worked with John Ford who virtually invented John Wayne who made a forgettable Western famous enough by winning an award that somebody else thought it might be worth remaking.

Somewhere along a similar historical timeline, British Sea Shanties transformed into Bluegrass and Country music. Somehow playing skiffle riffs inspired "The Beatles" to create a discography that still echoes here and there across every iPod playlist.

Few people know that "Oklahoma", the Musical that both saved and revived the Broadway Musical was based on a play that had died on a nearby New York stage only months earlier. If you want details, may I suggest Jaime Weinman, who probably can quote from both Playbills.

Indeed, the entire history of Hollywood has been based on turning previously successful books and plays and magazine articles into movies. Why should it be considered out of the ordinary that studios are now basing their new films on old ones.

And the same books and plays have often been remade in the past when social mores adjust to allow them to tell parts of the story once expurgated for being too sexy, somehow taboo or even just politically out of tune with the times.

At first blush, the Seth Rogan version of "The Green Hornet" looks like studio hubris at its worst. But maybe 3D and cloning visuals from video games will make it worth watching.

The trailer for "Transformers 3" certainly had my attention until I saw things begin to transform, so maybe there's a chance it won't end up as another noisy, pointless toy commercial.

For all the potential doom and gloom, "True Grit" exhibited that there is still room for an original voice and a fresh take that make a story come alive.

So maybe "Rounders 2" will need Matt Damon and Teddy KGB to make people "Pay the man. Pay him his money". Or maybe all it will take is a screenwriter with a fresh take on Poker.

You can't make a Poker movie without a guy who's good at the game. Does it really matter if his name has to be Mike or "The Worm" to get it made?

Somehow, despite Aristotle pointing out that there were only 7 basic plots, we've managed, in the intervening centuries, to keep people entertained and coming back for more.

And no matter how "original" our creative voices might feel to us, we're all just echoing what came before and being derivative.

What keeps the experience from being repetitive is our ability to tell the story better rather than just repeat it; finding a truth in it that no one has discovered before or making it resonate for our times in a way the older version made for another time and another people can no longer do.

There's always a future -- even if there's a 2 stuck on the end of it.

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I was more than happy to see 2010 skulk out of my life.

I'm certain it was a terrific year for some and just as certain that many dealt with issues far tougher than any I had to put up with.

But for me it just held the loss of too many close friends, a couple of beloved projects stalled and other stuff that makes life less than a pleasure.

Yet, as I waited for 2011 to appear, I also looked forward to the Red Bull No Limits New Year's Eve Extravaganza.

That's been featured here at the Legion the last couple of years. And I wondered just what made me gravitate to that event instead of frigid outdoor rock concerts, dropping balls or noisemakers and party hats as my symbolic turning of the page.

Just what did watching some guy I didn't know risk his life trying to plant a motorcycle on a Vegas casino roof or fly a car across a California harbor mean in the grand scheme of things?

If they failed it would have been awful to witness live. And even when they succeeded the thrill was kinda cool but very fleeting.

And then I realized that those jumps symbolized the great leap we all take every New Year's Eve.

Many of us make resolutions to get rid of bad habits or somehow become a better person. When I've done that, I found I either succeeded or I failed.

Sometimes the successes happened quickly and then I was left wondering what to do for the rest of the year beyond being a little smug about myself.

Sometimes the failures were just as quickly obvious, but they could be rationalized until the next New Year's Eve -- because -- y'know -- there's always a chance...

Eventually, I realized that even when I changed a few things, me and my life didn't really change that much as a result.

Unlike characters in scripts, I don't think most people change. I've yet to meet a scumbag who Ebenezer Scrooged his life around. And I also don't know a single George Bailey who allowed events to drive him to debauchery.

In the same way, I'd never seen any of the adrenaline addicted daredevils Red Bull trots out every New Year change because of their accomplishments.

Whether it's nurture or nature, I think we all stay pretty much who we are. Maybe thinner, less prone to profanity or better at phoning our Moms from time to time. But mostly we go through life as the same basic person we've always been.

Although -- once in a while -- we allow ourselves to do something extraordinary.

And that's what "Red Bull No Limits" combined with the New Year means to me -- it's a reminder to make this the year you do something "extraordinary".

I'm sure that word means something different to each of you and that's just fine. All I'm suggesting is that when we get around to next January, whether you've stopped smoking or done a great job recycling your garbage should take a back seat to one moment -- just one -- where you did something you and/or everybody you know never expected you to do.

And while, like everybody else, I hope your 2011 is happy and prosperous, I also hope it brings you a good measure of Mercy and Justice and at least one moment you had never before imagined happening.

This year's Red Bull Daredevil, Levi LaVallee, was robbed of his extraordinary moment by a practice crash on the day of the stunt.

But he's out of hospital and it probably won't be much longer before it officially arrives. Because the truth is -- he already had it in practice.

Have a very special 2011! And Enjoy your Sunday.

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