Lights! Camera! Buff!

  Of course, the headline machine in my noggin fired right up: “Beautiful Stone for a Beautiful Stone,” or  “Basic Instinct is Fine Style.”  I also knew that the layers of personal assistants and celebrity protocol that I’d have to traverse to even get the story would mean years of negotiations, so I sighed, mentally shelved the idea, and moved on to look at some very nice quartzite.
  The notion of getting some star power behind stone kept with me, though. It’d be great to have something connected to someone with the greatest name-association for the trade (and her real name is, yes, Sharon V. Stone), but wouldn’t there be another way to get some top-level recognition?
  Maybe you think the notion sounds silly, but the high-profile product placement is an area where competing surfaces are taking the lead. Take a look at the next Extreme Makeover-type show on the air, and you’ll see the brand names of quartz and solid surfaces mentioned prominently. Nobody, it seems, talks about stone.
  The answer to this challenge came one day during a morning walk. I  was listening to the latest podcast of TV writer/producer Rob Long’s Martini Shot barbed commentary on Hollywood life (available at www.kcrw.org/podcasts), and the surreal process of pitching a new show and …
  … That’s it! Why go for some quick mention in a home-improvement show or a credit that now pops up in some dinky corner of the screen? Let’s take the full enchilada and offer whole shows about stone, and tailor them for current programming?
  Given the failure rate of the stuff the networks shove on and off the channels, there’ll soon come a time when TV writers exhaust all the angles of single dads with smart-alec children, smart-alec spouses trading tired insults and smart-alec ensembles of single people doing nothing and living in impossibly expensive settings. Prime-time television needs something fresh: It needs stone.
  There’s not enough time here at the Stone Business Towers to develop treatments and trot them around the studios. So, for future development, here are some concepts that anyone’s free to run with:
  • QuarryQuest. Every eight weeks or so, this reality show begins with teams of blindfolded contestants bused to celebrity homes and shown a new installation. Working backwards from the normal routine, the teams get a sample of the stone and all the clues (in random order) at the start, and then have to physically travel the material’s route in reverse to its pit of origin. For the first contest, of course, there’s already a natural starting point: the kitchen of Sharon Stone.
  • Fleuris. This prime-time soap opera, set in the picturesque stretches of southern Quebec, features the travails of a family stone operation and the several generations involved in the business. The members battle the forces of greed, lust, cheap imports and a nefarious ceramic-tile baron. The location also offers a plus with less-expensive Canadian production, which Hollywood continues to crave to cut costs.
  • Backsplash! A rollicking comedy of an ensemble of smart-alec pals constantly running into the goofiest situations during installations. The stern and stone-faced boss back at the shop (why was Joe Flynn taken from us too soon?) becomes the perfect foil as the team run him ragged and still manage to produce a perfect job every time.
  • Measuring Up. Who says that stone’s a dull product? Enter the handsome, world-weary biscuit of a guy who’s making his own way in life as a freelance countertop designer and estimator, making his way through the homes and lives of the rich and famous. Along the way, he encounters a bevy of desperate housewives – oops, that title’s taken – okay, lonely and bored spouses seeking some steamy attention along with their Juperana.
  • Travertine and Me. For those reaching into the past to revive old concepts, this is the return of the dramatic anthology. Every week, the melodrama unfolds in a different fabrication shop, distribution warehouse and stone factory, as a life crisis is exposed and neatly solved in 57 minutes (with commercials). The central figure is an on-the-road OSHA inspector who opens and closes every show, and occasionally gets involved as she sheds her by-the-book demeanor and shows an unregulated human side.
  • Love & Vein. All the international suspense, romance and action that an audience can take, as a stone-magazine editor crisscrosses the world to trade shows, conferences and anywhere else where the action is for stone. It’s a life full of corporate intrigue, exotic locations and innumerable situations calling for pluck and daring – along with finding the correct adapter plug for the laptop charger
  And why limit the last one to television? Get the word to Steven Spielberg: Let’s go to the shop. Set the closeup. Mr. D., I’m ready for my mill.
  Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net