"Your call on spontaneous human combustion is as good as mine," Finkleman finally concedes to a special effects technician, who dutifully hauls the chair away to be worked over with a propane torch.

Minutes later, a vaguely priest-shaped outline has been burned into the chair's still-smoking fabric. Scientifically accurate? Maybe not. Visually striking? Hell yeah.

So it goes on the set of writer/director Finkleman's new six-part CBC-TV mini-series about the denizens of a boutique hotel, shooting in the GTA, Hamilton and Ottawa through Nov. 10 for broadcast next year. The series doesn't have a name yet, but won't be called by its initial title of Hotel Metropolitan - turns out that's a registered trademark in France or somesuch.

The fact that Finkleman himself didn't attend the torching of the chair is, frankly, a little surprising. The auteur behind The Newsroom, More Tears and Foolish Hearts (and, lest we forget, Airplane II and Who's That Girl?) is concerned with details -- if by concerned you mean nearly obsessed.

But he's not a prick about it. In fact, this is either a kinder, gentler, warmer Finkleman behind the camera, or he's earned a bad rap over the years for being a tyrant on set. A cynic might say the former, but that's a cynic's job.

"I have no idea what this is going to turn out to be," Finkleman admits during the lunch break of a recent day of shooting. "No idea. Not a clue. It could be a complete disaster."

And yet the guy is infectiously buoyant, especially when he's demonstrating the proper way for a chambermaid (Natalie Lisinska) to bop a scarlet-robed bishop (Frank Fontaine) in the head with a shower brush. It's all in the wrist, see.

Later, Lisinska's character will have sex with the bishop's assistant in an elevator, leading the priest (Alvaro D'Antonio) to burst into flames in a fit of post-coital guilt. Indeed.

The hotel series marks the first time Finkleman has shared writing duties on one of his shows -- the script is a collaboration with screenwriters Ellen Vanstone and Morwyn Brebner -- and the first time he hasn't cast himself as a character. So for better or for worse, George Findlay will not be checking into the Chateau Rousseau.

The sprawling hotel set, including a faux street exterior, startlingly detailed art deco lobby and series of corridors and rooms, was built inside Etobicoke's New Toronto Studios for a price of about $350,000, a good chunk of which went into paying overtime wages to the small army of workers who pulled the thing out of thin air in a month.

It is clearly Finkleman's kingdom, where he benignly lords over a devoted crew and a cast of more than 100 characters, whose story arcs will intersect over the span of the series.

It's a long way from L.A.'s fabled Chateau Marmont, where Finkleman lived off and on in the mid-'80s while churning out high-paying, lowbrow scripts for pap like Grease 2.

"The Chateau Marmont had quite an effect on me," Finkleman says of his former home on the Sunset Strip. "That place was definitely the inspiration for this.

This is cache, read story here