Film and Television

As The Crow Flies

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Crow_business_card My friend Bryce Zabel talks about the development of his TV series version of THE CROW, which is about to be released on DVD. It’s fascinating stuff (what’s even more fascinating is that he saved his business card):

What do you do when the incredibly violent film you are asked to adapt to a TV audience is based on cruelty, and the main character is driven by a thirst for revenge?

My answer? You expand the premise to fully explore the nature of life after death, and you change the character quest from revenge to redemption.

And how do you handle the fact that the cult film was made infamous by the horrible on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee?

That was a tougher question because the idea behind the TV series was to use the Eric Draven character, the one who’d been in the comics and that Brandon Lee had played. My take was that, tragic as Lee’s death was, George Reeves’ tragic death did not prevent Christopher Reeve or Dean Cain from playing Superman, and that we would just have to proceed and hope that our own version stood intact on its own.

The Only Crime is the Cover Price

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0275988074_01__ss500_sclzzzzzzz_ I stayed up almost all night reading Douglas Snauffer’s CRIME TELEVISION. This is the latest in Praeger’s excellent line of television books (which includes SPY TELEVISION and CHRISTMAS ON TELEVISION, two other books I loved). Snauffer’s fascinating overview of television crime shows is much, much more than a look at the histories of particular shows over the decades. He offers a unique and revealing perspective on the history of television as a medium, a story-telling form, and as a reflection of our society and culture. It’s also a step-by-step examination of the evolution (and, you might say, the maturing) of the crime show genre. It’s packed with interesting facts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and interviews with some the top writer/producers of our time. There are some errors, and you could quibble with the shows he choses to focus on, but those are minor drawbacks. It’s a valuable book for cop show fans, tv scholars, film students, and even writer/producers working in “crime television” today. The only problem is that the book costs $50, which is way, way, WAY over-priced for what it is and that’s going to limit its potential audience.

Fast Track

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One of the reasons I have been jetting back-and-forth to Europe a lot lately is because I’m writing and producing a two-hour movie/pilot for Action Concept that will be shot in Berlin in May for  broadcast on ProSieben (a big German network) and worldwide in international syndication. I’ve waited until we got the firm greenlight before sharing the news with you (I’m superstitious that way).

The project is called FAST TRACK and is about urban street racing (yes, I’m being intentionally vague). The movie will be packed with amazing, street-racing action (check out the Action Concept website to see what these guys can do!) and shot entirely in English. The leading roles are being cast in Los Angeles by Burrows/Boland,  who did LORD OF THE RINGS, KING KONG, CAST AWAY, 21 JUMP STREET, CONTACT, A-TEAM, DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MARTIAL LAW, to name a few.

I’ll bring you reports from the set as production moves along.

TV Main Title of the Week

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I have a real sentimental attachment to this main title from SPENSER FOR HIRE. This is the show that began my television career. Bill Rabkin and I wrote a SPENSER spec script and — to our surprise and delight — they bought it, shot it, and hired us to write several more scripts. I can’t believe it’s been twenty years already…

Interview with Roy Huggins

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My six-hour Archive of American Television video interview with legendary writer/producer Roy Huggins is now up on Google Video. The interview was conducted back in 1998, not long before Roy’s death.

Roy created and produced such series as MAVERICK, 77 SUNSET STRIP, THE FUGITIVE and THE ROCKFORD FILES…and was Stephen J. Cannell’s mentor in the business.  He was a mentor of mine, too.

I put myself through college as a freelance journalist. I snagged an assignment from a magazine to do an article on the complete history of the TV series MAVERICK. So I tracked Roy down at Warner Brothers, where he’d just been fired as showrunner of the BLUE THUNDER TV series. His misfortune was my good luck — he had time on his hands.  He invited me down to the studio and, over the next several weeks, screened every single episode of MAVERICK for me, giving me a running commentary. And each day he’d take me to lunch and tell me stories about his days in TV. I was  in TV heaven. I couldn’t believe it. 

A few years later, I interviewed him again at length for Electronic Media magazine (now known as Television Age). He was the showrunner of HUNTER at the time, working for apprentice Steve Cannell. And not long after  that, I became a TV  writer and actually ended up as a story editor on HUNTER. The first thing I did was give Roy a call to share with him my pleasure (and astonishment) that I’d gone from being a "Roy Huggins fan" to writing on a show that he’d  produced. He was very happy for me and gave me some good advice about dealing with the various people he knew who were still working on the show. I told him I hoped we’d get a chance to work together some day. Sadly, that day never came.

But we stayed in touch and I was thrilled to have the chance to interview him for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television.

Inside The Writers Room

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Writer/producer Matt Witten talks with Deutsche Welle about the Media Exchange "Writers Room" seminars I’ve been doing with Action Concept in Germany. Matt sums it up pretty nicely:

American shows tend to be pretty fast-paced and vigorously structured,
and the way we structure the action and the conflict for our main
characters has been thought through in ways that are fresh for German
writers, they haven’t necessarily heard it described in these terms. So
it gives them a new way of looking at the writing they’re doing. They
were also intrigued by the fact that in America we have staff writers
who meet every day, and we have a head writer responsible for the
consistency of the show — "the show-runner." These concepts are new in
Germany, where there is no cohesion of writing staff. Instead, episodes
are written by freelancers who turn in maybe just two a year. Another
thing in American TV is that directors don’t have the power to change
the script without talking to the writer.