Film and Television

Here are a few more true stories from my experiences in TV land ( I’ve mentioned these here before in the early days of this blog)…

Before starting a pitch,  I like to ask the execs what they are looking for. At a recent meeting at a network, the exec said: 

“We’re
wide open,” she said. “The only things we don’t want to hear are cop
shows, science fiction shows, anything set in the past, military shows,
buddy detectives or stuff with monsters.”

I could think of only one genre she left out. “What about a medical show?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “We don’t want those, either.”

* * * * * *

We were writing our first episode of a detective series. We turned
the script in to the network executive for his notes. The first note
was in scene one, act one.

“The hero doesn’t know what’s going on,” the executive said.

“That’s right,” I replied. “Because it’s a mystery.”

“You can’t do that,” the executive said. “The hero should be ahead of the story.”

“Ahead of the story?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“The hero should know,” the executive said.

“Know what?” I replied.

“Everything,” The executive said.

“But
he just arrived at the scene,” I said. “He’s taking his first look at
the body… and you want him to already know everything?”

“Is he a
hero or a complete moron?” The executive asked. “Nobody wants to watch
a show about a guy who’s lost, confused, and stupid.”

“It’s a mystery and he’s a detective,” I said. “He’s going to show us how smart he is by solving the crime.”

“If he was smart,” the executive said, “he wouldn’t have to solve it. He’d already know.”

“So what’s the mystery?” I asked.

“There isn’t one,” the executive said.

“So what’s our show about if there’s no mystery to solve?”

“You tell me,” the executive said.  “You’re the writer.”

* * * * * *

Bill Rabkin and I were in middle
of writing an episode of “Spenser: For Hire,” which was airing at 10
p.m. on Saturday nights. In our episode, Spenser sees a woman jump off
the roof of a building, so he begins to investigate why she wanted to
commit suicide. He discovers she’s fleeing her brother, with whom she
shared an incestous relationship. The network loved the story.

We
get a call on a Friday from the network. They had just decided to move
“Spenser For Hire” to 8 pm on Sunday, sandwhiched between “The
Wonderful World of Disney” and “The Dolly Parton Show.”

Somehow
our episode didn’t seem quite right for the Family Hour, unless your
idea of family is rather twisted. But the network didn’t think it was
quite as big a problem as we did.

“We love everything about the
script, so all you need to do is take out the incest,” the network exec
said, “but maintain the integrity of the story.”

No, I’m not talking about the Colonial Fan Force again. This is a true story that I’ve told here before (so this is like a blog rerun — only I don’t get any residuals).

I was working on Murphy’s Law,
a light-hearted detective series starring George Segal as an insurance
investigator when I got this call from the network censor with notes on
our script:

“You’ve got one of your characters calling another character a moron,” the censor said.

“Yeah, so?”

“You can’t do that,” he said. “We’ve approved ‘dolt,’‘dummy’ or ‘dink,’ as acceptable alternatives.”

“What’s wrong with calling somebody a moron?”

“You’ll offend all the morons in the audience,” he said.

I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

So I said, “Don’t worry, all the morons in the audience are watching Hunter.’”

Three months later, Murphy’s Law was cancelled… and I got a job on Hunter
   

I had a pitch yesterday, and for some reason, it’s got me thinking of all the bad pitching experiences I’ve had (not that the pitch yesterday went badly, it didn’t, but that’s not to say he leaped out of his seat, kissed me on both cheeks, and said "My only goal in life now is to make this project happen!").

Okay, so here’s my story, which I’ve told here before. This goes back a few years. 

I was in middle of pitching three TV
series ideas when the newly minted network exec – formerly a lawyer,
rock musician, accountant and personal trainer—interrupted me.

“You have no clue what makes a good TV series concept,” the exec said. “And your pitches suck.”

I smiled. “But does the rest work for you?”

“You
want to hear a pitch? This is the perfect pitch, I just bought it.” the
exec continued. “There’s a cop. He’s a rebel. He’s a rogue. He doesn’t
play by the rules. He’s also an incredible slob. He’s teamed up with a
new partner who’s a stickler for the rules, a team player, and a neat
freak. His new partner is…a dog.”

I stared at him. “A dog?”

“A dog,” he said proudly.

“Does the dog talk?” I asked.

The exec’s eyes lighted up. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

I told this story a while back, when I first started this blog — but most of you weren’t around then, so it’s going to seem fresh and new.

We were writing an episode of a series for a Major Television
Producer who had dozens of hit shows to his credit. This particular
series, however, was not destined to be one of them.

For this
episode, he wanted to do a “modern take” on a “cowboys and indians”
story. He wanted to see “indians on the warpath” only with “a
contemporary sensibility.”

“Call’em Native Americans instead of
injuns,” the Major Television Producer instructed us, “that’ll make the
story instantly relevant.”

He also wanted it hip, sexy, and edgy. And he wanted women, lots of beautiful women.

I
joked that we could have seven super-models lost in the desert. His
eyes lit up. “Yes,” he said. “That’s perfect. That would give the show…
sophistication.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding around. We
were stuck with seven super-models. I learned an important lesson. I
never joke about the story in a meeting… or the joke could become the
story.

We went off and worked on the outline for our script.
We came up with a scene in which some bad guys destroy some sacred
Navajo ruins, upsetting the Native Americans, causing them to go “on
the warpath” and attack the bad guy’s camp. But when the Major
Television Producer read our scene, he was outraged.

“You can’t
have the bad guys destroy Navajo ruins,” he bellowed. “It’s
unthinkable. Those ruins are priceless, historical artifacts. The
American public will never stand for it. You’ll offend our entire
audience!”

We apologized, explaining all we wanted to do in the scene was provoke the Native Americans into attacking the bad guys.

“Why not have the bad guys rape the seven supermodels,” the Major Television Producer said.

“Sure,” I replied. “That won’t offend anybody.”

“Exactly,” the Major Television Producer said. “Now you’re learning how to write television.”

I really enjoy GREY’S ANATOMY but for me, their big two-parter jumped the shark. A doctor was giving birth, a doctor’s husband was having brain surgery, a doctor (who previously had a brain tumor) had an apparent heart attack, and another doctor had her hand inside a patient who had a live bomb in his chest.

I think there should be a moratorium on doctor shows doing stories where their own doctors, and their families, become patients. Is there anybody left on GREY’S ANATOMY who hasn’t become a patient yet?  If so, they soon will be. The same thing happened on ER. Every doctor and nurse on that show has been treated in the trauma room for a medical emergency over the years. It’s tiresome and a cheap way to generate conflict…God knows, the GREY’S ANATOMY writers are talented enough to come up with stories that don’t make their doctors the patients.

That said, I must admit I’ve made Dr. Mark Sloan a patient at his hospital many times in my DIAGNOSIS MURDER scripts and books.  I figured if he’s going to be injured during an investigation, he might as well be treated at his own hospital.  Is that convenience or laziness? Oh, and come to think of it, I’ve made his son a patient, too. Mea Culpa.

For years now, Academy of Television Arts and Science’s  Archive of American Television project has been taping in-depth, four-to-six hour interviews with the writers, producers, directors, actors, and executives who have made a lasting impact on the television medium… people like Grant Tinker, James Arness, Fred Silverman, Norman Lear, Stephen J. Cannell, Roy Huggins, Mike Wallace, Norman Felton, Dick Van Dyke, Sherwood Schwartz, Bob Newhart, Carroll O’Connor, Jim McKay, Carl Reiner, Joseph Barbera, Stephen Bochco, Julia Child, Phil Donahue, Robert Guillaume, Alan Alda, Fred Rogers, Larry Hagman,Ed Bradley, Jonathan Winters, Leonard Stern, Delbert Mann, James Garner, and William Shatner to name just a few. Many of those interviews are now available to view for free on Google. This is a tremendous resource, of which I have been a proud contributor and interviewer, and I highly recommend it to any student of television.