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CREATING EARLY EDITION by Vik Rubenfeld
Lenore asked me for an article describing how EARLY EDITION was created. Well, it's a pretty good story... |
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CREATION I had written, produced, directed, cast and cut an independent feature which we sold all over the world at Cannes, Mifed and AFM, and which made a profit. So I was looking for another low-budget script to produce. Pat Page and I met playing volleyball in Manhattan Beach, California. Pat had written several scripts which he showed to me, and we got to talking a lot about premises for features. One day we were talking on the phone and we made up EARLY EDITION, each of us contributing different key parts of what ultimately became the show. And I said, it should not be a feature -- it should be TV. Because it was a really unique way to put a character in physical jeopardy each week, which you need for a TV drama. Also, in TV you're always desperately trying to find new stories -- here, you have the entire paper to draw on. And, you were going to have a rock solid plot each week -- Gary was going to open the paper, see something he wanted to fix -- and he'd have to try hard the whole episode to fix it. Also, it was uplifting, and TV needs more uplifting shows. I knew that what I was suggesting was considered by almost everyone to be impossible. Almost anyone in the business will tell you that it is impossible to get a show on the air in network prime time unless you have been in TV for ten years as a producer or a writer. And in fact, very few people other than Pat and I have ever done it. But I felt that this show was perfectly designed, that TV desperately needed something like this, and that those rules didn't apply to it. In TV when you design a show, you do what is called a Bible, a written document that describes the characters, the world of the show, and treatments for a dozen episodes. Our Bible also contained a detailed treatment for the Pilot episode describing how the whole thing began. This became the story for the pilot episode as shot, which is why Pat and I also got "Story By" credit on the Pilot, in addition to our "Created By" credit on the series. *~*~*~*~* THE PITCH While we were working on the Bible Pat was asking me, who are we going to pitch this to? And I said, we'll find somebody. We pitched it to a lawyer, who didn't like it. And to an assistant agent, who didn't like it. I belong to a great group of writers called THE PAGE. You have to be a published or produced writer of any kind to join (TV, Film, Novels, Journalism, etc.), and it's $60 a year. If you're a writer I highly recommend it. You can find it at <http://www.pagebbs.com/>. PAGE is an Internet discussion group, and once a month many of the members get together in person and have dinner. At one of these dinners I was speaking to PAGE member Ian Abrams. At that point Ian had written UNDERCOVER BLUES, a feature film that starred Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner. Ian had also done some work in network TV. I told Ian that my friend and I had a great idea for a TV show, and we were trying to figure out who to pitch it to. Ian said, "Pitch it to me." We didn't have any reason we knew of to pitch it to Ian, but we figured it would be good practice. So we took Ian to lunch at RJ's in Beverly Hills, and pitched it to him. Half way through the pitch he said, "That's the coolest thing I ever heard. I have to call Lillah." Lillah was Lillah McCarthy, a producer at TriStar Television. *~*~*~*~* TRISTAR TV Ian had just written a script that had gotten a pilot episode of a TV show greenlit, that is, put into production. We met with Lillah, and she loved our show and asked if it was okay with us if Ian wrote the pilot. We said sure. We wanted a writer the networks liked -- and, Ian had gotten us into TriStar. They pitched it to CBS -- and within 24 hours CBS ordered a pilot script. Ian wrote the script based on our treatment, and added some great contributions of his own as well. They shot the pilot -- and the show got picked up, and became the highest-rated new drama of that season. And that's how it happened. In the entire business the show was only pitched about five times. Vik Rubenfeld lives in Los
Angeles. |
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