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You mentioned Carla Kettner in an earlier reply, and I've always considered you, Carla, and Alex Taub to be the best of the EE writers, because you three seemed to have the best grasp on the characterizations and on the show's history. Do you still keep in touch with your fellow writers, and if so, do you know what they're up to these days?
---Yes, I stay in touch with Alex and Carla. Alex is the Executive Producer for the new UPN drama Kevin Hill -- Taye Digges is a hot shot lawyer who gets saddled with a little baby -- and Carla writes for a couple of days a week on Strong Medicine on Lifetime and spends more time at hoome
with her daughter. Her husband David Solomon was on Buffy and now, coincidentally, is on Kevin Hill as a director and producer.
Somewhat silly question... speaking of fellow writers, is "H. Wiggins" a real person, or is that the "Alan Smithee" of the writing world? Because it seemed like, whenever something that might be seen by the fans as bad would happen in the series, they'd bring in "H. Wiggins" to write the episode.
(What? Burn down the Gary's room at The Blackstone? Let's bring in H. Wiggins! Send Chuck driving off into the sunset, possibly never to be seen again? Bring in H. Wiggins! (I'm suprised that H. Wiggins didn't write the episode that introduced Erica and her spawn, but poor Alex got stuck with
that nasty chore.)) Anyway, real person or pseudonym?
---H. Wiggins is a registered pseudonym of a writer/producer. We are all allowed to have one registered if we don't want our name attached to something -- and only that name can go with that specific writer, so that residual records never get messed up. Legally, all I'll tell you is that
H. Wiggins is not Alex Taub, Carla Kettner or Sean Clark. It is a real person.
When writing an episode, did you ever worry about fact-checking (dates, for instance), or is that something you left up to the script supervisor or a continuity person?
---Actually script supervisor/continuity are the same person as a rule and they are an On-set entity with little or no research time. The script coordinator may occasionally do some research, but usually just coordinates sending the scripts to the studio or network research/legal clearance
service. Things like address in Chicago have to be out in Lake Michigan for the most part for legal reasons, we're pretty sharp as a arule, but sometimes we just make stuff up.
Was there ever any thought about having "Renee" (from "Don't Walk Away, Renee") become a recurring love-interest type character, or was she strictly meant to be one episode only?
---Since Alex and I co-wrote Renee I can say we loved writing her and often talked about bringing her back -- but by then, of course, Kristy Swanson was in the picture as decreed by those from on high, but Renee was fun to write and she and Gary had nice chemistry. Between her and Brigatti, we could have really cooked with Gary's social life.
If Erica hadn't been foisted-- I mean, introduced to the series, in what direction do you think the episodes might have gone?
--see above for a bit of that...
For instance, the first season seemed more dark in tone, what with the flannel and the brooding, but by contrast, second season was more light and pull-over-sweater-y, and by
fourth season, it seemed to circle back around to the deeper, darker episodes.
--there's no real telling as many involved felt creatively spent early in the fourth season. There was a great deal of discussion which I hated of taking the series into more of a time-travel deal in season five. Or introducing others in other cities that get the papers there and weaving them into Gary stories -- I was happy just getting deeper and deeper into
Gary's life and bringing more women into it and more friends and seeing how to complicate things with the paper...but the plug got pulled and things just left where they were...
Are any of your scripts-that-didn't-get-filmed still around and available for reading?
----No, it costs too much to pay for a script that won't get filmed, but there were a lot of stories still laying around that never got broken into good enough shape to go to script -- Gary has to get on the airplane he knows might crash as nothing he does gets the headline to change; Highjacked
train in Illinois; Elaborate bra to save the 9-1-1 emergency phone system; bullfighter regains his nerve in a fight with the Chicago bulls mascot; Gary saves a blues legend from freezing to death only to realize that he's a horrible human being and now he's stuck with him...there was a bunch, not all of them great, but it would have been fun to work on them....
Question set #13 (and the last one, as far as I know )
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Please ask Mr Clark if there was ever a episode written that would have had Gary and Brigatti babysitting or stuck in a situation where they're together but it never happened due
to the fact Constance Marie was filming another show and
was unavailable?
---wow, I don't really remember those circumstances. We really made sure we had specific actors buttoned down before we wrote for them because it's too expensive to have to
deal with shifting availabilities. I wasn't there in the fourth season on a day-to-day basis, so something like that might have come up, I don't know, but I doubt it -- it would have just been
re-written to be someone else or rescheduled to fit Constance's availability....