1/31/23
Newsletter 236
The Crack of Dawn
I don’t remember which comedian said this, but he asked, “So, there was a time when women couldn’t vote, and men had to vote to give women the vote? How did we lose that one?”
I’ve been watching the series ER for the past few months and I’m halfway through season #11. It ran for 15 seasons. I watched the first 5 seasons when it originally aired in 1994, and bailed out when George Clooney left the show. As I watch it now I’m finding it interesting on a number of levels. First of all, George Clooney was the best thing on the show, and when he departed for greener pastures it left a hole in the show that they could never fill. Even still, they lasted for 10 more seasons.
What actually got me to watch it again was seeing interviews with several of the cast members on a series called Pioneers of Television on YouTube, which is a seemingly endless amount of interviews done by the Television Academy over the past 20 years. In their interviews Noah Wyle, Eriq La Salle and Gloria Ruben explained the process of making the show, which was not like any other show before or since. ER was created by the multi-talented Michael Crichton who was actually a doctor (though he never practiced). What he did that had never been done in a medical show before – and there had been many – was to show the medicine realistically, and use real medical dialogue. Well, the second a patient is brought into the ER on a gurney by EMS techs, dialogue begins to spew at an outrageous rate, and continues throughout the procedure until they cut finally away. Stuff like: “Head and chest films, four liters of O-neg on the rapid infuser, start a central line, etc., etc., etc.” The thing is, you can’t fake it; it’s either exactly right or totally wrong. And there were several doctors on set to make sure it was right.
This caused the ER scripts to be twice as long as normal scripts. On any hour show, like Hercules or Xena, the scripts were about 45-pages. For ER they were 80-pages. On top of that, and this is one of my favorite aspects of the show, the operating scenes are generally covered in complicated circular Steadicam shots. This was part of the inspiration for me making my movie Running Time in 1996, which contains many of the longest Steadicam shots ever done. In any case, in ER, since they’re putting tubes down people’s throats and up their noses, and they’re not cutting, the actors have to do magic tricks pulling tubes out of their sleeves, all the while reciting difficult technical dialogue that has to be gotten right.
So, I guess this would be 1992, my buddies Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi being the ambitious, industrious little beavers they were – much more so than me – were making Army of Darkness (1993) and expanding into TV. And all sorts of TV ideas got batted around before they ended up producing Hercules, starting in 1993. And they hired a sharp young hotshot named David Eick to be their TV guy.
Stick with me, folks, this all makes sense and is going somewhere.
My best friend as a kid was Ivan Raimi, Sam’s older brother. Ivan not only became an ER doctor, he is still an ER doctor 40 years later. Ivan is also a writer, and he and I wrote short stories as kids. He wrote a lengthy short story in med school called WOW (Women on Wheels) that ended up being made into the movie Easy Wheels (1989). Ivan also co-wrote the biggest moneymaking movie of 2007, Spider-Man 3.
Back in 1992, Ivan and I came up with a crazy idea for a TV series, and we called it ER. And get this, the idea was that the story took place in an ER and follows the doctors and nurses as emergencies keep coming in and they treat them. We wrote it up as a treatment. We made an appointment with Sam, Rob and David Eick and met at their new offices on the Universal lot (they used to be in a trailer). David took control of the meeting and did most of the talking, while Sam and Rob sat watching. Ivan and I got up and pitched our story called ER. You’ve got your doctors, some of which are crazy; you’ve got your pretty nurses; and any time you want, the doors burst open and in comes a gurney with a patient spewing blood.
Sam, Rob and David listened patiently. Finally, David stood up and explained in great detail why a show like that would never work. Ever. Under any circumstances. “Besides,” he said, “medical shows are out. Out, baby, out. What was the last one? Marcus Welby, M.D.? No, man, young people want something edgy and new.”
So, two years later in 1994, when ER premiered and was the biggest show on TV, I tore off the cover of TV Guide, folded it up, put it in envelope and sent it to David Eick. Oddly, I never heard back.
Eli’s comin’, hide your heart.
How men "lost that vote" :. Withholding tax. ;o)