B004YENES8 EBOK by Barney Rosenzweig Read Free Book Online Page B

threatened suit. Months later, in an NBC projection room—court order in hand—I viewed the film commissioned by Silverman. “Gentlemen,” I said to the audience of NBC attorneys as the lights slowly came up in the room, “I don’t want to be associated with this project even by lawsuit.”
    The network’s lawyers were relieved and candid. They had read Cagney & Lacey and frankly couldn’t understand why their creative people chose to make the show they did—especially when they had this other choice.
    Spelling/Goldberg had also made a two-woman cop pilot for ABC, complete with stiletto heels and plenty of cleavage. It was a spin-off of their private-eye show set in Vegas and also not worthy of a lawsuit. Goldberg may have read Cagney & Lacey , but he didn’t get it.
    In desperation, 4 I had sent it to the movie divisions of the networks. There was nowhere else left to go. “Too episodic,” said the men at ABC. NBC was clearly not going to touch it now. In those days that left only CBS.
    Finally, the Eye network responded: It was Peter Frankovich on the phone. “You should take this project to our series people, Barney. It’s more a series than an M.O.W.” 5
    “I’ll be honest with you, Peter. It’s damaged goods. I’ve already been to your series people, and they turned me down.”
    “Well, I won’t turn you down,” the TV movie exec went on. “I like it. Let’s develop a script.”
    I never told him one already existed. Avedon was still on holiday, so Corday came in and together we pitched Frankovich our new story. Avedon returned, and the two women worked out all the story beats. It was given a go to screenplay, and Corday pulled out to begin her new career at ABC. She gave the best parting gift a writing partner can present to an erstwhile teammate: a job with a solo writing credit. With thirty to forty pages already written from their earlier collaboration and the rest thoroughly blocked out by the two of them, there is little doubt that, had Corday asked their guild to arbitrate, there would have been a shared credit on that script. Corday’s was a generous act and, as is so often the case in these matters, not fully appreciated. I don’t believe Avedon ever really forgave Corday for the split.

Chapter 6 
    THE MAELSTROM 
    The Frankovich/CBS endorsement was nice, but more “development” was not what I needed. Somehow I had to get something into production. It was all incredibly frustrating. The industry is (and was then) like a series of concentric circles, the kind of design formed in a pool of water when disturbed by a small object falling therein. Those in the maelstrom, and closest to the inner circles, were people like Wolper, Spelling, Goldberg, Lee Rich , and Grant Tinker; they were in the business. The rest of us were “in development.” (Today one would substitute JJ Abrams, David E. Kelley, John Wells, Jerry Bruckheimer, and maybe Steven Bochco; it is the same game now, only with different players.) We would joke then, only half kidding, that “development” was something invented by the networks to keep thousands of us believing we were in the business and therefore too preoccupied to go to the justice department.
    My one-time USC pal Bernie Sandler had helped me get Angel on My Shoulder to then-ABC superstar Peter Strauss. It proved to be an easy sell to the actor. He had just done Here Comes Mr. Jordan on stage and was looking for something in that genre to combat his (he thought) too-serious TV image.
    Even with this outstanding package, I could not get a commitment out of Leonard Hill at ABC. In frustration, after months of waiting for a green light from the network, I hired Bill Haber, cofounder of the powerful CAA agency, to represent the project. He brought back Hill’s remark: “Yeah, yeah, we oughta make it. Is there any way to get Barney out of the picture?”
    Now, I could restate my case here: how I found the property, discovered it was in the public domain,