Post by Naj on Apr 3, 2005 16:37:16 GMT -5
Bringing Back the Dead for Some Detective Work
Picture of the cast
Ron Jaffe/CBS
Making cold bodies hot property on CBS: Kathryn Morris, far left, as Detective Lilly Rush on "Cold Case," with Thom Barry, Jeremy Ratchford, Danny Pino and John Finn.
By JOE RHODES
Published: April 3, 2005
It was the kind of pitch that Jonathan Littman, point man for the producer Jerry Bruckheimer's ever-expanding television empire, had heard - and rejected - a dozen times before.
"Everyone's pitched the cold-case idea - it's a perennial," he was saying, describing his state of mind in 2002, before his first meeting about what would become the show "Cold Case." The writer, Meredith Stiehm, was then 33 years old; she had written for "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210" and "NYPD Blue," but had never created her own show.
"I had no idea that they get this pitch every year," she said in an interview at the "Cold Case" production office. "And their response is always the same: 'What's the urgency? Why should we care about something that happened 20 years ago? Why would we want to take on that case now and solve it immediately?' And it's a very good question."
But Ms. Stiehm, unlike her predecessors, had an answer. She had been fascinated by the coverage of the Martha Moxley case in Connecticut, in which a 41-year-old nephew of Ethel Kennedy, Michael C. Skakel, was convicted in 2002 for a murder that had occurred in 1975, when he and the victim were only 15.
"The images fascinated me," she said. "The idea that we're all so different than we were in our past, yet we're accountable for our actions," she continued. "It was all about what time has done to people, how it changes them."
"So my answer to the urgency question was: 'Let's go meet this person who died 20 years ago, or 30 years ago. Let's see them at their best emotional moments so that we care about them.' "
It was that flashback idea that caught Mr. Littman's attention: the notion that every episode would start with a cold-case file, a forgotten victim brought back to life through a series of flashbacks, with period music and time-specific visual cues - clothes, cars, magazine covers - recreating the crime and the witnesses, then revealing, ultimately, the killer. As the story moves present to past and back again, characters (usually played by two actors) morph from their present-day to their flashback selves.
"I knew immediately that we had a hook," he said, "a way to connect the present to the past."
"Cold Case," approaching the end of its second season , has been a consistent Sunday-night hit for CBS since its premiere in September 2003 with an episode that closely paralleled the Skakel case. The show, starring Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush, the only female detective on the Philadelphia homicide squad, hasn't had the splashy, heavily promoted visibility of the other Bruckheimer-produced CBS dramas - the three "CSI" blockbusters and "Without a Trace" - but it has averaged more than 15 million viewers a week, steadily ranks in the Nielsen Top 20 and has climbed into the Top 10 on more than a few occasions.
"There's something universal about the idea that we all have to deal with our past," Mr. Littman said, explaining why "Cold Case" seems to have such a loyal audience. It's also one of the most musically distinctive shows on television, with bursts of instantly recognizable period music permeating the episodes - everything from "I Wanna Be Sedated" to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." These tunes are matched with often-gimmicky flashback cinematography, like supersaturated Ektachrome to represent the 70's, blurry psychedelia for the 60's and sepia tones for the 40's.
Like "Without a Trace" and the "CSI" franchises, "Cold Case" is an amped-up version of a nuts-and-bolts, just-the-facts-ma'am cop show. Only louder and with brighter colors.
"We put a lot of emphasis on visual storytelling," Mr. Littman said. "One of the things Jerry says is that this is not radio. He wants the audience to have a reason to watch the show, not just listen to it."
Mr. Bruckheimer said that it is no accident that his most successful dramas are, essentially, straight-ahead mysteries. "If you look at the New York Times best-seller list on any given week, 8 of the top 15 are mysteries of some sort. So it's a genre that audiences respond to."
When putting together "Cold Case," Ms. Stiehm soon learned that, beyond the necessity for visual fireworks, there was one other inviolable mantra for producing a Bruckheimer show: no loose ends.
"The one mandate I did get was that they needed to be stand-alone episodes," she said, admitting that her writing style, honed at "NYPD Blue," where story arcs often stretched multiple episodes and hinged as much on character and dialogue as they did on plot, required some adjustments.
"After you come home from a long day's work, you want resolution," Mr. Bruckheimer said. "All our lives are ongoing, never-ending dramas. So we want something that, at the end of the hour, justice is served. Nobody wants to be left hanging."
Still, Ms. Stiehm has begun stretching the format as much as she can. She has slowly worked in more subplots involving the detectives' personal lives, and the shows have started taking on more ambitious subject matter, including tonight's episode "Strange Fruit," which centers on the 1963 civil rights march on Washington. Also on tap are episodes that change the musical formula, including a show using songs only by John Mellencamp and another built around the soundtrack of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and featuring Barry Bostwick, who starred in that 1975 film.
"I'm thrilled with the parameters we're working in," said Nina Tassler, the CBS Entertainment president, when asked if the network's successful, process-heavy dramas - including non-Bruckheimer productions like "Numbers" and "NCIS" - were relying too heavily on a basic formula.
"that the fact that the audience is growing for these shows certainly indicates that they haven't grown tired of them," she said. "On 'Cold Case,' in particular, the writers have been dabbling with very gradually peeling back the layers of some of the characters, and I think that's exciting. But the show is, first and foremost, about the cases. That's the signature of the show and what it will always be."
Picture of the cast
Ron Jaffe/CBS
Making cold bodies hot property on CBS: Kathryn Morris, far left, as Detective Lilly Rush on "Cold Case," with Thom Barry, Jeremy Ratchford, Danny Pino and John Finn.
By JOE RHODES
Published: April 3, 2005
It was the kind of pitch that Jonathan Littman, point man for the producer Jerry Bruckheimer's ever-expanding television empire, had heard - and rejected - a dozen times before.
"Everyone's pitched the cold-case idea - it's a perennial," he was saying, describing his state of mind in 2002, before his first meeting about what would become the show "Cold Case." The writer, Meredith Stiehm, was then 33 years old; she had written for "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210" and "NYPD Blue," but had never created her own show.
"I had no idea that they get this pitch every year," she said in an interview at the "Cold Case" production office. "And their response is always the same: 'What's the urgency? Why should we care about something that happened 20 years ago? Why would we want to take on that case now and solve it immediately?' And it's a very good question."
But Ms. Stiehm, unlike her predecessors, had an answer. She had been fascinated by the coverage of the Martha Moxley case in Connecticut, in which a 41-year-old nephew of Ethel Kennedy, Michael C. Skakel, was convicted in 2002 for a murder that had occurred in 1975, when he and the victim were only 15.
"The images fascinated me," she said. "The idea that we're all so different than we were in our past, yet we're accountable for our actions," she continued. "It was all about what time has done to people, how it changes them."
"So my answer to the urgency question was: 'Let's go meet this person who died 20 years ago, or 30 years ago. Let's see them at their best emotional moments so that we care about them.' "
It was that flashback idea that caught Mr. Littman's attention: the notion that every episode would start with a cold-case file, a forgotten victim brought back to life through a series of flashbacks, with period music and time-specific visual cues - clothes, cars, magazine covers - recreating the crime and the witnesses, then revealing, ultimately, the killer. As the story moves present to past and back again, characters (usually played by two actors) morph from their present-day to their flashback selves.
"I knew immediately that we had a hook," he said, "a way to connect the present to the past."
"Cold Case," approaching the end of its second season , has been a consistent Sunday-night hit for CBS since its premiere in September 2003 with an episode that closely paralleled the Skakel case. The show, starring Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush, the only female detective on the Philadelphia homicide squad, hasn't had the splashy, heavily promoted visibility of the other Bruckheimer-produced CBS dramas - the three "CSI" blockbusters and "Without a Trace" - but it has averaged more than 15 million viewers a week, steadily ranks in the Nielsen Top 20 and has climbed into the Top 10 on more than a few occasions.
"There's something universal about the idea that we all have to deal with our past," Mr. Littman said, explaining why "Cold Case" seems to have such a loyal audience. It's also one of the most musically distinctive shows on television, with bursts of instantly recognizable period music permeating the episodes - everything from "I Wanna Be Sedated" to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." These tunes are matched with often-gimmicky flashback cinematography, like supersaturated Ektachrome to represent the 70's, blurry psychedelia for the 60's and sepia tones for the 40's.
Like "Without a Trace" and the "CSI" franchises, "Cold Case" is an amped-up version of a nuts-and-bolts, just-the-facts-ma'am cop show. Only louder and with brighter colors.
"We put a lot of emphasis on visual storytelling," Mr. Littman said. "One of the things Jerry says is that this is not radio. He wants the audience to have a reason to watch the show, not just listen to it."
Mr. Bruckheimer said that it is no accident that his most successful dramas are, essentially, straight-ahead mysteries. "If you look at the New York Times best-seller list on any given week, 8 of the top 15 are mysteries of some sort. So it's a genre that audiences respond to."
When putting together "Cold Case," Ms. Stiehm soon learned that, beyond the necessity for visual fireworks, there was one other inviolable mantra for producing a Bruckheimer show: no loose ends.
"The one mandate I did get was that they needed to be stand-alone episodes," she said, admitting that her writing style, honed at "NYPD Blue," where story arcs often stretched multiple episodes and hinged as much on character and dialogue as they did on plot, required some adjustments.
"After you come home from a long day's work, you want resolution," Mr. Bruckheimer said. "All our lives are ongoing, never-ending dramas. So we want something that, at the end of the hour, justice is served. Nobody wants to be left hanging."
Still, Ms. Stiehm has begun stretching the format as much as she can. She has slowly worked in more subplots involving the detectives' personal lives, and the shows have started taking on more ambitious subject matter, including tonight's episode "Strange Fruit," which centers on the 1963 civil rights march on Washington. Also on tap are episodes that change the musical formula, including a show using songs only by John Mellencamp and another built around the soundtrack of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and featuring Barry Bostwick, who starred in that 1975 film.
"I'm thrilled with the parameters we're working in," said Nina Tassler, the CBS Entertainment president, when asked if the network's successful, process-heavy dramas - including non-Bruckheimer productions like "Numbers" and "NCIS" - were relying too heavily on a basic formula.
"that the fact that the audience is growing for these shows certainly indicates that they haven't grown tired of them," she said. "On 'Cold Case,' in particular, the writers have been dabbling with very gradually peeling back the layers of some of the characters, and I think that's exciting. But the show is, first and foremost, about the cases. That's the signature of the show and what it will always be."
..........
..........
...........
