Crash-and-Burn: The Lisa Nowak Story
Word today that NASA has fired astronaut Lisa Nowak. Okay, will everyone who is surprised please raise your hand. Nobody? Okay, then...
The Lede blog on the New York Times web-site has NASA's statement if you want to look at that. The space agency clearly seems relieved to pass Nowak back to the U.S. Navy to deal with, acting like they're not really firing her as much as re-assigning her. Okay, Navy, your move.
When the story broke just over a month ago, my first reaction was to blog about it.
Talk about the wrong stuff. Wigs, trench coats, pepper spray, rubber hose, latex gloves, large garbage bags, air cartridge BB gun, steel mallet, four-inch folding knife and diapers. Sounds like she was getting ready to conduct an interrogation worthy of Jack Bauer!
So now this woman who fell to Earth won't be making any giant leaps for mankind or anyone else since she gets to wear a GPS ankle bracelet to keep her from stalking anyone while she's out on bail. That's the spirit. Use satellite technology to keep her in line. The Space Shuttle program just keeps paying dividends!
The other thing I pointed out back then was that as a Hollywood screenwriter type if I'd pitched the story as fiction, people would have said that it was too loony to be believable. So, of course, I pitched the non-fiction version!
I called up Frank Von Zerneck, the producer I'd worked on "Fall From Grace: The Neil Goldschmidt Story" with for USA Network. It seemed like a natural, right? After all, that was the story of illegal behavior, tied into forbidden sex.
We decided to give it a shot and I wrote this treatment ASAP to get it on the market. So far, no takers. Maybe someone else has sold it, but neither "Daily Variety" nor "Hollywood Reporter" have had any articles to that effect. Here's what that treatment for "Crash-and-Burn: The Lisa Nowak Story" was like for those of you who care about such things:
We obviously had no rights at that time, certainly not to Nowak, and even the astronaut who was in the middle of the love triangle wasn't going to option his rights if he wanted to stay employed at NASA. What we had was me, so to speak, as I'd covered NASA while at CNN and PBS, and I'd been an investigative reporter who'd actually won a few awards. We also had a take on the movie, that it would tell the story while tracking her preparations for two major trips: the first being her maiden Space Shuttle flight the summer before, and the second being her ill-fated drive to Florida.
The thing you have to understand is that the TV movie business has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. Networks (the big ones) are not so much into the "ripped from the headlines" movies anymore; it's just not their business model. They prefer series. In fact, when I was the TV Academy chairman, I was approached by several network presidents who simply wanted the TV movie category to go away, or to at least not be featured on the primetime broadcast.
That leaves cable but that part of the business is in its own transformation. It's hard to sell there, too, because the cable networks see themselves as having very specific identities.
The upshot? A film that probably would have been a slam-dunk to be on TV when the Space Shuttle was first on the scene is a non-starter today.
If the project ever did get off the ground, I'd like to see Robin Weigert of 'Deadwood' play Nowak....
Posted by: Toby OB | March 12, 2007 at 12:02 PM