The Crow flies again... on DVD...
Must be something in the water. A few weeks ago, I got the news that my NBC series DARK SKIES (co-created with Brent V. Friedman) would be released by SONY on DVD this October. Now comes the news that THE CROW: STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN a series I developed and executive produced for Polygram TV will now be released by NBC-Universal this July. Woo-hoo!
Apparently, it'll be a four-DVD box set released under the "TV Guide Presents" banner.
(And thanks to writer-pal Lee Goldberg for knowing this before I did and telling me!) I've been waiting for some kind of news peg like this to hang this blog-post on because I loved that series and it was a terrific creative experience.
It started back in 1998 when I was asked to develop "The Crow" film and graphic novel franchise into a TV series by the now-defunct Polygram TV. It raised an interesting challenge:
What do you do when the incredibly violent film you are asked to adapt to a TV audience is based on cruelty, and the main character is driven by a thirst for revenge?
My answer? You expand the premise to fully explore the nature of life after death, and you change the character quest from revenge to redemption.
And how do you handle the fact that the cult film was made infamous by the horrible on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee?
That was a tougher question because the idea behind the TV series was to use the Eric Draven character, the one who'd been in the comics and that Brandon Lee had played. My take was that, tragic as Lee's death was, George Reeves' tragic death did not prevent Christopher Reeve or Dean Cain from playing Superman, and that we would just have to proceed and hope that our own version stood intact on its own. So, besides the conceptual changes, we also reached out to actor Mark Dacascos who created a Crow/Draven character that was unique itself.
In our 22 episodes, Eric Draven’s mission grew from simply wanting to murder the people who murdered both he and his girlfriend. He began to climb… that’s right… a Stairway to Heaven.
Although the concept of the Crow had history when I came aboard, this shift was no small challenge. The comicbooks by James O’Barr which started it all were intensely violent, bloodsoaked revenge fantasies. Pretty cool in their own right, but impossible to sell to a mass TV audience. The films, brought to life by several different writers and directors, were dark, brooding mood pieces, also saturated by the blood of sadistic, drug-abusing, violent scumbags. An equally difficult sell. Yet the films built upon the comics, changed the mythology to adapt to a new medium, and grew the premise in the process. That was the only way to go.
So the TV series had to become its own manifestation of the Crow. It, too, had to grow the mythology, and adapt to its own medium. At first, a lot of fans who came to the concept by way of the comics and the movies were taken aback. They felt it was not true to the spirit of O’Barr’s creation or the performance of Brandon Lee. Yet we knew that even if every person who read a comic or saw the movie tuned into the series, it would still be cancelled. We had to bring new people in.
We did. We brought in women by making it a series with a love story as its central premise –- a love that survived even death. That started with our opening titles where we used the famous lines from the Crow movie (delivered only by Eric) about the "soul can't rest" and re-wrote it as a poem between Eric Draven and Shelly. This was my first draft:
WE HEAR two voices – Eric Draven and Shelly Webster.
SHELLY (V.O.)
People once believed that when someone dies, a Crow carries their soul to the Land of the Dead…
DRAVEN (V.O.)
But sometimes something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest…
SHELLY (V.O.)
Then sometimes, just sometimes, the Crow can bring the soul back to put things right…
DRAVEN (V.O.)
Things can never be right, my soul will never rest, until we are together again.
We brought in others who found our new Crow’s mission to be more hopeful than the films and, therefore, more accessible to their lives. We cast as our lead the incredibly talented Mark Dacascos whose performance gave the Eric Draven character an entirely new dimension of sympathy and whose martial arts skills were crackling and theatrical. We wrote stories as smart as we could, expanding the mythology to include such twists as Draven being a suspect in his own murder to making literal the previously only mentioned Land of the Dead. Basically, we tried not to pander to the audience, but to challenge them upward.
By the way, if you'd like to read the pilot script, here it is:
If you'd like to read the series bible created before we went on the air (and, thus, something that changed), here it is:
Finally, if you'd like to read the episode summaries of the first season storylines, you can do that, too. I kept this document up-to-date throughout that season so that other writers could see where we'd been and it kept everybody "on the same page" as it were. This is definite SPOILER ALERT territory, however.
A number of people should be mentioned as having been part of this process. Ed Pressman and Jeff Most are the keepers of the Crow flame, especially in the feature world. Bob Sanitsky and Stephen Gelber were the Polygram execs who were smart enough to get us up and running, then support us creatively. The production wouldn’t have happened without Gregg Fienberg who came in as Polygram’s man on the ground, but quickly became my doppelganger, seeing my vision with me, and making it happen. Gordon Mark and Brad Markowitz took it from the page to the stage. The other staff writers and producers were Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes, Naomi Jantzen, John Turman and David Ransil. A great team.
It all worked. The show found its rhythm. Although the action was always intense by virtue of Mark’s fighting talents, some of the most heartfelt scenes I’ve ever written or re-written are in this series. It worked, and it was good. By the end of the season, we had a real friendship formed between Eric Draven and Detective Daryl Albrecht (played to awesome perfection by Marc Gomes) and Sarah (played so well by Katie Stuart).
The ratings were great by syndication levels (2.7 and above). Then Polygram was purchased by Universal, and it all fell apart. Universal, you see, wanted Polygram’s music division but, having gotten out of the TV business only the year before, had no desire to nurture a new series in the tough syndication market. It was just business. The show died.
Maybe, like Eric Draven, the show will come back to life some day. I’d like that. Maybe the fact that the underlying rights are now owned by NBC-Universal (which also owns the Sci-Fi Channel) will mean something. At the very least, I'd like it if this DVD release could spark the fire that would allow me to wrap up our Eric Draven arc with a film or a limited series, using Mark Dacascos. Then, maybe, Eric Draven really could rest in peace. Anyway, as the Crow flies...
