Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Duke Out: Would You Watch?

Over the weekend a disciplinary committee disbarred disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong for his leading role in the disastrous and dishonest prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players who he falsely accused of rape last year. Even Nifong agreed that his punishment fit his crime.

The only thing left in Nifong's public humiliation will be the books and the movie that may come of all this. I'd love to write the movie of this slow-motion disaster. In fact, I tried as hard as I knew how to do exactly that.

First, the background: the TV movie business isn't what it used to be. The networks, for all intents and purposes aren't interested anymore, leaving the form only to the cable outlets and even that territory isn't taking up the slack.

The Duke non-rape case was a good example. Ten years ago this might have been the perfect "ripped-from-the-headlines" film. It's got it all. He said-she said. Sex (or no sex). Athletics. Class struggle. Strippers. A good villain. Ruined lives.

So, as the story was breaking last year, executive Jonathan Eskenas from the Orly Adelson Company and I said to ourselves, "Damn. There's a movie there."

As a consequence, I wrote this one-page treatment. You can read it for yourself if you want by clicking the link below to download the PDF file.

Duke Out, TV Movie Treatment

We called around. Almost everybody passed in the concept stage. We got one actual pitch, at ABC. The executive we talked to understood the idea, he liked it even, but they passed, too. They just weren't sure...

Too damn bad. I look at the date on that treatment. June 5, 2006. Almost exactly one year ago. That means, being as fast a writer as I am, that I'd have jetted off to Durham for a few weeks, nosed around, read everything, and would have had a first draft by the end of August. We could have been in pre-production in September, shooting in October or November.

If ABC had bought this pitch, they would have had a movie in their hands for this May's ratings sweeps, and they'd be re-airing it this week with the Nifong hearing. Tell me that people wouldn't watch that. We'd have tacked on an ending reflecting the current reality, but it would have been compelling television and I'd be willing to bet that such a movie would have won its time slot.

But the networks are out of the TV movie business. I'm not sure that's wise.  Sounds as clueless as Mike Nifong...

Maybe the feature people will think differently.

Ouch! We're #1!

As an Oregon Duck alum, the last few seasons have been an interesting ride in the college football scheme of things.

The University of Oregon football team has made a few good runs for the conference title, stumbled a few times, but basically been seen as a national contender. Last year, if I'm not mistaken, we got to a #7 ranking.

Now comes the news that the Ducks are finally #1.

According to Sports Illustrated, we are the #1 team in the entire United State of America when it comes to "Ugly Uniforms."

This, of course, hurts. What makes it worse, however, is that Nike is an Oregon company and Nike's leader Phil Knight is an Oregon Duck like me. But, somehow, Nike has created the worst uniform out there for the home team. I'm not entirely sure how something like this happens.

On the other hand, maybe my style sense is lacking because I actually don't hate these uniforms. Maybe the fact that I'm used to yellow and green makes it hard for me to comprehend the "you suck" factor here but I kinda think they're okay. The helmets, for example, are the best I've ever seen at the UO.

I'm sure next year's uniforms will be different.

Raise Your Hands? Just Say No!

Forcing presidential candidates to raise their hands like kindergarten kids asking permission to go to the bathroom is demeaning for the candidates, the debate process and the viewers.

Wolf Blitzer used this device to great excess in the Sunday night debate and it made me hate the idea, the way it looked and, frankly, Blitzer for pursuing it. Every time he did it I felt my skin crawl. It reduced my opinon of him as a journalist.

If I was advising any of the candidates, I would tell them to no longer play that game. If asked to do the "raise your hand" thing again, they should refuse and say something along these lines:

I won't be raising hands any longer when asked. It's not that I don't have opinions on the questions being raised, I do. Simply because the questioner thinks a response can be given in a "yes" or "no" fashion, does not make it true. So, from now on, I won't respond either way to these questions, no matter what the issue is. There are lots of journalists here and I will be happy to respond to all these questions in a straightforward and direct manner after the debate on any issue whatsoever.

Well, that's what I'd say. I also think the first candidate to say something like this is going to get applauded big-time, get lots of press, and score a tiny victory for looking like they won't be pushed around by insane media pooh-bahs.

Note to candidates: Just Say No.

The "Pandemic" Crystal Ball: Quarantine, Selfishness & TB

Over the weekend, "Pandemic" aired on the Hallmark Channel across the United States, both Saturday and Sunday night. My wife and I wrote the screenplay which tells the story of a passenger who dies on a plane flight from Australia to Los Angeles of a bird-flu type of illness, infecting his fellow passengers, causing a quarantine first of the plane, then the entire city. And, without revealing the ending completely, the ending resolution has something to do with TB.

Today comes word from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a case involving a U.S. citizen who traveled on two international flights, probably infected his fellow passengers with a rare form of TB (XDR-TB) which was recently defined as a subtype of multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis. It can be fatal. In any case, Here is the story as CNN reports it today.

As with all TB, the disease can be spread through the air. "In this case, the infected patient traveled on two trans-Atlantic air flights and, in doing so, may have exposed passengers and crew to XDR-TB," the agency said.

"A federal quarantine order has been issued and CDC is currently collaborating with U.S., state and local health departments, international ministries of health, the airline industry, and WHO (World Health Organization)."

Sometimes life imitates art and vice-versa. The Fox News article has a couple of other similarities. For starters, the man who carried the disease has been put in respiratory isolation.

"I don't recall us doing this since 1963," said Gerberding. "We want to balance personal liberties with public health and, because this organism is so potentially serious, especially to those who have reduced immunity, our responsibility is to err on the side of caution."

Imagine, by the way, if he wasn't the sole incident but was one of thousands and thousands who needed this level of care or isolation. The other thing is that this particular passenger doesn't appear to have been very concerned about anybody else's exposure.

"The patient felt his personal agenda was highly relevant to him," she said. "The CDC was not aware he was traveling. We were surprised the patient left the country."

This is very consistent with the story we told in "Pandemic." We had a character, Jack Hendler, who felt his work as a Brentwood real estate agent was more important than public safety and broke the quarantine, becoming a "Typhoid Jack" across Los Angeles. All you have to do is to observe people's selfish, immature and dangerous driving habits around here to imagine that someone who is supposed to cool it in a quarantine would decide the rules didn't apply to them.

Should we be afraid? Yeah, probably...

Pandemic: Aftermath

Last night, after a barbeque, my wife Jackie and I sat down with our friends to watch "Pandemic," the three-hour Hallmark Channel "special event" film that we co-wrote together last year. I've already written a lot about it: you can catch up to that by clicking here or clicking here. We even got a good review in Daily Variety.

I gave my friends my standard disclaimer on projects that I've only been the writer on: I didn't cast it, direct it, edit it or produce it. Don't give me credit for those choices but don't blame me either. It was also fun because we'd used a number of our friend's names in the production. One of them, Hendler, could have been turned into a drinking contest there were so many mentions. Another friend who watched with us, Steve Friedlander, was the character played by Bruce Boxleitner. Other friends, Scott and Andie, watched as a character named after their daughter got sick, but rallied and recovered. Two other friends, Don and Morgan, had their character cut from the film, in just another cruel Hollywood reality.

One thing that was interesting is that the simplest thing in a review is to dismiss the science behind the whole thing as improbable and/or stupid (and a few reviews did try to make that point). Today, though, Doctor Joan Bushwell (if I'm not mistaken, this is a name she uses in order to keep her privacy, taken from The Simpsons) has come to our defense! She has a blog, along with other science enthusiasts, where she talks about her two passions: pop culture and science. Today on her blog, Doctor Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refugee, she writes:

As a scientist, I thought "Pandemic" had its redeeming moments. In terms of attention to scientific detail, it far surpassed my favorite guilty pleasure, Outbreak, a film that is campy-bad and injected with an Ebola-virulent bolus of laughable "science." That, and Dustin Hoffman's chewing up of the scenery are what makes "Outbreak" such a noteworthy sci-fi film for Mystery Science Theater 3000 style viewing.

As an example of "Pandemic's" details, one of the CDC-Atlanta scientists nicely explained the concept of antigenic shift that resulted in the virulence of the Riptide virus. To the writers' credit, they did not take the clichéd H5N1 route, but instead opted for a fictional (I think) strain called H3N7. The hemagglutinin piece is not fictional, and is the variant of the Hong Kong 'flu virus of the 1968 pandemic. I'm not sure about the neuramidase variant, but I liked this touch. The writers used part of a strain that already infects people readily, and applied the antigenic shift to it. This is at least consistent with a "stuck-on-the-tarmac-make-small-talk-with-your-neighbor" conversation I had a couple of years ago with a virologist from Childrens Hospital in Philadelphia when we were stuck at the PHL airport. He noted that nasty flu strains often result from antigenic shifts from those that are already transmissible among humans. He allowed as how H5N1 deserved close vigilance, but that other strains could readily be the next big thing.

Anyway, she actually writes more and you can read the whole thing by clicking on that link before the break-out quote.

Other reaction. San Diego film critic Fred Saxon (and former CNN film critic) wrote me an e-mail:

Thank you for scaring the bejesus out of me and certainly everybody who saw the TV version of your “Pandemic” script.  Well done! Having said that, let me say this: I know you’re the writers and not the directors, but please allow me to comment on the experience. It wasn’t long before I wondered if you wrote another Faye Dunaway face lift (or two) into the script. Hmmmm? If she has one more she’ll have a goatee.  And Eric Roberts, did you write that he should be so old?  Another thing, the blood looked totally fake on the plane.  Hey, what’s up with that music?  It’s going non-stop, like in “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire”, but more annoying. Could have been much more effective had it not been continuous.  I’m just sayin’...

Fred, by the way, is also a recovered stand-up comedian, if you hadn't guessed. I won't take a cheap shot at Faye, other than to say she was originally written to be an Arnold Schwarzenneger-type governor, but the music comment was interesting. About a month ago, Jackie and I got a copy of the locked cut, but without music. Completely sweetened for dialogue and background sound, though, and it actually was more compelling. Usually, I think music really takes a piece to the next level, so this was an odd experience for me.

Also, in a few places, Jackie and I ended up getting confused by our own movie. That's because we were hired to write it as a four-hour mini-series to air in two two-hour parts. That four-hour has already been seen internationally and will make up the DVD release, but the Hallmark Channel wanted one three-hour. Take away the 45 minutes of commericals and last night's airing was about 150 pages worth of film from a script that we turned in (at producer's request) at about 250 pages.

Although he may be biased, Movie Smackdown! critic Mark Sanchez sent us this e-mail this morning:

No space aliens, costumed oddballs or special effects overload. Distinct characters, a plausible story arc and a satisfying conclusion. It's a fine, attractive project because it's not like the blockbusters clogging the multiplexes these days. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, "Pandemic" offers an accessible big story that is still human-scale in its dimensions.

Well, at least it was produced. In a world where everyone has a spec script in their desk drawer, this is a very good thing.

What Are The Chances?

I haven't been a subscriber to the Los Angeles Times for over five years now. I've found it easier to read on-line and, when I feel like it, I'll pick up a copy at the local Starbucks if I've got the time. Sometimes you just like the feel of a newspaper.

This morning around 6:15a, I went out front of my house to meet my running partner, Zach, and there was a plastic-bagged copy of the Los Angeles Times on my driveway. I have no idea why, after five years, I had one delivered to me. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was some kind of promotion to lure back old subscribers.

So I opened it up while I was waiting and there, featured in full-color on the front page, is the picture you see here in this post. Here's that photo and caption as they appear in today's "Valley Edition" --

IN THE WAY: A Los Angeles police officer picks up KCBS cameraman Carl Stein to move him out of the way during the police sweep of MacArthur Park. Stein said he had been struck by a baton earlier.
Photo: Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times

The thing is Carl Stein is a friend of mine, going back 25 years now. We met when my wife, Jackie, also worked at KCBS as a new writer/producer. Carl lives out near us, we work out at the same gym and we have even been in Weight Watchers together.

What are the chances that I get one paper delivered to my house in five years and that, on the day it happens, a friend of mine going back a quarter-of-a-century is on the front page?

It gets a little weirder. Six years ago yesterday, I was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times myself when I was the spokesman for the Writers Guild of America during their contract negotiations.

Welcome to the club, Carl. Something tells me the price of your membership was too high.

Numerical Fun Zone: Another Singular Exceptional Moment

At three minutes and four seconds after 2:00 am, on May 6 of this year, the time and date will line up like this:

02:03:04 05/06/07

This will never happen again in your lifetime. Unless you live until May 6, 2107.

I remember thinking that February 2, 2002 was a good day (02/02/02) as was January 1, 2001 (01/01/01). We'll have these every year throughout the decade. On July 7, we'll have 07/07/07.

I even remember doing this incremental march a year ago for 01:02:03 04/05/06.

Okay, maybe it's not quite like living through the Millennium, but at least there's no Y2K madness to worry about.

Heard about this latest one from Nancy Tokos, the talented graphic design artist who designed the banners for this blog and Movie Smackdown. We met years ago when she was working at CBS affiliate here in Los Angeles on their show Two of the Town and I defected (briefly) from the opposition over at Eye on LA. Then, years later, we became friends (and political allies) over at the TV Academy Board of Governors. These days she lives out of the country, but we keep in touch by internet trading items of key international importance such as the numerical march of the calendar.

And, no, the picture above has absolutely nothing to do with this unique moment in time. Attach your own significance...

Columbine: The Opening Volley Mass Murder in Our Schools

With the eyes of the nation riveted on Virginia Tech now, Columbine is tossed out in the news coverage as a footnote to the latest massacre. People have noted it happened eight years ago this week on April 20. This is a bad time of year for evil: Columbine, Oklamoma City, Waco, Hitler's birthday and now Virginia Tech. Here's what Time looked like in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine tragedy. The cover article was called, "... In Sorrow and Disbelief."

I think it's a sad cover, seeing the two demented killers featured in full color and  their victims all in smaller photos in black-and-white. There's something about the choice that sits wrong with me, even though I know journalistically that the news value is on trying to understand how violent killers can live among us. Still...

There is a chilling passage in the first few paragraphs of this article. It is simply awful to contemplate:

A girl was asked by the gunman if she believed in God, knowing full well the safe answer. "There is a God," she said quietly, "and you need to follow along God's path." The shooter looked down at her. "There is no God," he said, and he shot her in the head.

That young girl's heroism still makes me cry. Here's something that makes you scared.

Some members of Harris' and Klebold's clique, tagged in derision a few years before as the Trench Coat Mafia, had embraced enough Nazi mythology to spook their classmates. They reportedly wore swastikas on black shirts, spoke German in the halls, re-enacted World War II battles, played the most vicious video games, talked about whom they hated, whom they would like to kill. Harris and Klebold liked to bowl: when Harris made a good shot, he would throw his arm up, "Heil Hitler!"

What lessons can be learned? Well, we can debate gun control again, or argue for better reaction times among school officials. But there is a universal lesson that the close survivors of Columbine and of Virginia Tech can teach us.

Her friends began writing notes to their parents, saying that they loved them, that they thought they were going to die. Everyone was praying. "In a world where there are so many religions," says Lexis, "everyone was praying the same way." One friend made a vow. "If I ever get out, I'm going to be nice to my little brother."

Take a moment after you've read this, think about the people you care about, maybe about how you haven't hugged them or held them or just told them you care. Then do it. Just because.

Otherwise, lessons are probably going to continue to be as hard to come by now as they were then.

The hardest thing about the search for an explanation was the growing fear there might not be one. There would be lots of talk about the venomous culture that these boys soaked in--but many kids drink those waters without turning into mass murderers. There would be talk of deep family dysfunction, something in their past or their present, but nothing in the first days of archaeology turned up anything tidy that explained something so massively wrong. These were parents who came to all the Little League and soccer games. They even came to practices.

My wife is working with a trio of filmmakers on a documentary about the aftermath of Columbine. It's called "13 Families" and deals with those who were left behind and how they have dealt with the death of their loved ones. It does not include the two Columbine shooters in the documentary at all. They have had enough publicity.

Our hearts go out now to the new victims in Virginia.

You Haven't Seen This One Before!

I guess most people who read this blog regularly know that I like history, and I like John Kennedy, and I like science fiction. I combined those into an alt.history for the NBC "Dark Skies" series and now it looks like I've done it again.

What if they missed in Dallas?

Yeah, I know, I know. This is the classic "what if" and it's been done a few times. Historians love to speculate on this scenario, wondering if magically the nation would have been spared the pain of Vietnam and even Watergate. Knowing what we know now, it seems like they've missed the point. There's a new twist to the answer that wouldn't have been possible to even dream of until about a decade ago.

If he’d gotten out of Dallas alive, John Kennedy might easily have suffered the same fate as his arch-nemesis Richard Nixon -- humiliation and removal from office.

That's the premise of a novel I've been working on for over a year with Harry Turtledove who is pretty much the dean of alternative history novels. Our project is called:

And before you freak out and start calling me names, both Harry and I are life-long Democrats. We don't hate JFK. We have been as compelled by his story as anyone. We just think that this is one of the best alt.history ideas either of us has ever worked on. Our premise is pretty simple:

With the eyes of the world on the United States and the media in a frenzy, with JFK himself alive and not a martyr, an immediate investigation would have been launched into who might have been interested in killing our popular American President. Starting with the Secret Service, the blame-game would have taken on a life of its own, forcing explosive revelations in mere months that have instead dribbled out over decades. Kennedy’s reckless conduct would have become public: the lies about his medical condition, contacts with mobsters, election money-laundering, numerous attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, and even the hundreds of high-risk sexual encounters that endangered Kennedy’s safety and, by extension, our country’s security.

This alternative history novel covers the period from the November 22, 1963 near-miss assassination attempt of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas through the events of early 1966 when the fate of John F. Kennedy was in the hands of 100 United States Senators worried about their own careers in the next election.

If you'd like to see the whole bit, just CLICK HERE or on the BANNER ABOVE to visit the site.

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:

Crash-and-Burn.pdf

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.