Word: bochco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much more of an idealist than a cynic," Bochco says, "more of an optimist than a pessimist." To be sure, his own life is one argument for the possibility of having it all. Bochco, boyishly charming but prematurely gray, lives with his second wife, Actress Barbara Bosson (who co-stars in Hooperman), and two children in a spacious 14-room house in Pacific Palisades. In a town of driven workaholics, Bochco nearly always gets home for dinner with the family. "What keeps him fresh is that he's not obsessive," says Producer Milch. "He doesn't occupy the self-enclosed...
...Bochco's childhood family life was close but beset by money problems. He grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the son of a violinist who once played with the NBC Symphony under Toscanini. After flirting with music, Bochco opted for playwriting at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon). The only play of his to be given a student production was a "disaster," Bochco . recalls. But he established a close circle of lifelong friends -- among them Actors Michael Tucker (Stuart Markowitz on L.A. Law) and Charles Haid (Renko on Hill Street Blues...
...Bochco broke into TV with a summer job at Universal studios and wound up spending twelve years there, turning out scripts for shows like Columbo and McMillan and Wife. In 1978 he moved to MTM Enterprises, the studio started by Grant Tinker and his then wife Mary Tyler Moore. After a couple of failed series, Bochco and another MTM writer, Michael Kozoll, were asked by NBC to develop a police series with a human touch. They came up with Hill Street Blues, which debuted in January 1981. Though ratings were low at first, NBC stuck with the show; it went...
Hill Street's success was followed by Bochco's most notable failure: Bay City Blues, an ensemble show about a minor-league baseball team, canceled after just four episodes in 1983. Less than two years later, Bochco was ousted from Hill Street and MTM. But he resurfaced quickly at 20th Century Fox, where he began working on an idea that had been percolating for a year and a half: a Hill Street-style ensemble drama about a high-powered contemporary law firm. L.A. Law, which debuted in September 1986, caught on almost immediately...
...Bochco has remained closely involved in the series, overseeing everything from casting and budgets to regular story conferences. Casually dressed in jeans and sneakers and idly tossing a football during meetings, he is adept at managing the show's complex story lines as well as a crew of collaborators. "I see myself as more of a chorus member than a soloist," he says. "I'm good at creating an environment in which people can function creatively...