Word: crichtons
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...hour. Let's get another EKG. Keep him on the monitor ..."). The show's hopped-up pace and jumbled texture -- stories start, stop and overlap seemingly at random -- set it apart from almost anything else on the air. "There's a rhythmic instinct to slow down in television," says Crichton. "But our show had to go as fast as the real thing. We got rid of the pauses, those actors' moments, the hanging looks that mean nothing. Medical shows have been at the Marcus Welby pace: meet a patient, portray the disease of the week and finish with some heart...
...script for ER had been sitting in Crichton's trunk since 1974, when the former Harvard medical student wrote it as a movie screenplay. It languished until the late 1980s, when Steven Spielberg read it and got interested. But Spielberg was more interested in another Crichton project -- Jurassic Park -- and ER sat around for a few more years, until someone at Spielberg's Amblin Productions suggested turning it into a TV pilot. "Almost nothing was changed," says Crichton, "except cleaning up the language...
...Crichton has stayed closely involved in the series, taking part in some story meetings and watching the "dailies" -- footage from each day's shooting. "I get notes on dailies that he's written at 4 a.m.," says fellow executive producer John Wells, a former China Beach hand who was brought in to run the show. Spielberg too has been a surprisingly active presence. Supervising producer Robert Nathan says that for one episode he wrote, Spielberg sent him three-page memos on each draft of the script. Later Spielberg watched the rough cut and offered more suggestions. "He was amazing," says...
...pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross, is the most traditional hunk of the bunch, but the actor is self-effacing to a fault. "The writers are so good that even I can't screw up," he says. "For an old TV actor, it's great to have Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton come by and talk to you. It's so nice to be on a quality show. You can hold your head high...
...success. The show is giving another boost to the comeback of serious TV drama. It has shown that the networks can still create hits without the help of surefire time periods. And it has proved that viewers will try something challenging when given a chance. As Crichton relates, "People in the entertainment business said, 'Viewers won't understand this show.' Finally, there's a recognition that people are smart." Television sometimes...