In "Fear," tough-edged Officer Ganier learns what it feels like.
Fall 2004: Oct. 6
Cop Shop bids to become PBS partner in crime
By Karen Everhart
An ambitious drama to debut this fall on PBS Hollywood Television combines strongly drawn and realistic characters with the long continuous shots of live TV. It has what may be an even longer shot to become public TV's first ongoing American police series.
In its favor, Cop Shop has the production design, strong stories and high-caliber talent that could generate the buzz it needs to attract underwriting and a bigger audience than American-made drama usually wins on PBS.
Cop Shop's two piloted teleplays already have been written up in major dailies, months before either episode airs, because the producers are bleeping the rough language audibly to tweak the FCC for its campaign against naughty words.
The teleplays were written as if they were to be performed on live TV, "in one take, three cameras, no stopping," explained David Black, a veteran writer and producer of TV crime dramas who shares the e.p. role with actor Richard Dreyfuss.
With faster shoots and simpler sets, the producers' approach is relatively inexpensive — $800,000 per hour compared to the $3 million per hour average for TV drama. "The concept pushes you to do stories you normally can't do," Black said. "Because you can't cut to a chase scene, you have to go deeper and deeper into character." The cops are portrayed as real people, not hands-on-the-holster action figures.
In "Blind Date," one of the two Cop Shop teleplays, Dreyfuss plays Detective Leonard Manzo, a recovering alcoholic who makes his first sober visit to a brothel. As the clock ticks on his time with a prostitute named Heaven, Manzo talks about religion and finds unexpected solace.
In "Fear," Cop Shop takes viewers to a meeting room in an upscale urban community, where police meet with residents panicked by serial rapes in their neighborhood. Officer Debra Ganier, a young cop from meaner streets, opens the meeting with a callousness that exacerbates tensions. When the exchange spirals out of control, her hard-edged bravado dissolves.
The production design, quality of the scripts and opportunity to develop complex characters in extended TV performances drew award-winning actors to the project.
"The energy of going straight through is something the actors respond to," said Mare Mazur, series e.p. for producing station KCET in Los Angeles. Talent agreed to work for scale plus 10 percent.
"I had calls from big movie stars who wanted to be involved — people who don't do television," Black said. Rita Moreno gave up a well-paying concert gig and Dreyfuss acted despite an injured back.
Dreyfuss, pictured with Rosie Perez, didn't back out when his back gave out.
The cast includes two Oscar-winners: Dreyfuss and Moreno, who plays a business-minded madam. Tony Award-winner Blair Brown is a precinct commander. Rosie Perez (Do The Right Thing, White Men Can't Jump) plays Heaven and Michole Briana White (100 Centre Street, Jitney), Officer Ganier. Producer-director Joe Cacaci (The Education of Max Bickford) is also executive producer. Anita Addison (Judging Amy, Deep in My Heart) is co-executive producer.
Black's writing and producing credits include the 2000 feature film The Confession, plus the TV series Law and Order, The Education of Max Bickford, 100 Centre Street, Monk and CSI: Miami. Black said his work on 100 Centre Street with Sidney Lumet, a director of live TV dramas in the 1950s, inspired the concept for Cop Shop.
"This production had an amazing amount of challenges," Mazur commented. Producers weren't able to shoot "Blind Date" straight through because the set couldn't accommodate camera moves for a transition to the bedroom scene. Dreyfuss injured his back and his role in "Fear" was rewritten for another character, played by actor Jay Thomas. Thomas (The Santa Clause 2, Love & War) took the role with 24 hours' notice and learned his lines on the plane. Dreyfuss played his role in "Blind Date" and went in for back surgery the next day, Mazur said.
"It doesn't feel good"
PBS commissioned Cop Shop last year, well before a halftime glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple ring prompted the FCC's recent campaign against broadcast indecency.
The network and producers had agreed that the scripts were appropriate for the context and acceptable for broadcast after 10 p.m. For stations whose viewers object to adult language, PBS planned to offer an edited version.
But with the FCC crackdown, PBS changed its policy to feed only one edited version of any program, said Jacoba Atlas, co-chief programmer. Words that have prompted FCC fines are edited out.
For Cop Shop, this meant editing out "shit," "fuck" and "blow job."
"I'm not a great believer in dirty words or pushing the boundaries of sex and violence — in fact the opposite — but on the other hand I don't like being pushed around by bullies," Black told Current. The FCC rules are arbitrary and Orwellian, he added. "The giant offstage casting that shadow is very scary."
"This is an honorable production," said Atlas. "It is not prurient, it's not pandering, and it's designed for adults." Black and Dreyfuss "felt strongly that the language as written should be able to stand," she said.
PBS and its stations cannot afford the financial penalties that would come with a violation, Atlas said. "It's just not an option for us right now. We regret it as much as anyone else."
"For 35 years PBS did a really fine job of monitoring the language, and the stations were excellent stewards in making decisions in line with their own community standards," Atlas said. "I hope we can go back to that at some point because it doesn't feel good what we're doing now."
During a session at the Television Critics Press Tour early this month, Black and Dreyfuss denounced the FCC's strict regulation of naughty words in broadcasting.
"In a show about life in a whorehouse, separating out a line about blow jobs from lines about lubricants, pornography, drugs and deviance might seem odd or silly or more revealing about the censors than the censored," said Dreyfuss. "[B]ut it is inescapably censorship under guidelines imposed after the fact by those who are in temporary political power."
"The free marketplace should apply to ideas in speech and let the public tune in or tune off as they wish," Black said at the press tour. "And as for the word 'fuck,' I stand with Vice President Cheney, who recently used the word on the Senate floor, and who said sometimes you have to use it unapologetically because it makes you feel better afterwards."
Under other circumstances, Black said he would have removed his name from the project. But he didn't want to put his partners at KCET in a bind.
Instead Cop Shop producers and Mazur found a creative way to call attention to the edits. "We bleeped out the language that would have been allowed under previous guidelines," Mazur said. "Rather than an audio wipe, which is less intrusive, we chose to make a bleep instead."
"The bleeps will be audible so that people will see how foolish it is," Black said.
Black has another six scripts for Cop Shop and said "the smartest thing PBS could do" would be to greenlight more shows now, with all the publicity that came out of the press tour. Not only would PBS be showing some moxie by standing up to the FCC, it will attract a younger, lively and more diverse audience with Cop Shop.
Mazur said she would love to produce more episodes, "but it's not my call." The cost of original drama is a high hurdle for public TV. "If any drama has a shot, this format certainly should be up there, but it's always going to be a challenge until we come up with a funding solution," she added.
PBS has to gauge the reaction to Cop Shop's debut before it orders more teleplays, said Atlas.
The actors turned in tour de force performances, Atlas said. "The twist is you don't expect Richard Dreyfuss's character to do what he does in the end."
Web page posted June 22, 2004
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