Gregory Hoblit, producer/director of what may be the fall`s most talked about, most argued about new prime-time series, walks in on a private screening of the series in question, ”Cop/Rock.”
”It isn`t `The Brady Bunch,”` he says, smiling.
No, it isn`t.
And Steven Bochco, who brought ”Hill Street Blues,” ”L.A. Law,”
”Hooperman” and ”Doogie Howser, M.D.” to the small screen, admits that his latest creation is making him nervous.
”Not about whether the show is good or not-because it`s wonderful,”
says Bochco, the influential, most highly paid producer in the business.
”And I can`t say I knew that about other things I`ve done. But some people will have a hard time with it. I think it`s the music that screws them up. They don`t quite know what to make of it.”
The music, a compilation of rock, gospel, rap, blues and ballads, written for the pilot episode by Randy Newman, is designed not as textural window dressing, as in ”Miami Vice,” but as a storytelling device to move the plot forward. These cops sing. And the people around them-the perps, the politicians and the loved ones-chime in.
”All we`re really doing now is adding another kind of information and asking an audience to suspend their disbelief in a different way than they have in the past,” says Bochco, who knows full well he`s asking a lot.
But this is a man making a habit of challenging viewers` expectations about television entertainment.
In the casually elegant offices of Steven Bochco Productions at Twentieth Century Fox in Los Angeles, the proprietor, ravenously chewing a bagel, is discussing his latest prime-time gamble and the shows that propelled him into television-mogul orbit: an unprecedented 10-series, 10-year, $50 million development deal with ABC-TV.
Dressed in sneakers, jeans and T-shirt, Bochco doesn`t come close to playing the stereotypical Hollywood mogul. For a giant in the industry, he has a surprising gift of making you feel instantly at ease, often turning the tables to ask questions.
You almost can feel his mind working, probing, as if engaged in nonstop, full-tilt character analysis.
Ultimately, you discover, it`s the complicated, messy, all-too-human stuff beneath the surface that captures his multimillion-dollar imagination.
”I`m an old New York City boy. I grew up on the West Side, in a tough neighborhood, West 83rd Street. I got the ass kicked out of me, I was chased. It was a scary place, growing up. So I grew up with an indelible sense of the street, and cops and gangs. It`s always been something that fascinated me. You tend to write about the stuff that frightens you. It`s a way of coping with your fears.”
This may be why ”Cop/Rock,” turning its back on the almost flawless veneer of ”L.A. Law” and the upper-middle-class sensibilities of ”Doogie Howser, M.D.,” is a return to the mean streets-in this case, Los Angeles-with the unexpected element of music.
”I have to assume that I`m going to have to overcome an initial resistance to change,” says Bochco.
”There`s still a significant percentage of the viewing audience that goes to the tube the way they always went to the tube, just to kind of chill out. It`s like a drug, a visual medicine chest.”
To which Bochco has contributed such home remedies as ”L.A. Law.”
”`L.A. Law` is the biggest hit I`ve ever been involved with. It`s an across-the-board, accessible show. Now, it`s controversial and it pushes buttons, but it doesn`t get in your face the way this thing does. This thing gets in your face.”
Where did he come up with the ”Cop/Rock” idea?
”It`s been cooking in my pot for a long time. On the third season of
`Hill Street` (1983), someone suggested taking the show to Broadway, and I thought it was a great idea.” Bochco`s late father, a classical violinist, played in pit orchestras on Broadway. ”And, for an awful lot of practical reasons, it couldn`t be done. But the idea of a musical cop show stuck in my head, and I thought, well, if you can`t go to Broadway, what would prevent someone from bringing the form to television?”
Even with that Hollywood shorthand-”a musical `Hill Street Blues”`-”
Cop/Rock” was far from an easy sell.
”I mentioned the idea to a few people,” he says, grinning, ”and they looked at me like, well, a dog cocking its head and trying to understand.”
”I think at first I looked at Steven like this,” says Hoblit, making a what-are-you-nuts? face. But Hoblit, whose friendship, working relationship and Emmy-award-winning track record with Bochco go back more than a decade, knew he was serious:
”After I lived with the idea for a couple of days, after I drove around and thought about how we could make it work, I bought into it completely. I knew that if the songs worked, the show would work.”
The two are no strangers to resistance. It is easy now to forget that
”Hill Street,” with initial ratings in the Nielsen cellar, was saved only because NBC-TV had no replacement and the show had won a small wagonload of Emmys.
”When `Hill Street` first came on the air, there was a small core audience that was just knocked out by it from the jump,” Bochco says. ”And they tracked us wherever we went, which was not an easy task because we were put on five different nights, at different times. But the vast majority of people didn`t get it: It was too dark, there were too many people, too many conversations going on, the stories didn`t resolve, the camera was jumping around. But little by little they became accustomed to seeing something in a different way.”
This is precisely what Bochco is hoping for this time out. On the tangled ”Cop/Rock” sound stage, a short walk from the production offices, Hoblit has been at it, directing the second episode and a cast and crew that seem to number in the hundreds, since 7 a.m.
Take one step inside the padded doors and you`d think you were in a dingy, airless, cramped, almost-authentic squad room. Take two steps and the quiet, almost ferocious intensity of the work in progress blows over you like a Santa Ana.
”I don`t think of it so much as television as making a one-hour movie,” says Hoblit, waiting for a setup.
”We`re trying to make the best one-hour movies we can make. This isn`t like making `Hill Street,` where there was an innocence attached to what we were doing. We`re not kids doing a play out in the back yard anymore. There`s an expectation now and certain pressures attached.”
To help relieve that pressure, Hoblit`s relaxed, blue-jeans-and-bomber-jack et approach works like a tonic. As the room is hushed for the next take, Hoblit, instead of calling out his usual soft-spoken ”Action!” says, ”And hike!”
When no one moves, Hoblit quickly says, ”Action!” Then, flabbergasted but laughing, he turns to his script supervisor: ”I don`t believe it-no jocks!”
Maybe not. Just actors so pumped up about the series they seem to be operating on a free-flowing adrenaline rush.
”You can feel it from the crew,” says Larry Joshua, who plays the police captain.
”Everybody`s really excited about what`s going on here. And when we do the musical numbers, forget it: It`s sensational. We`re doing a play, with music, on television.”
The resident playwright and co-creator, lawyer-turned-screenwriter William Finkelstein, is clearly having trouble finding time to settle in. Finkelstein is also the Emmy-award-winning former supervising producer/writer of ”L.A. Law.”
Surrounded by boxes, papers and two life-sized cardboard cutouts of TV`s sleaziest attorney, Arnie Becker, Finkelstein has no time to dwell on glories. Making seamless transitions between words and music is now a daily challenge. ”If it`s done right, the music will not be a distraction,” he says.
”The music will not be something that has an audience saying, `I`m really swept up with this drama; I just wish they weren`t singing.`
”In `Cop/Rock,` the music is narrative. It serves more the function that music serves in opera: to advance the story. So you don`t go away from the story to go into a song. You don`t stop and burst into song. You don`t stop, period. The song, if it`s working right, is internal to the piece.
”Now, if you`re asking me, `Is this pony gonna run? Are we going to get the requisite millions of viewers?`, I don`t know the answer to that, and I don`t think there`s a human being who does. I think it`s a waste of time to indulge in doping out whether it`s going to be a hit or not. I only look at this in terms of, `Is this something we can be proud of?` The answer is yes.” Spend time with Finkelstein and you realize you`re in the presence of a mesmerizing, Old-World storyteller: a man who, even while explaining the mundane details of putting a script together, can bring the characters on the pages immediately and vividly to life.
As he describes his approach to creating the gritty, harsh, seemingly relentless world of ”Cop/Rock” and as you watch Bochco and Hoblit huddling quietly on the set, you begin to understand why ABC-TV would gamble an estimated $2 million an episode, twice the normal cost, on this team.
”Look, there are three factors,” Bochco says.
”Part of it is simply ABC`s commitment to broadening the horizon, which is an absolutely terrific commitment to make. Part of it is that they genuinely responded to the material. And part of it is me. If I go to you and say, `I want to make this-and-such show,` you can count on the fact that I will bring you a credible piece of business.”
”All I know,” says Hoblit, ”is I feel very good about the quality of the piece. It looks, smells and feels good.”
What does Bochco want the audience to think about ”Cop/Rock?”
”I don`t want `em to think about it. That`s the thing about music: It becomes a sort of waterslide that just shoots you-whoosh-into the wet stuff. Don`t think about the show-feel the show.”
Does Bochco feel courageous doing a show like this?
”No. I think when a network gives you a 10-series commitment, the risk is not doing things like this. That`s the risk.”
