Running with the (Dick) Wolves
To Be or Not to Be
There has been such an interest in the subject matter of real cold case crimes over the past few years. Both in real life news and in scripted TV drama.
Several months ago I was contacted by Dick Wolf, and then I met him on the set of one of his series in New York City. Soon after I was hired as a consultant for a new scripted series he was looking to create. This time the focus of the entire series was to be cold case related.
I worked with his team as they come up with a pilot script. It hasn't been green lighted as yet but I am still hopeful that they will continue to pitch (and hopefully sell) the project. I'm anxious to get to work on it, a great chance to use some of the things I have learned over the past couple of decades.
In looking at the final draft of the pilot script, I was surprised to find quite a bit of myself in the script, more than I was expecting to say the least! I had no idea how involved I was to be in this project. Up until that point, most of my input was through Q&A primarily via email. I didn't actually get to see the entire script until it was finished. I found the head writer listened much more closely to me that I realized.
If this project finally gets a green light, to me it will be like the American Dream. Imagine having a great job working on the fantasy side of your field of interest, and still getting to help bring real focus on the very real cause of the missing, murdered and unidentified.
Wolf has a very strict policy on the discussion of script content. Can you imagine having something like that and not being able to speak of it in any detail? I can say that it is very different from most of what is currently available on television.
For now the series fate is "to be or not to be". Either it will be pitched and green lit or it will end up as nothing more than NBC wallpaper -- either way a great experience for me. For now I live in limbo with the script, still spinning from the amazing opportunity. Every day hoping that fate will smile and the series will find a home somewhere in the TV world.
Published by Todd Matthews
Todd's calling to be a voice for missing and unidentified persons began when he solved the identity of the "Tent Girl" case, Barbara Hackman-Taylor, after a ten-year journey that ended in 1998. View profile
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2 Comments
Post a Comment'Lost and Found' picked up --Project resurrected as cast-contingent pilot: It is a project that has lived up to its name: "Lost and Found."
A year and a half ago, Chris Levinson penned the one-hour script for NBC. The network's old regime passed on it, and the project was lost in the shuffle until it recently was resurrected and ordered as a cast-contingent pilot. "There are exposed pipes, it's grimy and dingy and can't be further from the glossy 'CSI' shows," Levinson said. She originally was approached with the idea for a crime drama about cases involving unidentified victims by Wolf Films' Nena Rodrigue.Levinson, at the time a co-exec producer on Wolf's "Law & Order," said she was not interested in developing a procedural for a marketplace saturated by the genre. But then she found a way to crack the idea by adding a twisted sense of humor and making the show an homage to the 1980s crime series that influenced her as a kid and to her dad, TV writer-producer Richard Levinson
Guess what???
NBC Greenlights Dick Wolf Pilot
http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/nbc-greenlights-dick-wolf-pilot