Let's Get Rich and Famous

Wow, it's odd, looking back at e-mail exchanges Amy and I had so long ago. Memory can really play tricks, and these days, when people ask me how we came to the idea of writing a tv pilot script, I doubt I would have cited "re-making Northern Exposure" as how it all got started. We've moved so far beyond that now.

For starters, NOBODY should be re-making "Northern Exposure." It's a beautiful series, and should be allowed to stand precisely as it is. The only thing anybody should be doing is paying homage to that remarkable piece of work by trying to come up with something else that shares its sensibilities and holds NE as the watermark to which all other series should strive in quality and originality.

So, our show is called "Crossing the Divide." I have to give complete credit to Amy for that title, which I think is truly inspired. And the title came late in the process. We'd already decided the locale and theme of our proposed series idea, and who all of the regular characters would be even before the brilliant title came into play.

Since I've already admitted that I didn't remember that the whole thing began as nothing more than a playful e-mail discussion back and forth over how we'd re-make NE, I can't say for sure when we abandoned that foolhardy notion and decided to come up with our own original concept. But eventually we did.

And because we thought we should write what we know, we decided to set the series in Colorado. I'm a native of the state, and Amy has lived here for a good long time, certainly long enough to become familiar with the place and all its quirks.

First order of business? We contemplated how the rest of the world views Colorado. Most people tend to think "mountains" when they think "Colorado." Fair enough. Though, in truth, about 1/3 of the state is composed of flatlands. Denver itself is nicknamed "The Queen City of the Plains" for obvious reasons. That's where it sits. But okay... We'll set our story in the mountains.

What else? Well, if you asked most people what towns come to mind when they hear the name "Colorado," the most obvious answers are Denver, perhaps Colorado Springs, and certainly Boulder, Aspen and Vail.

Boulder, like Denver, sits on the plains. It's a great little college town, eclectic and forward-thinking. It's also something of a haven for people who never quite grew up. Or people who never quite wanted to leave the 1960s behind.

Colorado Springs is the polar opposite of Boulder. A largely conservative population base. Something of a stronghold of fundamental religious viewpoints and the whole Family First outlook. There are probably great television programs just waiting to be set in either Boulder or The Springs. Just not the series Amy and I wanted to write.

So...Aspen and Vail. Both reside far up into the Rocky Mountains. Similar, but different. Aspen is an old town, originally a mining community. Vail is a young town, something that was, for the most part, built to be a tourist destination. Nothing in Vail is very old.

The communities are similar in that they are havens for the uber-rich, people who can afford to have summer or winter homes. Sometimes both. Lots of famous people. The irony, particularly with Aspen, is that many of the people who were born there, grew up there, can no longer afford to live there. In both Vail and Aspen, a sizable percentage of the people who wait on tables, check guests into their luxury suites, perform housekeeping functions, work in the gift shops and convenience stores and other service trades--these people live in outlying communities and frequently commute as far as fifty miles one way because they don't make enough money to live any closer than that.

Aspen and Vail are "party communities." As the ratio of the wealthy and famous to "normal folk" becomes dispropotionately larger, these places become less representative of Colorado and far more representative of the Hollywood lifestyle. There are a LOT of little mountain communities in our state where celebrities aren't being arrested for domestic violence or public drunkenness. No, in those places, it's the COMMON MAN doing those things.

And that's what Amy and I wanted to have represented in our television series. Our sex, violence and nudity were going to be represented by the everyday people.

And so, "Crossing the Divide" began to take shape...

Now that Scott has spoken for me, it's my turn to return the favor. Here's what happened:

Scott said, "Wouldn't it be fun if we wrote a sequal to 'Northern Exposure'?" Well, sure - that sounded like a blast. So we began to play with that idea. We discussed which characters would still be around, which ones would be gone, and who we would have to create to fill any gaps.

Hang on... I have our original emails around here some place... did we mention that we did this all via email? We may share the same brain, but we rarely share the same breathing space.

Aug. 14, 2006
Scott to Amy
Wouldn't it be a lovely world if we were re-making "Northern Exposure," and Alan Tudyk and Christopher Sieber were two of the regulars? Would you prefer to direct, or should I cast you as one of the leads?

(I don't really need to explain the Alan Tudyk and Christopher Sieber references, right?)

Aug. 14, 2006
Amy to Scott
Wow – what a beautiful fantasy! Maybe I can be a regular who gets to direct once in a while? What made you think of this? Slow day at the office??? Could John Corbett make a guest appearance? What would my role be? Would it be a remake or a spin-off/next chapter? What about you?

Scott's next email is pretty long, so here's a relevant excerpt:

Aug. 14, 2006
Scott to Amy
Of course, any sort of tampering with a masterpiece like "Northern Exposure" is just begging for painfully bad comparisons, but if done carefully, I think it could be all right. My first impulse was to say we'd re-cast some of the well-known roles with new actors, but as much as I adore Christopher and as much as you adore Alan, I don't think they could exactly fill the shoes of Rob Morrow or John Corbett (who, by the way, says he has given up acting and will only concentrate on his music from now on...). So I think the only way to go is to make it a kind of "NE: Next Generation," without calling it anything so lame.

The next part of Scott's email is where the seed of "Crossing the Divide" was planted. It's actually kind of cool to see it in writing after all these years later. However, I'm going to save it for another time!

"Now, if I was going to create a television show..."

I think that's how it first got started. My friend Amy and I are television geeks to the max. I can't speak for Amy or what went so horribly wrong in her upbringing, but for me, it was the sad notion that whatever happened on that little box in the living room was so much more interesting--and comforting--than anything that was happening in real life.

Oh, and by the way, I lied in the previous paragraph. I can, and frequently do, speak for Amy. Ask her, if you don't believe me. We share the same brain.

And we have a history together. We met when we were both cast in a play on a college campus in Denver. Which is kinda strange, because neither of us were students there. But that's a story for another blog. Not this one. We learned that we shared a mutual affection for all things Disney (we both worked at Disneyland at some point during our misspent youths). We both loved the old television series "Northern Exposure." And we are both supremely egotistical enough to believe that we could write a television show that would be better than ninety-five percent of what's beaming through the airwaves and humming through cable lines these days.

So that's what we did...