Crossing the Divide

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!