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Eliza Dushku in Joss Whedon’s Angel
Like any two people whose privilege it is to spend their days and nights writing network television shows, Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain were glad to be going back to work after the 14-week writers’ strike ended last month.
But the life of a TV writer has its occasional twists, not unlike a one-hour drama series. And one was awaiting Craft and Fain on the day they planned to return to “Women’s Murder Club,” the show they had created for ABC.
“Apparently during the strike,” Craft said, “James Patterson and ABC came to a different understanding of what the show was supposed to be about.”
Patterson, whose best-selling crime novels Craft and Fain had adapted, wanted a change in who was running the show. But that was OK, because someone was waiting with an offer for the writing and producing partners.
“Joss e- mailed and said `I’m really sorry - and is it too soon to ask you to work on “Dollhouse”?’” Fain said.
Joss, as I need not explain to fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Firefly,” is Joss Whedon, beloved creator of those two shows and the mind behind television’s most anticipated new series. “Dollhouse” has a seven-episode order from Fox, will star Eliza Dushku, who used to be on “Buffy,” and will go into production in about six weeks.
“It was all very quick,” Fain said. “Monday we got fired, on Tuesday Twentieth offered us this other thing” - a different show from “Dollhouse” also being developed by the TV division of Fox, the pair’s actual employer - “and then Joss e- mailed on Wednesday.”
Craft added, “That was literally as we got home from cleaning out our offices. It cushioned the blow.”
Craft and Fain have spent the last decade writing scripts and novels together. Their previous series were “The Shield” and the “Buffy” spin-off “Angel,” also created by Whedon.
“Women’s Murder Club” features four women - a cop, a journalist, a coroner and a prosecutor - who have friendships that go beyond their mutual professional interest in bringing bad men to justice. The show, which stars Angie Harmon and Paula Newsome, struggled for ratings last fall until the writers’ strike knocked it off the air.
I thought Fain and Craft were a good match for Patterson’s work. Like the fictional foursome, they were friends going back to high school and while at “The Shield” were seasoned in a specific kind of TV genre that emphasizes personality as well as procedure.
I ask them what exactly were the creative differences that led to this parting of the ways. They are sitting in Fain’s car outside Whedon’s office discussing how best to answer my question. They have me on speakerphone, and as I listen to them hash it out off the record, I can tell they must have a dozen conversations like this every day, as business partners and as friends.
Their answer also confirms for me that they are determined to be just a little more honest than the usual Hollywood type, as seen in the brutal dialogues of “The Shield” or the emotional exchanges of “Murder Club.”
They agree to say that Patterson wanted the show to be, in Fain’s words, “more operatic,” to which Craft added, “And high concept. He made that clear throughout. We wanted it to be more about the friendship between the women.”
“We loved the show and don’t regret the way we did it,“Fain said.
“And we know a lot of people on the show who we care a lot about,” Craft said. “We wish them all the best and want their show to go on and be a success,” including new showrunner Robert Nathan, who the women agree is a great guy.
So, on to “Dollhouse.” From what I gather reading the trades, it’s one part lone-rebel character drama, one part “Fantasy Island.” The “dollhouse” is a place where people can live out their fantasies - with the proviso that their memories are wiped clean afterward. Except that Dushku’s character starts to remember her dollhouse experiences ... and that’s about as much as I could make of it.
If the women know more than that, they aren’t telling.
“`Dollhouse’ is going to be an awesome show,” Craft said, “but it’s a hard show to sum up in one sentence.”
“It will be intelligent and intricate and have amazing characters,” Fain said. “It’s a show about what it means to be human.”
“How screwed up we are and how divine we are ...” Craft said.
“And everything in between,” added her partner in crime. “It’s really great, because as a writer you can create a whole new world with every episode.”
