THE BOOK ON BOCHCO
Producer rewrote TV’s rules and lived to tell his story
— For viewers who rejoice in TV’s artistic upsurge, one virtuoso perhaps more than anyone can be credited for elevating the medium from its bygone boob-tube status.
Steven Bochco flinches at the mention of his half-century writing and producing TV. Could it really be that long? But his list of credits documents his legacy. Consider: the breakthrough hits L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, the pioneering dramedy Doogie Howser, MD and the groundbreaking legal drama Murder One, which, instead of a self-contained case every week, delved into a complex single case throughout the season.
Yet for Bochco, Hill Street Blues came first. And it pretty much changed everything.
In his self-published memoir Truth Is a Total Defence: My Fifty Years in Television, Bochco takes the reader through his prolific career, which he began at 22 as a story editor on a popular NBC drama, The Name of the Game, and continues today with his latest creation, Mur- der in the First, in its third season on TNT.
In his book, Bochco recalls his great collaborations and his battles royale with actors, studio heads and network execs, along with his courageous flops (Bay City Blues! Cop Rock!) that made the triumphs even sweeter.
But along the way, he expounds on something even more important to him: How, at age 72, he’s still alive.
“Everything is fine,” he says, and looks it, at his office in Santa Monica, Calif. He says he’s approaching two years since a bone-marrow transplant to fight leukemia. “The thing I like most about the book was the juxtaposition of a career that had a pretty great arc to it with the fight for my life.
“Most of us live our lives being afraid of death, and when it was actually on my doorstep, I was terrified. The biggest lesson I learned very quickly was to embrace the uncertainty of my circumstances, and when I did, a lot of that fear fell away.”
His crash course in how there’s more to life than hit shows — it’s covered in the book, too.
Bochco grew up in Manhattan, N.Y., the son of a painter and a concert violinist.
On arriving in Los Angeles after college, he wrote for several series at Universal Studios. Then he got a big break: writing the screenplay for the 1972 sci-fi film Silent Running.
It wasn’t the paltry $1,500 fee that soured him on his fling with the big screen. It was the disrespect he confronted as the writer: “Once you’ve delivered the screenplay, they don’t want you around, because you’re gonna get in the way of someone else’s vision.”
Bochco resolved to stick with television, despite what, then, was its second-class standing. He knew the strict schedule of completing an episode a week demands “an inform- ing voice, a central creative driver.” In TV, the writer’s vision was likely to prevail.
Nowhere was the writer’s vision more revered than at MTM Enterprises, a creative hotbed where, after leaving Universal, he was invited to cook up a new kind of cop drama.
Teamed with Michael Kozoll, he was game for such an opportunity, with one proviso: He and Kozoll would have creative control over the script.
The pilot script they wrote, and the series that resulted, redefined TV drama.
Hill Street Blues had a sprawling universe of engaging yet flawed characters, a zippy pace and layers of overlapping dialogue, shot in a documentary style. But what really set the show apart were the multiple narratives that interlaced each episode with those that came before and after. With the rare exception of the few prime-time soaps, almost every series up to that time made each episode free-standing.
Premiering in January 1981, Hill Street Blues challenged the meagre audience that sampled it. Then, on a wave of critical acclaim, the series began to click with viewers, while scoring a history-making 27 Emmy nominations its first year.
During its seven-season run, it would win 26 Emmys and launch Bochco on a course that has led to dozens of series and earned him 10 Emmys and four Peabody awards.
“I had a 20-plus-year run where I was pretty much the captain of my own boat,” he says, “and I loved it. But TV is a business where the goalposts keep moving.”