Volume 1, Issue 2 – December 1998
Stephen J. Cannell
How to Succeed in Show Business by Really, Really Trying
When Stephen J. Cannell formed his independent production company in 1979, he reinvented the television game by creating the only studio in Hollywood run “by a writer for writers.” But to paraphrase the old ad, almost no one believed it when this dyslexic, former high school football player first sat down to type.
No one imagined over 1,500 television scripts; over 35 Cannell-produced shows ranging from The A-Team to Profit, The Rockford Files to Renegade, Silk Stalkings to Wiseguy; and a growing number of bestselling novels would result. Least of all the writer himself. Recently, Cannell reminisced with Crescent Blues about how he started on the road that would take him from “stupidest guy in the class” to studio head and TV star.
Crescent Blues: How did you get from an advertising major at the University of Oregon to writing and producing your own television shows?
Stephen J. Cannell: To begin with, I had a great writing instructor in college. I always credit him. His name is Ralph Salisbury. Ralph turned on all the lights for me.
I’m a fairly dyslexic person. I flunked three grades before I graduated high school. So I had a lot of trouble with school. I graduated from the University of Oregon with a very mediocre 2.2. grade point average for four years.
For me, spelling was always a major problem. Ralph was the first instructor I ever had who gave me permission to spell any way I wanted. Ralph was the first person who said: “I don’t care whether you use sentence fragments; those are tools of writers. This isn’t an English class; it’s a creative writing class.” Without him I wouldn’t be sitting here today, because he really got me excited.
Ralph encouraged me to keep up with my writing after I left college. But I was getting married, and my dad had a fairly large [interior design] business that I was going to take over when I got old enough — and wise enough. So I went to work for my dad, and he had me doing all different kinds of things: driving trucks, working in different departments of his company.
But I had a friend from college, Rick Dumm, who wanted to be a writer. He sent me a script, and I looked at it and thought: “God, this guy sat down and wrote a whole script, and I haven’t written anything since I left college.”
Rick was coming to Los Angeles. He wanted to be a screenwriter.
Did you live in Los Angeles then?
I lived in L.A. I was L.A.-based. I was raised there. I was born there. It’s my hometown.
Rick said, “Can we get together and work together?” I said, yeah. Misery loves company.
I started to write with him, and we formed a writing team. We met three times a week, sometimes even more than that. We would get together at 6 o’clock. Our wives would play gin rummy, and he and I would go into another room and write together.
He had a job, and I had a job — a regular job. We did that for about four years. And we couldn’t get an agent. We couldn’t get anyone to read what we wrote. We still had our regular jobs, but we were punching out a lot of stuff together.
Finally, we got an agent. Her name was Paula Connell. She wasn’t a very powerful agent, in the sense of being Michael Ovitz or anything like that. She was really sweet, and she wore big funny hats. She was kind of a Hedda Hopper character. She would go to producers’ offices with brownies and stuff.
Paula really believed in us. She got us our first assignment, which was an episode of It Takes a Thief at Universal. This was five or six years later.
Rick and I were writing that script. We had really different writing styles, which became pretty evident as we developed as writers.
We were really close friends — still are — but we started to fight over the material. Because it was so important to me that it be the way I wanted it, I started to hear myself being a real jerk.
I get along with people really well, but I was being cruel and mean and criticizing Rick’s stuff in very unflattering ways. I would come from our meetings and go: “What is this? I’m not like this. This isn’t me. I don’t treat people this way. This guy’s my friend.”
But I realized there was this desperate need inside me to have my own work and not to share it with anybody. And I couldn’t control it. That desire just overpowered me.
So I took Rick to lunch one day after we did the It Takes a Thief script and said: “Look, Rick, I can’t go on like this. Every time we have a meeting and I tell you it’s got to be my way or the highway, I feel like a jerk going home. I’d rather have you as a friend. I don’t think we will be friends in five years if we keep writing together, and it’s too important to have you as a friend. I want to work alone.”
Rick didn’t want to do it at first, but he accepted it, finally.
I wrote for about two years on my own without much success. I thought after that episode of It Takes a Thief the shows would be lined up. Didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even shoot the episode. They threw it out. They changed producers, and new producers always throw out the old producers’ stuff.
Like lions eating the young of their predecessors.
Exactly. After two more years, I started to sell stories to Mission Impossible. They wouldn’t let me write the scripts, ’cause I was too young.
Now young writers are sought after in television. But back then, it was all the old radio guys who were in control — all 50-plus writers.
And here I was, 24-25 years old. I’d walk into an office, and people would look at me. “This guy’s a college kid. What’s he doing here?” They’d never trust me to write a script. They bought the stories from me, but they wouldn’t let me write the scripts.
I was constantly hitting on anybody I knew that was a producer. Rick, my ex-writing partner, was working in the mailroom at Universal. So he could get me on the lot. I couldn’t even get on the lot at Universal, which was the big television shop at the time.
I’d walk around and meet people. I’d meet secretaries. I was the Willie Loman of Universal. But I was also pretty good about not abusing my friendships. I always felt I don’t want people to think they’re my friends just because they can help me. I would often be friends with a secretary, and I’d never ask her to submit anything.
Sometimes a secretary would say, “Hey listen, Herm’s looking for a script. Why don’t you give me one of yours?”
I’d go: “OK…”
One day, I got a call. I’d sold two episodes of Ironsides. Those were my first “written by” credits. One of them was rewritten by another writer, because Ray(mond) Burr didn’t like it when my draft came to the set. So they brought in another writer to rewrite it. The second one I did all on my own.
So I had two writing credits, and this secretary friend of mine said that they had thrown out the last Adam-12 of the season. They didn’t have a script to shoot, and the episode was prepping on Tuesday. (This was Thursday.) She said Herm Saunders, the producer, who I also knew, had wondered if I might be interested.
I said, “I’m interested!”
You delivered the script in two days?
I wrote it in two days. They needed it on Monday. I got my story approved on Friday night, started it on Saturday, and handed in at 9 a.m., Monday.
What are we talking about in terms of page count?
Thirty-five pages. I knew by then — because I was so disciplined after all those years working with Rick and by myself — I knew if they wanted the script in two days, nothing to it. I knew I could write 15 pages a day, day in, day out. I knew I could do it.
So when Herm said, “Don’t take this assignment if you can’t deliver,” I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.” As it turned out, Herm had shot-gunned five assignments, and I was the only guy who delivered. I think I was the last one to start too.
They liked that script so much, they made me head writer. So I went from the bottom of the pile to the top in one script.
An overnight success that you had been preparing for how many years?
Five or six years. I was the lowest paid writer on the lot at Universal. I was getting $600 a week, which back then seemed like more money than… Because I had been making $6,000 a year, working for my father, which was way too little. My dad was a tough guy with a buck, because he had come through the Depression. Now I was making $600 a week. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I was making that kind of money. And I was the lowest paid guy on the lot.
The two youngest writers at Universal were me and Steve Bochco. So we instantly became best friends. We went to lunch together and hung together.
[Bochco] was working on Columbo, which was one of the most sought after shows on the lot. I was working on Adam-12, which was thought of as an also-ran, creatively. Although I thought it was a great show. I really enjoyed working on it.
It was all about structure.
It had an interesting structure. We had one spine story that would run through the half-hour. Then we’d have a lot of different stories — helping the old lady get the cat out of the tree; the two guys that are holding up the 7-11™, and we roll in on it while it’s going down — and a story that played between the two principals. It was a fun show to write, and it taught me a lot about writing. I still use what I learned on Adam-12.
The problem is, you hit a character on page 15, and you’d be off that character on page 19, and that character had to be alive. You had three pages to make that character happen.
I learned that it was very important that a character have a yesterday and have a tomorrow, and that the character’s attitude be reflective of both. For example, if a woman was reporting the crime, I would have her late to traffic court. That ticket happened yesterday. First, she’d try to get the cops to fix the ticket. She’d tell them what she wanted to do. “But look, I’ve got to get to traffic court….” She had a life she was living.
Because of this device, in three pages I could create a fully rounded, fairly complete character. I still use that technique. I discovered it on Adam-12, because I would write scenes, and they would feel flat to me. Information, just information. Now, all of a sudden, that woman reporting a crime became a character — and a funny character, because she had something she was doing in her life, and reporting the crime was an inconvenience.
I wrote so much during the Adam-12 years. I was there two years, and I must have written 35 of those episodes.
The Writers Guild contract at that time made it possible to pay you a flat rate. [Universal was] paying me a flat weekly rate. So I made $50,000 in pay scale, but I wrote $150,000 worth of scripts. They were way ahead with me, compared to if they’d gone to freelancers.
I thought, it’s bound to pay off. After that, I got a call from Sid Scheinberg, who was the head of Universal Television. He said, “I want you to write a pilot for me.” (It was actually for Jack Webb.) I got my first pilot, because I was so productive, the studio felt they had to pay me back. And they did.
So I went from being a writer that nobody even knew on the lot, but when they did the financial review at the end of the year — “There’s got to be a mistake here!” [Laughs.]
Do you think that being dyslexic helped you develop dialogue?
I don’t know that it did. I think what being dyslexic has helped me to do is to work very hard.
I was always the stupidest kid in my class. I was a football player, a halfback. I got my point of view, my sense of self-worth from football. I could read about myself in the Los Angeles paper. When I went to school, I was a big deal. I can’t spell, and I can’t pass math, and I’m doing chemistry for the third time, but I made six touchdowns on Friday. There was something about that that kept me from becoming a defeated personality.
Then I went to Adam-12, and actors would come to me and say, “God, your material is so good.” Then I would hear the word “brilliant,” and “genius” was actually linked in one sentence with my name. Never happened before.
I’m not a genius, and I’m not brilliant. I work really hard, but whew, it felt good.
Deep in my subconscious, I thought I was stupid. Even though I’d managed to walk past it and threw the cat in the corner and didn’t look at it, it was there. I knew I was stupid. I thought that from my academic experience.
The reason I wrote so many scripts when I was on Adam-12 is that when I would write one, they would say, “This is great.” Yeah! Yeah! OK! And I would do another one.
So I set up this work ethic for myself — and I still have it — where I can write a novel in 50 days. It isn’t that it’s going to be the exact book that ends up being published, because I rewrite it and rewrite it.
But you produce a 400-page draft in 30 days. That’s an achievement in itself, as anyone who’s ever written anything — fiction or non-fiction — can tell you.
Stephen J. Cannell: But I’m prepared to fail too. And I don’t believe that everything I write is going to be brilliant.
A lot of writers put that on themselves. They have to be brilliant. “After all, universities are going to study this stuff long after I’m dead, so it’s got to be perfect.” And of course, it’s not perfect. We’re all works in progress, and we all have huge holes in our personalities that we’re working on. So we get caught between the idea of being brilliant and writing.
That’s what causes writers’ block. “This isn’t brilliant, so I can’t write it.” That’s what causes procrastinating and delaying and putting off and all that.
Well, if you’ve spent your whole life being the stupidest kid in the class, brilliant isn’t… [Shrugs.] I just sit down and write to please myself. I don’t have any weight on my shoulders at all. I’m just going.
Then I read it. I’m a very stern critic, because I hold myself up against the writers I admire. So if I read my stuff, and I go: This isn’t as good as Michael Collins’s stuff; this isn’t as good as — pick the writer that you like. I’ve got to rework it. I’ve got to make it better.
I don’t marry my stuff. I don’t believe I do. I’m just a guy who tries really hard.
I have my own scale of one to 10 for my work, because I figure God gave me a certain equipment, and that’s what I’ve got. I own that equipment. It isn’t going to come and go. I don’t believe in burn-out. I suppose Alzheimer’s could take it away. But mostly, I believe what’s in your head is yours.
There will be times when you’ve got to write a story you aren’t connected to, or the story has an emotional or plot dishonesty to it. You’re going to have trouble writing that story. And that’s going to make you say: “I’ve lost it. I’m creatively burned out.” No. All that’s saying is that there’s something about the story that’s fighting you. That’s all. You own your equipment.
So when I work, I just say: “On my scale of one to 10, what was today’s work?” If it’s a seven or eight, OK. Every now and then I get a nine. [Lifts hand and makes a sound like a rocket blasting off a launch pad.]
If it’s a six or a five or a three, and I read it the next morning and go, “What was I thinking?” I try to fix it, try to get it up to a six or seven. I won’t accept anything less than a seven, and I want nines.
Then I’ll read somebody else’s work, and I’ll go: “Well, this guy or gal just writes better than me. That’s all.” And I’ve got something to shoot at now, something to aim for.
If I think I’m the best writer I know, and I think I’m doing it right, I’m never going to grow. But if I always view myself as somebody that has some talent who is working really hard to make that talent grow, then I’m going to keep growing and somewhere down the line I will get as far up that tree as I can possibly get.
And I don’t expect anybody to study this stuff in universities. If that happens, I’ll be laughing.
Jean Marie Ward