by Warren Littlefield, Former NBC President of Entertainment
I finally found a friend working at 20th Century Fox Television (who shall remain nameless) who agreed to supply me with a copy of the Cop Rock pilot. “Midnight,” he told me. “Your mailbox.” So I waited up, checked my mailbox at midnight, and discovered an envelope inside containing a VHS tape. I popped it in and started watching.
The opening of the show was riveting, a police raid on a house in L.A. to a pounding, urban beat. It was gritty and real, pure Bochco dynamism. Shit! ABC was going to have a hit drama. But then came the singing. First from a cop. Then from Barbara Bosson, playing a judge. There was a bit of dancing as well, and it was all very odd and exotic, but not in a good way. This couldn’t possibly work, could it? Our answer would be to put Hunter up against it.
Dick Wolf: I had a mole at ABC. Mike Post. He told me he was doing a song an act for Bochco’s Cop Rock. Four songs a week. So I said if the show ran for five years, he’d write 440 original songs.
Mike said, “Yeah.”
I said, “Gee, that’s more than Adolph Green. Nobody can do that.”
What were those people smoking and drinking and snorting? Four hundred and forty songs?
Warren: The show didn’t work dramatically. Better still for us, it didn’t work with viewers. It went on the air in September 1990 and was off the air in December. Law & Order, thankfully, was only just getting started.
Brian Pike: In Law & Order, the audience never knew anything before the characters did. You never went home with the characters, and there was this very daring thing at the half hour—a handoff from the cops to the lawyers. I remember it was better than our own shows.
I wanted to find out how CBS had made this mistake. It turned out the guy running CBS thought L&O was a cold, dark show, and he thought all of the rules they’d broken were insulting.
Dick Wolf: Most dramas make my skin itch because they give you personal stuff with a soup ladle. When you go into work and look around your office, how many of your colleagues’ apartments have you been in? Ours is a workplace show. All we’re interested in is what happens in the eight or ten hours when the characters are actually at work.
There’s also no time. That’s why there are no establishing shots, no driving shots, no people walking into buildings. Each half of the show is the equivalent to a normal hour cop show or legal show. You’re essentially doing an hour’s worth of content in half the time.
I grew up on N.Y.P.D., the original, and Naked City. Naked City is much more the prototype for Law & Order than anything else on TV. The best pictures about conflict are the ones that almost look like news. Like The Battle of Algiers.
Warren: NBC’s acquisition of Law & Order, which ran for twenty years, was the epitome of my approach to programming at the network. Dick Wolf came to us with his creative vision realized, and we embraced it.
Oddly—maybe inevitably—Dick Wolf’s next pitch to NBC was the antithesis of everything I believed in as a development executive and a programmer. The show was called Nasty Boys, and the pitch was pure crack for Brandon Tartikoff.
Dick Wolf: I gave everybody in the room a manila folder with an eight-by-ten picture of a unit of the Las Vegas PD called the Nasty Boys. They wore black ninja outfits and masks and carried heavy weapons.
Brian Pike: It was ninja cops. All you could see was their eyes. A SWAT team in Nevada.
Dick Wolf: It said “Nasty Boys” in graffiti over their heads, and underneath them it said, “We make house calls.”
I said, “Okay, open the folder.”
Brandon looked at it and said, “Sold.”
It was the only nonverbal network pitch I’ve ever given.
Brian Pike: Everybody was seduced by the image. We didn’t know who the characters were, what the show was. Nothing. But Brandon couldn’t get it on the air fast enough.
Dick Wolf: Unfortunately, the show was too expensive. We shot the first six episodes in Las Vegas, and it was damned exciting television. We moved the show to L.A., and it just wasn’t Las Vegas. It didn’t have the same octane.
In one show, we had a big gunfight on the strip, and the next week they were out in the valley. People said, “No, no. That’s not what I saw last week.”
Warren: Nasty Boys, starring Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Franz, first aired in February 1990 and lasted half a season.
By the end of the third season of Law & Order, it had become apparent to me, while looking at the performance data with Preston Beckman, that for all the show’s strengths, it was being held back in the ratings by the fact that there were no female leads in the show. Women just didn’t watch L&O, and I was determined to do something about that.
I called Dick Wolf and asked him to come see me. It was just the two of us in my office. I told him I was sorry but I was canceling his show at the end of the season. That certainly got Dick’s attention. I didn’t go into his restaurant and tell him how to cook. I didn’t tell him whom to keep or whom to get rid of. I just told him we needed more women as series regulars on camera and more stories that featured women in critical roles.
Dick Wolf: Warren gave me a cancellation notice a year early. He said, “Dick, it’s a really good show. Everybody likes it, but there are no women watching. You have to put women in the show.”
That led to the worst phone call I’ve ever had to make, to Dann Florek. He was the only sane one in the front half of the cast until Jerry Orbach came in. I told him he’d done an incredible job, always showed up on time, never bumped into the furniture, was always prepared, knew his lines—you’re fired.
It was terrible, but it changed the show. Epatha Merkerson is still there. It worked out great. The pilot was written twenty-two years ago, and the reality was that there weren’t that many women cops at the time, and certainly not many women prosecutors. Now it’s about fifty-fifty, but not then.
Warren: In 1998, when Dick came in to pitch me a show called Sex Crimes, my response was “Interesting idea, but we’ll never be able to get advertisers on board.” I advised Dick to spin the show out of the Law & Order brand. “Just go write it, Dick, and sometime in the next six months business affairs will figure out how to make a deal.” Thus began the now commonplace network practice of procedural spin-offs (CSI, NCIS). The Emmy Award–winning Law & Order: Special Victims Unit just completed its twelfth season.
Brian Pike: I used to say I want to work at a network someday because I really don’t understand how decisions are made. I learned it’s crazy how decisions are made.
Warren: The long, slow birth of Seinfeld marked the transition from the end of Brandon Tartikoff’s reign as president of entertainment at NBC to the beginning of my tenure in that job. I would be announced as Brandon’s successor within weeks of the airing of the first regular episode of Seinfeld in May 1990.
Getting to that first episode was as unlikely a process as any of us could have possibly imagined. No one at the network had any inkling that we were helping usher into existence what would become one of the most successful half hours in television history. Here’s how it all started.
Rick Ludwin: That first meeting was Jerry Seinfeld, Warren, Brandon, me, and George Shapiro, here in my office. I can still bring people in, and they can sit on the Seinfeld couch.
George Shapiro: I first saw Jerry Seinfeld on July 3, 1980. I saw him at the Comedy Store. I liked him right away. We started booking Jerry in clubs, and I wrote a letter to Warren and Brandon. Jerry had his first show at Town Hall in Manhattan, and nobody from NBC came to the show, even after the letter I wrote.
Then we had that first meeting with Warren and Brandon in Rick Ludwin’s office. They said if we had an idea, they’d be interested. Three days later, Jerry was in New York at Catch a Rising Star, where he met Larry David. Larry was doing stand-up at the time. They went for a walk, and Jerry said NBC was interested. Larry said, “This should be the show. Two guys talking.”
When we left the NBC meeting, we didn’t know what we’d walked out with. We walked back in and said, “Pilot!”
Warren: The reality was they had a script commitment and a little holding money for Jerry, but it wasn’t actually clear who would write the script.
Jerry Seinfeld: Imagine you have this kid who’s been on The Tonight Show thirty times and on the Letterman show thirty times. He’s on your network all the time. Presentable fellow. Seems to do well. No one ever thought, “Why don’t we talk to this young man. Maybe we can do some business. Do a show.” That never happened.
Rick Ludwin: Jerry Seinfeld was known from being on some of our shows, but he certainly wasn’t known to a wide audience. Jerry and Larry David had never written a sitcom. Our department (late night, variety, and specials) had never developed one. They came in with a story idea, and we approved the story idea and approved a pilot script.
There was no production company attached to it. George Shapiro called and asked how I’d feel if they went to Castle Rock. I told him, “Sure, that sounds like a good idea.”
Glenn Padnick: We’d met Jerry when we brought him to ABC to star in a pilot there. He was rejected for the part. When NBC bought the pilot script for what would become Seinfeld, and NBC couldn’t own the show, Jerry said, “Why don’t we use those guys from last year. They seem nice enough.” That was us, Castle Rock. That was our payoff.
Howard West: We took Jerry’s act. That was the pilot. Nobody was thinking a hundred shows, or whatever. Then we wondered, “What happens when we burn up the act?”
Jerry Seinfeld: I knew what I wanted the show to sound like. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew the way I wanted the people to talk. Larry and I both felt there was a type of dialogue in the world that wasn’t being shown on TV. A lot of it was New York. I knew whenever I talked with Larry that this kind of talking would occur. A style of talking and a superficiality of substance. What I’ve always enjoyed my whole life.
There were a lot of people at NBC and Castle Rock at the time who’d look at the stuff we were doing and say, “I don’t really get this, but … go ahead.” I remember Glenn Padnick told us our scripts were elliptical. I didn’t quite know what he meant.
When we began, the number one show in America was ALF. We never thought we were going to be at that level of acceptance. We didn’t think that was possible. We just wanted to do our thing.
Glenn Padnick: Warren told me I had to furnish a show runner because he didn’t trust Larry David in that role. We brought in Gary Gilbert, who had been, oddly, the writer of the pilot Jerry had done for ABC. The one he’d been rejected for.
Howard West: NBC didn’t approve Larry David. We sort of resented it, but we understood.
George Shapiro: Larry and Jerry didn’t feel any creative compatibility with Gary Gilbert. They wrote separate scripts. Both scripts went to the Writers Guild, and the guild awarded Jerry and Larry a created-by credit. They had their own rhythm.
Glenn Padnick: I knew Larry David, not personally, but I knew of him. I was given a script he’d written early at Castle Rock. It was Prognosis Negative. The plot was about a man who can’t commit, and he meets a woman who he hears is dying. He can commit to her because her prognosis is negative. Of course, the prognosis turns out to be wrong, and he has to live with her. It was a very funny script.
I didn’t start to feel Jerry and Larry had something special until they’d written the first draft of the pilot. I said to myself, “Am I crazy, or is this really good?”
Warren: The script was very funny, totally unconventional but funny. It didn’t sound like anything else on television. There was no historical precedent. We decided to make a pilot.
Jason Alexander: When I read the pilot script, I thought it was a glorious mess. It wasn’t paying attention to the rules. There were many episodes early on when George and Jerry were in conflict with each other, and they’d never resolve it, just let it sit. I remember asking Larry if there was another scene coming to tie it up, and he said, “No. It isn’t funny after that.”
George Shapiro: I was in all the casting sessions, and George was based on who Larry was, but Larry wasn’t ever going to play the part.
Jason Alexander: The elements that make George—the elements that make Larry—don’t go together. This odd combination of an unbelievable ego that’s convinced it’s not ever receiving its due coupled with the knowledge that George has no innate ability to do anything. They just don’t fit together.
Howard West: In Larry’s head, he always wanted to be an on-camera star. When I was at William Morris, I was involved with The Three Stooges, and I got a picture of Larry David with a note from his agent. Larry was being submitted for Curly. At the bottom of the photo it said, “He must have script approval.” I broke out laughing.
Jason Alexander: Larry and I had a special bond. I knew I was playing him, and he knew that I knew, but we never talked about it.
George Shapiro: Marc Hirschfeld was the casting director, and he did a fabulous job. Jason Alexander was doing a play in New York, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Marc arranged for a videotape, and Marc read with Jason.
Jason Alexander: I was looking for film or television. It was all a happy accident. I was living in New York, and I had four pages of a script in a casting office with a casting director who’d been hired to put fifty people on tape. There was no Larry to talk to or Jerry to talk to, and nobody gets a job that way. Every New York actor knows that.
I remember thinking it read like a Woody Allen script, so I went out and bought some Woody Allen glasses, and I did a blatant Woody Allen impression. I was shocked when they told me they’d like to bring me out.
Lori Openden: Jerry wanted Larry Miller to play George Costanza. I was very vocal about not having one comedian who’s learning to act with another comedian learning to act.
Jason Alexander: I flew to L.A. In my memory, the only other guy testing that day was Larry Miller. I didn’t know Jerry Seinfeld, but I knew Larry Miller, and I knew he was good friends with Jerry. I thought, “This is a fesso. I’m here to keep Larry from negotiating.”
I had nothing on it when I walked into the conference room at NBC. I did my thing, and by the time I’d landed in New York, they called and said, “You’ve got it.”
Warren: We knew Jerry was a great comedian, and we had a lot of respect for Jason’s acting ability. Watching Jason bring George to life was wildly funny and seemed effortless to Jason. It wasn’t a tough call to make.
Jerry Seinfeld: Larry and I saw Jason on a grainy VHS tape. We were standing there with our arms folded, and within twenty seconds we said, “That’s the guy.”
Glenn Padnick: Jason made George vulnerable and lovable and likable in a way that Larry David never would have, never could have. Jason made George palatable no matter what Larry had him doing. That was a great treasure for the show.
Lori Openden: Bob Wright was being honored at the Century Plaza hotel. There was no time for Brandon and Warren to see actors except right before the luncheon. I arranged a room for them to see two actors read—Michael Richards and Steve Vinovich.
Steve Vinovich came dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe. He was very good. Michael Richards came in, and he was Kramer.
George Shapiro: Michael Richards was standing on his head while he was doing his lines. A yoga pose. Brandon Tartikoff said, “Well, if you want funny …”
Lori Openden: He was born to play that part and can’t really play much else. The part wasn’t written for him, but when you think about it, it was written for him.
Warren: We had worked with Michael before, and regardless of the size of the role he was always a scene stealer. We were fans.
Glenn Padnick: Larry had worked with Michael Richards on camera. Larry objected to Michael because Kramer was based on a real person, but Jerry convinced him. Larry can be reasonable.
The real Kramer, jerk that he is, felt we should pay him for using his name. He was called Kessler in the pilot because Larry knew he’d make trouble.
Then Larry decided he needed to call him Kramer. We paid him a moderate sum—$100 an episode or something.
Warren: I attended run-throughs for the pilot. The show was about Jerry pestering George to give him a ride to the airport. Jerry needed to pick up a girl who was staying with him, a girl whom Jerry was interested in but who would ultimately tell him she was engaged. Signals, Jerry! There were no big, dramatic scenes. Act breaks had jokes, not momentous decisions. In the coffee shop—very much about life. In the Laundromat—about laundry. No hugs. No great emotional stakes. And no Elaine. Not yet.
Glenn Padnick: We loved the script, and we loved it for the little stuff. Most shows go for big plots—Grandma’s coming to visit et cetera. We filmed the pilot in the spring of 1989. We also filmed the Gary Gilbert pilot that Jerry had gone up for but with Howie Mandel. ABC didn’t pick it up. It was sort of like How I Met Your Mother.
Jason Alexander: In the pilot, there was some famous Larry David bit where the line isn’t funny, but he had a rhythm in mind. “No hand. No hand.” That’s all it said on the page. There’s a million ways to interpret that. I did it one way at the table read, and then we rehearsed it. Then Larry came over and said, “We kind of heard that this way … I hope you don’t mind a line reading.”
I told Jerry as long as we were discussing this sort of thing, would it be okay if I told him how he might be missing the mark as the actor? We’d been doing a scene in the coffee shop where Jerry was arguing with George about what a girl’s offer to stay over meant. The fun of the scene was that Jerry represented one position, I represented the other, and we switched over and then switched back. The only way that works was if he was adamantly advocating for his side of the argument, and Jerry doesn’t do that. I was playing George with such force that the whole scene was out of balance.
