| 04 January 2011
“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” – Mark Twain
What: Rod Buckley, owner of the Lucky Rabbit Casino in downtown Reno, has bitten the dust, literally and figuratively, having been found face down in the desert, bullet holes in the head and chest. The suspects and motives are plentiful.
Who: Rod Buckley inherited the Lucky Rabbit Casino from his father, a brilliant entrepreneur, and Rod did what most wastrel, drug addled sons would do – run it into the ground. Found naked in the desert outside of town, drilled full of holes, it would appear that the casino, what’s left of it, will soon be under new management. With his death, control of the casino was (and forever will be) called into question as the local bank already owned 49½ %. Another 49½ % was willed to his son, Peter, and daughter, Penny, children from his second marriage; and the final 1% was willed to a mysterious stranger by the name of Joe Smith. Who, everyone, including Reno police detectives Roger White and Reggie Rivers, wants to know, is Joe Smith?
Joe, it turns out, is a man of action who assesses the pros and cons and steps in to make those cons pros.
Peter, who inherited his father’s brains, decides to settle things once and for all, confronting Joe at the International House of Pancakes during breakfast.
Peter: Did you kill my father?
Joe laughs
Joe Smith: No.
Peter: Then how did you get that share?... I don’t really care how you got it, because eventually someone’s going to find out, and then you’ll be in jail, or you’ll be dead.
Peter’s trying to size Joe up. But that’s like a tic-tac-toe player trying to beat Gary Kasparov.
Joe Smith: That any way to talk to your new partner?
Peter: Fifty grand, that’s as high as I’ll go. You can have a suite at the hotel for a week, all expenses paid.
Joe Smith: A whole week! Wow. And all I have to do is sign over my share?
Peter: The casino’s broke, it’ll probably go under.
Joe picks up the entertainment section. Peter’s watching him, still trying to figure this guy out.
Peter: What are you getting? One percent of a dump. What’s that get you? Your buddies back home going to think you’re a big-time guy? A casino owner. Save yourself the headache, Joe. A lot of people are looking to take you down, and it’s only a matter of time… So take the money, grab a t-shirt out of the gift shop, and go back to wherever the fuck you came from.
Joe studies him for a long beat, then shakes his head.
Joe Smith: No… You got to sell that more. I didn’t feel it, you know what I mean?
Peter stares back blankly.
Joe Smith: It wasn’t a threat… (checking) At least I don’t think it was a threat.
More blank look.
Joe Smith: If you’re going to tell a guy to go… I mean, really go… You got to come up with a real reason. The buddy thing… (shrugs) Cute, but who cares. When it comes to money, friends don’t matter. And that line about people. How did you say it… “a lot of people want to take me down?” …What people? Cops? Girl scouts?... Ninjas?
This isn’t going nearly as well as Peter wanted.
Joe Smith: Take my advice, forget the threats. You can’t pull it off. Come at it another way. You ever train a dog?... Better to reward it when it’s good than punish it when it’s bad.
Peter: I don’t understand.
Joe Smith: Find out what I really want. What do I like? What do I do for kicks? That kind of thing.
Peter: (unsure) Okay.
Joe Smith: Try it again.
He picks up the paper and sits back.
Joe Smith: I’ll pretend like I’m not expecting it.
So starts an intricate game of cat and mouse; one in which the extremely adept cat will toy with the under-matched mice – Peter, Penny, Tony Panetti, the casino’s crooked general manager, and Fred Ingerhoff, president of the bank owning the other 49½ %.
Called to the bank, and made to wait, Joe Smith is finally led into Fred Ingerhoff’s office. After some meaningless small talk…
Joe Smith: …So what was it you wanted to see me about?
…
Fred Ingerhoff: My job is to protect the bank’s interests. And you control a portion, however small, of the property we won forty nine and one half percent of—
Joe Smith: And you want fifty and a half?
Fred Ingerhoff: We want the casino and hotel to return to profitability. Mr. Buckley had a different philosophy than ours, and his philosophy turned out to be crap. Now we want an opportunity to run the business in a more efficient manner.
Joe Smith: Well that’s why I’m here.
Beat
Fred Ingerhoff: Excuse us if we don’t see it that way.
Another beat as Fred smiles the kind of smile you just want to slap off somebody’s face.
Joe Smith: You know what I hate, Fred? I hate guys who keep saying “we” when they’re the only one in the room. And I hate banks who forget that all they are is a place to put your money. Let me guess, you get my share of the Lucky Rabbit, “however small” that is, then turn around and appoint yourself director. Well fuck you, Fred, you didn’t do anything. Guys like you play it safe. You won’t gamble unless it’s with other people’s dough… So we both know what’s what. We both know that I’m the only thing keeping those sibling sociopaths from having the controlling interest in the Rabbit, and if they got that… it’s goodbye, Fred.
Joe stands. He’s not mad. He’s not even a little-worked up. We get the feeling that chewing out guys like Fred just makes Joe hungry for lunch.
Joe Smith: Don’t ever make me wait again.
And Joe exits.
Joe, non-plussed by his current encounters, sets about, with the help of several slick and dangerous-looking associates, turning the Lucky Rabbit into an inviting, respectable establishment, much to the astonishment of all concerned.
There is, of course, still the matter of Rod Buckley’s murder in the desert; a murder that looked easily solvable when Rod’s mistress Destiny, the topless dancer, and Destiny’s husband (there’s always a husband) were stopped at the airport trying to smuggle suitcases full of silver bars through security. In the ensuing chase, the husband is shot by the police and Destiny is arrested for the murder of Rod, as the silver bars were the property of the deceased, having been buried in the desert not far from where his body was found. Reluctantly, Roger and Reggie come to the conclusion that Destiny and her now-dead husband were guilty only of theft, leaving them with a multitude of other suspects. And the mysterious Joe Smith is at the top of that list.
No Meaner Place: Fierro has deliciously created a “what if” scenario based on the infamous Ted Binion case in Las Vegas, in which Binion’s mistress, topless dancer Sandy Murphy, and Murphy’s boyfriend, Rick Tabish, the man Binion had hired to transport his silver and treasures to his new under-desert vault, were arrested looting Binion’s underground stronghold shortly after the discovery of Binion’s dead body, a death alleged to be a suicide using all of the drugs to which he was addicted – xanax, tar heroin, and valium. The Las Vegas police, or in this case the Keystone Cops, bungled the investigation and when Murphy and Tabish were eventually convicted of the murder, the Nevada Supreme court overturned the conviction and mandated a new trial. In the subsequent trial, this time with a first rate defense team, both were convicted only of burglary and grand larceny. Both are now free.
Like Ted Binion, Rod Buckley took a going concern, a good reputation, and a seemingly loving family and drove them into the ground. Using flashback and voice-over narration to excellent effect, we learn that besides Penny and Peter, Rod also had another son, Michael (our story’s narrator and guide), from a previous relationship, one that was dissolved when Rod abandoned Michael and his mother and opened the door to Penny, Peter and their mother. Seemingly aware of all the machinations, perhaps Joe Smith will sort it out for us, or in more biblical terms: “For now we see as through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” That should clear it up.
With no immediate collision point in sight, the eventual solution to the murder or the question of the identity of Joe Smith are tantalizing details that will only lead us deeper and deeper into quick sand. But oh what a journey it would have been.
Life Lessons for Writers: “You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain’t one.” Dashiell Hammett. And ain’t it always the case when you’re pitching a pilot.
CONVERSATION WITH THE WRITER:
Neely: I am so glad that Jack LoGiudice sent me this script to read. The two of you worked together on “Resurrection Blvd.” and he’s obviously a huge fan.
Adam: He’s always been interested in the work I’ve done and supported it.
Neely: I have to say, Adam, this script is a case of “the names have been changed to protect the guilty.” Did you follow the very juicy Binion trial when it was going on?
Adam: No, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I think I saw an episode of some true-crime type of show on television and thought it was just an unbelievable world. Those characters, Ted Binion and his stripper girlfriend, are people I could never have come up with if I tried.
Neely: When did you come up with the idea to use that incredibly insane story as a backdrop?
Adam: I needed to write a spec pilot to show as a sample to find work. It was important to get the right story so I could give it the exact tone I felt would be show the kind of writing I wanted to do. When I saw the original program about the Binion murder I knew it was a something I would borrow from sometime in the future. The pilot was the perfect place to do that.
Neely: What kind of research did you do into the twists and turns in the second Binion trial when the murder conviction was overturned and they were acquitted of murder (but not of several other charges)?
Adam: I really didn’t do any research. I just saw a program that showed what happened in the first trial (note: see “Ted Binion” on trutv.com) and then I took the resolution of the second trial and built a story around that.
Neely: I was especially impressed by the report that the jury in the second trial felt news accounts reported that jurors had been unwilling to find them guilty because the forensic evidence introduced by the prosecution had not met the standards of “C.S.I.” (source: Wikipedia)
Adam: I did see that. I saw that Sandy was let out and the boy friend was still in prison for other issues.
Neely: This really is a case of fact being stranger than fiction. It was, probably, a justice disaster waiting to happen because the Vegas police refused to investigate the death at the time and waited months before they looked into the irregularities of Binion’s death which was originally ruled a suicide.
Adam: These guys seemed really guilty. I didn’t know that about the investigation.
Neely: Tell me a bit about why you decided to use Reno instead of Vegas. Did you research Reno as a locale?
Adam: No, I didn’t and I’m embarrassed to say that because it comes across as somewhat lazy. It was more about what Reno represented to me, which was that it wasn’t Vegas. It was a sort of a low life “wanna-be” Vegas, but not even that. In fact, I think I described it as desert and someone who knew Reno – I’ve never been – pointed out that it’s really more of a mountainous terrain. So I don’t know if I got the actual geographic terrain right. But using Reno was more symbolic of what it represents as a small, less exotic version of what I imagine Las Vegas represents to most people.
Neely: Clearly Roger and Reggie are more on top of things than the Las Vegas police who initially declined to make any kind of an investigation. How long were you planning on having Roger and Reggie investigate the murder? Please give us a hint as to the kinds of things they would uncover?
Adam: I thought if this became a series, Roger and Reggie would pursue the investigation until the story was resolved, ultimately leading to the arrest of Joe for the murder. I was hoping Roger and Joe could develop an interesting relationship based on mutual respect. Two alpha dogs that could never let the other too far out of its sight.
Neely: You say that ultimately the investigation will lead to the arrest of Joe for murder. Clearly Joe was the frontrunner for the murder but if you arrest him, that’s the end of the series. Wouldn’t there have been a way to resolve the murder and still continue with Reggie and Roger and Joe? Ultimately it seemed to me that the resolution of the murder is just a “B” story at best.
Adam: I hadn’t really thought of it that way; I just thought of it as the ongoing investigation. We might see the cops investigate other tangents that may or may not be related to it – go down different dead ends. But the main detective, Roger, was going to become obsessed with this murder case; he always suspected Joe but just couldn’t prove it. That would go on for whatever the length of the series was.
Neely: For me it was that Joe was such a powerful character and I hate the idea of the investigation and its solution being the collision point that will end the series. If you can make it about something else or find someone else who might have done the murder, then it’s more than 100 stories because it’s Reno, it’s a crummy casino, and there are so many different directions to go.
Adam: I see what your saying. I just always thought that Joe did do the murder and they couldn’t prove it. Maybe someone else becomes a suspect or maybe they pin it on somebody. There are different things that can be done. I don’t think we ever definitively know he did it, I just think we need to think it.
Neely: I loved the voice over narration of Michael. I know this is off-the-wall, but I could hear the voice of Gil Stratton in Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17.” Stratton played the stooge for William Holden’s character and Stratton’s naïve quality added an interesting dimension to a very noir film, one that had one of the most defining anti-heroes in the cinema. In some ways, the Gil Stratton-style voiceover led me to think of Joe Smith in terms of a Holden-like good bad guy (or bad good guy) and made me want to pull for him all the harder. On the one hand, he can logically only be out for himself, and on the other, his motivations are as big a mystery as he is.
Adam: I never saw that movie, but I’m interested to see it now. I want people to pull for Joe. I want them to like him. He’s done a lot of things wrong in his life… Really wrong. Personally and professionally. But he’s older now, and more self-aware. He knows he can’t change the past, but whatever life he has left he wants to make the most of. For him that’s making the casino work; improving it and building it into a place people would want to go, a place he would want to go. If you’re on board for his vision, he would be the best friend you could ever have. If you’re not on board you’ve put yourself at risk. A tiger can’t change his stripes, and he’s accepted that about himself. So I think his motives are mostly true. But he also knows there’s a past out there that will probably eventually catch up to him. Until that time he wants to get the most out of life he can. Who doesn’t like to be around people that know how to eat life up?
Neely: Michael, as narrator, will always be asking the same questions that we are asking, giving this the sense that the fourth wall is being broken. As we both know, voice-over narration is difficult to pull off because most people use it as an excuse to introduce explanatory exposition. How did you feel you could avoid those pitfalls?
Adam: I had never used voice-over as a device. Normally I don’t like it in film for all the reasons you described, and we’re taught it’s a sign of poor writing. So I had always intended to use it more like an internal dialogue than an expositional tool. It’s a great way to add humor, and it just seemed better in terms of the mystery of who Joe Smith is if we were observing him through the eyes of the uninitiated. Michael’s interesting because he can be earnest with a real emotional stake in the story, but also someone who is in thrall to Joe. We don’t know if that will be good or bad for Michael, but I hope we care, one way or the other. Obviously I was creating a father/son relationship with Michael and Joe, which is a first for both of them.
Neely: I’d love to know more about Joe Smith. You drop a few hints… a wife who shows up unexpectedly; a personal profile that fits someone in witness protection; possible organized crime ties… Who is this guy?!
Adam: I think as the story went on we would learn more about him, and what we would learn we wouldn’t like. I think he’s a violent man who’s capable of horrendous acts, but like I said before, he’s self-aware now. It’s not an excuse, but he’s not making any. It doesn’t forgive what he’s done in the past, but he’s not asking for anybody’s forgiveness except maybe his ex-wife. The casino represents more of a bucket list thing to him than a journey of redemption, but at some point those two themes seem like they would have to blend into each other in some way.
Neely: Who did you take this to and what was the reaction?
Adam: People liked it. When I wrote it serialized stuff wasn’t really in vogue. I remember when I wrote it an executive said no one would ever do a show about Las Vegas. I thought to myself it’s about Reno, but I understood her point. I always thought somebody would take a shot on it someday. I still do. But the truth is this script really made my career by getting me some jobs on some key shows, and if that’s the only thing it accomplishes it was well worth writing.
Neely: Did it come close? Any helpful notes? Any inane notes?
Adam: Not really insane notes. The usual notes. “How can we turn this into a stand alone episodic show;” that kind of thing. When executives think of casinos they think more glitzy, etc. This is and should be the opposite. A fringe casino in a city that wishes it was Vegas, populated by fish who survive in the little pond but would be devoured in the larger one. It’s really all about the tone, and television usually isn’t so much.
Neely: I felt that this was definitely a cable show. When the networks indicated that they wanted a stand-alone episodic, a code word for procedural, they have now opened up more to a stand-alone with a serialized thru-line. This could definitely be made to fall into that category, don’t you think?
Adam: Yes. But I don’t think that this script was ever really sent out to be set up. I wrote it about 10 years ago and at the time there wasn’t really a lot of serialized stuff on the air. I’m trying to think about what was out there. To be honest, I don’t think the agent even bothered to send it out to the networks. The script was written mostly as a sample. I think it was sent to a couple of places where they talked about maybe doing something with it, but there was definitely not a full court press in terms of trying to set it up.
Neely: That leads to something else that I hadn’t thought of, but this script, like several others I’ve written about, was sent out by the agent only as a writing sample. On the one hand, yes, it’s a wonderful writing sample; I can see where it got you lots of work. But this is really a very viable pilot script. When it’s sent out as a writing sample, how does one get it looked at as a viable project.
Adam: It’s funny, because I’m always telling my agents that maybe we should look at this script again and see if there’s a market for. These things are so cyclical. On the one hand it seems like it’s not the right time for a script like this and then you turn around and there seems to be three or four shows like it tonally. I never really seemed to be exactly at the crest of the wave. It’s not a criticism that they haven’t really approached it that way. I think part of the reason is that I don’t think there was really a market for it at the time I wrote it; and I think in an agent’s mind they assume once something has been seen that its commercial appeal is shot. Sometimes it’s all about timing. I’ve thought about going to them and saying “hey, maybe we should look at this and maybe we could attach an element to it.” And I have no doubt that they would consider it. But the script has been seen a lot; it’s set up a lot of jobs for me. The assumption, I suppose, is that if people had wanted to do it they would have done it. Sometimes it’s the way it’s presented.
Neely: A perfect example of that is “Mad Men” the script of which had hung around for years and years. Weiner used it as a writing sample and it got him “The Sopranos” but it was the pilot he wanted to produce. The fact that people had seen it before, eventually the right network, and clearly this was cable, saw the possibilities, especially since they wanted to get into the game. A viable alternative here might be Starz which wants to get into original programming and has been doing a pretty poor job in terms of their choices. Even if “The Lucky Rabbit” was taken out as a pitch, there are so many people in those development jobs who weren’t around when you wrote this.
Adam: That’s a good point. Ten years ago a lot of these cable stations didn’t exist. It’s a very different landscape now. Starz is actually a real good idea for it; and maybe a couple of other companies. I should really have that conversation with them. You know, for some reason it’s very hard to attach elements to television projects, especially actors. I always felt that if you could get a really interesting actor for one of the characters it would be very appealing. It’s a lot easier to attach directors. “The Lucky Rabbit” is a very visual script. I think Starz is a really interesting idea. I should have that conversation sooner rather than later. Even though it’s been out for ten years, there are probably a lot of people who haven’t seen it.
Neely: You know, in the past attaching an actor to a TV script, while not exactly problematic, was not business as usual unless the network had a holding deal they needed to burn off. In terms of cable, now you can absolutely attach talent because relatively big stars – Glenn Close, Kyra Sedgewick, Dustin Hoffman – are willing to be attached to a good script if it’s on cable with a limited episodic order. That any of the big names would have considered television ten years ago would have been unthinkable.
Adam: I love Ray Liotta. A lot of feature people are making their way to television. Frankly, I think you can make the argument that the work is a lot better, especially on cable.
Neely: Say for someone like Ray Liotta, the number of good quality movies, independent interesting movies – that arena is incredibly limited right now. Television is doing what those movies used to provide. And what a brilliant idea to come up with Ray Liotta just off the top of your head as “Joe Smith.” He was willing to do “Smith,” the John Wells series a couple of years back, because it was going to be a one season and out (but didn’t last the season).
Adam: That’s one more reason to have my agent put it out there again.
Neely: Do you think there’s another way of developing this? Although this is clearly television, there might be a way of turning this into a feature that is more centered on the character of Joe Smith with most everyone else as much more ancillary. He really is a great anti-hero.
Adam: I’ve thought about it. I’ve always thought it would be nice to maybe develop it with a filmmaker, something like that.
Neely: What direction would you take it in if you were doing this as a film?
Adam: That’s a good question. I haven’t really thought about it. The great thing about writing a pilot is that you don’t have to close it off, resolve it at the end. Just giving it some thought right now, I would think that Joe Smith’s past would catch up with him and he’d have to deal with it in some way. I’d have to define exactly what that past is, and whether or not it’s something he can surmount. It’s interesting that you brought it up because I didn’t really consider it a feature film although, ironically, it is the script that my features agent sends out to producers to consider me for work. I guess it is kind of written like a feature.
Neely: I still think that it is TV, but it could be reshaped as a feature. Your characters are vibrant and I don’t think it would be that difficult to find a resolution. The thing with television writers, who I think are doing the best writing right now, is that the reason they write television is because they’re not done with the characters they create. You want to play them out over a much longer period of time. They’re family, whether for good or ill, and they have more stories to tell and so do you. That’s the difficulty, finding an end point resolution on something that was written as a series.
Adam: What you create in television is powered by a much more long-term dynamic. Of course it can be resolved. I was more worried about mob films in general. Mob genre has always been something that is either in vogue or out of vogue – no in between. I’ve never quite felt it was the time to pursue it as a feature, but the next time you turn around, there it will be – that type of film that someone has done well, and you think of it as a missed opportunity. But it feels like the kind of genre that people don’t go after in terms of trying to find projects that are easier to set up. Maybe I shouldn’t think of it that way because it’s defeating it before it gets a fair shot.
Neely: You’ve written a great script here, so don’t limit yourself. But in terms of Mr. Smith and his henchmen, it’s easy to think of them as mob guys. But on the other hand, and especially in the present climate, it wouldn’t take much rethinking. The mobsters of today aren’t Italian or Jewish or Russian criminals; they’re Wall Street lawyers and investors. There’s no reason not to rethink these guys who play like mobsters; they also play like investment bankers and hedge fund managers, today’s true villains, who are taking a very close watch on their investment.
Adam: That’s really true. I agree with that.
Neely: You’ve been doing this for quite a while. When did you first realize that you wanted to write, or even that you had write?
Adam: I don’t have to write. I think I can tell stories pretty well. Writing is hard for me. I have ADD and it’s always been a struggle. In my previous life, I was an agent and represented writers. Some of them used to complement me on my ideas and my notes and suggestions about scripts. I guess I finally started thinking that maybe I had a skill for that. Also, there wasn’t anything else I really wanted to do instead.
Neely: What agency did you work for?
Adam: ICM.
Neely: When did you make the switch?
Adam: I got fired from ICM in the early 90s; it’s been a long time. I used my severance money to start writing. I wrote some screenplays that were well received, although I didn’t sell any of them. It took me about five years; I’m not sure how I managed to survive. When I was about to throw in the towel, one of my agents said I should try writing a television spec. It just so happened that I really liked “Homicide” and I thought I could write it well. That spec got me a lot of attention and I got hired off of that. If there hadn’t been a show that I really enjoyed watching, I might not have written that spec, so things all worked out for a reason, I guess.
Neely: That’s an amazing journey and took a lot of guts to follow it through.
Adam: I started late, and I remember thinking that, after five years, it was like a poker game and being “all in.” I didn’t know what else to do if that didn’t work out because I’d already gone so far down the road. Knock on wood; it worked out. I’m very lucky.
Neely: Where did you go to college?
Adam: I went to UCLA.
Neely: Did you already know you had ADD?
Adam: No. I was diagnosed less than a year ago.
Neely: Obviously you had learned your own coping mechanisms. What were they?
Adam: I don’t remember things very well so I have to make a lot of lists. It’s difficult in terms of reading so I have to write a lot of outlines. I have to be very structured in my approach to information because I have to be logical in the way things play out. I think I have a knack for structure, probably as a result of that. I have to progress logically in order to remember things. If I had to remember the things I wrote, I’d really be in trouble. One of the reasons I’m a television writer, more than a features writer, is because I need deadlines; it’s having a specific deadline when a script is due or there’s a set production or prep date that’s very helpful to someone like me. Without them I can be easily distracted.
Neely: What did you major in?
Adam: Political Science. I managed to graduate and do okay without reading too much of the material. I probably skimmed it, for the most part. You can buy notes, you can take notes; I was smart enough to do well enough to get by.
Neely: Did you have any influences, either good or bad, when you were in school? Someone who encouraged you and thus motivated you? Or to the contrary, someone who discouraged you, and therefore motivated you?
Adam: No one encouraged me for obvious reasons. I struggled in school with all kinds of things like grammar and basic sentence structure. As a result I wrote as little as possible because I was so insecure about it.
Neely: What about literary influences? What did you read early on that has stayed with you?
Adam: I haven’t read a lot for the same reasons. When I do, I like the mystery crime genre. I appreciate Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake tremendously, and I’m sure the tone of “Lucky Rabbit” was influenced by them.
Neely: What are you reading now?
Adam: I’m a new father, and I’m reading The Road by Cormack McCarthy. Not sure what that says about me.
Neely: Congratulations on the baby. Your first?
Adam: Yeah.
Neely: How does the baby change the work dynamic?
Adam: That’s a good question. We have a full time nanny. I was working and now I’m off. Right now my wife, who’s also a writer, is working full time; so I’m home more with the baby at present. We’re building a home office and I think when that’s done we’ll be able to get on a better schedule. We’ll be able to go off, close the door, and have some time to focus. Right now it’s all pretty much about the baby and then the work obligations. There hasn’t been a lot of time spent on just writing new material and I’d like to get back to that. We’re just making this up as we go and really enjoying our time with the baby. If we’re erring, we’re erring on the side of giving him as much attention as we can. He’s finally sleeping through the night, so now it’s really about us trying to focus our attention again. Even though I think we’re both really tired, you never realize how fatigued you are. Just being with the baby and picking him up and playing with him, it’s a different kind of an exhaustion – a very happy exhaustion. But really, we both sit around at night and turn on the television and try to catch up a little bit on our DVR and both of us say “we should be writing something or we should be on the treadmill.” For most parents, there’s a list of the things you should be doing. You can also make the argument that just watching some television is important to our jobs. We’re just trying to figure it out as we go.
Neely: Welcome to the greatest journey you’re ever going to take. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines in film “Fasten your seatbelts everyone, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Who does your wife write for?
Adam: She’s on “The Vampire Diaries.” Her name is Elizabeth Craft. She and her writing partner, Sarah Fain, are supervising a pilot right now. A few years ago they had a show called “The Women’s Murder Club” that was on ABC. She’s been on “Angel” and “Dollhouse” with Joss Whedon. She and Sarah had a deal at Fox and now they have a deal at Warner Brothers.
Neely: I noticed that Elizabeth and Sarah were also on “The Shield.” Is that where you met her?
Adam: Yup.
Neely: That’s very romantic – the romance, not “The Shield.”
Adam: Yes, it was.
Neely: How did you end up in LA?
Adam: I was born here.
Neely: So you wanted to stay in town?
Adam: Yeah. I never really thought about going away. My family’s all here and we’re pretty close. I didn’t do that well in high school, well enough, but I didn’t have any real plans. I applied to UCLA almost as a fluke and wound up getting in. I was always going to go to college – my parents were really insistent on that – but based on my academic performance, I didn’t consider myself to have a lot of options just because I was a B+ student. It wound up working out.
Neely: So often, people who grew up here fell under the “entertainment” influence early on. Was this environment an influence on your choices? What about your parents? What do they do?
Adam: My parents are retired. They weren’t in the industry. My father worked at a finance company; my mom worked at a department store. Coming from Whittier, working in the entertainment industry was the equivalent of getting a job on the dark side of the moon. It was really nothing I had ever considered. I just kind of fell into it. When I was at UCLA, opportunities presented themselves. I always pursued the thing that I thought would be the most fun. If I give myself credit for anything, it was just not wanting to settle for something I didn’t think I’d enjoy. I just tried to find something challenging that I thought I would like to do.
Neely: What was your first job and how did you get it?
Adam: I was a page on “The Price is Right” on CBS. I just applied after college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want a real job.
Neely: What was “The Price is Right” like and where did it lead?
Adam: It was fun for about 4 weeks and then it was the most redundant job you could have. They played the same soundtrack and when they played a certain song the crowd was supposed to be at a certain place in terms of getting in line, getting name tags, and being seated. It is a completely repetitive experience. It was on the CBS Television City lot when CBS was on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. I then wound up getting a job in the development department xeroxing scripts. It seemed like I was very close to television writing but I couldn’t have been farther. It did, however, start me on a path toward entertainment. From there I got a job on a desk at ICM. I had originally wanted an overview of the industry and that’s what led me to being a page, where I could bide my time and figure out what I wanted to do. And then when I got the job xeroxing, someone said if you really want to figure out the whole landscape, you should work on an agent’s desk. But I never had any inclination to being an agent or even a writer. It was all about me trying to figure out what part of the industry I wanted to be in. I always thought I wanted to be an executive but things didn’t work out that way.
Neely: How are things different now, compared to when you first got here?
Adam: Things feel younger. People feel more disposable. They are constantly cycling new people in, so my frames of reference feel very fluid.
Neely: Did you have any mentors along the way that helped push your career or steer you in a particular direction?
Adam: Yes, in the sense that I had supportive people who told me I had some talent. I’ve worked with writers who provided a good example of how writers should treat other writers, that kind of thing.
Neely: Let’s talk a bit about dreadful experiences, followed by great ones. What was your worst Hollywood experience?
Adam: I can’t be specific. I’ve been on some shows where the upper level writers were assholes. Horrible people. Disrespectful and abusive. No one you would want to be associated with.
Neely: And your best experience?
Adam: Still probably “The Shield.” (laughs) Shawn Ryan is not that asshole upper level writer, by the way. He’s a great guy, super talented. That show was a great experience. The more experiences I have after that show, the more I appreciate how unique it was (I was on The Shield for its last 5 seasons).
Neely: What are you watching on television right now? How about a recent film or films that you thought were terrific?
Adam: “Mad Men” is fantastic. I don’t really watch a lot of television. I watch something once, just to see what it’s like. My wife watches a lot of reality television, so I see that. Movies are a rarity since our baby was born.
Neely: Do you have any favorite films or TV shows from the past?
Adam: “Hill Street Blues” was a really big influence on me and that’s why I really started appreciating the kind of journey that television takes me on – those characters. Before that I think most of us were watching things like “Love Boat” as escapism. “The Sopranos,” obviously and “The Shield.” If I hadn’t been on “The Shield” I would have loved watching it as a fan. I think I can draw a line from “Hill Street Blues” to “The Shield” and it’s an interesting line in terms of the portrayal of law enforcement because they dealt with larger themes. That’s always the key – tell a story and have some characters and also address a theme – it makes it so much richer. Watching certain shows has made that very clear, at least in terms of the way I would approach other material. Those are some pretty seminal shows; “Homicide” as well. Character shows, interesting shows, smart shows.
Neely: What are you working on right now?
Adam: I just finished “The Walking Dead” on AMC. It looks like I’m going to write a pilot. It’s an Idea I really love. My deal’s at Sony. I think the plan is to write it now and then take it out as a script next year with them.
Neely: Do you have anything percolating for the future?
Adam: That, and I’m going to make a real effort to pursue some feature stuff this year. I’ve been working on shows for a long time, and I’d like to try to tell some stories that have a clear beginning, middle, and end for a change.
Neely: Ideally I’d love for someone to take a second look here. This was a very different kind of casino show – unlike “Vegas” centered around a private eye, and “Las Vegas” with its “Hotel”-like soap opera approach. Reno is featured so seldom, and it just seems so right for TV – The Biggest Little City in the World has big city corruption, small town politics, and a dusting of grit. Well, if not this, then something else – preferably by you. I really think you nailed the small stakes corruption and crime scenario. Thanks for spending the time.
