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John Romano: Firing Up the Small Screen
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16586 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1997 |
2,236 Words |
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Tom O'Brien
Tom O'Brien, who has taught Shakespeare, is a writer living in
Washington, D.C.
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A mile down Amsterdam Avenue from the school where scriptwriter John Romano used to lecture on Dickens, he watches television star David Caruso keenly.
Caruso (formerly the lead in NYPD Blue) is shooting Michael Hayes, a new pilot cowritten by Romano and Nicholas Pileggi (author and screenwriter of Goodfellas). In the series, airing on CBS in September, Caruso plays a tough but honest federal prosecutor, and in the scene being shot he is solemnly telling an old childhood friend, now a city official, that he cannot excuse his corruption: He must report it. The scene is rich with tension, which eventually explodes in horror.
Romano watches as director Thomas Carter repeatedly orders retakes of the scene, intent on getting the detailed sequence of facial actions and reactions, especially Caruso's, exactly right. Not all moral virtues are fashionable on television, but patience, for its makers, is still cardinal.
For Romano, an ex-academic and now a huge Hollywood success story, the hard labor of "the shoot" is worth it. "We are trying to do for 'single-lead' television what shows like Hill Street Blues and Thirtysomething and ER did for a whole ensemble," he explains. "We want to go beyond that ensemble work and find a level of drama that the TV audience is not used to yet."
Michael Hayes marks a television comeback for leading actor Caruso, who left NYPD Blue for an (as yet) brief career in film. It also marks a return to New York's Upper West Side for Romano, who is executive producer as well as cowriter. Romano used to teach nineteenth-century fiction as an English professor at Columbia University, a mile north of the set. Thereby, as novelist Walter Scott might say, hangs a tale.
Romancing the Word
This is Romano's sixteenth season writing late-night prime-time dramatic TV--or what the industry designates as "A-Television," to differentiate it from sitcoms and kids' fare.
Once a writer for Hill Street Blues at MTM (Mary Tyler Moore) Studios, and then for LA Law with trendsetter Steven Bochco, Romano now shares leadership of San Vincente Productions, the small television company making Michael Hayes for CBS. Other credits include creating The Class of '96, and writing and producing episodes of Cop Rock, Sweet Justice as well as the TV movie Dark Angel. He
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