THE ART OF STORY, THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING AND MORE

In my last two posts, I told you the story of how my Hollywood career got started.

In Part 1, I discussed how in 1984 my wife’s great-uncle, Don Ingalls, a long-time Hollywood writer-producer, had opened the door for me to pitch and write an episode of Fantasy Island.  In Part 2, I described how the script, Final Adieu, I wrote for Fantasy Island was so well-received that it received an immediate production order and I received a commitment of a writing job the following year if the show got picked up for an eighth season.

My Ethiopian Fantasy Island adventure

Watching my episode air that April of 1984, I had a swagger in my literary step. I had my first credit on network TV and a 24-share in the ratings, which meant approximately 25 million people were watching my episode.  Today that would be American Idol territory, ratings-wise.  I took home a check for that script for $13,883, which was a fortune for us back then. I think it probably represented almost half of what I was making annually. And best of all, Don Ingalls had indicated there might be a story editor position in my future.

Well, as it turned out, Final Adieu was exactly that. My episode was one of the last three to air because Fantasy Island got cancelled about a month after my show was produced.

Don Ingalls had been so incredibly generous to me.  He went on to become a writer-producer on the series, T.J. Hooker for a few seasons before retiring from the business after a legendary career. He tried to open another door for me on his new show, but the circumstances had changed and it just never came to pass.

So I continued my day job as a journalist, had a few babies with my beautiful wife, Patty, and continued to dream about the possibility of another opportunity, but I soon began to realize that Fantasy Island might have been my one — and only — cup of coffee in the TV big leagues.

Four years later, in 1988, I was in Ethiopia working on a documentary for the relief organization World Vision, and I was staying at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa. One night I was watching Ethiopian television in my room, and  I turned the channel and landed on something that made my jaw hit the floor. Not only was it an airing of Fantasy Island, but it was my episode, Final Adieu. The show had been subtitled in the Amharic language.

Now this might not seem all that earth-shaking to my young friends from the digital age, but in 1988, it was a stunner.  I had certainly gained a little perspective in four years. After all, one episode of a show does not a legend make, and I had come to realize that as fun a show as Fantasy Island might have been, it wasn’t exactly going to rock the world with existential meaning.

But then something else dawned on me: if a slice of Americana like “De Plane, De Plane” was  being exported all over the globe, then the converse had to be true, as well.  In other words, that meant there might also be a hunger out there for for life-and-faith-affirming stories.

It was a crystal moment for me.  I don’t mind saying I dropped to my knees and said a prayer:  ”God, if it’s your will for me, put me back in that game.”

A year later, I was working as a story editor on a CBS situation comedy called The Family Man.

And ten years later, I was a co-executive producer and writer on the show Touched By An Angel — a show which was being broadcast in more than 200 countries.

But those are storylines for another time.

Sometimes I get asked by aspiring writers and producers how my career in film and TV got started. While there are undoubtedly as many paths to success as there are successful people, that old saying “it’s who you know that counts” is actually true in Hollywood.

The word “nepotism” comes from the Greek word nepos, which means “nephew.” And in my case, that shoe fits… literally.

So here’s Part 1 of how it all started for me.

At 10 p.m., April 14, 1984, I had my first cup of coffee in the big leagues. That’s a metaphor used by minor-league baseball players for the first time they are called up to the Majors. Of course, in my case we weren’t talking about that national pastime. I was 26 years old, and that was the night I became a television writer. As my family and friends huddled around the TV screen, veteran actor Ricardo Montalban, dressed in his trademark white Panama suit, toasted a seaplane full of arriving visitors: “My dear guests… I am Mr. Roarke, your host.  Welcome to Fantasy Island.”

And there, for 13 million American viewers to see was my first network credit. I don’t mind saying, the experience of seeing “Written by Brian Bird” on national television was, as we might have said in the 1980s, “most excellent.”

I had graduated from journalism school four years earlier and had been working as a newspaper reporter for The San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune, and then as a public relations officer for the Christian relief organization, World Vision, when I had a conversation with Don Ingalls, my wife Patty’s great-uncle. Ingalls had been a Hollywood producer for three decades and at the time was one of several writer-producers of Fantasy Island. He explained that he had read some of my newspaper and magazine pieces, fortuitously promoted by my lovely wife at a family Christmas gathering. He wondered if I had ever given any thought to trying to write for television.

I was stunned and intrigued. Although my career had been pointing toward news and non-fiction writing, as a son of the TV Age, I had to admit the prospect of developing my fictional muscles was tantalizing.

Like tens of millions of other American Baby Boom families, my family loved the tradition of gathering around the television set several nights a week. This was the era of TV Dinners and the innovation of the color television tube, and we spent many prime-time hours together around our Magnavox Magna-Color with its amazing 19-inch screen and pecan wood console.

There we sat, week after week, captivated by the rugged individualism of Ben Cartwright his three sons on Bonanza, and thrilled to the adventures of the Impossible Missions Force on, you guessed it, Mission Impossible. We laughed at the antics of a family of Munsters who felt sorry for their very plain niece Marilyn and couldn’t understand why people were constantly staring at them. And we found wish-fulfillment in the good fortunes of a poor mountain man named Jed who struck black gold and moved his clan to the hills of Beverly in, of course, The Beverly Hillbillies. And while the Vietnam conflict and the cares of the real world swirled around us, there was a sense of safety and comfort as our TV heroes took care of business and righted the wrongs of the world.

When I was ten, I remember watching an episode of a new science fiction series, The Invaders, with my father. After it was over, I have a vivid memory of sitting there, awestruck, and saying a simple little prayer: “God, someday let me be able to tell a story like that.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)