Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  Yeah, I created Cool Million. It was a series at NBC that was produced by Universal and starred James Farentino. [19] I wrote a two-hour movie for television, which is called “The Mask of Marcella.” That was the pilot, and the series got on the air. Cool Million was on what they call the “Mystery Wheel,” which meant it rotated with other ninety-minute shows in the same time-slot: Columbo, McCloud, and Rock Hudson’s show, McMillan & Wife. Of course, Columbo was the real heavyweight of the package, but Cool Million wasn’t bad. It was about a former CIA agent, who now runs his own detective agency. He has a private jet and only handles major big-time cases. His deal is that he receives a million dollars from his clients for each case that he solves. However, if he fails to solve the crime then he gets nothing. That was the central conceit of the show. Unfortunately, Farentino — who is a good actor — didn’t exude the class and sophistication required for the role. You had to believe that this guy enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and would be able to secure a million dollars for each successful case. Farentino was more like the private eye who had a crowded little office on the second floor of some dingy building and got $25 an hour. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who owned a private jet. You needed somebody like Roger Moore or Cary Grant to play the part; that was the sort of actors it was written for. Farentino did his best, but if a role is cast wrong at the start you can never make a show work later on.

  Your next script for television, Man on the Outside, was filmed in 1973 but not broadcast until June 29, 1975. Why was that?

  Man on the Outside was really the two-hour pilot for a television series and was about a retired police captain played by Lorne Greene, whose son becomes a private detective. When the son is murdered, the father takes over the detective agency and tries to solve his murder. At the end of the movie, having solved the crime and rescued his grandson who has been kidnapped by the mob, the elderly cop decides that he will come out of retirement and stay in the private detective business. That movie of the week was spun-off into a television series called Griff, again starring Lorne Greene, on ABC. The network had been interested in the show based on the strength of the script and the prospect of Lorne Greene playing the lead. Lorne was a successful TV star, but we had to wait for six months to make sure that he wouldn’t be picked up for another season of Bonanza. I had suggested that we try and get another actor of a similar, or perhaps even greater, stature than Lorne Greene, but instead we waited. Once it was finally established that Greene was available, a considerable amount of time had passed and another series suddenly appeared on CBS called Barnaby Jones. [20] Our first episode and the pilot of Barnaby Jones were virtually identical. Both guys were retired police captains; both had a son who they felt was wrong to be a private detective; the son was then murdered and both Griff and Barnaby Jones investigate the deaths and both have a grieving daughter-in-law. There were just too many glaring similarities for it to be a simple case of coincidence.

  What do you think happened?

  Basically, I think the idea was stolen by Quinn Martin. Martin did Barnaby Jones in the exact same format as Griff with hardly any variations. With Barnaby Jones being broadcast before we were on the air, it had stolen our thunder. This was even after TV Guide Magazine had said that Man on the Outside was a pilot for Barnaby Jones. All of this happened because old Quinn Martin stole the idea when he heard what I was doing. He copied it and got it out — only instead of Lorne Greene he had Buddy Ebsen, a very gifted actor, as the lead. Ebsen was, of course, very good in his part, better than Greene was in Griff, but that wasn’t the point. Barnaby Jones ran for seven or eight years and was a huge success. We then had to change the format of Griff because Barnaby Jones had got on the air first. We did that so it would at least be different, but it took all of the guts out of our show. It wasn’t even worth putting Griff on because there was nothing left of it after Barnaby Jones had stolen everything. We didn’t receive any credit or money for it either. So, that’s just another example of something getting stolen which has happened to me periodically over the years. If you’ve been around as long as I have and written so much, inevitably, things do get stolen, and Griff was stolen! What makes it particularly tough to take is, sadly, it was due to a friend of mine. He was a partner with me on several projects and knew about my script. I told him my idea and the next thing I know he was working for Quinn Martin and directing a hundred episodes of Barnaby Jones. I don’t know this for a fact, but I have a sneaky suspicion that my friend had something to do with the theft.

  Did you ever confront your friend?

  No, there was no point. It was all over and there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, what can you do? In this business you have to be careful of your friends as well as your adversaries. Sometimes your friends are your adversaries.

  In 1978, you wrote a little seen pilot for CBS called Sparrow.

  Yes, and we actually did that pilot twice. Sparrow was another show about a private investigator, who operates a detective agency in New Orleans. It was produced by Herbert B. Leonard, who was the producer of Naked City, a truly wonderful and important police drama series that began airing on ABC in the late 1950s. Before we embarked on Sparrow, I’d anticipated that Leonard would be a brilliant producer, but it soon transpired that he wasn’t. I quickly discovered that Naked City was actually the brainchild of the writers, Stirling Silliphant and Howard Rodman, rather than Leonard, who didn’t really know anything. I mean, the lead role of the detective in Sparrow was cast very badly. [21] When we shot the first version of the pilot, it became obvious that this actor just wasn’t right for the part. He didn’t have any panache or presence, and it just didn’t work. All of a sudden, they came back and said, “CBS still thinks this show has merit, so they want to mount another pilot.” I was very agreeable to that suggestion, but then Leonard did something that I thought was remarkably inept. As they prepared to re-shoot the pilot, who does he secure for the lead role? Only the very same actor who was no good the first time around! I couldn’t believe it. Leonard actually hired this same guy again and he wasn’t any better the second time around! What can I tell you? Sparrow was a clever idea and it could have been a successful series. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. Once again, I got some money for it and I tried my best, but I didn’t have control over the situation.

  Leaping ahead nearly twenty years, your next episodic television work was the critically acclaimed “Dirty Socks” episode of NYPD Blue which appeared in the second season. How did you come to write for the show?

  I knew the creator of the show, David Milch, socially. David asked me if I would write an episode of NYPD Blue, and so as a favour to him, I did. “Dirty Socks” was a terrific episode, too. I sent Milch the script and he called me up, and said, “We’ve moved your episode ahead of two other shows and we’re building the sets right now. We’re actually going to start shooting it next week.” Milch invited me to the set and he was very complimentary towards me. He then invited me to view the first cut of the episode, and later welcomed me into his house to see the telecast. Afterwards, he even took us out for dinner. Milch then called me up and said, “You are not going to believe this, but our ratings are the highest they’ve ever been for your episode. There was also a bigger response on the Internet for this show than anything we’ve had on previously. It’s a great show and you did a wonderful job.” Naturally, I was thrilled to hear this. I was thinking about what Milch had told me and the positive reaction the episode had received. I called him back a few days later and said, “Hey, why don’t we do a sequel to my episode since it went over so well? We could take the characters I created and use them in another story?” Milch said, “Uh, I’ve already written it.” I said, “What? You’ve already written it? Why didn’t you ask me to write it?” Well, there was really no answer for that. Milch had done his own spin-off episode using some of the same characters again. He had gone in a different direction, something I also had a good idea for. He just went ahead and did it without askin
g me or giving me an opportunity to write it myself. I should add that Milch’s episode was lousy, too, by the way. It was nowhere near as good as “Dirty Socks” and it went right into the ground. Anyway, that was the end of my association with NYPD Blue. Well, almost. There was one character I had created in my episode that went on to become a continuing character in the series. He was a gay guy who worked in the police station as a receptionist or aide. [22] When they used him each week for the rest of the series, they had to pay me a royalty. So, I got paid every week on NYPD Blue for about two years, solely based on the appearances of that one character.

  Why do you think Milch wrote a sequel to “Dirty Socks” without you?

  Ego. He couldn’t stand the fact that the show I’d done had been so successful. Milch was the head writer on NYPD Blue and he wanted to prove that he could probably write it better than me. So, he went ahead and wrote the episode himself instead of asking me to come back and do it. Again, it is like I told you, ego is always the problem on all of these shows. The show will always come second to preserving and bolstering people’s egos, every single time. Why, you might ask? Because it’s always about themselves. They must always make themselves look good.

  Am I to believe that you yourself are without ego?

  In television? No. But as far as my movies are concerned, I don’t work with anybody else, so I don’t need an ego. I do it all myself — everything — so I don’t have to be better than anybody. I don’t have to compete. I supervise every element of my films from the casting to the editing. But television is something else entirely. You can’t enjoy that kind of freedom for the most part. The only thing I could have ever required anybody to do for me when I was making my movies would be to change the typewriter ribbon when I was writing the script. It was not like that in television. You were always competing, always striving not to be crushed beneath these enormous egos.

  What do you consider to be the best of the television scripts you have written?

  My best TV scripts were the ones I wrote for Herbert Brodkin Productions in New York — The Defenders and The Nurses. They were both wonderful shows and they are also on exhibit at the Paley Museum of Television. I’m still thrilled to watch them today because they have such good quality writing and beautifully-judged performances. Admittedly, the production values are minimal. Brodkin was very stingy with the money, but he did spend his cash on good writers and good actors. Those shows were just fabulous and I’m still very proud of them. Actually, I think they rate with the very best in television. Although I did write a few things for Arrest and Trial, Sam Benedict and a couple of other shows out in California, that work was mainly inferior to what I’d been doing in New York. Ultimately, this was a prelude to what I really wanted to do — write my own movies. Frankly, if things in television had worked out differently; if I had assumed the autonomous position that writers and showrunners enjoy today and I had stuck with television and accepted ABC’s offer to become a supplier, no doubt my whole career would have been very different. I would never have made the movies that I made, but it all worked out for the best. I just didn’t want to go to an office every day and deal with producers, co-producers, executive producers, story editors, network executives, and suffer meetings and endure all the changes and memos. I did not want to contend with all that.

  You were ready for a new challenge?

  I was ready. That was my ambition in life — to make movies. I’ve been involved in a lot of television series and one of the things I must say, to my credit or disservice, is that I get tired of writing the same thing week after week. I’m really not interested in doing the same show time after time, which is exactly what series television offers you. You are merely doing variations on the same characters every week, and I always got tired of it after six months or a year. I always wanted to move on and do something else, stretch myself creatively. Again, I really wanted to go make my own movies — write, produce, and direct them — and be in full and absolute control. If I learned anything during my television experience, it was that you can make a lot of money but you really don’t have any control. You constantly have to make compromises with people, and you are constantly arguing and fighting them to get what you want, and you never do quite get what you want. But when you are writing screenplays, it always seems like you are painting on a much bigger canvas, at least that’s what it seemed like to me back in the late 1960s. I was going through some changes. I wanted to try different things. There was more room to experiment and push ideas in film, and there seemed to be a wider range of subjects you could take on. Television just couldn’t give me that. Certainly not back then.

  Screenplays: Part I (1966-1986)

  You sold your first feature film screenplay whilst you were still writing for television. What was it and how did that opportunity present itself?

  The first one I sold was The Return of the Magnificent Seven to the Mirisch Company and United Artists. I talked to Walter Mirisch, [1] who was the head of the company, and he called me in. Walter said that he wanted to do a weekly TV series based on The Magnificent Seven, which had been one of their pictures. I said, “Don’t waste such a great property, when you could do a film sequel to the original picture and have a big box office hit.” Actually, the first movie wasn’t much of a hit in the United States as it was very badly released. It only became popular over the years after television reruns. I felt the time was right for a sequel, and so Walter called Yul Brynner and Brynner said that he would do it. Walter then came back to me and said, “Okay, if we’re going to do it your way, you write it.” So, I got the job of writing the feature and I wrote a very good script, I think. In fact, Walter later said the screenplay was much better than the movie he made. That’s generally the case, anyway. In most instances, the pictures were never as good as the original scripts they were derived from.

  Did The Return of the Magnificent Seven move into production quickly?

  It lingered on for a while and then finally they got it put together. We met with various directors for the project, and throughout this period, Yul Brynner remained committed to it. I remember that one director who came through was Irvin Kershner, who later went on to do The Empire Strikes Back. I believe that Kershner had been a teacher at USC film school, and George Lucas was actually one of his students. Several years later, when Lucas was looking for somebody to direct The Empire Strikes Back, he gave the job to his old teacher. I don’t think Kershner had much to do with the planning or the ideas for the movie. He was just a traffic cop, because Lucas didn’t want to direct anymore after Star Wars. Anyway, Irvin was a nice man, but was very rabbinical. We had a meeting with Walter Mirisch, and started going through the script, and Irvin seemed to have a question for every single page we turned. He had to analyse every element of the picture and this went on and on. Finally, Kershner looked up at us and said, “Why do there have to be seven?”

  [Laughs] Seriously?

  This was The Return of the Magnificent Seven and he asked why there had to be seven! I looked over at Walter and Walter looked at me, and at that very moment we both knew that Kershner was the wrong director for this project. So, we went on and on and continued looking for somebody, until finally we ended up with Burt Kennedy. [2] Now Burt had directed a lot of what I would call “inferior” Westerns. Honestly, between Burt Kennedy and Andrew McLaglen, [3] both of these men had succeeded in completely destroying the Western as an American motion picture staple. There had been many, many Westerns made over the years — every year there had been Westerns like crazy — but all of a sudden after Kennedy and McLaglen had got through directing some of them, there were no more Westerns anymore. They basically killed the genre, in my opinion. I mean, Kennedy was okay, but he was a very slow-moving director who would just creep along. He also made the mistake of cutting out roughly twenty-five percent of my story so that it didn’t really make sense anymore. All the developments of the story had been removed. There were no longer any twists and it became more of a li
near piece.

  What exactly was lost?

  Oh, many things, a lot of scenes and little touches that really gave it some depth and detail. For instance, my story concerned these poor Mexicans, who were kidnapped from their village and forced to become slave labourers for a viscous Mexican general. The idea was that this general wants to construct a church out in the desert that will stand as a monument to his deceased sons who have all perished whilst defending their country against its enemies. The Magnificent Seven then show up and chase the general away, freeing the enslaved people so they can now return to their homes. I then had a nice touch in the story where the Mexicans decide to remain and willingly build the church. This is because they want something lasting in their lives, something that is their own. The Magnificent Seven join the Mexicans in their efforts to build this place of worship, setting aside their guns for probably the first time in their lives. They are now creators rather than killers, but this proves to be only a temporary thing as the general returns and blows up the newly-built church. The script was full of little details and twists like that, but Kennedy only shot half of my story. There was some other stuff lost, too. I just can’t recall all of it right now.

  Did you have any other issues with The Return of the Magnificent Seven?

  I had several problems with it. Artistically, the sequel was nowhere near the achievement the original was, but it was more successful financially. They had secured the budget from Spain as a co-production. This had saved money, but meant they had to fill the cast with Spanish actors. Now The Magnificent Seven had featured several terrific young stars, people like Steve McQueen and James Coburn, who later emerged as important actors in movies, but The Return had a very meagre cast. Naturally, Yul Brynner and Warren Oates were very good, but the rest of the people were second-rate. Then, later, Walter Mirisch came to me and said, “We can’t use Elmer Bernstein’s music because it’s been used for a car commercial on television.” I said, “Walter, if you don’t use Bernstein’s score then don’t make the picture. There simply is no Return of the Magnificent Seven without that music.” Once again, Mirisch listened to me and he reused the original score — re-orchestrated, of course. Believe it or not, the sequel actually got Bernstein an Academy Award nomination — for the exact same music that had been used previously! Crazily enough, he had not received any kind of Academy recognition at all for the original film. It was all thanks to me.