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And yet, for all the authenticity and intimacy borne of a first-hand account, you can see why a movie director might struggle with Crichton’s promising screenplay. The extended 88-minute pilot that aired on NBC in September 1994 is, in all the essentials, the same semi-autobiographical movie screenplay Crichton and Spielberg had chewed over five years earlier.Īs green as the hospital walls, medical student John Carter (Noah Wyle) is the screen offspring of John (Michael) Crichton, and our tour guide for the hellish next 24 hours. In fact, Crichton only penned one episode of ER - the first. Crichton, however, is hardly a creator in the same sense as The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin (who wrote practically every episode until he was fired last year) or Buffy’s Joss Whedon (who wrote and directed every standout episode). The credits of ER list Michael Crichton as “Creator”.
This was the fag end of the ’60s and the free-spirited Crichton would quit medicine soon after graduation, but his experiences at Mass Gen would stay with him for decades to come, a recurring nightmare nagging at his creative mind. (Oh, and some movie about overgrown lizards.)Īlthough he preferred to spend nights squirrelling away on the science-goes-wrong thrillers that would soon make his fortune, Harvard Medical School did afford young John Michael Crichton with the opportunity to experience the sharp end of his nominal line of work during an internship at the emergency ward of Massachusetts General Hospital. And it is in a similarly conversational manner that Crichton casually replies, “Well, I have just finished this book about dinosaurs…” With that single sentence, the most important television drama of the 1990s was born. So it is in the spirit of solicitous curiosity, rather than outright desperation, that Spielberg idly asks Crichton if there’s anything else the author is working on. Work is progressing slowly - the script currently has ‘third act problems’ - but the redoubtable duo has every reason to believe a solution is just around the corner. Spielberg has called the meeting to suggest some revisions to a movie script he bought from Crichton some months ago.
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October 1989, and on a typically clement LA autumn afternoon, Steven Spielberg is holed up in his Amblin offices with author and director Michael Crichton.