1981 Article David Jacobs talks Dallas,Knots and censorship

[Paul Raven]

December 1979. The first draft of my newest pilot script. "Secrets of Midland Heights," is too long. In the second draft I eliminate an introductory sequence establishing geography and atmosphere. The network's program -development executive agrees to the deletions. with one exception: we should put back a shot of a teen -age couple necking in a parked car. Indeed, says the executive, this should be the show's first shot: he likes the idea of "opening hot."

January 1980. The network's Program Practices department -in effect, the network censors -declares that "Secrets of Midland Heights" is too sexy. We negotiate, compromise, generally tone down the script. A particularly sticky area is an affair -alluded to, not dramatized between a high -school student and one of her teachers. We don't want to drop this element from the series altogether, so we agree to make the meaning of the specific scene in the pilot oblique. Maybe the student and her teacher are having an affair: maybe they aren't.

February. As we are preparing to shoot the pilot, the network broadcasts its sexy miniseries Scruples, and the ratings are tremendous. A high up network executive telephones: sex obviously is selling, so we are to restore "Secrets of Midland Heights" to its former, sexier condition. Including, I ask, the student -teacher affair? Yes. What about Program Practices? I'll deal with Program Practices, he says.

February- March. We shoot "Secrets of Midland Heights," sexy scenes intact. March. A Program Practices editor sees a rough cut, objects to all the material we failed to tone down, especially the student -teacher scene. I'm sorry, I say, but you will have to take that up with the high -up executive; we were only following his orders. She takes it up with him, calls me back in a few minutes; we are to make all her suggested trims in order to tone down the show's sexiness. As for the student -teacher scene, we are to recut it to make it oblique. Maybe the student and teacher are having an affair; maybe they aren't.

April. The finished print of "Secrets of Midland Heights" goes to New York to compete with other pilots for a slot on the network's fall schedule. A tense week, then word comes: we've made it! Triumph! We'll have to make a few changes, though: the network's senior

executives in New York found the show too sexy. The student -teacher affair, for example, must be completely eliminated -not only from the pilot but from our long -range plans for the series.

May. Now that "Secrets of Midland Heights" is on the fall schedule, network supervision of its development is turned over to the executives in charge of current programming. The student -teacher affair is gone by now, but the new group of executives has additional observations, objections, suggested alterations.

CBS and I have been good to each other. Since December 1977, I have written four dramatic pilots for the network; all four have been shot; all four have been picked up as series. Dallas is -well, Dallas: a phenomenon. Married: The First Year, the only critical success of the group, flopped, but nobly. Knots Landing is off to a good start. Secrets of Midland Heights has just begun. Four times I have submitted a pilot script to the network, and each time I expected the process of converting script to film and film to series to be easier than the last. Each time I've been wrong.

.

When I created, in my first pilot for CBS, the character of Lucy Ewing on Dallas, she was supposed to be about 16 years old and sexually promiscuous. Abandoned as a baby by her father, snatched away from her mother by her evil uncle J.R., raised by virtual captors, oversheltered and underloved, she slept around because sex was her only means of obtaining the undivided attention of

another human being; it was the substitution of body warmth for real love. Her promiscuity, however, increased her loneliness and self -loathing when she wasn't having sex; her escape from these feelings was more sex ... and, of course, more loneliness, more self -loathing. The first episode of Dallas retained a suggestion of this Lucy, although we were forced to make her older a high - school senior -and to veil her promiscuity. In the episodes that followed, she was further toned down. The network's Program Practices people simply could not accept the idea of a series regular being a promiscuous teenager. When I appealed to the programming executives for support. I was told that Program Practices had a point: that we are, on series television, making role models. By the end of the fifth Dallas episode, Lucy had been cleaned up. She emerged a coquette. To me, the Lucy of the first pilot script was the most morally responsible Lucy. She was too young to handle sex, yet she was sexually indiscriminate. Had we proceeded to develop the original character, she would have been cynical, mean - minded, self -destructive. There was no way that this miserably unhappy girl could have emerged a role model. Her pathetic behavior would have been televised proof that sex is no substitute for love. Instead, we were given a flirtatious, sexy eyed Lucy -a tease. And because she seemed to have a pretty good life, she became rather appealing to some younger members of the audience. This Lucy could be seen as a role model. Why not? She wasn't unhappy; she seemed to like sex; she got her own way by playing the little girl to her hard -as -nails grandfather. An unhappy teenager might well select her as someone to emulate.

Four pilots later, I still have the same arguments with Program Practices, only I am a little more savvy now and understand the real function of that network department. Recently, we submitted a Knots Landing script to the network in which Diana Fairgate, the 17- year -old daughter of Sid and Karen (Don Murray and Michele Lee), makes love with her boyfriend. She Loves the boy; he loves

her; they are both mature and well adjusted kids. But the experience is not good for either of them because they did it for the wrong reason: because it was expected of them, because their friends were urging them on. Diana becomes depressed; the experience contradicted everything she had expected sex to be even her mother had told her that sex between loving people is a form of sub-

lime communication, so special that it must be treasured, never taken lightly. To me, this was a responsible treatment of the subject; there was no way an impressionable teenager would watch this show and then go looking for sex just to be like Diana Fairgate. It wasn't preachy; we weren't saying don't ever have sex, a message kids with sex on their minds would have laughed at anyway. It

said, in effect, that making love requires maturity, a clear head, love and understanding.

We couldn't do it. A 17- year old series regular, we were told, could not lose her virginity under any circumstances on our show. I felt strongly about this. I appealed to a programming executive without success: he felt that the story would work as well if the young couple's lovemaking was not actually consummated. I attempted to reopen my argument with Program Practices. Look, I was told, advertisers don't like sponsoring a show on which a teenager has sex. Eureka! Now the Lucy controversy made sense to me. Advertisers. Or fear of their response. The advertiser may not even watch television; he is not interested in the reasons why Lucy is promiscuous or Diana depressed. But he doesn't want to risk letters from someone who complains about his sponsorship of a show on which there's a 16- year old girl who sleeps around, or a 17- year old girl who had sex with her boyfriend. In both cases, I believe the most morally responsible attitude was the attitude expressed in the original script. In both cases, we were forced into a less morally responsible position by the very department charged with maintaining the network's moral standards. At the present time I seem to be creating with my partner, Mike Filerman -the kind of show that is being watched. However respectable our track record, I keep reminding myself that we don't know anything about the tastes of the audience. We've hit a nerve; it's as simple as that. If we try to analyze why, the analysis may dull the instinct.

Network executives, in contrast, constantly analyze "the audience" and are full of pronouncements about the nature of the medium -this despite the fact that the industry track record is less than extraordinary. Last season (1979 -80), no fewer than 20 new dramatic series played, each a candidate for a permanent place on the schedule. Only three -Hart to Hart, Trapper John, M.D., and Knots

Landing -have returned so far this season. The previous season gave us two survivors: Vega$ and The White Shadow; the season before that also two: Dallas and Fantasy Island. One network pronouncement that has given me trouble says that every ongoing

series must have characters for whom the audience is rooting. I don't disagree with that, but I do quarrel with an amendment proclaiming that the rooted for character must be virtuous and heroic. In my original conception of Dallas, the character of Bobby Ewing was a spoiled brat, charming, playful, occasionally irresponsible -a playboy. His marriage to Pamela was a threat to his brother J.R. because Pam wanted Bobby to grow up and assume his place in the family business. Not wanting to have a pesky brother privy to his dirty dealings, J.R. was anxious to keep Bobby out. At first Bobby's response to his brother's resistance was to say "Who needs this ?" and back off, opting for a trip to Vegas. But then Pam would say, "No, Bobby, you've got to stand up to him; it's time to stop being a boy." Pam was the character who would make things happen.

The executives assigned to the show told me that audiences wouldn't accept this. We need someone to root for, they said. They'll be rooting for Pam, I suggested. Yes, but Pam is a woman, and audiences might resist accepting a woman as hero; to make matters worse, Pam is a woman with A Past, and women of uncertain virtue are not acceptable candidates for rooting. Besides, some viewers would feel threatened by Pam and resent her pushiness. We could root for Pam, I was told, but only as an adjunct to Bobby; Bobby would have to be the hero, and to be a hero he would have to be virtuous and strong. This didn't sound right to me, but they were the network and I was new at this, so I made the changes. This shift from the original concept made Bobby dull. Strong and responsible from the start, he had no place to go as a character. The potential for dramatic conflict between Pam and J.R. -as they bounced Bobby back and forth was lessened; gone was the dramatic process that would have led to the emergence of the heroic Bobby and the long awaited moment when he would stand up to everybody and declare himself no damned tennis ball. As a result, the show, at first, lacked a center. But not for long. Into the unoccupied middle stepped J.R. Ewing, propelled by the boundless energy and considerable skills of Larry Hagman. The emergence of J.R. as the center of Dallas and as a world celebrity does not seem to have affected the department of pronouncements. I like to create pris- matic characters, interesting people who have flaws, who make mistakes and have blind spots. To this day I still have trouble selling such characters. For whom will the audience root? l am asked.

When I answer, I'm told that audiences won't root for her because she's married and having an affair, or him because he drinks too much, or the other because he has a wart. But what about Dallas? I ask; for whom are we rooting on Dallas? Bobby and Pam, they say. We are, of course, rooting for J.R. That doesn't mean we're rooting for the triumph of evil; it means only that we are intrigued by this rogue: we want to test him. Will he really chisel his lifelong friends? Will he wreck Lucy's life by arranging a marriage that will serve his purposes? Will he forge his daddy's name on a fake will? Yes, he will. He wouldn't really sleep with his wife's little sister, would he? Oh, yes, he would! The writers stretch and stretch and it turns out there is no limit. I could be wrong about this. The other day I was being interviewed in a Beverly Hills restaurant, and I expounded on this notion that J.R. is the rooted for character on Dallas. Three women at the adjacent table spoke up to contradict me. They emphatically do not root for J.R., they said (while adding that they love to watch him; he's so bad). The person they root for, they explained, is Sue Ellen, J.R.'s wife. Fine. I accept that. I love it, in fact. The person being rooted for is a drunk and an adulteress, a woman who gave birth to a child she refused to touch for much of a season -a woman who, not incidentally, treats one of our ostensible rootees, Pamela, miserably. "The audience," apparently, chooses its rooting candidates for itself. Given the contradictory directives that come from the network, and the disproven yet clung to pronouncements of its executives, it seems miraculous that anything good ever gets done on series television.

At this point, I don't think there are any good dramatic series on TV. A few shows are good for what they are -The Rockford Files and Kojak were pretty good entertainment; Hart to Hart and Dallas are slick fluff, easy to watch -but "what they are" is not really good drama. I remember TV drama that made me angry, that made me think, that made me change my mind about things. I remember The Defenders when E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed defended two survivors of a shipwreck who were guilty of cannibalism; and Naked City when Paul Burke had to shoot a homicidal, aging war hero who he felt had been exploited. Those were series that got you where you hurt and where you think; I can't imagine them being produced today. The reason is that network television has become so competitive. Competition, I remember being taught, is supposed to improve products, but if that is so, the rule is excepted in television. In the old days CBS was so far ahead of the other networks in ratings that it could afford to take chances; it could afford The Defenders. And, for that matter, ABC was so distant a third that it could afford to take chances; if Naked City averaged only a 25 share, it was doing fine. In today's neck and neck ratings race, a show must not only win its time slot to survive, it must win it fast. This effectively dictates the kinds of shows that are developed. A successful show must be "promotable" -which is to say melodramatic, sensational, or gimmicky.

The task of developing good dramatic series is further hampered by what I've come to think of as the failure factor. Given the awesome flop rate of new shows, network executives have come to expect a show to die. Presented with a bought pilot, the programmers search for flaws, overdiscuss, overanalyze and overtamper. If the show flops, then they can say the flaws proved unsolvable. If the show succeeds, the credit can be shared by those who "fixed" the flaws. When only one in 10 filmed pilots

becomes a series and one in nine or 10 series becomes a hit, it doesn't seem unreasonable for network executives to assume the worst and resist the impulse to enthusiasm. Reasonable or not, however, it is a tough attitude to come up against. So dramatic series television is not very good because of the networks - right? After listing all my gripes against the network for all to see, I would have to say: Wrong. Dramatic series TV isn't very good because of the creator -producers.The closely competitive situation that

dominates network TV today may restrict the possibility of developing good shows, but it also opens up possibilities for producers of hit shows. When I worked as a story editor for Family, these possibilities were exploited regularly. The producer, Nigel McKeand, refused time and again to compromise the integrity of the show. On one occasion, we heard that ABC was going to pull a show about homosexuality if a certain change were not made, a change ordered by Broadcast Standards. The change would have dissipated the impact of the episode, and McKeand refused to make it. If the network pulled the show, he would call a press conference to explain the controversy. Family at that time was a ratings hit, as widely praised as watched. The change was not made. The show was not pulled. The days when a network can pull a successful show -as CBS once yanked The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - are probably gone. CBS was the number one network then, and by a substantial margin. Today, the cancellation of a hit show could mean the difference between first and second place for CBS or ABC, and neither network can afford to lose a winner; NBC can afford it even less. This gives producers of such shows incredible leverage -but, for the most part, they're not taking advantage of it.

As for my latest entries into prime time, Secrets of Midland Heights, like Dallas, aspires to be nothing more than terrific entertainment, a great diversion. Knots Landing, with its basis rooted more firmly in reality, has the potential to be good, strong drama, but its success so far has been modest: until it attains consistently high ratings over a whole season it will remain cancelable. I am, then, still a novice.I have not yet been in the position to do the kind of work I want to do, the way I want it done. The prospect is a terrific motivator; it keeps me working, inventing, making the compromises now that will lead to the greater creative freedom later. Will I flex my integrity muscles and take advantage of that creative freedom, when and if I get it? I plan to. I will disappoint myself if I don't. That's one thing I like about working in television: you do so much work that you know could be better, the best is always yet to come.

[DRW50]

Thanks. Fascinating article. That's a great point about Lucy - the "clean" version of her, who was still naughty and wild, was more of a role model girls than what he likely intended.

Too bad that Midland Heights didn't go anywhere. I guess it wasn't the right era.

[aMLCproduction]

Wow,thanks for sharing

[Cheap21]

Ha! I wonder what those same people would feel about today's tv when you have a half naked Miley Cyrus twerkinv and gyrating on TV with a married man old enough to be her father. All this stuff seems so tamed compared to what we are exposed to now

[P.J.]

I find the thought of a spoiled, bratty Bobby fascinating.

Is David Jacobs still alive? It would be fascinating to know what he thinks of the revived Dallas.

[allmc2008]

http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/06/12/looming-dallas-disaster-how-shows-creator-was-cut-out-of-reboot

http://www.ultimatedallas.com/dallasnews/2012/12/07/david-jacobs-talks-dallas-tnt/

[YRBB]

Great stuff! His thoughts on the original incarnations of Lucy, Bobby and Pam are fantastic. Really, really good and I wish those had come to be. Love that he points out the love the audience had for early (bitter, alcoholic, nasty, post-partum depressive) Sue Ellen.

[P.J.]

Yeah, thanks! I had no idea he'd been much more involved with KL as opposed to Dallas.

Very gracious of him to be so supportive of the new version, when he's really been brushed off and ignored. I think he's exactly right about the first season being plot heavy. I wish they'd do a follow up to see what he thinks of it now. I think it's vastly improved.

Shocked that BBG was only nine years older than Hagman.

[Khan]

I still think his idea of reversing John Ross and Christopher's roles was brilliant and logical and it would have made such a difference (even if the casting would have prevented any dynamic from becoming a total success). I also still think that making Ann's character a native of the East Coast rather than a fellow Texan would have been a fresh choice as well. (For one, it might have given DALLAS 2.0 that advocate for the audience that Jacobs talks about every show needing in the UD interview; someone who, like the uninitiated viewers, is a complete outsider both to the Ewings and their peculiar lifestyle.) And the way he talks about the dynamics among Pamela and Bobby and J.R. in the original series -- it's just so special and classic. You could take those same conflicts and put them into a show today and it'd still sing.

Make no mistake, I think David Jacobs is just a brilliant dude.

[DRW50]

The awful casting for the key roles (all of the key roles) tanked the show from the start. I do think the writing made it even worse, sadly.

[slick jones]

Thanks for this great article!

[cuzIsaySo]

I heard that in The original concept Bobby was supposed to die and that the show was supposed to be about JR vs Pam. The idea was re-tooled because Pam would have had a harder time fitting in without Bobby around.

[Khan]

It's true that DALLAS was supposed to kill off Bobby at the end of the first mini-season. However, IIRC, producers changed their minds, b/c the chemistry between Patrick Duffy and Victoria Principal, or between Duffy and Larry Hagman, was too good to let go of.

[cuzIsaySo]

I guess i might have gotten the real reason why behind it but I knew Bobby was slated to be killed off early.

I never got into Dallas tbh. I caught the last few seasons I think but I was more of a KNOTS LANDING fan

[allmc2008]

Does anyone know how much of a Daytime person David was? He would have EXCELLED! If I had a show I would SO put him on board! HE should be in charge of AMC/OLTL 2.0. He understands WHAT soaps are about and WHY people write for them. Not to sell products but to tell stories about the HUMAN CONDITION!

He was light years ahead of his time as well.

I wonder what he would do with a show like Y&R?