Michel Jaffe had produced several TV movies before NDIE and went on to produce dozens more into the 2000's.
TV/Radio & Cable Week, Dec. 19, 1982
Producer finds road to 'Eden' By ANNE EATON Cable Writer
Basically, this is a daytime soap. We are using daytime actors, daytime writers and daytime production values.'Eden' is a soap, pure and simple. That is all it was ever intended to be.'
The speaker is Michael Jaffe, producer of the first such serial for pay TV, "A New Day in Eden," which runs regularly on Showtime at 10 p.m.. The series stars Jim McMullan, Steve Carlson, Lara Parker, Larry Poindexter, Maggie Sullivan and Rachel Todd. It has the usual soap paradigms: the patriarch of the rich family that runs the town, a "good" son and a "bad son, a spoilt heiress, a good girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a sluttish girl who wants revenge, and a single mother whose alleged husband left her sixteen years ago, right after their daughter was born.
"There is no question that daytime is a specialty," Jaffe says. "Many who do well in daytime go on to succeed in nighttime. There is a whole list of people who came out of daytime. But it is a tremendous specialty quite distinct from the talents of prime time." There are some differences, however. While it will avoid "total sexual explicitness," the themes and scripts are more adult-oriented than those found on network television. It will depict more frank lifestyles and issues that are only alluded to on network television. "We have a different set of goals to start with," Jaffe explains. "The networks want to have sophisticated and adult elements, but nobody will watch unless it's a quality product. We make 'Eden' different by the inclusion of elements not available to the consumer in the free market. These elements are language and body parts. At first there was a push for quantity of sophisticated elements in each part of the show, but we certainly don't let them dictate the production.'
"We recognized the need to do the best with the funds available. We were able to get Doug Marland, the world's best soap writer, who won an Emmy twice for "The Guiding Light' Herb Kenwith, one of the best three-camera tape directors, did our pilot. I also asked Susan Flannery, who starred in 'Days of our Lives' for seven years, to come in as a consultant. We were looking for network quality. We don't achieve that goal every time. We are still at the steep end of our learning curve at the end of our current cycle of 33-hour chunks."
But Jaffe has the reputation of being a producer of serious, high-quality programs. Does doing "Eden" violate any of Jaffe's professional standards? "There are programs you deeply believe in," says Jaffe, "and they are not always one and the same as the ones you do. I wish they were. I wouldn't do anything that violated my moral precepts. There are some things I make that I feel morally strong about on a personal level, but I don't feel I have to apologize for 'Eden' at all. Violence — especially against women — is kept to a minimum. It got out of hand in some of the early episodes, and we have tried to decrease it. It is important that there be a wholesome family and a wholesome relationship in the program, but in no other respect have we limited it."
Getting network quality for a little over half a network budget is quite a stunt. "We have managed to meet our goals with 60% of network budget because I'm a better producer than the networks have. There is no middle man, and no excessive baggage like featherbedding. These are all my people, my production men. The buck stops with me. We have used good friends, who' have been loyal to us as we have been to them, and so we have been able to make better deals." What is there about soaps that appeals to people? "If you take a long-term story projection of a soap, and read it, you get hooked by the story," Jaffe explains. "Some of us don't have the patience to watch a story unfold over such a long time span. We could not sit and watch soap after soap after soap because the payoff isn't big enough to spend that much time.
By
Paul Raven ·
