F.F.: I thnk I in-
jected a lot of
humor, especially
between Tony and
Catherine." In
the episode
"Bringers of Won-
der," Maya turns
into a clawed
alien when she
becomes jealous
over Tony's in-
terest in Diana
Morris. |
 |
|
episodes, and end up with four clinkers, I
think you've got one hell of an average. I
wrote three scripts under the table, using the
pseudonym "Charles Woodgrove." I took
the job and was just paid expenses. My stories
were "Space Warp," "The Rules of Luton"
and "The Beta Cloud."
SL: Coincidentally, we wanted to ask why
Maya's metamorph abilities were changed in
"The Rules of Luton" script. In other stories,
Maya could change from one form to
another without reverting back to her normal
self. In "Luton" she is changed into a bird,
captured and held prisoner in a small wire
cage, unable to change into something
smaller and escape. Why was this done?
FF: In this case I'll just have to claim
"writer's license."
SL: "Beta Cloud" seemed to be a rehash of
the standard B.E.M. (Bug-Eyed Monster)
type of story.
FF: What I did was try to get into the situa-
tion. How do you defeat the undefeatable?
What intrigued me is that the Alphans could
not seem to defeat this creature. Finally,
Maya becomes a bee and enters the creature's
ear, discovering it to be a machine. David
Prowse, who of course is now famouse as
Darth Vader, was in that costume.
SL: How many days on the average were you
given to shoot an episode of 1999?
FF: Ten days, not including our special-
effects stage; nine hours of shooting a day. In
the U.S., you begin work at 8 a.m. and pull
the plug at 6 p.m. In England, its 9 a.m. to 6
p.m. The shoot more in the U.S., too,
because there's overitme built into the
budget.
SL: In a press release sent to STARLOG, ITC
says the second season budget for 1999 was
upped from $6 million for Year I to $7.2
million for Year II. This would break down to
$300,000 per episode. Was that your typical
working budget?
FF: That's nonsense! We brought them in for
$185,000 per episode, which got them fantas-
tic production values. That $300,000 figure is
probably just for publicity. In England, at
that time (1976), the pound dropped to $1.80, |
so they got enormous revenue in terms of
dollars. The 1999 budget was predicated ori-
ginally on pounds. When the pound dropped
to $1.80, for the dollars they got in domestic
sales here, they got that many more pounds in
England. So, in essence, that budget leaped
way up. The studio had legitamate costs of
about 25 percent. No way can you get a show
in America for $200,000. The fringe benefits
alone amount to one-third. A second assistant
director in America gets $900 a week! And
that's not counting overtime. We did a black
panther sequence on 1999 (in "The Exiles")
. . .Catherine Schell made a leap and trans-
formed into this panther. . . in mid-air. We
spent the whole day and it cost us $5,000. In
America it would have cost us $50,000!
SL: Is it still a good idea to do a series in
England?
FF: I think so. I still think you can get, prob-
ably for two thirds of the cost here, the type of
production values necessary. The facilities
are great, and so are the people.
SL: Had Space: 1999 been renewed for
another season, what changes would you
foresee?
FF: Well, I don't know if I'd make any
changes. I think I injected a lot of humor, es-
pecially between Tony and Catherine. As for
Martin and Barbara, I think I beat the bad re-
lationships. I think if they would have the
budget for not only American guest stars, but
if they could have really paid for high-class
English actors, they would have had a hell of
a lot better acting. But, in terms of changes, I
think that American guest stars would be ap-
pealing for the American audience.
SL: Could you give our readers an idea of
what's involved in writing for a television
series?
FF: Using the Harlan Ellsion Star Trek script
as an example. . .Roddenberry and Gene
Coon rewrote his "City on the Edge of For-
ever" and Ellison submitted his first draft to
the Writer's Guild awards, and it got the
award. Now, that doesn't mean that the staff
people were wrong in what they wanted to do,
or that he was right. This is the nature of this
business. If people come in to produce a |
|
show. . .Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon
or whoever, that show has to be shaped in
terms of what they think. There are 1,200 ac-
tive writers in the Writer's Guild. Writers
have fragile egos. The come in and submit
something. You generally know your show
better. You change that show; you rewrite
the show. You suggest what they do. You
make suggestions. The professional writer is
one who has been in the business and knows
what it is. No writer likes to have what he's
done changed. Some of them will accept the
fact that some good suggestions are made and
will follow the guidance of the people who are
running the show. The writer comes to the
producer and tells him the idea. The get the
assignment. All are cut-off assignments, cut
off after story. They then come in with the
story and discuss it. They adjust. At no time
does a writer have to, if he's got such inte-
grity, and I do not say that disparagingly, ac-
cept the change. All he has to do is leave and
say, "Just pay me my money for that story
and I'm finished." They don't have to go on
with it after that.
The people who are running a show have to
run that show. The can't let 22 different
writers come in and determine how the show
should go. You've got to shape it, rightly or
wrongly, ratings and otherwise. The average
writer that I know, if he's been around, he
gets 50 percent up there on the screen.
There isn't too much joy in the actual
writing. The term "hack" has a stigma at-
tached to it, but it shouldn't, because it's
much tougher to hack out a job for a format
show than to write an anthology show, where
you have no restrictions. But if you're "hack-
ing" out a job on Ben Casey or Star Trek,
you've got to handle their characters. You've
got to shoehorn your story into a situation
where these characters can come in where
they probably don't even belong. You're
stretching the story and doing things to get
these people into that show. And it's very
tough. You have to be a real craftsman. But if
you hack out a job for one of these shows,
you're doing pretty damn good. And they
would always pay more money for an an-
thology show than for an episodic show, and
we couldn't understand why, because it was
so easy to do an anthology show as opposed
to the other.
Integrity's a wonderful thing when you can
afford it. I have no great admiration for the
guy who wouldn't work in television or
wouldn't work in a show and chose to stay in
a garrett and starve to death. I don't want to
live that way, but I admire and applaud his
right to do that, if that's what he wants.
* * *
With Beyond Westworld behind him, Fred
Freiberger is now concentrating on a new
project, Space Station Starburst. Projected
as a Saturday morning show for CBS, this
live-action series would chronicle the first
manned space station in Earth orbit. The
show will be realistic, with background infor-
mation supplied by NASA. If the series is
sold, a start date for the 1981-1982 TV season
will be set |
