Fast forward to the summer of 1991. I was back at home in Santa Fe (though I worked in Hollywood for ten years, I never actually moved to Los Angeles, and would flee back to New Mexico and Parris the moment my current project wrapped). Since the end of Beauty and the Beast, I had written the pilot for a medical show and the screenplay for a low-budget science fiction movie (it wasn’t so low-budget after I got done with it). Neither had gone anywhere, and no new assignment was in the offing, so I started work on a new novel. Avalon was science fiction, a return to my old future history. The writing seemed to be going well, until one day a chapter came to me about a young boy who goes to see a man beheaded. It was not a part of Avalon, I knew. I knew I had to write it too, so I put the other book aside and began what would ultimately become A Game of Thrones.
When I was a hundred pages into the fantasy, however, my lovely and energetic Hollywood agent Jodi Levine called to report that she’d gotten pitch meetings for me at NBC, ABC, and Fox. (CBS, the network that had aired both The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, was the only network that did not want to hear my ideas. Go figure.) I had been telling Jodi that my werewolf novella “The Skin Trade” would make a swell franchise for a series, and asking her to get me in to pitch it. Now she had. So I put A Game of Thrones in the same drawer with Avalon and flew out to L.A. to try and sell the networks on a buddy series about a hot young female private eye and an asthmatic hypochondriac werewolf.
It’s always best to have more than one string to your bow when fiddling for networks, so I noodled with some other notions on the plane. Somewhere over Phoenix, the opening line of “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr” came back to me. There is a girl who goes between the worlds…
By the time I got off the plane, that line had mutated into a concept for an alternate-world series I called Doors (it was later changed to Doorways, to avoid confusion with Jim Morrison’s band and Oliver Stone’s film). It was Doors that ABC, NBC, and Fox all responded to, not “The Skin Trade.” I flew home thinking that Fox was the most likely of the three to bite, but ABC was faster on the trigger. A few days later, I had a pilot.
Doorways became my life for the next two years. I took the project to Columbia Pictures Television, where my old Twilight Zone colleague Jim Crocker joined me as Executive Producer. The rest of 1991 I spent writing and rewriting the pilot. I did several story treatments and beat outlines before going to script. The toughest question I faced was deciding what sort of alternate world Tom and Cat should visit in the pilot. After long consultations with Jim Crocker and the execs at Columbia and ABC, I went with “winter world,” a stark post-holocaust Earth locked in the throes of a nuclear winter. My first draft, as usual, was too long and too expensive, but Crocker seemed pleased with it, as was Columbia.
ABC was pleased as well…with the first half of the script. Unfortunately, the network guys had changed their minds about what should happen when Tom and Cat go through the first door. Winter world was too grim, they now decided. If we went to series, we could go there for an episode, certainly, but for the pilot ABC felt we needed a less depressing scenario.
It meant tearing up the entire second half of my script and doing it all over, but I gnashed my teeth, put in some late nights and long weekends, and got it done. In place of winter world, I sent Tom and Cat to a timeline where all the petroleum on Earth had been eaten some years earlier by a bioengineered virus designed to clean up oil spills. Needless to say, this caused a rather major…ah, burp…but civilization recovered after a fashion, and the resulting world was far less grim than winter world had been.
In January 1992, ABC gave us a production order for a ninety-minute pilot. To offset some of the projected budget deficits (my script was too long and too expensive), Columbia also decided to produce a two-hour version for European television. Academy Award winner Peter Werner was hired to direct, and preproduction began. Casting was a hell and a half, and actually caused us to delay the shoot (with fateful consequences further down the road), but we finally found our regulars. George Newbern was perfect as Tom, Rob Knepper made a splendid Thane, and Kurtwood Smith was so good in his dual role as Trager that we would have brought him back many times had we gone to series. For Cat, we had to go across the ocean to Paris, where we discovered a brilliant and beautiful young Breton stage actress named Anne LeGuernec. I remain convinced that if Doorways had gone to series, Anne would have become a huge star. There was no one like her on American television, then or now. We found some great people for our guest roles too, adding Hoyt Axton as Jake and Tisha Putman as Cissy. Finally we were go to roll.
When we screened the rough cut for ABC that summer, we got an enthusiastic reception and an order for six back-up scripts, so we would be ready to go into production as a mid-season replacement in 1993. I wrote one of the six scripts myself, hired some terrific writers to do the other five, and spent the remainder of 1992 and the first few months of 1993 doing rewrites, going over pattern budgets, and getting ready to go to series.
It never happened. ABC passed. The why of that remains a matter of conjecture, though I have my theories. Bad timing might have been a part of it. By the time we finally found our Tom and Cat, we had missed the development window for the ’92 fall season. We seemed to be a lock for the fall of ’93, but there was a shakeup at ABC before that decision day rolled around, and both of the execs who had supervised the pilot ended up leaving the network. We might also have made a mistake when we agreed to scrap winter world, which would have given the second half of the show a visual and visceral impact that no-oil world could not match. The test audiences and focus groups would have gotten a much different idea of the dramatic potential of the series from a world in more desperate straits.
Or maybe it was something else entirely. No one will ever know for certain. After ABC pulled the plug, Columbia screened the pilot for NBC, CBS, and Fox, but it is a rare thing for one network to pick up a project developed for another. Heinlein said it best: if you let them piss in the soup, they like the flavor better.
Doorways died. I mourned a while, and went on.
You don’t forget, though. Ten years have passed, but it still makes me sad to think what might have been. It gives me great pleasure to include the script in this retrospective. No writer wants to see his children buried in an unmarked grave.
I debated a long time over which version of the script to use here. The later drafts are more polished, but in the end I decided to use the first draft, the one with winter world. The two-hour European cut of Doorways has been released on videotape everywhere but in the U.S.A., and large crowds saw the rough cut of the ninety-minute version at the test screenings we did for MagiCon, the 1992 worldcon in Orlando, Florida. But no one has ever visited winter world till now. And what could be more appropriate for an alternate-worlds story than to present an alternate version of the script?
Doorways will always be the great “what if” of my career. I wrote other pilots—Black Cluster, The Survivors, Starport—but Doorways was the only one to get beyond the script stage, the only one to be filmed, the only one to come within a whisker of winning a spot on a network’s primetime schedule. If it had, who knows? It might have run for two episodes, or for ten years. I might still be writing and producing the show today, or I might have been fired two months into the series. The only certainty is that I would be much, much richer than I am at present.
On the other hand, I would never have finished A Game of Thrones, or written the other volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire. So maybe it all turned out for the best after all.
THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED”
FADE IN
INT.—LIVING ROOM—NIGHT
JEFF MCDOWELL and his wife DENISE, an attractive couple in their late thirties, are cuddled together on their couch, watching TV. She’s sleepy but contented; he’s rapt on the screen. The light of the TV plays over their faces. The furnishings are eclectic, not expensive or terribly chic, but comfortable. There’s a fireplace
, with bookshelves to either side stuffed with magazines and plenty of well-read dog-eared paperbacks.
O.S. we HEAR dialogue from the original version of The Thing: the exchange “What if it can read minds?” “Then it’ll be real mad when it gets to me.” Jeff smiles. Behind them, we SEE their five-year-old daughter, MEGAN, enter the room.
MEGAN
Daddy, I’m scared.
As Megan comes over to the couch, Denise sits up. The girl climbs up into Jeff’s lap.
JEFF
Hey, it’s only a space carrot.
Vegetables are nothing to be scared of.
(beat, smile)
What are you doing down here anyway?
Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?
MEGAN
There’s a man in my room.
Denise and Jeff exchange looks. Jeff hits the pause button.
DENISE
Honey, you were just having a bad dream.
MEGAN
(stubborn)
I was not! I saw him, Mommy.
JEFF
(to Denise)
My turn, I guess.
Jeff picks up his daughter, carries her toward the stairs.
JEFF
(cheerful, reassuring)
Well, we’ll just have to see who’s scaring my girl, huh?
(aside, to Denise)
If he reads minds, he’ll be real mad when he gets to me.
CUT TO
INT.—MEGAN’S BEDROOM
as Jeff opens the door. A typical untidy five-year-old’s room. Dolls, toys, a small bed. A huge stuffed animal, fallen on its side, fills one corner. The only light is a small nightlight in the shape of some cartoon character. Megan points.
MEGAN
He was over there. He was watching me, Daddy.
JEFF’S POINT OF VIEW
as he looks. Under the window is a shape that does indeed look like a man sitting in a chair, staring at them.
BACK TO THE SCENE
Jeff turns on the overhead light, and suddenly the man in the chair is nothing but a pile of clothes.
JEFF
See. It’s nothing, Megan.
MEGAN
It was a man, Daddy. He scared me.
Jeff musses his daughter’s hair.
JEFF
Just a bad dream, Megan. My big girl isn’t scared of a little nightmare, is she?
He carries her to bed, tucks her in. Megan looks uncertain about the whole thing; she sure doesn’t want to be left alone.
JEFF
Can you keep a secret?
Megan nods solemnly.
JEFF
(conspiratorially)
When I was a kid, I had lots of bad dreams. And monsters.
MEGAN
(wide-eyed)
Monsters?
JEFF
In the closet, under the bed, everywhere. Then my dad told me the secret. After that I wasn’t scared anymore.
(whispers in her ear)
Monsters can’t get you if you hide under the blankets!
MEGAN
They can’t?
JEFF
(solemn, definite)
Those are the rules. Even monsters have to obey the rules.
Megan pulls up her blankets and ducks underneath, giggling.
JEFF
That’s my girl.
(lifts blankets, tickles her)
But blankets can’t hide you from daddies.
They tussle playfully for a moment. Then Jeff kisses her, tucks her back in.
JEFF
Now go to sleep, you hear?
Megan nods, ducks under the blanket. Jeff smiles, goes to the door, and pauses to look back before turning out the light.
JEFF’S POINT OF VIEW
Of the room, the bed, Megan’s small form huddled under the blankets, the scattered toys. He flicks the switch.
SMASH CUT TO
INT.—HUT IN VIETNAM—NIGHT
Everything is the same; everything is grotesquely different. The walls and roof are thatched, the floor is dirt. The arrangement of objects is a distorted echo of Megan’s room. Outside the window a nearby fire illuminates the scene (instead of a streetlamp). In a dark corner, where the stuffed animal lay in Megan’s room, a body slumps instead. Every toy, block, and object from Megan’s room has a counterpart placed identically; pots and pans, a rag doll, a gun, etc. The bed is a pile of straw, and the blanket is ragged, but there’s still a child’s body beneath. Only now there’s a dark stain spreading on the cloth. We HEAR Jeff’s shocked gasp. The Vietnam shot should be held very briefly, almost a subliminal. Then Jeff turns the light back on and we
SMASH CUT TO
MEGAN’S ROOM
As before. Everything is normal.
CLOSE ON JEFF
Disoriented, confused, he stares for a beat, shakes his head.
BACK TO THE SCENE
Jeff turns off the light again. This time nothing happens. He closes the door softly, and we FOLLOW him downstairs.
LIVING ROOM
Denise is glancing over some legal briefs, oversized glasses on the end of her nose. She glances up at Jeff, and notices something in his expression that makes her put away the papers.
DENISE
What’s wrong? You look like death warmed over.
JEFF
(still shaken)
It’s nothing…I thought…ah, it’s absurd. Like daughter like father, I guess.
(forced laugh)
The “man” was a chair full of clothes.
DENISE
She’s got your imagination.
JEFF
I wondered who took it.
DENISE
She’s okay, though?
Jeff seats himself, picks up the remote control, turns the movie back on just in time for the “Keep watching the skies” speech.
JEFF
Sure.
CUT TO
MEGAN’S ROOM
The girl is huddled under the blankets in the soft glow of her nightlight. We HEAR her soft, steady breathing. The camera MOVES IN slowly, with the faint SOUND of a wheelchair moving across a hardwood floor.
CLOSE ON MEGAN
As a shadow falls across her. She does not stir, not even when a man’s hand moves in from off camera, grasps the corner of her blanket, and pulls it back with ominous slowness.
FADE OUT
FADE BACK IN
INT.—CLASSROOM—THE NEXT DAY
A college lecture hall. Twenty-odd students are watching and taking notes while Jeff paces in front of the class, tossing a stub of chalk idly as he lectures. On the blackboard is written NY JOURNAL—HEARST and NY WORLD—PULITZER.
JEFF
—when Remington complained that he couldn’t find a war, Hearst supposedly cabled him back and said, “You provide the pictures. I’ll provide the war.” Now, that anecdote is probably apocryphal, but the role the yellow press played in whipping up war fervor was beyond dispute.
A sullen dark-haired student with the look of a jock interrupts the lecture before Jeff can proceed.
JOCK
At least they were on our side.
Jeff stops, looks at him, sits on the edge of his desk.
JEFF
You have a point to make, Mueller?
JOCK
(points at board)
These guys, at least they were behind our boys. The real yellow journalists were the ones who ran down everything we did in Nam.
JEFF
(drily)
Not every war can be as box office as Hearst’s little shoot-emup, I guess.
JOCK
Yeah, well, at least we won that one. We could have won in Nam too.
JEFF
I wouldn’t go that far, Mueller. You need to spend more time with your text and less with Rambo.
The class breaks into laughter, but the jock looks angry. Before Jeff can resume his lecture, the class bell RINGS. The students begin to rise, gather up their books, etc.
JEF
F
Remember, chapter twelve of Emery is due by next week.
He puts down the chalk and begins to clear his papers into a briefcase as the students file out. The jock lingers until he and Jeff are alone. He steps up to the desk. Physically he is bigger than Jeff, who closes the briefcase and looks up at him.
JOCK
So where were you during Nam, Mister McDowell?
The two men lock eyes for a long, solid beat. It is Jeff who breaks and looks away first, his eyes averted as he replies.
JEFF
(brusquely)
I was in school. Not that it’s any of your business.
He brushes past, walking a little faster than necessary, while the jock watches him go.
CUT TO
EXT.—DAY CARE PARKING LOT—DAY
Denise and Megan emerge from a Day Care Center, and cross the parking lot to her Volvo. Denise, on her way home from work, is dressed in a chic tailored suit, carrying a briefcase. As she unlocks the car, we HEAR the sound of a wheelchair.
ANGLE OVER VET’S SHOULDER AT DENISE
In f.g., we see a man’s shoulder and the back of his head. Denise backs out of the parking spot, turns toward the camera.
ANGLE ON CAR
As it passes we get a quick glimpse of a legless man in a wheelchair (THE VET) turning to follow it with his eyes. He is long-haired, bearded, his trousers pinned up at mid-thigh, wearing a shapeless olive drab jacket without badges. We should not see his face clearly.