On the other hand, “It forces you to be more creative,” Fazekas concludes. “Neal likes to grapple with issues. He wants the cops to be on opposite sides in an argument. . . . The only rules at
SVU
are: Don’t be ordinary and don’t be lazy. I love courts and case law but have a tendency to get into the legalese too much. Neal always said, ‘Find creative ways to get around ordinary questions the cops or prosecutors ask.’”
Amanda Green’s specialty is sticking to the quintessential facts. “We take liberties with timing,” she says. “Obviously, cases don’t go to trial five minutes later and DNA results don’t come back in thirty seconds, but we never make up a technology that doesn’t exist. We stay on the cutting edge. We research what’s new and happening in forensics or law. I’ve gotten calls from lawyers asking me to explain how we did something.”
Before he was hired, Mick Betancourt remembers being impressed by
SVU
’s commitment to topicality. “It was a show that was so good I was just entertained by it, which for someone who is a writer is a pretty unique thing, because usually you want to get in there and find the nuances, and I just took it for what it was,” he says. “Which is more a compliment than anything because it was so airtight. And when I got hired I went through all the scripts and saw the character nuances that Neal likes to put in, socially conscious events and issues. . . . Not being heavy handed but just shining a light on these things.”
That revelation gave him pause. “It was so perfect, I was a little intimidated,” Betancourt acknowledges. “You don’t write 200 episodes of television by accident. It was a humbling experience to be brought on and see how other people write, see what the process is, have them share it.”
Former co-executive producer Patrick Harbinson, who arrived at the end of season three, knew Baer from
ER
, where Harbinson worked as a producer. “He was the brains and heart. He asked me to join
SVU
and I said, ‘Yes, please.’”
Originally from England, Harbinson had done a series there about the special investigations branch of the armed services called
Red Cap
. “That was close (to
Law & Order
) in terms of tightly plotted procedurals,” he suggests. “I love the strictness of the Mother Ship. There are rules, like a little dramatic sonnet. For
SVU
, Dick Wolf said we can break some of the rules. What writer wouldn’t like that?”
Esat Coast-based producer David DeClerque thinks
Law & Order
is “a great whodunit, with twists and turns.
SVU
was going to be much more about the emotions of victims. We were still going to have those ka-chings. This show is similar to
L&O
in many ways, but with a little more beating heart to it.”
A medicine man who knows how to keep hearts beating and beat sheets pumping, Baer says his intention is “to inspire writers. I give them the ideas. Some are better with emotional material; others with the twists and turns.”
A sublime testament to the show’s ethos may be the two leather signs on the well-appointed desk in Dick Wolf’s office—the only things on his desk, in fact. One reads, “It CAN be done.” The other: “It’s the writing, stupid.”
CHAPTER FIVE
TOGETHERNESS
O
ur best writers are women,” proclaims executive producer Ted Kotcheff.
The presence of so many females on the staff is “unusual for any show,” says former co-executive producer Michele Fazekas. “There are always many more men. But I don’t think this has been a coincidence on
SVU
, because women are a huge percentage of the viewing audience. It’s a nice change.”
Judith McCreary takes heart from Dick Wolf’s compliment on her ability to transcend gender. “He once told me, ‘You write like a man.’ I felt like Dorothy Parker. It was always her aspiration to write like a man. A lot of women (writers) lean toward romantic notions,” she says. “I’m by no means a feminist, though some might say I’m a rabid feminist. I tell them, ‘Trust me. I’m a double-D. I need my bra.’”
Dawn DeNoon seems to think the feminine mystique is an
SVU
charm: “Ted Kotcheff has always loved female writers on the show, and we’ve gone through a lot of men. Turnover’s big on men, and even talking to them, I hate to say, it’s really hard for a man to get (the) mindset of being a victim and at risk to be raped . . . I’m generalizing; obviously there are men who can write for (the series), and Neal is running it.”
Moreover, at
SVU
it’s extraordinary that people in their prime are writing for primetime, given an industry milieu that worships youth. In a 2003 interview, Dick Wolf pondered this Hollywood phenomenon: “I’ve never understood the obsession with younger writers and dramas. Comedies I understand, but how do you write drama at twenty-three, you haven’t experienced anything? . . . There are not many twenty-three-year-olds who can write about life-changing situations unless it’s medical. That sounds weird, but there’s not the mileage on the odometer to get under the surface. There are exceptions—(Charles) Dickens wasn’t bad at twenty-three.”
Whatever the age or gender, writing partnerships of all kinds have been a fairly common occurrence at the L.A. headquarters. After being teamed with Lisa Marie Petersen from 1999 through 2005, DeNoon found the work ethic a wee bit harder to muster on her own.
“It’s a big difference if there’s no one to come in and say, ‘OK, we have to start writing now!’ The procrastination lasts a little longer,” she muses. “With another person, we’re going to meet up at this time and we have to get to work. . . . Conversely, I was always a nighttime person. So when the idea comes to you at midnight you could start and run right through, but with a partner you’re like, ‘I can’t call her at midnight, but this just hit me.’”
Fazekas, who went on to work with longtime collaborator Tara Butters on CW’s sci-fi show
Reaper
, explains their method while at
SVU
from 2001-06: “We’d break a story together, figuring out every beat, write an outline, and split up to each write half. Then we switch halves. Tara gets less frustrated than I do. I’m like, ‘If it’s not working throw it out.’”
Butters remains committed to her bailiwick: “My favorite thing is dialogue.”
Once his writing partner Robert Campbell left the show, after a stint that lasted from 2000-03, co-executive producer Jonathan Greene soldiered on alone. “When you’re doing it by yourself, you get to work more in your own head. You don’t have to verbalize as much stuff,” he observes. “So it makes it easier for me to go through whatever my wacky thought process may be, and to get it out there.”
While still together, they would always use a whiteboard to plot their episode. As a solo act, Greene assumed, “I don’t need the board; I can do this all in my head,” until encountering a small hurdle. “I just started using the board again because I realized it helps me to look at something and not have to go to a computer. It’s like anything else, your process evolves,” he explains.
Across the country, close collaboration is a daily
SVU
regimen, generally involving clusters of people with expertise in various fields.
“We normally prep for eight days and shoot for eight days, so there’s always a team prepping,” says producer David DeClerque, who has to keep track of it all. “We constantly leapfrog that way throughout the year. It’s high-energy. We can’t ever lag. Sometime that means twelve- or thirteen-hour days. In the beginning, we had crazy hours to establish the look of the show and the characters. Now we’re pretty well-oiled.”
That term is frequently mentioned by the many human cogs in the
SVU
machine. Indeed, if the roof were removed to allow a crane shot looking down at the labyrinthine North Bergen operation, it might resemble elaborate wheelworks—or perhaps an ant farm. The hustle-bustle is constant, all the more so when scenes are being shot on the soundstage and everyone seems supercharged with a sense of purpose.
“We start with Uncle Ted’s Story Hour (a weekly brainstorming session for each new script that’s led by executive producer Kotcheff), going over our thoughts on the episode,” DeClerque explains. “For example, what kinds of houses will we put the characters in? The assistant director breaks down the script to come up with a schedule. We discuss what guest stars might be available.”
CHAPTER SIX
FINDING OTHER TALENT
“U
ncle Ted’s Story Hour” sounds like a cozy children’s library event. But, at
SVU
’s New Jersey headquarters, it’s a visit to the dark side of human nature via a brainstorming session led by executive producer Kotcheff for each new script. About a dozen people gather in a conference room or squeeze into his office to evaluate everything from plot to potential sets.
“We go over our thoughts on the episode,” producer David DeClerque explains. “For example, what kinds of houses will we put the characters in? The assistant director breaks down the script to come up with a schedule. We discuss what guest stars might be available.”
The search is always on for an
SVU
smorgasbord of victims, suspects, perps, witnesses, legal eagles, uniformed flatfoots, and city gumshoes with badges.
“We hold one or two casting sessions and ‘offer out,’” says DeClerque, referring to the way well-known performers are recruited for
SVU
. “If someone is not going to audition, we send them a script. We have a casting treasure trove in this city. There was a playbill for a Broadway show that referred to a cast member as ‘one of the few actors in New York that hasn’t done a
Law & Order
yet.’”
Casting Director Jonathan Strauss (who works with Lynn Kressell Casting, the company that oversees all three
L&O
s) likely has that list of theater people memorized. He started out on “the finance-marketing-computer track, but I always had a hankering for arts and entertainment.”
Strauss heard about a number of production jobs that were open in the late 1990s. “One happened to be in casting,” he says. “So, I got an internship and loved being on the buyer versus the seller side of things. As an assistant with a casting company for six or seven years, I did indie films and learned the ropes, then more TV. . . . In 2000, I received an Emmy nomination for casting on
Ed
[NBC, 2000-04].”
At his Chelsea Piers office in Manhattan, Strauss can now boast “a wall of videotapes—actor reels. There are 15,000 actor names with contact information and notes in my computer. When I started
SVU
[in season five], I watched and re-watched about 100 episodes to get a sense of who they had used, looking at the show through a casting director’s eyes for the first time.”
Occasionally, his enterprise devolves into a misadventure, such as what happened while casting “Design” in season seven. “We thought it would be a hoot to have Donald Trump as the prototypical businessman,” Strauss says. “He was doing
The Apprentice
on NBC. I went to his agent. Mariska, who’s an acquaintance of his, put in a call. He agreed.”
But the casting coup was soon scuttled. “We were all set to shoot, then four or five days before I got a call from Neal Baer: ‘We can’t use Trump.’ Turns out there was some creative conflict in the script. I had to call to let the guy know. He’d even postponed a trip to Dubai for us. His assistant asked, ‘Let me get this straight: Are you actually telling me that Mr. Trump has been fired?’ That gave me cocktail party conversations for a lifetime.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
OH, THE PLACES THEY’LL GO
“I
takes a village,” says location manager Trish Adlesic, referring to the support available to
SVU
from a city of 8 million and beyond. “I try to get what’s written on the page and don’t give up too quickly. I’m tenacious.”
Her task is partly public relations, when she negotiates for use of a desirable home or business or park. “I have to keep the real and episodic worlds happy,” Adlesic explains. “It’s a balancing act, given the gritty New York life, the kinetic energy. It’s also caring so much about the palette for actors and production designers.”
She worked on the
Law & Order
pilot (“Everybody’s Favorite Bagman”) as a location coordinator, before joining the series for its first three actual seasons (1990-93). Adlesic then left to try her hand at feature films for nine years.
But early in season one of
SVU
, DeClerque invited her to rejoin the Dick Wolf fold and the show’s location manager was born.
“I brought with me twenty-five boxes of files because I’ve had a fair number of jobs in which we canvassed New York,” Adlesic says, enumerating “some of
SVU
’s more magnificent locations over the years: the old TWA terminal at JFK (‘Angels,’ season four); Reuters’ 30
th
floor (‘Pure,’ season six); the Museum of Natural History (‘Alternate, ’ season nine).”
She also likes to find “new, cutting-edge locations. I read
Architectural Digest
. I network. It’s always an evolving situation in the city.”
Executive producer Ted Kotcheff quotes Dick Wolf on the show’s
mise-en-scene
: “He says the audience loves seeing New York—our sky-scrapers, our yellow taxicabs—and hearing the New York accents. I just love exteriors. I often ask, ‘Why don’t we move it outdoors?’ There’s such an endless parade of interiors. It gets claustrophobic. Exteriors engage the eye.”