TV producer Cannell honored by Writers Guild

By Cynthia Littleton

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Nobody will get a
heartier round of applause from the TV producers in the
audience at the Writers Guild Awards Saturday than Stephen J.
Cannell, when he accepts the union’s highest award for
television writing.

The man who once did a show titled “The Greatest American
Hero” is an action hero to a generation of TV writer-producers.
He is the “showrunner” made good, the writer who managed to go
it alone in a big-time way for nearly 20 years without ever
giving up his original craft.

A day before he turns 65, Cannell will receive the
prestigious Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award during the WGA Awards,
taking place at the Hollywood Palladium (and simultaneously in
New York at the Waldorf-Astoria). Named after the Oscar-winning
writer of “Network,” “The Hospital” and “Marty,” the award
honors “writers who have advanced the literature of television
throughout the years and made outstanding contributions to the
profession of the television writer,” according to the WGA.
Previous recipients include Steven Bochco, Larry Gelbart, Rod
Serling, Carl Reiner and David E. Kelley.

Cannell has never stopped writing — in the decade since he
shifted his focus to novels, he has published 11, with No. 12
coming soon — and he has never sold out, at least not
completely.

Although he parted with his production company for $30
million in 1995, Cannell still owns the negatives to 1,000
hours of television that earn a small fortune every year. And
he still keeps to his old schedule of rising at 4:30 a.m. to
lift weights before getting in a few hours of uninterrupted
writing time.

“I marvel at what he was able to do. I so respect him,”
says “CSI” executive producer Carol Mendelsohn, who got her
first staff writing job on the Cannell-produced 1980s detective
drama “Hardcastle & McCormick.” The Cannell building on
Hollywood Boulevard was packed with hard-charging creative
types who were long on talent and enthusiasm if often short on
experience, Mendelsohn says.

“When I first got there, it was like getting into Harvard,”
she says. “It wasn’t just, ‘Come into my office and get some
notes.’ He gave of his time and of his experience. He taught us
the rules of drama. The writers were always in and out of each
other’s rooms, we were in the editing room learning how it’s
done. We rooted for each other. You just don’t get that kind of
collaborative environment anymore.”

For Cannell, the drive to succeed in business came from his
father, Joseph, a self-made man who had a highly successful
Pasadena furniture store and other small businesses. The desire
to make it as a television writer came from deep within. It was
an all-consuming passion that even overcame the dyslexia that
went undetected until Cannell was well established as a writer
and the condition was diagnosed in his eldest daughter.

“I wrote for five hours a night for five years before I
broke into the business,” Cannell says. “I would have put in
five more years if that’s what it would have taken.”

He finally got some bites on spec scripts and then landed a
job as a story editor on “Adam-12.” With that show, he began a
long association with Universal Television that yielded such
hits as “The Rockford Files,” co-created with his mentor Roy
Huggins, “Baretta” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

By the end of the 1970s, Cannell decided to strike out on
his own. The boss of Cannell Prods. had no choice but to keep
writing for all of the shows that bore his imprint because he
needed to keep his staffing costs down. After a few singles
(“Tenspeed and Brownshoe”) and doubles (“Greatest American
Hero”), Cannell hit his first home run in 1983 with NBC’s “The
A-Team.”

When you’ve created or co-created more than 40 TV series,
it’s hard not to have a few favorites. Among the shows that
stand out in his memory are the ones that first put him on the
map, NBC’s Emmy-winning “Rockford Files” (“I didn’t know my ass
from second base back then, but Roy taught me everything”),
“A-Team,” CBS’ “Wiseguy” and Fox’s “Profit,” which lasted only
four episodes but has endured as a cult favorite.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter