Working With Garry Trudeau
One of the projects I got involved with after Groove was a script written by Garry Trudeau called The E.T.C. It had been around since the mid-90’s at Fox 2000 with director Alan Pakula attached (until his tragic death in 1998). The script eventually found its way to Fox Searchlight, which is when I first read it.
I loved that it had all the satire and humor and rich characters of Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic, but on a much larger canvas: The story was set in a speculative near-future, when a fast-acting virus is decimating the population of the country. A group of doctors at the National Institute of Health are thrust into the spotlight like rock stars as they attempt to fast track a drug that combats the virus. They do this by experimenting on thousands of terminally ill patients in a vast warehouse-like medical facility called The E.T.C. (Experimental Treatment Center).
After a year of script development with Trudeau and another year of casting and budgeting, the studio killed it. In retrospect, as well-written as the script was, it was not an easy sell: A comedy but with harrowing life-or-death situations; an ensemble cast where no one actor could be the star; and a story with scope that had to be made for a price.
It was my first (but certainly not my last) painful experience with Development Hell, working on a project for years with the promise of making it, only for it to fall apart. That said, I learned a ton about character and dialogue working with Trudeau, always marveling at his ability to express wit and humanity so effortlessly through his writing.
The images here are renderings I did with a storyboard artist during the budgeting process.
