'Once and Again' Article Architects Recognized by AIA

By Pat Duff of the American Institute of Architects

Since the birth of network television over a half a century ago there have been hundreds of doctors, hundreds of lawyers, and thousands of law enforcement officials featured week to week. With the exception of an occasional guest star, or a few quickly cancelled series, the weight of the entire profession of architecture has been carried by one man-Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch.

In the fall of 1999, the television series Once and Again starring Sela Ward and Billy Campbell premiered on ABC Tuesday evenings at 9:00 central. While the series focused on the developing relationship of these two divorced main characters, it was revealed in the premiere episode that Billy's character of Rick Sammler is an architect. We later learned that he had a partner named David Cassilli, (Todd Field) and a client from hell named Miles Drentell (David Clennon) transplanted from the TV series 'thirtysomething'.

A few episodes later, Rick Sammler proudly noted that shortly after he had opened his firm that they had won two AIA awards. This year's AIA Kansas City design awards committee decided that if Rick Sammler's firm thought they had won two AIA awards, then we were going to give them to him.

In September, I flew to Los Angeles and gave design awards to producers/series creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. The awards were made out to the firm of 'Sammler & Cassilli' for the project "Bedford Falls Savings and Loan" (Bedford Falls is the name of their production company).

With the assistance of AIA National, I also presented AIA membership certificates to actors Billy Campbell and Todd Field in the names of their characters, Rick Sammler, AIA and David Cassilli, AIA, firmly establishing that these two fictional architects are AIA members.

The accompanying quotes and pictures are from the videotape of the producers and actors accepting their awards and membership certificates, which was shown at the AIA Kansas City design awards event on September 22.

Marshall and Ed were delighted to tell me that the architecture plots will play a significant role this season as both Rick Sammler's partner, David Cassilli, and client Miles Drentell are now regular characters. Once and Again airs Tuesdays through December, and moves to Mondays in January.

Quotes

Executive producer/writer/director/ series creator Ed Zwick:
"We felt that there were too many doctors and lawyers on television and it was probably high time to put some architects on."

Executive producer/writer/director/ series creator Marshall Herskovitz:
"My brother Rick Herskovitz is an architect in Philadelphia. Architecture has always been a minor passion of mine my whole life and we wanted to try to get it as right as possible and I hope we're doing a good job."

Actor Todd Field (David Cassilli, AIA):
"I know a lot of architects and I told them I was going to receive this and they were very angry because I don't have to do anything other than pretend to be an architect. Every week we are surrounded by member's of your association's work and it's always a wonderful thing to come to work and be able to pass the time looking at the various models, designs, and books."

Actor Billy Campbell (Rick Sammler, AIA):
"We're all very grateful to AIA National and AIA Kansas City for these fantastic awards and this declaration of membership."__AIArchitect, (Nov./Dec. 2000 issue).