Marshall Herskovitz Probes Middle-Age Angst on 'Once and Again

by Victoria Looseleaf

Marshall Herskovitz had absolutely no interest in chronicling his real-life divorce when it happened six years ago. But three weeks after Herzkovitz's split, longtime partner Ed Zwick urged him to write about it. The result: "Once And Again," ABC's critically lauded drama that has generated a cult-following and critical raves for its portrayal of Lily Manning and Rick Sammler, two freshly separated, madly in love adults.

"I wasn't ready," Herskovitz explains between gulps of Evian, legs sprawled on a coffee table in his office on the Culver City lot. "But the issues--what it means to make changes in your life--that concept was fascinating."

Cut to 1999. Herskovitz was not only ready to write about but had an eager outlet at ABC, home to his previous relationship dramas "thirtysomething," "My So Called Life" and "Relativity." The Zwick-Herskovitz team rolled into action last summer, writing many of the scripts together, with Herskovitz directing, overseeing day to day production and even acting from time to time. He'll do a cameo in an upcoming episode, playing a marriage counselor. Acting is not his strong suit, Herskovitz laughingly admits as he recalls when he directed himself as a neurologist in "thirtysomething." "I talked to myself out loud. I missed my mark. It was a scary moment."

HITTING HIS MARK

The atmosphere on the "Once and Again" set is replete with shades of Ikea and Pottery Barn. Women are knitting! But Herskovitz, preppy in blue jeans and checked shirt, says weekly production is actually a pretty hair-raising experience. "It's terribly hard, the pace. You get caught in an avalanche and you're buried. The buzz saw keeps going at the same rate and we're up here killing ourselves trying to get the script right."

Honing those scripts has resulted in two ground-breaking shows. "With 'thirtysomething' we were ahead of the pulse. With 'My So-Called Life' it was the ascendance of teenage girl culture, (although) the show ended after 19 episodes. Then the movie 'Scream' happened, and MTV is re-running it."

"Once and Again," appears once again, to tap into a particular strain of angst in the TV watching population. Tough it didn't win any of its three Golden Globe nominations, the series, starring Sela Ward and Billy Campbell, has struck a nerve with baby boomers hungry for grown-up fare. The language, the stories, the characterizations are not merely Hollywood gloss, but probe the psyches of its characters, especially Ward's Lily.

WOMEN ARE PEOPLE TOO

How does Herskovitz manage to capture the female persona with the acuity of a brain surgeon? "I've been around women my whole life," the Philadelphia-born writer notes. "I wasn't raised as a stereotypically oblivious male. I was the youngest of three brothers, and had to be aware of what my mother was thinking and feeling. That's part of writing--to get inside anyone's head--a woman, a child, a rabbi. I don't separate women as a special achievement."

An early episode bandied around the notion that men have a "genetic need to lie." Herskovitz believes that both men and women lie. "In my life," he says, tongue in cheek, "women are the better liars." Herskovitz, through his work, knows how to provoke; how to titillate; he understands the need for real connections. But he also is careful to preserve the boundaries between art and real life. The father of two daughters himself, he has been very careful, he says, to protect the privacy of "real players." His eldest daughter, 16, likes "Once and Again," but had a few reservations. "Lizzie was discomfited with too much sex in the beginning. My youngest has no interest in the show. She squirms. Her attention span isn't there. But," Herskovitz laughs, "twelve-year old girls are not the demographic we're going after."

The demographics have been kind to Herskovitz, and ABC is committed to the show through 2001. Beyond that, Herskovitz is interested in directing films. He has two under his belt-- "Jack the Bear" and "Dangerous Beauty" and wants to try again. "My main priority is the show, but I would like to direct again (because) that is the most rewarding."

BEING ALIVE

While Herskovitz continues to put a piece of himself into every episode of "Once and Again," and keeps on cranking out good stuff at a frenetic pace, he has been quoted as saying "There's no such thing as living happily ever after." Explains Herskovitz: "With " thirtysomething," I was suddenly on the map. People treated me differently. I was in business, and you don't get that the fourth time around. My children come first, though, and in my adulthood I've come to embrace the notion that you don't look for happiness." "Being fully alive," he continues, "has its ups and downs. In many ways, I feel better now than I have in my life. I feel extremely lucky to have achieved a large portion of what I've dreamed (and) more has come to me than I ever thought would. It compels you to look deeper."__Tribune Media (February 11, 2000)