The Master of Small-Screen Ambivalence
The co-creator of 'thirtysomething' and now 'Once and Again,' Marshall Herskovitz,
is happy to fill his own little creative TV niche

By Jo-Ann Mort -- Marshall Herskovitz looks and sounds like the intense, down-to-earth characters in his TV shows. Dressed in jeans and sneakers, his feet dangling over the side of an armchair, he could have stepped out of an episode of "thirtysomething" or, perhaps more appropriately (since he turns 48 this month), "Once and Again." The latter, about a developing relationship between two divorced 40-somethings reentering the dating scene, is in its first season on both ABC and the Lifetime cable channel.

"Once and Again's" production facility is far from Hollywood's glitz - in a former clothing plant in a Culver City industrial park, a fitting venue for the Bedford Falls crowd. (Herskovitz and his partner Edward Zwick named their company in homage to Jimmy Stewart's hometown in the Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life.") Among the most successful of Hollywood's younger talents, Herskovitz and Zwick are known for testing the limits of commercial appeal by producing and promoting exceptionally cerebral TV fare.

The chronicle of 1980s life among a circle of friends in suburban Philadelphia, "thirtysomething," was loosely based on the lives of its creators (Herskovitz hails from the City of Brotherly Love, Zwick from suburban Chicago). "Once and Again" was inspired by Herskovitz's divorce from Susan Shilliday, who was a writer on "thirtysomething." Like Hope, Michael Steadman's wife on the show, she is non-Jewish.

Herskovitz is quick, though, to warn that both shows are fiction. "It wasn't until we came up with a construct about who these characters are and what took place in their lives that was sufficiently different from my own history that I felt comfortable." He was particularly concerned, he says, that none of "Once and Again's" four children be depictions of his own. (He and Shilliday have two daughters, ages 16 and 12.) Though the show is centered on burgeoning love between Lily Manning (played by Sela Ward), a divorcing mom with two girls, and Rick Sammler (Billy Campbell), a divorced dad with a teenage son and a younger daughter, their kids are emerging as key characters, especially Lily's troubled 16-year-old, Grace (Julia Whelan) and Rick's son, Eli (Shane West).

Along with writers from previous Herskovitz-Zwick shows, including Herskovitz himself, the new show employs some of today's most prominent American playwrights - Michael Weller ("MoonChildren") Donald Margulies ("Collected Stories," and the currently running "Dinner Party") and Pamela Gray (last year's film "A Walk on the Moon"). All are known for chronicling the baby boomers; all too, are Jewish and employ sophisticated, somewhat dense language.

Religion and intermarriage were occasional themes in "thirtysomething"; Michael had to deal with the issues that arose from being a Jew married to a gentile. They were not meant to be in "Once and Again," but have crept in: Lily Manning's Jewish father on the show, played by Paul Mazursky, is married to a non-Jew. He uses Yiddishisms and appears to have given his two daughters some non-religious sense of Jewishness. During the episode aired during Hanukkah week, for instance, the camera panned quietly across a menorah burning in the Manning kitchen. A week later, Lily and her girls decorated their Christmas tree, but they are no more religiously Christian than they are Jewish.

For Herskovitz, this lightness of being regarding religion reflects the times. "We had no plan to make this family Jewish. It was slowly discovered over time that they were half-Jewish. They are so assimilated that they have almost forgotten they are Jewish. This reflects something that is going on in the culture now, and not just among Jews." He adds that he's "not condoning it, by the way. I'm just observing it: When you see United Colors of Benetton, that comes from something."

Herskovitz's own Jewish identity seems bound up in some of the trademarks of the 20th-century urban Jewish experience. "My father was an extremely ethical man - ethics are certainly not the exclusive domain of the Jews, but I think that Jews as a culture value ethics very strongly. My father treated people more powerful and less powerful than him the same. That's very important to me and I think of that as being Jewish." Herskovitz says he thinks it's something that comes through in the show. His maternal grandfather was a president of the venerable Har Zion Conservative Synagogue in suburban Philadelphia, where Herskovitz grew up. Former Har Zion rabbi David Clayman reminisces that Abner Schreiber was one of the most respected members of the congregation, who in addition to his regular philanthropic activities, was known for gathering clothes to send to a young Israel years ago.

Herskovitz's mother is a psychotherapist, and this influence too manifests itself in his work. "A cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory," he says, "is the understanding that all things are ambivalent. That we have more than one feeling about things. That's in all our shows - the ambivalence, the explanation of it." And the audience is forced to live in this ambivalent universe.

In its four seasons, "thirtysomething" broke new TV ground, airing episodes in which sex was discussed explicitly, and about gay love, and serious illness and death among friends. It also pioneered a format of friends sitting around talking that later became a prime-time staple largely through shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends."

"Once and Again" aired its first episode in September, to critical acclaim. The New York Times called it "one of the season's most polished, accomplished series." But, some of those same critics are now questioning its direction. The show occasionally lapses into soap-opera tones and a construct of the show uses black-and-white shots of each character talking about his or her feelings directly into the camera, as if the audience were, in fact, a therapist. This effect sometimes mars an otherwise ambitious, touching series. Recent shows seem to have recouped its edginess, with new characters (including the return of "thirtysomething's" Miles Drentell, played by David Clennon).

Though their main mark has been on TV, Herskovitz and Zwick are also moviemakers. Herskovitz has directed the films "Jack the Bear" and "Dangerous Beauty," and Zwick the somewhat more memorable "The Siege" and the Civil War epic "Glory." And they have production credits on "Shakespeare in Love."

"We will never do a television show that's in the top five," acknowledges Herskovitz. "We're happy with that little place that we've found and we hope we can continue to live in it."

Herskovitz majored in English at Brandeis, but has a special passion for history. (He says the only TV he watches is the History Channel.) After turning his senior thesis on "Beowulf" into a film, he moved to L.A. to attend the American Film Insti-tute. That's where he met Zwick, himself a recent Harvard graduate, and Jewish. The duo has produced, written and/or directed documentaries, movies and four TV series (the other two being "My So-Called Life" and "Relativity"). Both partners have won a myriad of awards, Herskovitz alone four Emmys, two Directors Guild awards for "thirty-something," among others.

Their production office - located above one of the sound stages - is relatively bare, with handwritten signs leading actors to casting calls. As Herskovitz reflects on their 25-year partnership, Zwick walks in and out of the room, teasing his partner while Herskovitz answers questions ("Just trying to keep a straight face," Zwick says good-naturedly).

"We've been teachers to each other," he says, explaining that the two were drawn to one another "when we got out of film school and realized that there was no mentorial process in the industry."

He continues: "It's been like a marriage, probably because there was no sex, [though] it's more peaceful than most marriages. But we've had to make compromises and we've had to learn the other's narcissism and all the other things you have to deal with in a marriage."

An upcoming project by the duo will soon bring Herskovitz to Israel for the first time, allowing him to exercise his passion for history and to visit the country his grandfather assisted in nurturing in its early days. Bedford Falls is developing a mini-series for ABC-TV about the refugee ship Exodus "and the whole epic story that swiled around that boat. It's an astonishing story, it shamed the world." The Exodus brought 4,500 Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1947 but the British, after a violent confrontation in Haifa port, returned the refugees to France, and those who refused repatriation to that country were sent to DP camps in Germany. The series will be based on new documentary evidence and not surprisingly, should be a far cry from Otto Preminger's 1960 film of Leon Uris's novel on the subject. Shooting begins this spring or summer.

Herskovitz says that "it's easier to do serious work on television than movies. Just look at the math. If a movie costs $50 million, it's hard to make a serious one. We've had much less interference in TV than we've had with movies. We can do what we want to do, do it our way, find our little niche of the audience." For those who find their home in that niche, there's likely comfort in knowing that the Bedford Falls duo will continue to challenge the medium.__Jerusalem Report (February 28, 2000)