The Man Behind the Curtain

The shriek of power saws and the report of pounding hammers fill the Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, former home of Desilu, where Lucy and Ricky cast their comedic spell over a nation. The din pierces the large but unpretentious second-floor office of producer David E. Kelley, but Kelley is totally focused on his legal pad, his clamped lips putting an exclamation point on his concentration. His pen moves frantically over the page. While the banging continues outside, Kelley is banging out another script.

On a nearby sound stage, the cast of Kelley’s latest legal drama, “Ally McBeal,” is reviewing a new Kelley script. On a neighboring stage, the cast of Kelley’s other legal drama, “The Practice,” is filming a Kelley-penned script. Elsewhere on the lot, two Kelley screenplays are being prepared for feature films. It is, in fact, impossible to walk anywhere at Ren-Mar without bumping into a Kelley project.

The David E. Kelley factory is operating full tilt, the output almost single-handedly fueled by the endless imagination of the intense, boyish-looking man scribbling dialogue by hand from the scenes playing in his head. Assistants periodically burst through his door and pick up yellow pages to be typed in script form. But the interruptions don’t break Kelley’s stride. When he finally looks up and rises to receive a visitor, he smiles and sighs. He is between his worlds.

“I just finished an ‘Ally’ script, and now I’m about to go in ‘Practice’ mode--there’s about a 15-minute fog before I switch gears,” he explains, looking neither tired nor dazed.

Among the few dramatic-television producers lauded with descriptives such as “can’t miss” and “sure thing,” Kelley, 41, a former Boston attorney who broke into television writing for “L.A. Law” in the 1980s, is at the top of the marquee. In little more than a decade he has become one of TV’s most sought after, powerful and influential producers, with seven Emmy awards, including two outstanding drama series statues in 1992 and 1993 for “Picket Fences.” He also created the successful medical drama “Chicago Hope,” just renewed for its fifth season on CBS.

His winning streak has continued with “Ally McBeal”--one of the few new shows of the fall that has generated serious buzz and Fox Television’s only new bright spot this season--and ABC’s “The Practice,” which has also been picked up for next season. Both shows have received mounds of critical praise for their complex and humorous examinations of human behavior in the midst of unrelenting crisis and angst. Network and studio heads say Kelley is one of the fastest, purest writers in television and that his distinctive vision--with its crackling dialogue and multilayered characters--has raised the bar for dramatic shows.

CBS President Leslie Moonves says Kelley “scores in all categories.” Jeff Sagansky, co-head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, crowns him “the Charles Dickens of TV writers.” And Sandy Grushow, president of 20th Century Fox Television, which has a production deal with Kelley, says, “Most work a lifetime to develop a show with the quality and integrity of any one of the series David Kelley has done. For him to create four in a row is pretty extraordinary.” (Unlike other prominent TV producers, Kelley not only writes his own shows but also has been known to crank out a season’s worth of scripts almost entirely on his own.)

Kelley earned these accolades producing precisely what television is not supposed to reward: unconventional dramas that defy formula. In the Kelley universe, cops don’t always come to the rescue, problems aren’t solved by car chases and lawyers lose even when they win a case. Some of Kelley’s series might be rooted within the right-and-wrong confines of the legal or medical genres, but the characters have more questions than answers. Many are struggling with deep psychological pain, making sense of a world that wants to swallow them whole. There is little action or violence in Kelley’s hourlong shows, yet the rapid-fire dialogue, kinetic camera movement and intensity of the characters give them the pace and energy of police shows.

Kelley’s series are where the absurd and surreal are commonplace, where a student can bring a severed hand to class for show-and-tell. Where the pope can witness a homosexual murder and be compelled to testify. Where a female attorney beaten up in life and love can find solace at the local nightclub, dancing the night away with nerdy twins. Where doctors in the middle of a lifesaving operation can break into a muffled rendition of “Something Stupid.”

Says Fox Entertainment President Peter Roth: “David captures the voices of characters in a more natural way than any writer I’ve read. He’s also a brilliant storyteller and a master of irony and counterpoint.”

But the brighter the spotlight beams on Kelley, the more he retreats into the shadows. Among TV producers whose names are more prominent than the titles of their shows--Kelley’s mentor, Steven Bochco (“NYPD Blue”), Chris Carter (“The X-Files”) and Dick Wolf (“Law & Order”)--Kelley is something of an enigma. Those who work or have worked with him say he is quiet and unknowable. Some writers on his shows say that he is so centered on his vision that he has frozen them out. While Kelley’s characters grapple with their moral dilemmas by laying bare their innermost thoughts--at times screaming them to the heavens or to each other--Kelley’s feelings usually stay hidden beneath his soft-spoken exterior. Even his 1993 marriage to actress Michelle Pfeiffer has done little to heighten his public persona. Though they are photographed often at premieres and she talks about him and their two young children in interviews, he has grown ever more protective of his privacy and that of his family.

Former and current members of Kelley’s camp say he’s become the TV equivalent of the Wizard of Oz. David E. Kelley, they say, really is the man behind the curtain, citing as irrefutable evidence the three or four Dorothy outfits in the wardrobe department of Kelley’s studios and the Oz-related plot lines in “L.A. Law,” “Picket Fences” and “Chicago Hope.” For his part, Kelley discloses that the premise of his graduation speech from Boston University law school asked the Socratic-tinged question “What if Dorothy had gone to law school instead of Oz?”

“They call me the ‘the wizard’ because they think I hide behind the curtain?” Kelley chuckles. “I guess, on one hand, that’s kind of flattering. But at the end of the day, all the wizard was capable of doing was filling a balloon full of hot air.”

*

When Kelley emerges from behind his protective demeanor and staff, he reveals a warmth heavy with shyness, offset by a charming, bone-dry self-deprecating sense of humor. With his lanky build, casual clothes and long face framed by sometimes-windblown brown hair, he looks more like an anxious college student than one of television’s elite.

He is modest about his accomplishments. “The bottom line is still the most important one, and I’ve never delivered a Top 10 show to anyone,” he says. “ ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘ER’ are big hits, but there are not that many network executives running around saying, ‘Please give us another “Picket Fences.” ’ “

Kelley would prefer that his written words speak for him. He points to his childhood idol, the shy and humble hockey legend Bobby Orr. “He was very shy in interviews. But when he got on the ice, he let his playing do the talking. I thought that was a virtue.”

Bochco, who gave Kelley his first Hollywood job on “L.A. Law” and remains a close friend, says, “David is a real New Englander. He’s very charming, bright, funny, but he really does not give it up easily in terms of what his real feelings are. He is most revealing in his writing.”

Adds Kelley’s agent, Marty Adelstein, another longtime friend: “David says the essentials. He’s very straightforward. He never has adapted to the business. People don’t take him out of his game. He could live his life anywhere.”

And Mandy Patinkin, the acerbic Dr. Jeffrey Geiger in “Chicago Hope,” says, “I wish people could understand that David lives tremendously through his pen. It’s unfair to ask a lot more than that.”

Asked about the conflict between his private and public selves, Kelley thoughtfully lowers his eyes, and his mouth briefly tightens. Then he slowly breaks into a knowing smile. “If you interview people or friends who work with me, they would say I’m private or internal or don’t emote a lot,” he says. “Yet I do it every day for 10 million people. I just don’t do it for the 30 people I’m in the room with.”

*

Sometimes it will hap-pen in the middle of lunch.

Kelley will be having a conversation. And then he will get quiet.

“David will get that look,” explains Jeffrey Kramer, president of Kelley’s production company, David E. Kelley Productions. “Then I can tell what’s happening. His people are talking to him in his head. Many might mistake that for aloofness. But he’s just in his process.”

It’s a process that Kelley finds difficult to describe.

“I certainly can’t sit there as one of those writers or poets and say it was because of a tortured past or a lonely existence growing up,” he says.

Indeed. A capsule of Kelley’s life reads like a modern Hollywood fairy tale. Quiet boy with a vivid imagination but no particular fondness for writing grows up in a series of small Massachusetts towns. Graduates from Princeton University in 1979, where he was captain of the hockey team. Gets law degree from Boston University in 1983. Joins mid-sized commercial firm, writes movie script during idle moments. Snags meeting with big-time television producer. Gets hired on producer’s legal drama as writer. Show becomes huge hit. Wins Emmys. Creates drama about eccentric small town, wins back-to-back Emmys for best series. Creates drama about hospital, gets rave reviews. Starts production company with a reported $200-million budget. Weds beautiful movie star. Develops two more dramas, gets more rave reviews.

“I certainly am not complaining,” he adds. “When people say everything balances out, that scares me. Because if my life has to balance out, I have some hard knocks coming.”

Once Kelley is finished writing a script, he has story and “tone” meetings for producers, directors and other staffers to get a grasp on his vision. Then while they carry it out on the set--under the watchful eye of Kramer--Kelley returns to his office-sanctuary and writes some more.

“I remember in the early days, when David first came to Hollywood, we would go somewhere for the weekend,” Adelstein says. “David would sit with a yellow pad, just writing. He writes like other people breathe.”

Kelley says he writes about the grays of life with no clear heroes or villains, and that viewers looking for tidy or easy answers should flip the channel. “The questions fascinate me much more than the answers,” he says. “If you’re looking for answers, don’t come to me.”

Sagansky, who was CBS entertainment president when Kelley developed “Picket Fences” and “Chicago Hope,” says: “All of David’s writing touches on two things--the moral dilemmas of life and how people with weaknesses in their characters come to grips with those dilemmas.”

In “The Practice,” the central character, defense attorney Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), is not above bending the rules when it comes to keeping his small Boston law firm open. He is a passionate attorney but also a time bomb ticking with desperation, and time is running out. Although Bobby is the hero of the series, his flaws and shortcomings come through as clearly as his triumphs. And he is surrounded by characters who are as colorful and dedicated to the law but have their own personal demons. “The Practice” is, in fact, the flip side of the seductive legal world Kelley helped popularize in “L.A. Law.”

“I always wanted to explore the inner workings of a gritty downtown firm which first had to guarantee that its doors would stay open to defend clients before getting around to defending them,” he says. “The applications for law schools went up during the run of ‘L.A. Law.’ I remember thinking that if these students really knew how the practice of law is or can be sometimes, they would think twice. The biggest challenge was to cultivate an attachment for these characters while they were fighting for causes that were neither heroic or noble. At its heart, this series is about good people trying to live ethically in an arena that is unethical.”

Although “Ally Mc-Beal” is also a legal drama, it is much lighter than “The Practice” and has a singularly female point of view. Ally (Calista Flockhart) is a young attorney struggling to keep her head above water, professionally and personally. Also in the firm is Ally’s ex-boyfriend Billy (Gil Bellows), whom she still loves. But Billy is married to another lawyer, Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith). Through voice-overs and dialogue, Ally’s point of view comes across, at times with blunt force. “Love and law are the same--they give me a yeast infection,” Ally declared in the pilot episode.

The centerpiece of the show is Ally’s imagination. Through flashbacks or fantasy sequences, viewers see what is really going on in her mind. When she fantasizes about having larger breasts, she looks in the mirror and sees her chest swell. When Billy suggests a cup of coffee, she imagines a sloshy tryst in a giant cup. Her nosy assistant, Elaine (Jane Krakowski), is so full of information that Ally imagines Elaine’s head growing.

“Ally” is Kelley’s effort to explore the internal side of a character, as well as female sexuality. Some female viewers wonder how Kelley knows so much about a woman’s sexual side. In a recent episode, Ally teaches Georgia how to drink coffee from a cup as if she were making love--the scene included close-ups of lips and tongues. Later in the episode, Ally shows her roommate, Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), the expressions she makes during orgasm.

Kelley says Fox came to him looking for a female-oriented show that could be paired with the veteran Monday night soap opera “Melrose Place.” Fox “made it easier for me to take the leap into something more experimental and unconventional,” he points out. However, Kelley the storyteller is also Kelley the businessman.

“We could utilize sets already used on ‘The Practice,’ ” he says. “We would have more opportunities production-wise to deliver episodes we were proud of, and the opportunity to economize was something I couldn’t ignore.”

Though he is pleased that “Ally” and “The Practice” are performing well--neither are among even the Top 20 shows, but they attract the sort of prosperous young adult audience advertisers covet--Kelley says he is not in it for the ratings.

“I don’t obsess about numbers,” he says. “I’m certainly aware of what they are, but there are certain things I can’t belabor. ‘The Practice’ is in a rough time slot, and ‘Ally’ is on Fox, so no one is expecting huge numbers. That takes the pressure off us. Both networks look upon the growth as long-term.”

Still, he can’t hide his frustration with ABC’s scheduling “The Practice” at 10 p.m. on Saturdays. Speaking at a banquet given by the Center for Law at which he was honored for his work, Kelley made a few barbed jabs at ABC, thanking them for scheduling the series when most people are out or not watching television. Jamie Tarses and Stu Bloomberg, the heads of ABC Entertainment, looked on with frozen smiles.

“No, I wasn’t happy with the way things turned out at ABC, but it is what it is,” Kelley says with a slight edge in his voice. “At the end of the day, I’m here in this room, doing the work. I don’t expect many of them to be speaking at my funeral. However, I would love to speak at all of theirs.” (After “The Practice” was renewed, Kelley telephoned to amend his statement thus: “Instead of speaking at their funerals, I’d be satisfied just to visit them in the hospital.”)

It is a rerun of the nightmare he endured with “Picket Fences,” when CBS declined to move the series from Friday nights--another dead-end time slot--despite the show’s critical acclaim and its Emmys. Kelley felt the stalemate limited the show’s chances to gain a larger audience (it ended its four-year run in 1996).

Looking back, Kelley says, “Yes, the time slot was very frustrating. I regret living in that situation as much as we did. That’s one thing in terms of being older and wiser.”

“Picket Fences” remains Kelley’s favorite and most personal project. “It was the first series I created, and it came from a place in me that was more personal,” he says. “Once every two months, I think we should bring ‘Picket Fences’ back.”

The show’s fictional small town of Rome, Wis., was a heightened and distorted microcosm of society. No real town has a Dancing Bandit or puts on a production of “The Wizard of Oz” in which the Tin Man dies of a heart attack. Tom Skerritt, who played Sheriff Jimmy Brock, says he was especially fond of Kelley’s gallows humor. “We were always saying, ‘David, you are not going to get away with this.’ ” Skerritt recalls one episode in which an elephant is stolen by a midget from a circus. When the elephant is found in a backyard, the animal is cranky, and Brock’s wife, Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker), deduces he is constipated.

“It’s decided that he needs an enema, and there’s this point-of-view shot of Kathy from out of the elephant’s anus as Kathy puts in the enema,” says Skerritt, laughing at the memory. “It was wonderful.”

*

Becoming a powerful television producer was furthest from Kelley’s mind when, after graduating from law school, he was practicing civil litigation in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston.

He was filled with adrenaline and ready to argue, but found himself mostly regulated to handling routine matters and motions. He eased his boredom by scribbling out a screenplay. “What I could do was go off into this imaginary world,” he says.

The result was “From the Hip,” about an outrageous, irreverent young attorney who “attacked law like John McEnroe played tennis.” “From the Hip” was eventually made into a poorly received film starring Judd Nelson and directed by Bob Clark of “Porky’s” fame. Kelley was less than pleased with the film, but there was one positive result: The script wound up in the hands of agent Adelstein, who knew that veteran producer Bochco was seeking attorneys to help out with story lines on “L.A. Law.” He sent the script to Bochco.

“What impressed me initially about David was the disrespect with which he portrayed courtroom proceedings,” Bochco says. “He informalized them and made those interactions which writers make so formal funny and informal.”

During one of their early meetings, Kelley suggested a plot about a man who had a terminal illness going to court to challenge a law that he could not be stuffed and placed in his backyard. “I said the story should have less to do with him being stuffed and more to do with his fundamental fear of dying,” Bochco says. “David said, ‘I got it, don’t worry.’ Then he just went and did it. He was never intimidated by sitting alone in a room and writing. That is so rare in this business.”

Bochco pauses. “David’s only weakness as a writer is his unwillingness or his inability to let other writers into the process. He has such a clear idea of what he wants that it’s just easier for him to do it than to guide someone else. In the short term, it probably defeats you.”

In fact, some staff writers on Kelley’s shows have felt shut out by his preference for simply writing the scripts himself.

David Mills, a co-producer of “ER” and a former staff writer on “NYPD Blue,” ran into such a roadblock when he signed on with Kelley in 1994 to work on “Picket Fences.” It was the first staff-writing job for Mills, who had quit his job as a reporter at the Washington Post and was freelancing spec television scripts.

“Unfortunately, after David moved me out, he didn’t ask me to write another script,” Mills says. “It was the same year he was starting ‘Chicago Hope,’ and David was doing both shows, writing every episode. That meant he didn’t have time to meet with the other writers or sit in meetings. We weren’t seeing him at all. He was behind closed doors, under the gun.”

The frustration of Mills, as well as of staff writers on “Chicago Hope,” only grew. “There was a lot of sitting around,” Mills says. “Here we were, all extremely frustrated, experienced writers, but now we were like a dysfunctional family.”

At one point the writers wrote four scripts of their own and presented them to Kelley. “That didn’t really work either,” Mills says. “That’s when I learned that David is an extraordinarily prolific writer. He can write a great script in a weekend. It just turned out to be a hellish year for him--and he didn’t look happy.”

Mills finally asked for his release from the show, and Kelley agreed. “He was very apologetic and said it would be great if I worked with Bochco, that Steven knows how to work with young writers,” he says. “We left on good terms.”

Kelley nods when recalling how how he ended up churning out no fewer than 40 scripts between the two shows that season--an insane workload for one writer. He had always intended to get “Chicago Hope” up and running and then focus on the third season of “Picket Fences.” “But there were problems, so I had to come back on ‘Chicago Hope’ as executive producer,” he says. It was a grueling period: “A script was due every third day, whether it was ‘Picket’ or ‘Hope.’ It was always a matter of trying to beat the clock.”

The relentless pace took its toll. “Doing that much writing took the fun out of it. Writing was, and is, the best part of my job, and I remember thinking, ‘I’m not enjoying the writing part.’ I thought, ‘You have to make an adjustment.’ And I did. I left both shows.” Although no longer committed to the shows full time, he remained as executive producer of both and contributed occasional scripts. It would be roughly a year before new Kelley shows would make it on the air. This time around, with “Ally McBeal” and “The Practice” running simultaneously, Kelley says he wants to involve the writers more to take the pressure off him.

The private Kelley has become more public since his marriage to Pfeiffer. “We go out all the time--you’d be surprised,” Kelley says in a rare departure from his usual silence on the subject of his wife. “Saturday nights we usually go out to a movie or dinner. About 98% of the time no one approaches us. People do recognize her, but a lot of times they don’t because she’ll have a baseball cap on.”

Still, there has been some adjusting.

“Before I was married to Michelle, I was not recognized on my own except on my own stages, and even then some crew members might have to ask who I was,” Kelley says. “I’m still not recognized that much, but there are times when I’ll be sitting at the Century City mall, eating a hamburger, and someone will come up to me and say, ‘I really enjoyed your show last night.’ That never happened before I was married to a famous person.”

His heightened profile has provided some surreal moments. He recalled one Emmy ceremony, which he attended without Pfeiffer, who was working.

“I got out of the car and walked up the carpet, and no one said boo. When I get out of the car with her, it’s ‘David! David! David! Mr. Kelley! Mr. Kelley!’ It doesn’t bother me. I would prefer to walk up without people saying boo.”

*

“‘No, the crocodile does not practice law.”

Kelley thumbs through the storyboard book of his latest project with obvious glee. It’s for one of the films he’s written, “Lake Placid,” about a giant crocodile with an attitude that finds its way to a lake in central Maine. It’s a character-driven horror movie, Kelley says, that has been described as “ ‘Jaws’ Meets ‘Fargo.’ ”

It will be the second film he has made since his TV career took off. The first was 1996’s “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” with Pfeiffer playing the ghost of the wife of a man who still has talks with her years after her death. Asked if “Lake Placid” will be funny, Kelley smiles and says, “It’s funny right up to the time you get bit.” Another Kelley screenplay, about hockey players in Alaska, is also being developed.

Whether or not the movies or, for that matter, the television shows become huge commercial hits does not worry him. Only writing, he insists, matters. “One thing I know I do now is that when I am writing anything--if it’s not in the front of my mind, then it’s in the back of my mind--it’s that my children will see it, my grandchildren will see it,” he says. “If they ever ask me, ‘Why did you write that?’ I’ll have an answer, and it won’t be because I thought a lot of people would watch or that it was because I thought the networks would program it. That makes you a more responsible producer.”

He also doesn’t expect to come from behind the curtain any time soon.

“When I’m old and gray, I’ll make my first public appearance in one of those American Express commercials: ‘Do you know who I am?’ and nobody will. But when they mention the work, then they’ll remember. They’ll remember the work.”