TOM HANKS, BABY JESSICA AND LESSONS FROM A THREE STRIKE WRITER
It was October of 1987 and I was saving the morning’s writing on my Mac 512 – a process that took about a minute longer than Michelangelo needed to finish chiseling David – when the phone rang. I welcomed the diversion.
“Turn on CNN,” said the voice on the other end. It was Ken Finkleman, one of the producers of the script I was working on.
“Why?”
“Just turn on CNN.”
I did. On the network was a breaking news story. A baby had fallen into a backyard well in Midland, Texas. The 18-month-old girl was alive and emergency workers were feverishly trying to rescue her. Jessica McClure, the toddler stuck in the well, would be a story that would capture the world’s attention over four days of around-the-clock coverage.
Besides the friends and family of baby Jessica, I doubt anyone else cared more about the child’s survival than me. Of course, my first concern was for the girl’s welfare. A distant second was the screenplay I was working on for a major studio. It was called Baby Sam about a little boy that fell into an abandoned missile silo and captured the world’s attention over four days of around-the-clock coverage. It was an indictment of the news media’s insatiable appetite for the sensational, a reoccurring theme in Hollywood. It also had a romcom jammed in there.
“This is terrible,” I said. I wanted to go on record that I cared more about the baby in the well than the outcome of my project.
“I know. The poor thing,” said Ken.
We kept watching in silence, but I was thinking about something else, something I dared not say out loud. If Baby Jessica was rescued it would bring attention to our project set-up at Major Studio. It would make us look prescient, to be telling a story reflective of a world-wide media event before it happened. For sure, other writers at that very moment knew this would be a slam dunk TV movie, let alone inspiration for a feature. But we had a jump on them.
However, if Baby Jessica didn’t make it — perish the thought! — if Baby Jessica didn’t make it, besides causing unimaginable pain and suffering for her friends and family – first and foremost – the studio could get cold feet greenlighting a movie about a baby trapped in a North Dakota missile silo so soon after an ill-fated rescue of a baby trapped in a Texas well.
“They’re going to save her,” said Ken. “They’ve got oil drillers on it. Keep an eye on the news anchors. Watch how the emergency workers operate. Take notes.” Then he hung up.
I liked Ken’s optimism. The phone rang again. It was the creative executive at Major Studio assigned to Baby Sam.
“Turn on CNN – ” said the executive.
“I’m watching. That poor little girl.”
“I know. When will you be done with the script?”
For the next 56 hours CNN burned like a nightlight in my cramped apartment. I mainlined Taster’s Choice, filled legal tablets with chicken-scrawl notes and recorded CNN coverage on a growing stack of VHS tapes. I worked on the script day and night and, I swear, gouge-out-my-mother’s-eyes if I’m lying, I would have happily traded a go-picture in exchange for saving the life of that child.
But I didn’t have to.
Baby Jessica was rescued. Her story had a happy ending. It also provided a tailwind for Baby Sam. So would another news event threatening to disrupt Hollywood.
The Writers’ Strike of ’88 – which no one was calling it in 1987 – were storm clouds on the horizon. The studios wanted scripts finished in case the writers walked. I was naively excited to have the studio asking for the delivery of my draft “sooner rather than later.”Even better, not only did Major Studio like my rewrite, so did a significant piece of casting.
“Tom Hanks likes Baby Sam.” It was Richard Green, my agent at the time.
“Cool,” I said, even though I was anything but.
Tom Hanks wasn’t Tom F****** Hanks then, but he was a popular actor, a guy whose voice was in my head when I wrote witty male leads in their early thirties. I loved him in Nothing in Common and Splash.
“You’re having dinner with Tom tomorrow night to talk about the project,” said Green.
After just a few months in Hollywood (okay, the Valley), I had finished my first script at a major studio and Tom Hanks was close to committing.
Was it always this easy?
The next morning, I was told to meet for dinner at Le Serre restaurant in Studio City at 7:30 with Tom, his development president Joe Seldner and two executives from Major. Hanks was a fellow Northern Californian who shared my love of baseball. I allowed myself to think Tom and I would become friends, start a production shingle and go on family vacations together in the Mediterranean.
It was an hour before the dinner when I got a call from the creative exec’s assistant at Major. I was told there was a change of plans. No dinner for me, because the studio wanted to “talk to Tom first about other business.” (Red Flag.)
I was told to come for dessert.
Okay, not dinner. But not nothing. I was still meeting Tom Hanks for cheesecake to discuss Baby Sam. I was told I would get a call from the studio when they were close to finishing their meal. I microwaved a Stouffer’s lasagna and waited. At 8:10, I got a call from the restaurant.
“Where are you?” asked the junior executive at Major.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me to come for dessert.”
“You’re supposed to be here for dinner. Get your a** over here now.”
I arrived at the restaurant and was led to a private room where I over-apologized for being late. Tom Hanks waved it off. He was everything he is today. Funny, conversant on all topics and very gracious. Over dinner we talked in general about Baby Sam and Tom expressed his enthusiasm for the script along with the other Major Studio projects, (Red Flag). He had some story thoughts on my script, along with changing the name of Josh, the character he’d play in Baby Sam. He played a “Josh” in a new movie coming out soon about a boy who instantly turns into a man directed by one of the leads of Laverne and Shirley. Whatever. Sounded stupid. We connected on NorCal stuff, like frog jumping at Angel’s Camp and Tom selling hot dogs at Oakland A’s games. We skipped dessert and soon found ourselves at valet waiting for our cars. (Actually, I was pretending to wait for mine. I decided to save two dollars and parked on the street.) When the senior’s exec’s foreign exotic purred to a stop at valet, Tom quipped, “Love the new Capri.” We both laughed like bosom buddies. Despite my late arrival, it was a good night.
I did my next revision, was invited by Tom’s agents at William Morris to screenings of his movie Punchline, then attended a WGA strike meeting in a packed house, the Palladium in Hollywood. (The membership was mostly male and white back then. Sadly, it would take another 30 years for that to significantly change.) Having never belonged to a union, I was struck by the eloquent yet muscular language of the WGA members and the liberal use of what would be my first exposure to Yiddish. Members spoke passionately about expanded creative rights and residual rollbacks. The rhetoric was often bellicose, the energy infectious and binding. I was swayed by what the old heads were saying as they lined up for the open mic that night – that the strike wasn’t just for the welfare of the current membership, but those who came before and after.
Two weeks later I was on the picket line. A month into the strike, a junior exec at Major Studio called me. I was told that we had a lot of momentum going on Baby Sam, but the movie would fall apart if we didn’t continue “developing it.” They asked if I’d be open to meeting in secret at an undisclosed hotel in LA to get their notes for a rewrite. I was grateful to them for giving me my first paid job as a screenwriter and I enjoyed my experience with the creative team there. But they didn’t appreciate how proud I was to be a card-carrying member of the Writers Guild of America and thankful to have healthcare and the chance at a pension. So, there I was, my dream of making a living in Hollywood fully realized, having written a feature for an actor who I was sure would be a star, only to learn that I might need to push all my career chips into the middle of the table.
I called the producer Ken Finkleman and told him about my phone call with Major and that I wasn’t going to meet or revise the script until the strike was over. No surprise, Ken agreed. “Damn right, you’re not.”
The strike lasted an agonizing five months – not just for the writers, but for crewmembers, actors and all the area businesses relying on us. I went from worrying about Baby Sam to worrying about making rent. While Tom Hanks started shooting another movie, the boy-turned-into-man picture was released. It was called Big, directed by Penny Marshall and did just a little, tiny bit of business. My big break was slipping away. It wouldn’t be the last time, either. The ’07 strike hit in the middle of the first season of the first TV show I created, an NBC time travel drama called Journeyman. I had to walk away from it. The killshot came shortly thereafter; the force majeure of my overall deal.
So here I am again, walking in circles in the Strike of ’23 (that no one is calling it yet). I wonder how many of those shuffling along with me are writers who were about to start their first staffing jobs, or screenwriters who had the plug pulled on their movies, or show creators who finally got their series up only to see it die midstream. I know how bad they feel. It crushes the soul and either sews radioactive seeds of cynicism where inspiration once lived or pulls you into a warm milk bath of self-pity. It all seems personal, like the puppet masters of success have conspired to single you out for punishment.
Yes, I’ve been there. And I understand there’s no guarantee that when labor peace returns, those writers will go back to their shows or that their movies will get made. Hell, who even knows what the business will look like after this is over.
But those writers need to remember they were on the precipice of something great before the strike. Which means hard work, perseverance and talent got them there and it will get them there again. Choosing to treat these times as the end times is wasting valuable time. In fact, all writers should come back better at their craft than when they left it — by continuing to write, read, create, feel and evolve. Afterall, we have to upgrade our organic intelligence against the rise of the machines.
When the Strike of ’88 was over, I dropped by Joe Seldner’s office, Tom Hanks’s development exec.
“Do you think Tom will ever find time for Baby Sam?” I asked.
“Put it this way,” said Joe, like a man preparing to sugarcoat bad news. “You and Tom will have long, successful careers – maybe just not together.”
Joe was right. But I wouldn’t really appreciate his wisdom until years later.
I consider myself fortunate to be participating in my third strike. It means I’m having a long career. And speaking only for me, the most rewarding creative experiences I’ve enjoyed in this fantastic, exciting, entertaining, glamorous and heartbreaking business, were not the shows and movies that were derailed by the strikes, but the ones that came after.
As for Tom Hanks, I’m not sure what ever happened to him.
Kevin Falls has been a writer and producer on several TV shows, including Sports Night, The West Wing, This Is Us and Pitch. He also created Journeyman, co-created Franklin and Bash and wrote two movies, The Temp and Summer Catch.