Yes, I wrote THE BURNING BED, or more accurately, the TV screenplay based on Faith McNulty's book and bearing the same powerful title. Some other time I'll think about titles, but in this case, Faith's has everything: symbolism, visual quality, onomatopoeia and a stunning double meaning: the description of an incendiary marriage, and what Francine Hughes, the abused wife, did to end it. In a ground-breaking trial that changed law, police procedure in cases of domestic violence, and, many people's attitudes towards battered women, Francine was acquitted
Soon after the movie aired in 1984, another woman tried to burn her husband alive, claiming that THE BURNING BED was her model. Since then, for twenty-five years, in almost every report of domestic abuse leading to murder, THE BURNING BED is mentioned.
The story it told was true, painstakingly researched by its first producer Arnold Shapiro (SCARED STRAIGHT), Faith McNulty, and me. What was our responsibility, if any, for a copycat attempt by a desperate woman who was part of the huge audience that saw, and can still see, THE BURNING BED on video and on cable -- the biggest audience, I'm told, for any television movie ever? In 1984 I would have said "none."
In those years there were three networks, their contents scrutinized by the FCC, which licensed them. My script was "vetted" by Standards and Practices at NBC; every line, every event had to be justified: a quote, a taped interview, a dated note, a printed fact. It was not my version of the story; it was the story, dramatized, but not fictionalized.
Of course not every program was as scrupulously researched even then. Producers, directors, actors, directors' secretaries, producers' wives -- all felt entitled to suggest changes, even wrote on the script if they chose to; writers were not usually welcomed on the set, and -- as now -- since we don't own the copyright to our work, we could be fired or replaced if we didn't do as we were told.
Still, when Budd Schulberg, a well-known and respected writer (WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN, ON THE WATERFRONT), learned that a script of his had been significantly altered by others, he held a press conference, took his name off the project, and announced that the writer would henceforth be known as "Richard Drecksler", because the script was now "dreck."
I'm not claiming that we were giants in those days, or that everything we wrote was "literature." But there was, in my experience, a general feeling among writers of responsibility to the facts, and a commitment, as with doctors, to "first, do no harm."
What comes onto my big screen now bears little resemblance to the dramas we used to stay home on Saturday nights to watch. The three original networks are still here, but barely holding their own in a seemingly endless sea of cable stations and "spontaneous" reality shows -- all accompanied by cameramen and cobbled into some kind of shape by directors and/or writers. Before there were dramas and series and soap operas and newcasts; now there are Kardashians and hoarders and exhibitionists and actors who read the "news" from monitors positioned just where we, the viewers, sit, so that it seems they speak honestly and directly to us.
Is it just coincidence that today the quality of life, everyday life, has deteriorated so dramatically that those of us who have lived awhile can hardly believe we are in the same country, the same world? Many factors are blamed: the huge gaps between segments of our society, an unintegrated population, early sexualization of young people, poverty, racial inequality, the toll of wars, widespread unemployment, and on and on. But what about the constant, insistent yammering of television, advertisements, unsavory people, serial killers, vampires, all brought into our bedrooms and made to seem justified, attractive, normal, fun? What about the writers who influence so much of what our world sees, thinks, desires? Do we do no harm? Are we doing no harm?
Don't we have some moral obligation in our fingers -- these fingers that can make sex fun or sinful, make heros out of villains and villains out of heros -- to tell our audience at least, what we believe to be the truth?
I wrestle with this, can hardly find the words to express my concern about it, believe that others must too. A trusted (yes, if it's in print, on TV, in the movies; doesn't that give it a ring of truth?) writer who may indeed be doing harm, shouldn't that writer tear up the paper or hit delete, delete, delete, and start over?
Am I naive, or crazy? What do you think?
