writer, television director, screenwriter, television producer, physician, fighter pilot, novelist, film director
1966
Part of what motivated my writing was anger. I was angry that the daily misery of doctors, nurses, and patients was being trivialised into soap opera. We were made to feel bad because we were not perfect like our television counterparts. We were resentful that our patients did not get better as quickly as they did on telly - or at all.
There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.
The doctor part of me recognises the light and shade of medical life, but the writer in me is more attracted by the darkness, perhaps because it is the road less travelled.
I believe that properly regulated research in stem-cell biotechnology will lead to many valuable improvements in medical treatment and that objections on religious or ethical grounds should be vigorously opposed.
If you look at American medical fiction written by doctors, like 'The House of God' by Samuel Shem and 'The Blood of Strangers' by Frank Huyler, both have themes of cynicism and dysfunction running through them that you won't find in 'ER.' You find it in 'Scrubs,' but because that's a comedy, it gets away with it.
I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.
In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because other medical dramas at the time had these hospitals where even a drop of blood seemed to be too much, which is clearly not what it's like when you cut someone up.
One of the things I learned on medical drama 'Bodies' was that actors can't play ambiguity.
In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because it was a medical drama. The gore was authentic.
'Cardiac Arrest' was the first British drama to use a lot of medical jargon. 'ER' began the following year and was the first American drama to do that.