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HITMAKERS: Cochran, left,
and Surnow shared a writing Emmy in 2002.
Kevin Winter/Image Direct
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august 13, 2003. 11
a.m.
I pull up to a nondescript
office building, tell the security guard I have
an appointment with the
boss, and am quickly told to drive through the
gate and around
the side to a parking area. There’s no phone call
to see if the boss is expecting me, no ID check,
even, to confirm that I am who I say I am. Minutes
later, I’m
walking into the headquarters of the federal government’s
Counter Terrorism Unit, whose helicopter is parked
outside. Considering all the CTU and its star agent
have faced
in the last two years—an assassination plot on
a presidential candidate, a terrorist plan to detonate
a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles—getting into the
building is surprisingly easy. Too easy.
However,
this anonymous, low-slung warehouse space in Woodland
Hills, Calif., is not actually a high-security
government installation. It’s the sets and offices
of the Fox network’s hit drama 24, starring
Kiefer Sutherland as anti-terror agent Jack Bauer.
And the boss I’m here to see? Robert Cochran, ’71,
JD ’74,
who, with writing partner Joel Surnow, is the show’s
co-creator, co-executive producer and co-head writer.
Since
even before its first episode, in 2001, 24 has
been one of the most talked-about shows on television.
Cochran and Surnow shared the drama-writing Emmy
after
the first season and are now in production for
the third, which began October 28.
“I’ve had shows that were successful,” Cochran
says in his bare-bones, decidedly unpresidential
office, “but
this one, with the Emmy, and the nominations we’ve
gotten, and all the publicity, it’s fun.”
Each
episode of 24 is frenetically paced and stylishly
shot, but the key to the show is its gimmick: the
entire season comprises one day, unspooled in 24
one-hour installments
of real time. It’s a compelling, high-pressure
concept, and critics have been hooked since they
saw preview tapes in the fall of 2001. “24,” wrote
Time television critic James Poniewozik back then, “is
the most distinctive, addictive new TV series this
season. As an old-fashioned thriller, it’s relentless,
tense and deliciously paranoic, with more twists
than a Twizzler.” Despite its critical success,
24 didn’t
find a large audience until last season; it ended
the year as Fox’s second-most-watched scripted
show, trailing only The Simpsons.
Cochran’s route
to Hollywood was as unpredictable as a 24 plotline. After
leaving Stanford with a bachelor’s
in economics and a law degree, he went to work
as an attorney in San Diego. “I didn’t hate
it by any means,” he recalls, “but I was
26, 27 years old, and I felt this would now be my life
for
the next 40 years.” Seeking a change of pace, he
went to Harvard Business School, graduating in
1980, and joined management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
He liked what he was doing, but tired of the constant
travel.
“I’d always wanted to write,” he says, “and
I had written a script, finally, that I thought
wasn’t
bad.” It was a comedy about lawyers, which eventually
made its way to L.A. Law creator and producer Steven
Bochco. The show was finishing its first year,
and Bochco needed lawyers to write the next season.
Cochran was
asked to pitch some ideas, Bochco and his team
liked one, and Cochran was hired to write an episode,
and,
later, another. That exposure drew the attention
of Surnow, who hired him for the last season of
Falcon Crest.
Later, Cochran and Surnow collaborated on
ABC’s
The Commish and USA Network’s La Femme
Nikita, and Cochran, a history buff, maintained a full
schedule writing historical specials and miniseries.
He was busy
with that work three summers ago when Surnow called
with a new idea. “He gave me the framework for
24, 24 one-hour episodes, so the whole season takes
place in
one day,” Cochran recalls. “I said, ‘Okay,
that’s clever, but I don’t know if it can
really be done. What’s the story?’ He said, ‘I
don’t know.’ ‘What are the characters?’ He
said, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What is
the genre?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ And
I said, ‘Well, Joel, I don’t know either.’ And
I hung up.”
But Surnow was persistent, and he and
Cochran teamed up to develop the show. They realized
they needed a plot
that could plausibly drive a protagonist to work
nonstop for 24 hours, as well as a personal-life
subplot that
would also have an urgent, up-all-night story line.
Being fans of action movies and also fathers of
teenaged daughters,
the pair settled on the main stories of the first
season: a federal agent confronts both an assassination
attempt
and his daughter’s kidnapping. Fox bought it, and
then the high-pressure ride began.
“We had the pilot,” Cochran says, “and
we were able to plot out about six episodes.” Beyond
that, he and Surnow really didn’t know what would
happen to their characters. They had to deliver
18 more episodes with dozens of twists and turns
that connected
into one logical story arc, resolved itself in
the 24th installment, and remained true to the
show’s
real-time formula. “It’s way different—and
it’s
way harder—than anything else I’ve ever done,” Cochran
says. “I didn’t think I would be here for
a third year—even if the show was. I love the situation.
But it’s exhausting.”
Season three will determine
whether the real-time idea itself is worn out and
whether audiences will
stick with another cliff-hanger day in the life
of Jack Bauer.
Cochran, Surnow and four other writers, huddled
in that Woodland Hills building, are only a few
episodes ahead. “We
have no idea what’s going to happen,” Cochran
says. And even if they did, “We’re all sworn
to secrecy.”
But he will confirm that this season
takes place three years in the future. That must
mean President
David Palmer, felled by a nerve agent in last season’s
finale, lives on, right? “I’m not saying
that,” retorts Cochran with a grin. “I’m
not saying anything.”  |
