Everwood's Creator Speaks Out

[Stuck In The '70's]

From E Online.....

K: The fan outcry to save Everwood has been overwhelming. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so many emails about saving one show. What have your thoughts been as this has been going on?

G: I mean obviously it’s an incredible thing and it feels great. It serves to sort of just enhance all of the very proud feelings we all already had regarding the show. I think, in some part, its legacy will only be polished by everything that’s happening and by this outpouring. We’ve certainly felt it on our end. However, I think honestly, I would offer to the fans to maybe sort of redirect their enthusiasms. Not to pour water on anyone’s hopes, but I just think logistically at this point, it would be impossible [to bring the show back]. Contracts have lapsed, and all the creative entities behind the show have disbanded and gone on to other things, and we’re all in contracts elsewhere now. So unfortunately, logistically, it’s an impossibility. But this fan enthusiasm is so appreciated and I would love to sort of redirect it, if I could, to getting the show released on DVD. You know, we got season one released on DVD, and over time, it’s done OK, but initially, it didn’t do well enough for them to slate another run of any of the additional seasons. That’s something that I’m working on and the fans could be of great help with any kind of campaign that they want to do. I’m not going to tell them to do it, but I certainly wouldn’t stand in the way if they were so inclined to redirect their enthusiasm to Warner Home Video. They just have to be encouraged that there’s an appetite and a market for these DVDs. My sort of general sentiment about Everwood is, look, for four years we got to be a great show, and we didn’t go out on a whimper. We went out with a bang and we went out creatively strong and with a lot of the same audience that was there from the beginning and I think in syndication and on DVD, there’s a real chance that we’ll last. I mean, when you think about it, the DickVanDyke Show was only on for four years, you know what I mean? And Thirtysomething was four years and you know, there are a lot of great shows out there that didn’t go on forever. I mean, we had 89 episodes, which is tremendous. So I feel like the logical thing to say to everyone is, again, we’re so grateful for everyone’s enthusiasm and that they all love the show as much as we did. That’s been tremendously rewarding, but the reality of the situation is, at this point, I don’t know under what circumstance we would be able to put the whole cast and the writers back together.

K: So all of the actors and the writers are out of their contracts now?

G: Yeah. Their contracts lapsed.

K: And the rumors a couple weeks ago that talks had been re-opened by The CW…?

G: I have not been contacted about that in any way, and I can only speak for myself, but I would be crazy to be hanging on at this point, and I’ve had to sort of make additional plans for myself that now would preclude my own coming back to the show, you know?

K: How did you feel about the decision to bring back 7th Heaven instead of Everwood?

G: I actually think the decision to not bring back Everwood was separate from any other show. I think, apart from what anybody says, anywhere, on any level, the decision to let it go was its own separate decision, because you look and you see Sunday nights at 9 where there’s a repeat of America’s Next Top Model, and Everwood could have just as well gone there. So I don’t think it was that we were in competition with another show. I don’t think that another show was chosen over us. I just think they felt as though, for whatever reason, that it was time. Honestly, and this is really important, I don’t begrudge The CW at all. You know, I think that they did what they sort of had to do, and we had already been, in this last year on the network, moved around a bunch of times and taken off for a whole bunch of months, and to continue that way again for another however many more months, on a new network with new people, would’ve been torturous on our end. And I’m not sure that we would’ve been able to make Everwood the same way that we’ve been making it, you know what I mean? I think sometimes you take the good with the bad, and our slightly under-the-radar status enabled us to do the kind of stories that we were able to do.

K: Do you have any sense of how the cast is feeling?

G: You know, it’s such a double-edged sword. Again, the show has always been sort of a double-edged sword. It’s like, wow, we can tell these great stories, but wow, they’re not necessarily the kind of stories that bring flocks of people to the show. So you’re doing this quality product that you feel is both undervalued and people aren’t as aware of it as you’d like. And the same is true for this. I think we look at it, and we think, wow, we got to do this great show for four years, and its potency was never diluted. If we were on cable doing thirteen episode seasons, this would’ve been a six, seven year run and no one would’ve said, after 89 episodes, ‘gosh, it got too short of a run.’ So I feel as though we got to tell a lot of the stories that were in us. Would we have loved to have gone another year? Of course. But sometimes, again, you don’t know why these sort of things happen, and my hope is that the ending of the show will only add to its legacy. So along those lines, if people want to sort of help me with that, that would be great. You know, we’ve gotten a bunch of ‘no’s’ where releasing the show on DVD is concerned. And not to name other shows, but there are certainly a lot of shows with not even half the audience that have gotten released on DVD, and so we may not be quite the value of some of the bigger shows that have been released on DVD, but I think we’re of enough value that [we deserve to be released]. My hope is that they’ll recognize that, and the passion of the fans will mean a lot in that regard I think.

K: You guys were sort of able to do what you wanted for the end of the series, right?

G: Absolutely.

K: I mean I know that there was an alternate ending…

G: Yeah, but to be honest, those cliffhangers were more set ups for next year. We would’ve have almost the same number of payoffs for the life of the series. Because we would’ve been trying to sort of redefine the show next year, I think, in certain regards. I mean, it was sort of a pivotal moment.

K: And it was weird, to me, how you guys brought Sarah Lancaster back for the alternate ending and planned to have her be a part of next year’s storyline, and then, who would’ve thought, Everwood didn’t get picked up, but What About Brian did.

G: I know! You know, it’s like, who knows?! Again though, when we did Jack & Bobby, that was one year, and we got to do this for four. The show was always in the vein of Northern Exposure, which also I think, went about four years. For these kinds of relationship-driven dramas, like Once & Again, which went three years, we had a long run. We had a long run for the kind of stories we were telling.

K: Moving forward, will you continue to develop these sort of relationship dramas like Everwood?

G: You know, I’ll always make these kind of shows. Hopefully, there will be some that are more mainstream than others and more for sort of a broadcast network in that regard, but what we’re all not feeling right now is that fear of ‘What’re we going to do next?’ I mean, I think everyone that was involved in the show benefited from its quality, and because we never sacrificed that, I think it may have also, over time, brought about a lack of support from certain parties that we wanted support from, but we were never willing to sacrifice that quality, and Rina kept that up the last couple years, and we’re all sort of better because of it.