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Arli$$

Oct 28, 2002  •  Post A Comment

[HBO is] out for the best product going. They encourage you and they totally leave you alone creatively. I haven’t seen an HBO executive in five years. I get notes occasionally, but they are always just suggestions. The lack of advertisers changes everything; they are always encouraging you to go further.
They like subject matter where you’re not too PC-things that no one dares to talk about. We did an episode on a professional basketball player who had fathered a child illegitimately. We had to talk the girl whom he had impregnated into getting an abortion. I wanted to make sure it was real. I talked to every agent I knew and asked-what would you do? They told me the reality was that if you paid for the abortion, it would be $100,000; if she had the baby, it would be $1 million-at least. They told me buy her off. So we did.
And this was in 1998.
This year we did one about the lack of black head coaches in college ball and played the guilt card. After the coach succeeded in getting hired, he took off for the pros. The morality is up in the air.
A longtime client was accused of domestic abuse by his alcoholic wife and the character winds up having the case dropped. Then we find out that he did it. The guy winds up in the hall of fame anyway. Guilty people get away with things.
With HBO, you don’t have to have a happy ending.