Living With the Wounds of ‘War’

The television auteur was emotional as he recalled the years he put into his masterwork:

“It was extraordinary, impossible to put into words. It gave me the opportunity to concentrate all my talents on one project, which is something people in our business never do. Being on location, reliving the history--there’s no way to tell you what it was like. I ate it. I slept it. The business of actually shooting at Auschwitz--as devastating as it was--will live in my memory forever, until the day they put me into the ground. I feel so privileged to have been part of this, to have lived it, to have brought it out into the world.”

And how did the world respond?

On Sunday, producer/director/co-writer Dan Curtis’ “War and Remembrance” ran third in the ratings, outdrawn even by NBC’s “The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.”

The Incredible Henry Family’s tumultuous odyssey through World War II beaten by a green giant?

“I was stunned,” Curtis said. “That they (viewers) wanted to watch the Incredible Hulk, I . . . I . . . it’s so shocking I can’t even put a mentality on it.”

Watching “War and Remembrance” wind down, Curtis is at once reflective and angry. He’s warmed by the critical praise lavished on “War and Remembrance,” but dismayed by the ratings.

To a large degree, he faults ABC.

Picking up where ABC’s 1983 miniseries “The Winds of War” left off, “War and Remembrance” opened with 18 hours in November and resumed Sunday with the first of five concluding parts spanning 11 1/2 hours.

The final installment of this epic achievement in historical drama--and it’s definitely that--airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

Curtis initially expected “War and Remembrance” to at least approach the enormous ratings success of its 18-hour predecessor, “The Winds of War,” which was also based on a novel by Herman Wouk. “My feeling was that another 53 share (the percentage of TV sets in use that are tuned to a given program) wasn’t possible,” he said, “but that maybe it would come close.”

It didn’t.

November’s “War and Remembrance” averaged a 29 share and an 18.6 rating (each rating point represents 904,000 homes). The first four episodes of the finale, despite increasing audience through the week, have averaged a 23 share and a 14.5 rating.

Those are not insignificant figures for a struggling network such as ABC, and exposure to perhaps 40 million viewers is nothing to be taken lightly. Yet it’s far less than what ABC promised advertisers, and from the network’s purely fiscal perspective, a minus yield on a lavish venture.

Curtis praises ABC for approving a whopping $104 million budget for “War and Remembrance,” the biggest and costliest miniseries ever.

But he adds:

“If ABC had followed through with their resolve and programmed this the way it should have been programmed--and not let sales dictate how it was scheduled--I think we would have done considerably better.”

Although Curtis said he was originally “brainwashed” by ABC executives to think otherwise, he now believes that it was a terrible mistake to air “War and Remembrance” in separate chunks months apart.

ABC rushed the first 18 hours of “War and Remembrance” into its November schedule to fill a program void resulting from last summer’s writers’ strike. Networks traditionally deploy their expected blockbusters in November, February and May, the ratings sweeps months that most determine advertising rates for local stations.

“I should never have given them the show in November--not that it would have made any difference running it in February and again in May (which was its plan before the writers’ strike),” Curtis said. “It should never have been broken in two. That did irreparable harm because the audience realized they weren’t going to see the end until six months later.”

In other words, many people who would have watched a continuous “War and Remembrance” decided not to watch at all.

Curtis would have preferred either completing the 29 1/2 hours of “War and Remembrance” in a two-week period or airing it as a weekly series spanning an entire season.

Actually, Curtis said, ABC originally wanted to air “War and Remembrance” in “three bursts,” and he had to “fight like a lunatic to get it back to two.”

Curtis is just as critical of the way the miniseries is being presented this week, claiming that the three-night gap between Wednesday’s highest-rated fourth installment and Sunday’s conclusion will erode momentum. “So now, whatever audience we had, we’ll lose again,” he said.

ABC declined to comment.

Is it possible also that watching “War and Remembrance” simply requires too large a commitment for most viewers?

“I laugh when I hear that word commitment ,” Curtis said. “What are we talking about, a commitment to stay home and not go bowling?”

He is just as skeptical of continued reports of ABC suffering a huge financial loss over “War and Remembrance.” As the miniseries was about to go on the air last November, John Sias, president of the ABC Television Group, estimated that the loss would be $20 million. (And only last week, Thomas Murphy, chairman of Capital Cities/ABC, elevated the estimate to between $30 million and $40 million.)

“Those stories gave it (the miniseries) the feeling of being a loser, and people translated that to ‘bad,’ ” Curtis said. “That was wrong. Nobody has any idea yet how this thing will do financially.”

Yet unmeasured, Curtis said, is revenue from the miniseries’ international distribution. “To say it lost $20 million is just insane,” he said. “I’m tired of this constant crying of losing money. We brought this show in on budget, 35 days ahead of schedule. The additional $6 million over the $104 million budget was spent getting it ready for the November start that ABC wanted.”

Curtis rejects the notion that “War and Remembrance” is the last of the big miniseries.

“You may never see anything this big again,” he said. “But someone will come along after a year or two with 10, 12 or 18 hours, and get good numbers. That’s because the miniseries is really what television is all about. There is no better way to tell a story than in a miniseries.”

One other reason for possible viewer tune-out has to be addressed: That the Holocaust--and these final chapters are essentially a Holocaust story that is simply devastating--is too painful for some to watch.

Curtis agrees. “But what really bothers me is that losing to the Incredible Hulk means we lost the younger audience, and they are exactly the people who should have watched this,” he said.

Not that there haven’t been plenty of other Holocaust documentaries and dramas, only that this one breaks ground in candidly portraying the actual gassings and other brutalities, as opposed to just the aftermath. “Kids don’t know about this,” Curtis said.

Still, Curtis said, he would not change a thing about “War and Remembrance,” not even carrying over lifeless Robert Mitchum from “The Winds of War” in the key role of Victor (Pug) Henry.

“I cast Bob originally for the same reason I cast him the second time,” Curtis said. “I could not find anybody who was better.” That included, he said, George C. Scott, Cliff Robertson and James Coburn, three other actors he considered for the role.

Few industry observers could have predicted that Curtis--a man with largely undistinguished credits on his resume--would have turned out the likes of “The Winds of War” and then, at ABC’s urging, also shaped the infinitely greater “War and Remembrance.”

It’s been a 10-year journey for Curtis, now 60 and fuzzier about his future than his past. “I feel so good about this show,” he said, “because I know we’ve accomplished something that won’t be accomplished again.”

Hulk or no Hulk, that’s something to be proud of.