COVER STORY : An English Empire? : Moving on from ‘Murphy Brown,’ Diane English and her husband go it alone, hoping to build a new company around ‘Love & War’

Monday night, a TV sitcom character will respond directly to the vice president of the United States for his real-life attack on her decision to bear a child out of wedlock.

Yes, the reruns are over--”Murphy Brown” is back.

“It has become arguably the central focus of this political year,” said David Beckwith, Dan Quayle’s press secretary, referring to the national debate that began in May when the vice president attacked the TV journalist played by Candice Bergen on “Murphy Brown” for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’ ”

In the months following, the Quayle vs. Brown fight escalated into a nationwide battle over family values, with both political parties taking shots at each other and Hollywood getting caught in the middle, branded by the vice president as home of the “cultural elite.”

Throughout the debate, Murphy Brown the TV character has been silent--the show has been in reruns since the birth of her child. But now, with the start of a new TV season, she gets to speak her piece in Monday’s hourlong, fifth-season premiere.

Ratings should be huge. Republicans . . . Democrats . . . members of the cultural elite . . . single mothers . . . just about everyone is curious to see what new national dialogue will be created.

Everyone, that is, except for the woman who actually bears the responsibility for Murphy’s decision last season to become a single mother.

While “Murphy Brown” creator Diane English plans to be tuned in to CBS at 9 p.m. Monday, she will do so for the first time as just another viewer. She has moved on, emotionally and physically, to concentrate her efforts on a new series, “Love & War,” which debuts after “Murphy Brown” at 10 p.m.

“Love & War” is the series that English and Joel Shukovsky, her husband and business partner, have been working on during the heated debate over her old character. The slightly autobiographical romantic comedy “about a Gentile and a Jew,” starring Susan Dey and Jay Thomas, is the first solo project of the couple’s independent production company, Shukovsky-English Entertainment. It is also the first building block in what the two hope will become a television empire.

In a sense they have taken the money and run. English and Shukovsky have broken off from Warner Bros., which put up the money for “Murphy Brown,” and struck out on their own with the revenues earned from producing that series.

Their goal is to become a ‘90s version of what Mary Tyler Moore’s production company was in the ‘70s: An independent company that attracts the industry’s top writers and producers and creates the likes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Newhart,” “Lou Grant” and “Hill Street Blues.” Shukovsky’s tough negotiations with CBS led to a four-series, two-movie deal that includes a steep $1.5-million penalty should the network decide not to air the next series submitted by Shukovsky-English.

What’s really driving English, however, is not empire and money. At 44, she has something to prove: that the success of “Murphy Brown” was something more than capturing lightning in a bottle. She wants to show that she can do it again and again.

“When ‘Murphy Brown’ became a campaign issue, that was the pinnacle of the kind of influence you can have,” she said shortly before the Emmy Awards last month, where her 4-year-old show was named best comedy series of the season. “In a sense, you can creep into the culture in a way that you make your mark. That’s very exciting. I really feel now I’m much more relaxed (about “Love & War”) because ‘Murphy Brown,’ in my opinion, is the best. And maybe the best that ever was. So I feel I can relax a little bit.”

Sitting on a rustic porch swing in the back yard of her Malibu Canyon home, she paused for a moment. “Although, there’s a voice in the back of my head that’s saying, you know, ‘Everybody thinks you can’t do it again.’ Now I sort of feel like maybe I’ve got to do it again. And that’s for me. That’s for me. It’s just my own standard, my ridiculously high standard, which I’ve always had. I don’t know if you’re born with this stuff, or where it comes from.”

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In striking out on their own, English and Shukovsky have removed the middleman in their operation, while turning their backs on a $50-million financing and distribution deal that English said they could have received from a studio. The couple simply refuse to support what they regard as a giant Hollywood infrastructure of TV production that has grown outdated. The acronym for their company is SEE, because the two are looking ahead to the future.

“I think it’s about control, trying to avoid the very complex maze of charges that studios put on top of shows,” said Shukovsky, 47, who has been married to English for 15 years. “I wouldn’t call us new wave--we’re not walking around in Birkenstocks--but we are trying to respond to what we observe as the American problem, being somewhat stagnant and overstaffed. We find it in the auto industry, the electronics industry and certainly the entertainment industry.”

Television, English laments, erodes the writer’s vision. “The system really doesn’t work very well. It always amazes me that anything good winds up on television at all.

“The process of pitching is strange,” she said. “You’re pitching to a lot of people, many of whom don’t have any credentials to be there and don’t understand the production process or the creative process at all. And then you go through the writing process, and there’s zillions of notes they give you, and a lot of compromises are made. You wind up with the feathered fish that doesn’t swim or fly. Then you go through the research process, where they show this thing to a captive audience of bizarre people and take their word as gospel.”

If English is driven by her desire to put on a good show, Shukovsky wants to rewrite the rules of the game. Together, they form a matched set.

“Joel is an entrepreneur,” English said. “Doing it the way everybody else does is very boring to him, and doing it in a different way is very challenging.”

In what they describe as an effort to keep costs down and maintain their independence, their young company employs only non-union workers, a move that has already brought them heat. (See story on Page 76.) At the same time, they are filming “Love & War” to be compatible with high-definition television, a technology that should be on the market in five years, about the same time “Love & War” would go into syndication if it’s a hit.

“We’re investing in ourselves,” Shukovsky said. “If we lose the money, we know where it went. I make no excuses for us. We’ve given up a lot. We have no children. We’ve been too busy. More than once we’ve looked at each other and said, ‘Are we ready now?’ And before you know it, you’re no longer 35. But we’re pursuing our dreams. We’re not sitting in a bungalow somewhere in the Catskills saying, ‘If only we had done this. . . .’ ”

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English’s cadre of “Love & War” writers--three men and two women--are gathered around an enormous wooden table at the show’s office in Century City, trying to come up with a few good jokes for Dey’s character during a rewrite session. Random ideas swarm around the table like fireflies.

“A bunch of naked ugly men with no teeth,” Marc Flanagan suggests.

“No, we had a naked man joke last week,” says Shannon Gaughan. “That’s becoming a recurring theme on the show.”

“I like the word Zamboni,” says Stephen Nathan. “It doesn’t matter if people know what it means, it’s a funny word.”

“Would 96 butts or 97 butts be better?” Elaine Pope asks.

Seated at the head of the table, like a nucleus around which a bunch of organisms are flowing and conforming, is English, her short, straight hair swept characteristically over to one side. She pulls in her writers’ thoughts, records them on a note pad and gives them shape.

“I was in the locker room after the Rangers game, sucking on my 97th butt of the day, which was a lot, even for me,” English says, reading out loud the completed dialogue for Dey’s character, Meg, who is considering giving up smoking after attending a fateful hockey game.

“But it was a double overtime and they had a real slow Zamboni driver. Then all of a sudden the room started spinning, and like some sissy, I fainted. It’s all over ESPN. Me splayed out on the floor, a bunch of idiots with no teeth standing over me, stacking pucks on my forehead just for the fun of it. I’m ruined.”

Such rewrite sessions, involving all the writers, take place three or four nights a week, often lasting into the early morning hours. Although the mood was light in the room, there was an underlying sense of seriousness because of the sheer bulk of work that needs to be done each week.

Peterman, whom English chose to take over as executive producer of “Murphy Brown” with Gary Dontzig, recalled a similar rewrite session on “Murphy Brown.” “It was during our second year, about 11 p.m., and there was an earthquake, and the room started shaking,” he said. “We looked around nervously at each other. Do we bolt for the door? Do we get under the desk? The table stopped rocking, there was a pause and then Diane said, ‘OK, page 17.’ ”

There is a sense about English that she shows people only what she wants them to see, and what she wants them to see is a consummate professional who is always on top of her game. At the same time, she tries to make herself accessible, inviting her actors and writers to her home for social visits.

“In the four years that we were with her, we saw her get angry once,” Dontzig said. “There are other people who blow their tops and run around screaming. We were always amazed that this woman was so totally in control of the situation that she never has to get angry.”

Sexual discrimination or harassment are issues that have never seriously confronted English in her career. Although she can’t offer an explanation why, people around her can.

“With Diane, I don’t think anybody’s going to step over too many lines,” said Jay Thomas, who presents himself as a self-styled sexist as the morning radio host of KPWR-FM in Los Angeles. “Certain women exude equality. Someone asked me how I feel about performing lines written by a woman, but she has the ability to see both sides of male and female.”

“I don’t know how to say this right, but Diane is so strongly centered that it doesn’t leave room for anyone, male or female, to be able to be sexist with her,” said Susan Dey, who spent six seasons on “L.A. Law.”

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, one of English’s few writer-producer female peers in the TV industry, said that a woman has to be that strong to succeed.

“We’ve got to get up earlier, work harder and go to bed later every day,” said Thomason, who created “Designing Women,” “Evening Shade” and the new CBS sitcom “Hearts Afire.” “We’ve got to have more sheer raw talent, pound for pound, than men do. Because at the end, there’s no network. Women don’t get put out to pasture with golden parachutes, and women don’t get to discuss business deals on the golf course. We don’t have access to the same sort of power forms men do.”

English offers a bit of her own advice to women trying to make it in an industry dominated by men: “Instead of wallowing in our bitterness, I think what we need to do as women is to go out and, if you can’t get in the front door, you have to go around to the back door. You have to find a way. And if that means making your own projects, getting your own financing, doing it your way instead of trying to play by their rules, then do it. We can spend a lot of time being angry about it, but it isn’t going to get you what you want.”

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English met Shukovsky in the early 1970s at public-TV station WNET in New York, where she was a secretary and he worked in on-air promotions as a graphic designer. When she first laid eyes on him, Shukovsky was wearing bright yellow corduroy pants, a green crew neck, black patent leather clogs with metal studs and big aviator glasses.

“I didn’t know what to make of him,” she said. “But he was real fast and really funny. And anyway it wasn’t like the best relationship in the beginning because I just thought he was a wise guy.”

Their first Thanksgiving dinner together at the home of Shukovsky’s folks was telling of their difficulties.

“During dinner, Mother took my father into the kitchen and said, ‘Why are you talking to her?’ ” Shukovsky said. “My father said, ‘She’s Joel’s girlfriend.’ My mother said, ‘She’s not Jewish .’ My father said, ‘Don’t be silly, Joel would never bring home a non-Jewish girlfriend.’ When they found out (that indeed he would), there was a coolness and a disappointment that their sole son opted to get involved with a Gentile.”

The general set-up of “Love & War” echoes the early experiences of English and Shukovsky. In the one-hour opener, Thomas plays a smart-mouthed Jewish newspaper columnist with a middle-class background who falls for a stylish restaurateur played by Dey.

English differs from her character, however, in her modest upbringing, which she tirelessly points out whenever she’s accused of being part of some “cultural elite.” She grew up in Buffalo in a neighborhood frozen in time, she said, where people rarely left; the kids she played with own houses there now.

“I was part of a group that was sort of the outcast group in school,” she said. “You know, we were the ganglies and the overweights and the ones with the thick glasses and the braces. That was our little bunch. We weren’t the cheerleaders. And we used to get together on the weekends at each other’s house and listen to old Elaine May and Mike Nichols records and then do our own sketches on tape. We would write little songs and plays and perform them. That’s how we amused ourselves.”

After graduating from the local state college, English taught English for a year at an inner-city high school. “I was being asked to teach Shakespeare to kids who grew up in the ghetto and couldn’t speak English,” she said. “I found it very frustrating, and I also had this burning need to write. So after a year I decided, ‘Well, I’ll try writing and I can always come back to teaching.’ ”

Upon the urging of a college professor, English sold her red Volkswagen beetle for $500, packed her belongings and headed to New York to write. “When the U-Haul moving van pulled up to take my stuff away, it was like, you know, a spaceship had landed, because nobody ever moved out of that neighborhood,” English said.

Throughout most of their marriage in the late 1970s, Shukovsky ran his own successful graphic design business, while English worked as a free-lance writer, including a stint as Vogue’s first regular TV columnist.

Every August, Shukovsky and English would take the month off and travel together to avoid the “tar beaches” on the rooftops of New York City. In 1980, after English’s first major TV assignment--a rewrite of the PBS movie “The Lathe of Heaven,” adapted from the book by Ursula LeGuin--they impetuously rented a villa in southern Italy.

“You could see the Mediterranean,” English said. “And one day we’re sitting there looking at Capri, and we’re sort of feeling like something’s wrong, you know. We shouldn’t be in the cement canyons anymore.”

“Life was getting routine,” Shukovsky said. “I said, ‘Why don’t we pack up, go to California, form a production company and get into television?’ ”

Backed by a Writer’s Guild nomination for “Lathe of Heaven,” English started getting work right away. Over the course of three years, she was hired to write nine TV movies--none of her own ideas--of which three were made.

Eventually, she agreed to produce “Foley Square” for CBS Entertainment, a 1985 comedy about a woman district attorney in Manhattan, as a way to build a track record. That led to a deal with Warner Bros., where English took over executive-producing chores on “My Sister Sam,” starring Pam Dawber, before finally getting her shot with “Murphy Brown” in 1988.

But before “Murphy Brown,” there was another series idea that English pitched to Warner Bros. The studio turned it down, saying it wasn’t commercial enough. It was “Love & War.”

*

Despite her polished demeanor, English stepped perilously close to the line of professional good taste--and many critics felt she crossed it--during the Emmy broadcast Aug. 30, when, in accepting the best comedy show award, she became a national cheerleader for single mothers. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not a family!” coaxed English, dressed elegantly in a black evening dress on loan from Chanel. Then she made a disparaging remark about the family of former President Reagan.

Although English generally prefers to make her impact behind the scenes, her words were public and bitter that night. “We’ve really taken the brunt of it this year, and it’s time we give a little bit of it back,” she told reporters backstage, charging that “Murphy Brown” served Quayle’s purpose as a political football to polarize the nation.

“I don’t feel that I crossed any line at all,” English said later. “I would do it exactly the same way if it happened again.”

English acknowledged how politicized the Emmys were. “Hollywood is very, very angry for being made a scapegoat,” she said. “It seems we’re entering an era of McCarthyism out there. That’s what you were feeling that night. It’s unfortunate most of it was unfunny, and the show was poorly executed. So in that context it did not reflect well on anyone.”

English has been accused numerous times of promoting a liberal agenda on “Murphy Brown.” L. Brent Bozell III, who publishes the conservative watchdog newsletter “TV, etc.,” points to such props on the show as an office dartboard that regularly features conservative leaders or organizations as targets, and to Murphy’s coffee mug that reads PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“I think they need to be more honest, and stop whining when Dan Quayle points it out,” Bozell said. “They can’t have it both ways. They can’t enter the world of politics and then cry foul when someone points out they did it.”

“When it comes to programs I produce, I don’t have the right to abuse public airwaves in a way that allows me to proselytize to people my points of views,” English responded. “I have a responsibility to present controversial issues in a responsible way. And to me, that makes good television. Because if you have no conflict, if you have no opposing points of view, if it’s all about paper tigers, then it’s just a lecture. It’s not dramatic and it’s not funny.”

English also dismisses Quayle’s description of her as a member of some cultural elite.

“The insinuation is that there are certain of us who have sort of hatched somehow, that we didn’t have parents, that we aren’t parents ourselves, that we have no ‘family values’--whatever the hell that means--that we’re these callous, money-driven people who are completely out of touch with the rest of the world,” English said. “And our agenda in life is to corrupt the rest of the country for our own profit. I find that offensive.”

English and Shukovsky lead a quiet, mostly reclusive life on their small ranch, where English rides her horse on weekends and Shukovsky works on his 1950s Ford pickup truck. Every so often they hop in their Range Rover and drive around the country, hopscotching from coffee shops to antique stores to offbeat restaurants.

If English and Shukovksy are elite somehow, English said, they got there “by hard work and persistence. Nobody handed me that on a silver platter. That’s for sure. I didn’t inherit this from anyone. I feel sort of proud about it, because the word elite suggests that you’re special. And I think that we look at what we do as special.”