‘Wonderland’ Gathers Inspiration, Ideas From Inside the Walls of Bellevue

Peter Berg is a morning person. This morning, Berg, who is probably best known as Dr. Billy Kronk in “Chicago Hope,” is sitting in the office of Dr. Robert Berger, who is the real-life director of the Forensic Psychiatry Service at Bellevue Hospital Center. Around a corner and down the hallway, behind several sets of bars and a phalanx of police, is a psychiatric ward. Inside are 27 of the most dangerous people in New York.

“This is a true flash point,” says Berg, who talks about the ward with the authority of someone who has spent some time there. “It’s like a hot zone where very explosive issues are living within close proximity.”

Berger leads the way. To the left is a holding area. Farther on is where prisoners in need of medical care are attended. Ahead and to the right is a small cafeteria, with tables and chairs bolted to the floor. The TV, which is playing Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” in Spanish, is out of reach. Berger and Berg speak quietly.

The idea here is to keep things on an even keel, don’t get anyone excited, because if one patient gets worked up, they all do. According to Berger, they have problems with “impulse control, intense emotions, mania, hyper-irritability.”

An attendant who leads discussion groups talks about a 380-pound patient who threw a television set across the room. Another doctor appears with an X-ray. Clearly visible are a cluster of foreign-looking objects.

“He thinks they’re flying saucers,” the doctor says.

“What are they?” Berg asks.

“Wing nuts.”

Don’t be surprised if variations on these ideas and anecdotes appear on television screens sometime soon. Berg has stepped into a different role and is producing, directing and writing a new show based on this place called “Wonderland.” It will get to test its mettle Thursday nights at 10 beginning this week on ABC, facing off against the thus-far unbeatable reign of NBC’s “ER.”

The “Wonderland” ensemble cast features Ted Levine, Martin Donovan, Michelle Forbes, Billy Burke and Michael Jai White as a group of psychiatrists and attendants who are not only dealing with patients but also the patients’ loved ones, the courts, the cops, their peers, their family and friends, and, last but not least, their own demons. It’s shot documentary-style, at a closed wing of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, with hand-held cameras and an institutionally greenish color scheme inspired by photographs of a Japanese elementary school.

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Though some of this may sound like a psychiatric version of “ER” or Berg’s own “Chicago Hope” or even “NYPD Blue,” it is not.

“One of the challenges of this show is, unlike a traditional medical drama or cop drama or legal drama, we don’t have the convenience of quick resolution,” Berg says. “A schizophrenic doesn’t come in in the morning and leave cured in the afternoon. So the tracking of these characters doesn’t have the inherent black or white resolution that audiences are used to seeing.”

Berg, an intense man with spiky hair and a restless intelligence, spent six months researching Bellevue. The upshot is he’s on backslapping terms with many of the hospital’s psychiatrists and attendants and has become a kind of lay expert on its workings. Eventually he found himself gravitating toward Berger’s forensics department on the 19th floor and the psychiatric emergency room on the first floor, known by the acronym CPEP (Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program), a vast room of glass-enclosed cubicles where patients are interviewed.

Berg, 38, says he’d been mulling over the idea of doing a TV show about a psychiatric hospital for the past half-dozen years. In part this interest can be attributed to the fact that his mother worked at a psychiatric institution in White Plains, N.Y. (he was raised in nearby Chappaqua).

Very little in his resume would suggest he had the wherewithal to pull together an hour series on the subject. He’s had a steady, if unspectacular, career as an actor, known chiefly for his stint on “Chicago Hope” and appearances in such films as “The Last Seduction.” He made his directing debut with a black comedy called “Very Bad Things,” which featured a psychotic (played by Christian Slater) who spouts self-realization psychobabble. Berg is the first to admit that he went too far in “Very Bad Things,” with its double-amputee groom and quadriplegic best man and three-legged dog, and is grateful to be working with ABC--and therefore Disney--because they will rein him in.

“Disney is going to push in one direction, I’m going to push in the other, and maybe we’ll find something really interesting in the middle,” Berg says.

Originally the project was developed under former ABC network chief Jamie Tarses. Berg says that it might have fallen through the cracks after she left, though Imagine Television CEO Tony Krantz, whose company is producing the show, disputes this. Both agree that Disney’s Michael Eisner took a personal interest in the pilot.

In fact, Berg recalls being holed up in a Manhattan hotel, despairing that the show would ever be picked up, when he received a call from Eisner’s office. Thinking it was his friend Joe playing a practical joke, he slammed down the phone. It rang again, and when Berg picked up, Eisner said, “I don’t know who Joe is, but I want to talk about your show.”

Once they were given the green light, Berg and his writing staff had to begin shaping material that was fascinating on the face of it, but not inherently dramatic. Berg says they had to fight the impulse to “write highly disorganized monologues” that writers like to write and actors like to act, but audience often don’t connect to.

Levine and Donovan loosely based their characters on Berger and his colleague, Dr. Sasha Berdey, both of whom are technical consultants on the show. Berger is quirky, prone to giggling and discursive monologues. One of his jobs is to separate the malingerers, the guys who swallow taped-up razor blades, from the real thing. He’s had his clothes shredded by a patient, been threatened by a car bomb. A self-described “Bellevue baby,” he’s been at the hospital 23 years. He says he knew what to expect when Berg and company descended upon him because he’d worked on a film years ago called “Fatal Vision,” starring Kim Basinger.

“He’s a nut, but he’s a brilliant psychiatrist,” Berg says. “And I’ve seen that quirkiness be applied to really shut down violent criminals who don’t talk to anyone. . . . I’ve seen Berger completely disarm and bring out love, compassion, warmth.”

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When it is pointed out that Berger and Berdey’s onscreen alter ego, Levine, is best known to many viewers as the psychopath Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs,” Berg says the irony is not entirely unintended. Levine represents qualities that are shared by all the cast members.

“Anybody who comes within the radar of our cameras should be fair game for psychological exploration,” Berg says. “It was important to find characters who appeared to be psychologically complex, if not downright damaged. And all of these actors, who I have a great deal of respect for as actors and friends . . . they’re all in their own ways very damaged, and they don’t hide that. They use it to their advantage.”

“My pat response is it takes one to know one,” Levine says dryly.

Donovan and Levine say that during their research on the wards they experienced firsthand what many viewers may experience watching the show: There but for the grace of God go I.

“If nothing else, I have felt rage and anger and paranoia, things that I’ve thought, ‘Jesus, am I cracking up here?’ ” Donovan says.

Imagine’s Krantz thinks the show’s intensity will cut through the clutter rather than put people off--and it will have a lot of clutter to cut through, because “Wonderland” (which was originally called “Bellevue,” then “Bedlam,” then “Rivervue”) is being pitted against “ER,” “the Big Kahuna,” as Krantz puts it. He adds, about the time slot, “It’s about as tough as it gets.” On the other hand, he says, the show won’t have to do that well to be considered a success.

Ultimately, of course, all Berg can control is the show, not the audience’s response to it. And no matter what happens, Bellevue has had a profound effect on him.

“Any one of those people who you saw with no shoelaces shuffling around, you sit them in a room and listen to their stories and each and every one is like reading a novel,” Berg says. He pauses, then adds wryly, “The process of turning that into a television show is a whole other thing.”

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“Wonderland” can be seen at 10 p.m. Thursdays on ABC.