‘A Season on the Brink’ Creators Cry Foul

When the predominantly negative reviews began to appear for sports network ESPN’s first made-for-TV movie, “A Season on the Brink,” the film’s creative team wasn’t surprised. In fact, it had assembled its own negative review for the network--in the form of a memo detailing changes it felt were necessary--before the project was shown last month.

“I watched it at home, and I was heartsick,” said writer-producer David Rintels. “The picture was just unrecognizable.”

“Bad reviews are always painful,” added director Robert Mandel, “but it’s extra painful when you get bad reviews for something you didn’t do.”

Based on the best-selling book providing a behind-the-scenes look at former Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight, the movie turned out to be a success for ESPN commercially. Even though many critics derided the film (The Times’ Howard Rosenberg called it “pointless and utterly numbing”), the initial simulcast on ESPN and ESPN2 drew more than 5 million viewers, a strong performance by cable standards.

Still, ill feelings the production left behind underscore tensions that exist between creative personnel and networks as TV executives increasingly put their imprint on the production process, exerting control over decision-making and responsibilities once left under the aegis of producers.

In the case of “Season on the Brink,” which starred Brian Dennehy as Knight, an ESPN executive was on the set throughout the production. After filming was completed, the network sent its own camera crew to Bloomington, Ind., shooting footage that was inserted into the movie. ESPN also brought in its own team to reedit the film--according to the filmmakers, keeping them out of the editing room.

“They just came in like Attila the Hun and rode rampant through the thing,” said Dennehy from Chicago, where he is starring in a stage production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” “The fact is that they were arrogant and high-handed about the whole thing.... They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t use the talent that they had hired.”

Added Dennehy’s longtime manager, Susan Smith: “Never in my experience has a film been so completely taken away from the creative group.”

Mark Shapiro, ESPN’s senior vice president and general manager of programming, was credited as an executive producer on the film, which is also unusual. Shapiro acknowledged that the network was closely involved in the production but insisted those plans were made clear from the outset and that ESPN collaborated freely with the filmmakers. “We always told them, knowing sports more than anyone else, that we were going to be hands-on,” he said, calling disagreements over the changes “just part of the compromise and the tussle and bustle of doing a project.”

Producers of made-for-TV movies nevertheless complain about greater encroachment by executives. Many are reluctant to publicly discuss the shift, for fear of alienating those who can order their projects--an especially scary proposition, industry sources noted, given that the major networks are producing fewer movies and miniseries than in years past, making producers more reliant on cable channels.

Networks such as MTV, VH1, Court TV and ESPN have all added original movies to their programming menu in recent years, though in some instances producers say such channels insist on a level of influence beyond the traditional norm.

Veteran TV producers also point out that the current environment is a departure from the way the TV movie business was conducted in its heyday, when producers were empowered to pursue a specific creative vision once the script was approved.

‘There’s a Fear of Being Identified’

“These are things that would have never taken place 20 years ago,” said Jerry Isenberg, a former producer and network executive who teaches at the USC School of Cinema-Television. “The whole culture at the [program] buying level is a desire for producers to lay down and for creative people to do what [the networks] want. There’s a fear of being identified as someone who is willing to fight.”

Isenberg, in fact, went so far as to draft a “creative bill of rights” during his tenure as chairman of the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers and Directors--an honorary group consisting primarily of those who have worked in TV production--with the hope of establishing parameters delineating where the network’s authority ends and the producer’s begins.

Stanley Brooks, the executive producer of “Season on the Brink,” declined to be interviewed. Other members of the creative team, however, say that ESPN’s reediting altered the film’s structure, with several scenes that would have better connected the basketball footage to the central plot line and more fully explored Knight’s character either excised, trimmed or rearranged.

“None of this has ever happened in my experience in the business,” said Rintels, whose TV credits include the historical dramas “Day One,” “Sakharov” and “World War II: When Lions Roared.”

According to Shapiro, the post-production process was rushed because ESPN was committed to televising the movie March 10, after NCAA tournament pairings were announced; still, he said the producers were kept “very much involved” and the movie largely adhered to Rintels’ screenplay.

“If he didn’t like the finished product, that means he didn’t like his script,” Shapiro said.

ESPN, meanwhile, is already developing its next dramatic project, about the terrorist attack against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. As for “A Season on the Brink,” Shapiro made no apologies, saying the network spent millions on the production and was within its rights to “push for the product that we envisioned.”

“That’s the way it’ll be in the future too,” he said. “Nobody knows our fans better than we do.”

Dennehy said the experience soured him on working for the network again and that ESPN would have difficulty “getting serious people involved” in the future. Still, he added that producers have little recourse in such situations.

“Inevitably, whoever pays the piper calls the tune,” Dennehy said.