Tom Fontana

Tom Fontana, the creative force behind St. Elsewhere, Homicide, and Oz, spoke on Saturday at the IFP's From Script to Screen Conference. Interviewed by NY Daily News TV critic David Bianculli, Fontana gave his thoughts about coming from a theatre background (and a love of Shakespeare) and working in television and on his shows. Besides creating the best cop show ever (in Jen's opinion...and Law & Order is a cop-and-lawyer show), Gothamist loves Tom Fontana's honesty and colorful language ("He said buttfucking!"). Some of the more interesting things:

On St. Elsewhere:
- He and John Masius were given incredible creative freedom while working with producer Bruce Paltrow (yes, Gwyneth's dad) and MTM Productions, the company formed by Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker, which was behind The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Hill Street Blues, and Newhart.
- An idea for the series finale, when a snow globe of St. Eligius is taken from a character's son's hands, implying that the six seasons were just a dream, was to have snow globes of all MTM Productions shows, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show... Gothamist wonders if that idea inspired the series finale of Newhart, which had an extra twist.

On Homicide:
- NBC wanted to work with Homicide co-creator Barry Levinson, but the grittiness freaked them out. They had a six-episode season commitment at first, which was extended for three more, for a nine episode first season. The second season was only four episodes. Fontana didn't think it would go past the initial six episodes, since they were doing a show in Baltimore, a town that never had a television show in production.
- Bianculli called the fifth episode, Three Men and Adena, as good as television or film gets. Fontana likened it to a three person play - he wanted something that would be cheap to produce, so he put the episode in its entirety in the (interrogation) box, with Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor blisteringly persistent in trying to get a confession out of Moses Gunn's itinerant produce salesman. He credited director Martin Campbell for his creative staging. When he received an Emmy for writing the episode, Fontana thought the Academy was crazy, as he wrote the episode out of commerce.
- NBC President Warren Littlefield asked, "Does someone have to die every week?" Fontana responded, "I don't know, it's called Homicide."

On Oz:
- The riots at Attica happened when he was a teenager and he didn't really think much of them at the time. Later on, realizing that men who have commited one extreme act in their lifetime, all living in the same place...of course there would be problems.
- In the opening credits of Oz, the arm being tattooed with "Oz" is his. The director wanted another cut, but the tattoo artist (one from prison) said if he cut into Fontana's arm anymore, he'd die.
- He killed off Harold Perrineau 's Augustus Hill because Perrineau was starring in the two Matrix sequels in Australia and the commute's hard.
- He joked about killing off many of the character because he wanted to avoid a 25th anniversary reunion show. Bianculli questioned whether Fontana's imagination would be that good.
- After seeing the Sopranos episode in Italy, Fontana said to HBO, "Hey, they went to Italy...we just go to Bayonne! We want to go to Paris..." Oz in Gay Paree - that works in Gothamist's mind.
- In the series finale of Oz, he appears in a Hazmat suit, spraying down Oswald Correctional Facility, and turning the lights off.

On the future:
- He was relatively tight-lipped about his future project, but did say it was set in New York City clubs. He did hope it would be "with lots of big-breasted women...I'm really tired of editing penises."

On writing:
- He wakes up at 5:30AM to start writing, no matter if it's for 2 minutes or 2 hours. Before going to bed, he will think about what he needs to write the next day, and when he wakes up, sometimes his dreams are about what he needs to write.
- When asked what inspires him at 5:30AM, with a blank computer screen staring at him, Fontana said he wrote longhand. He admitted that writing OZ at 5:30AM could be hard.

Other Tom Fontana facts:
- Gothamist loves Tom Fontana's bloggish website.
- Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales loves Oz
- Check out Fontana's yearbook pictures.
- Buy the first two seasons of Homicide.
- There is a We Hate Tom Fontana site, complete with quotations to bolster reasons to hate. But Gothamist can't argue with someone who will admit: "Listen, I'm a whore. I'll work anywhere. I'll spread my legs wherever they want."
- Two Fontana moments are in Entertainment Weekly's 100 Most Important Moment in Television History (list made in 1999): One from St. Elsewhere and one from Homicide.
- The MTM logo is the one with the cat meowing.

Gothamist spent an evening listening to Jerry Orbach and Dick Wolf of Law & Order.