Tuesday, November 16, 2004
They were cautious about returning to television.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
He's done 30 ("thirtysomething") and 40 ("Once and Again"), but homeboy Marshall Herskovitz can't face the big 5-0.
"I don't know if I've accepted being 50-something," says Herskovitz, 52. "I need a few more years in that decade. We don't know what 'being in your 50s' means anymore. When I was 20, 50 was old."
Did someone say 20? That's the demo Herskovitz and his producing partner, Ed Zwick (also 52), will put under their emotional microscope in their next ABC drama, "1/4 life," in development for next season.
The show revolves around seven twentysomething friends from college living together in a Chicago apartment. ("Friends in the Windy City"?)
"They're all at various stages of figuring out their lives," says Herskovitz. "Most of the people I know made their big life decisions in their mid-20s. It's a fearful, exciting, confusing time."
Inspiration
Herskovitz and Zwick came up with the idea while observing the young employees in their production house, Bedford Falls.
"We have maybe six people in the office between 24 and 27," Herskovitz says. "We hear about their lives every day. One day, it just clicked."
Herskovitz and Zwick mined the adolescent psyche in 1994's "My So-Called Life," with then-unknown Claire Danes. Two years later, they took on 20-year-olds in the short-lived "Relativity," starring Kimberly Williams and Adam Goldberg.
"Ed and I have an ongoing fascination with various developmental passages of life," Herskovitz says. "That's why we keep doing it."
They spent the last two years producing (Herskovitz) and directing (Zwick) Tom Cruise's "The Last Samurai." Their big-screen credits include Brad Pitt's '94 "Legends of the Fall."