Original subtitles

I went to Grant Tinker and sort of proposed to him that doing a television

show that took place in a teaching hospital.

And it was Grant who said, oh, you mean like Hill Street in the hospital? I

wouldn't call it Hill Street in the hospital. We didn't care for that much.

But it's a multi-character, multi-story drama.

Elements of soap opera to it, I suppose, if you call continuing drama soap opera.

I don't think anything in television up until that point, unless it was a

documentary, showed slice of life.

and depicted it in the way it really was. It incorporated the absurdity of

life, and that you would be crying one moment and then laughing the next. It

was the beginning of what is happening on television today, actually.

It certainly was the first one.

It's a literate series.

They took time to develop character, took time to explore those characters.

And it took time to tell a story. And the heart of the story was the hospital.

Because it was just a place where people went to work to get through the day,

trying to do what they do well, in this falling down, crumbling building.

That hospital was as much a character as any of us were.

So all of us intersected in this character of the hospital.

Now, I am sick.

of hearing this hospital snidely referred to as St. Elsewhere. Let me

tell you something.

St. Allegius isn't elsewhere.

This is the place to be.

The first thing I worked with Bruce Paltrow on was The White Shadow.

John Falsey had worked on The White Shadow.

He may have been involved with Josh, because Josh was the guy who actually

had the idea to do a medical show.

My oldest friend, who I've known since I was 10 years old, at the time was a

resident at a teaching hospital in Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic.

And we would talk frequently, and he would always say, Josh, somebody ought

to do a television show about a teaching hospital.

And so when The White Shadow ended, I was hired by MTM to go write a pilot

about a teaching hospital.

And things just sort of snowballed from there. And then the whole team was

recreated. And then John Falsey, who had worked with me on The White Shadow, I

had worked with him. We were story editors.

I said, well, you want to do this with me? And he did. And then we went off to

the Cleveland Clinic and did our research.

And then forces came together and the White Shadow team was recreated.

with Bruce Paltrow at the head of that as he was on The White Shadow. And so it

was very important both to myself and to John Falsey to have as much of a sense

of verisimilitude as we could. It was...

You know, up until that time, doctors were kind of iconic figures, like Dr.

Kildare, Ben Casey.

And our take on it was we wanted to show them as people.

In the first year of the show, which is the year that I worked on, it was kind

of dark. I think that they called John and I Dr. Death and Mr. Depression

because people came into the hospital and very often they didn't leave.

And that was also important to us because we didn't sort of see it as...

club med westfall is right doctors don't carry guns it's easy to say you're not

going into emergency medicine don't give me that i've been in er just as long as

you have i've been knocked around down there i didn't go out and buy a gun i'm

scared some of the things that i'm most proud of are things that people didn't

think could work the scene and the pilot where fiscus sits around the table and

talks about an experience that happened to him the night before.

The guy was in atrial flooding.

Ventricular response, 150 minutes. Blood pressure, 40 overzilts. The guy was

hemodynamically compromised.

You don't really know what he's talking about, but you do know what he's talking

about. D5 lactated ringers, colloids, O-negative blood, an intubation tray

with a 22-centimeter endotracheal tube and a number 2 central intravenous

catheter and a mass suit stat. Now, I don't know what any of that means.

but I know that some of that might help if I get it.

My head is just filled with all this stuff, and it's probably wrong.

I've got to soak the wound in betadine, and then I'm going to give you some

local anesthesia.

No, no, no, wait, wait, you ain't putting me to sleep. Just your back, in

order to infiltrate the skin and reach the subcutaneous tissue around the area

of the wound.

People started to believe I was a doctor, and then eventually I believed

it, and can I be honest?

I am now seeing...

Just two patients on a regular basis.

Wayne Fiscus, emergency medicine.

Apparently we have a mutual friend.

Oh, really?

Mr. Shuttleworth Sliver. Anytime you create something, there are elements

from real life and then there are elements from your imagination. It sort

of becomes a... At some point you can't really...

You know, it is fiction. It wasn't based on real people.

But there were elements from real stories and real people that we met that

we used for the characters. So the first thing was really the characters, coming

up with the characters, trying to find in an ensemble different kinds of people

so that everyone isn't sort of the same.

The writing was just so brilliant. It's like when I felt so in sync where I

could make the writing shine, you know, that was so exciting. Will you listen to

me?

listen to what i'm saying i do too i don't want a relationship you mean you

don't want a relationship but you don't want a relationship with me with you we

weren't trying to replicate something we were trying to do something that now is

very common but at the time hadn't been people always say what's the a story the

b story the c story well we didn't really think in those terms we just had

multiple stories We would pass off one conversation to another in the hallway.

I think so. You would try and have longer, more involved shots that would

make it seem as if you were watching a documentary crew shooting as opposed to

an edited, you know, dramatic program.

How do you expect me to carry all this?

Oh, I'm sure one of your colleagues would help you. For sure, one of them

would. Oh, come on.

You're both big, strong, healthy girls here. Come on, give a guy a hand. Lucky

for me, Mr. Halper needs his animal.

I'm out of here.

You're lucky I respect all the women.

I think everybody will have the same story about doing these long takes. It's

always that you do not want to be the last person that that camera gets to.

You just want to be in the beginning of the scene because the camera literally

would go all the way through the hospital, into rooms, out of rooms,

around the corner, meeting different characters all the way.

It would be ten characters and forever.

The dread as an actor is that you would be at the end of one of these scenes

with four words.

It's a wonderful drug.

God forbid you should screw up your one line after everybody's gone through five

pages. There's no cut. They had to start again.

Why don't you sit around? Are we doing rounds or what? And it was the first of

its kind.

In the movement of the camera, the camera never stops.

We have it today, but that's only because St. Elsewhere came first.

Because nobody ever thought about that. You do a two-shot, you do a close-up,

you do a reverse.

But this camera kept moving.

Tell me this chaos will end.

This chaos will end.

The network was really...

afraid of how dark this this show was and they literally after the first

season made them repaint the whole set to change the set so to brighten the

world up as well as the writing up if john falsey and i would have stayed i'm

not sure that the show would have continued it would have been picked up

and so it was probably best for a lot of reasons that we left we got to the end

of the first season very iffy ratings and we get the call that we're picked up

and now that you're all here i want to thank you for your skill your dedication

And your compassion.

A toast to life. For myself and for John Falsey, we felt that we did the show

that we wanted to do. We were able to put on the screen what we were

interested in putting on the screen.

As I said, we were, I think, somewhat affectionately referred to as Dr. Death

and Mr. Depression. And I think that probably from the powers that be, they

thought it was depressing.

And we didn't. We thought it was maybe tragic, but not depressing.

And so maybe there was an effort to change the tone. But for me personally

and professionally, it was a tremendous experience. And I had a, you know,

it was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.