36 Questions for Richard Hatem

The fans at MiraclesHQ.com sit down
for a virtual fireside chat with the
creator of Miracles himself...
Edited by Angela D. Mitchell

As millions know, Miracles creator Richard Hatem is a terrific writer.  But he's also a heck of a nice guy - and, it turns out, a very good sport.

Not that Miracles fans need to be told this - they already know it.  Because when legions of passionate Miracles
television viewers cried out against the show's premature cancellation by ABC on April 5, Hatem immediately posted a thoughtful and appreciative public letter thanking them for their support and good wishes.

When the outcry quickly became an organized movement to save the show, with thousands of participants and a new hub at MiraclesHQ.com, Hatem was once again a gracious, accommodating (and patient) cheerleader for the cause.  He spoke to fans again via a second public letter of support, and has since provided tireless goodwill, morale, behind-the-scenes show updates, signed Miracles scripts for auction, and even the occasional tantalizing glimmer of insight into what, exactly, made Alva Keel tick.

In short, the guy's a bona fide saint.  (Which Paul Callan himself probably would have discovered in the show's second season.)

1.  Before Miracles, what were some of your favorite TV shows, past or present?  Which shows most inspired you?

 The Big Three: Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Rockford Files and The A-Team.

Kolchak is the nearest and dearest to my heart.  Rockford might be the best all-around series I've ever seen - it holds up beautifully, and there is simply no one on earth remotely like James Garner.  (I fear there never will be again.  Same goes for Darren McGavin.)

And The A-Team came along at just the right time.  Stephen J. Cannell - a personal hero of mine - wrote and produced both Rockford and The A-Team.  I was a junior in high school, but decided to take the leap and write my own episode; I fully intended to sell it and join the staff of the show.  It was exactly twenty years later that my first hour of television made it on the air.

2.  Who's your favorite superhero?

No favorite superheroes.  Unlike almost all my peers, I've never been into comic books at all.  Also, no interest in Star Wars.

3.  Have you yourself ever had a supernatural experience?

I've never had a supernatural experience.

4.  Do you believe in God?  Do you believe in life after death?

 I believe in God and life-after-death, but I believe the experience of both is as unknowable to human beings as the ideas of college and marriage are to a dog.

5.  Who's your favorite author?

Thomas Berger, James Lee Burke, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Robert B. Parker, Andrew Vachss, Robertson Davies, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Larry McMurtry, David Sedaris, Thomas Hardy, Stanislaw Lem.

A few books I've loved would include A Prayer For Owen Meany, by John Irving, The Main, by Trevanian, and Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.  Ender's Game might be the perfect novel.  I don't know a single person who has read it who doesn't rank it at the top of their list.
 

6.  What's the best advice you ever got?

The best piece of writing advice I ever got boils down to, "It's got to be about something." 

Meaning, don't just write a story about a cop who solves a murder.  That's not enough.  You only tell a particular story of a particular cop solving a particular murder to illustrate the point that - whatever: "true justice is out of the hands of mortal men," or "true justice can only be determined by mortal men," or "a small act of kindness can change the world." 

Really, it can be anything.  But the audience has to walk away with more than, "Oh, it was the ex-wife."

The best piece of life advice? "When in doubt, do nothing."

7.  When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I thought it happened when I was in high school.  But apparently I'd written and talked about being a writer since I was about five.  I just don't remember it.  Back then I thought I wanted to be an actor and a stand-up comedian.  I've done a little of both and want to do more.

8.  What's your biggest creative ambition?

My biggest creative ambition is to write a good novel.  Well, okay, first just write a novel.  And then write a good one.

9.  What's the scariest movie you've ever seen?

I don't recall ever being really scared by a movie.  The closest would be Night of the Living Dead, when I was twelve or thirteen.  Second scariest is probably Ordinary People or The King of Comedy.  I'm kidding here, but only a little.  (I love both of these films.)

More favorite movies: A Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Rollercoaster. 

Coincidentally, Rollercoaster was written by the late Richard Levinson & William Link, a writing team best known for creating Columbo.  Levinson had one daughter, the lovely and talented Christine Levinson, who was on the staff of Miracles with her writing/producing partner Zack Estrin.  They wrote "Little Miss Lost" and the as-yet-unaired "The Letter."

10.  Who's your real-life hero or inspiration?

Besides David Greenwalt?  Uhhhhh - earlier, I mentioned Stephen J. Cannell as a personal hero/inspiration. 

By 'hero,' I guess I mean someone who at one point I became aware of and said, "Yeah, that guy does what I want to do."  So I'd add to that list Stephen King because he writes scary stories that mean something, and Robert B. Parker (author of the Spenser novels) because he has, over a long period of time and many novels, created a character and a world that is like our own - but is infinitely preferable.  To me, at least.

11.  What was the best thing about your experience with Miracles?

The people I worked with, no question. 

From the studio execs at Touchstone and Spyglass, to the department heads (who possess a level of talent and creativity that shocked me), to the writers, the directors, the actors, the absolutely amazing guest stars, the office staff - I couldn't wait to go to work in the morning.  If you loved Miracles, it's only because these people loved it first and dedicated themselves to making it as great as it was.

12.  What was the worst?

The worst parts of the Miracles experience were probably the same things all of you dislike about your jobs - moments of feeling like others don't understand or appreciate your efforts, etc.

13.  If you could say anything to ABC right now, what would you say?

Uhhhhhh... "I'm really, deeply, passionately excited about season two of Dragnet."

14.  Do you have any "magic juice" (like gummi-bears), that gives you super creative strength?

I like to start the day with a coffee shop counter, breakfast, coffee and the newspaper.  That puts me on course for the day. 

And there was a while, during the dark month of last November, at the toughest point of mid-production, that I'd resort to a vodka tonic at about two in the afternoon on Fridays.  But then I'd fall asleep in the editing room and end up drooling on Greenwalt's sleeve until he woke me up to go to casting or whatever. Candy bars (especially Nestle's Crunch) were also comfort food.

But while I'm actually writing?  Nothing, 'cept maybe a diet, caffeine-free Pepsi.  And some black tar heroin.

15.  What's the one moment in your life that led to Miracles? Where did you get the idea?

I feel it's important to de-mystify the creative process at every opportunity - it's mystifying enough on its own without my help. 

So I never tire of pointing out that Miracles the TV show was not my idea at all.  There was a wonderful screenplay written by the brilliant Michael Petroni called Miracles - it was more of a drama than a supernatural thriller.  I was approached by Touchstone and Spyglass who handed me the screenplay and said, "Do you think you could turn this into a TV pilot, sort of a spiritual X-Files?" 

So I read the screenplay and thought, "These people are crazy - this is a beautiful script - just go make this movie."  But, as a courtesy, I took a meeting with Suzanne Patmore (Touchstone) and Megan Wolpert (Spyglass).  Also, it was about six weeks before a possible WGA strike, and I simply decided to take every meeting offered and try to get any job I possibly could.

Then, just before heading out the door for the meeting, I grabbed a book off my bookshelf and brought it with me - Herbert Thurston's The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, a study of "miraculous phenomena" (I have a huge collection of 'paranormal' literature).  Often, holding a book from my own collection is like holding a security blanket - so I brought it into the meeting and used it as a jumping-off point for the discussion.  And a meeting that I assumed would last about twenty minutes went three hours.  Suzanne and Megan's enthusiasm carried me, thank God, and before the meeting was over, much of the series had been figured out.

Please also keep in mind - ABC knew about the idea for the show and had shown clear interest before I was ever brought aboard.  This was something they were extremely high about producing from the very beginning.

16.  What was it like to work with Greenwalt?

Working with Greenwalt was a living, breathing hell from minute one.  His virulent anti-Semitism and constant flatulence alone would drive any sane man to murder.  But when he starts in on Native Americans, or "Red Skinned Savages" as he calls them, well - all bets are off.

Oh, you mean David Greenwalt.

David Greenwalt is terrific.  David got the show immediately; he knew what we were trying to do and he knew how to do it.  Creatively, as far as big-picture things, we were in step from the very beginning. 

He is a very driven guy, very "Type-A" - much more so than I am, which makes him a perfect show runner.  He has opinions, and he's not afraid of expressing them.  Creatively, he knows what he wants - but he's always willing to listen, and he's also the first to pull a one-eighty when he hears a better approach.

David understands the difference between a story and an "almost story" - which is roughly the difference between an ice cream sundae and the words "ice cream sundae" written on a chalkboard.  (You'd be surprised how many working writers do not know the difference.  An easy way to tell?  Taste their ice cream sundaes.)

David and I are still currently working together.  Even as he gears up another big TV machine as show runner for Jake 2.0, he and I spend a few days each week writing a feature for Spyglass Entertainment. 

Our meetings go like this:  First, there's an exhaustive account of our personal lives and all the painful, embarrassing events that have occurred since we last saw each other.  Then, a wrap-up of the day's news.  David and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, so that's always fun. (I'm dead serious - hours go by in just this fashion.)  But this is part of our process.  This must be done before the work can be done.  In a way, we're like dogs.  We have to sniff each other each time we meet.  Once the formalities are over, the real work begins, which is...

More talking.  But now it's about story.  David offers up a lot of good ideas, I piss and moan and reject them.  Then, a spark.  He says something.  I get quiet.  Then, instead of pissing, moaning, or rejecting, I add a little.  Then we pass the idea back and forth like a snowball, adding to it each time.

On the episodes we wrote together, we'd work together all the way through a very detailed outline (often running as much as twenty pages).  Then we'd divide up and each write two acts.  Then we'd trade, give each other notes, rewrite separately and boom - a script.

17.  Were any of the episodes based on your own real-life experiences in any way?

Not a single one.

18.  What episodes were your personal favorites?

Of my own episodes (the ones I wrote), my favorites are the pilot, because of Matt Reeves's direction, and an episode that did not air called "Saint Debbie," in which Keel has an "almost" love affair with a small town waitress who just might be a saint.

I loved Greenwalt's episode, "The Patient."  Christian Taylor wrote two episodes, both among our best; my favorite of his is "Mother's Daughter," in which a young Amish woman is slowly over-taken by the spirit of another young woman who committed suicide ten years earlier.  My favorite Estrin and Levinson episode, also un-aired, is called "The Letter."  It is loosely based on events in Christine Levinson's life, and it concerns a woman who begins receiving letters from her dead father.  And my favorite episode by David Graziano, also un-aired, is "The Battle At Shadow Ridge," and it concerns Paul and Keel running afoul of a "time slip" in a small southern town.  I really love this episode.

In fact, I love them all.

19.  Which character on Miracles, if any, is most like you?

 I have Keel's philosophy, Paul's soul and Evelyn's eyelashes.

20.  Is your use of the surname Keel in Miracles a reference back to The Mothman Prophecies book by John Keel?

Yes!  The "A" in John A. Keel (real-life writer of the paranormal and unexplained) stands for Alva.  And the character played by Alan Bates in The Mothman Prophecies is named Leek, which is Keel spelled backwards.  (The line between writer and serial killer is thin indeed.) 

Keel himself is proud to have been represented on screen, both large and small, twice in the past two years - and both times by respected British actors.  Neither character is supposed to be John Keel himself, but both maintain some of his ideas and philosophies, though neither gets near his lunatic sense of humor.  I recommend all of John A. Keel's books to anyone who believes the world is a stranger place than we can ever imagine, and sees the dark humor in that.

21.  Where did you get the inspiration to use hemography within the story, and to have the "God is nowhere/now here" central theme?

The "God Is Nowhere, God is Now Here" thing came from a class I took in the Spring of 2000.

A year before Miracles came along, I got an inspiration out of nowhere to take a class on the Bible.  I never went to church and had never read the Bible, and I felt this was a huge hole in my western humanities education.  So I signed up for a UCLA extension course taught by the brilliant Professor Charles L. Batten, Ph.D.  This guy deserves all the credit.  He was trying to illustrate a point about the difficulty in translating ancient stone tablets.  He explained that since stone tablets were so difficult to produce, that authors would not waste any space on them at all - in fact, they didn't even put spaces between words. 

Then Professor Batten walked to the chalkboard and wrote GODISNOWHERE.  "Alright - what does that say?" he asked. 

Half the class saw one thing, the other half, another. Then he asked, "How are we to know what the author intended?  And how costly would a mistake be - especially here?" 

Now, what did I see on the chalkboard?  Let's just say I'm no Paul Callan.

I forgot all about this little lesson.  Then, a year later, while outlining a much different version of the pilot, we needed Paul to see something - something he could not explain.  In this early version, Paul was going to see these words spelled out on a wall by a cluster of living flies.  Much later, the hemography angle was substituted.

22.  Did you read any books about hemography?  Where did you get the background information on the subject?

 I first found out about hemography in a wonderful book called (what else?) Miracles, by D. Scott Rogo, a parapsychologist who devoted an entire book to the investigation of miraculous phenomena.  The book includes photographs of actual hemography.  It's a wonderful book and I recommend it to you all.

And here's a tip I can't resist: If you're looking for out-of-print books, go to http://www.addall.com/.  You will find every book you've ever seen or heard about.  Ever.

23.  Is Miracles based on a real person or events?

Miracles was not based on any real individual's experiences.  But the Catholic Church does have people who investigate miracles.  They have for hundreds of years, and they still do.

24.  Who did you originally envision casting when writing the script?

I really had no specific actors in mind for any of the characters when I wrote the script.

25.  Was the scary creepy vision guy actually a high-ranking executive at ABC?

Next.

26.  What did each of the lead actors bring to their roles that surprised you and added dimension to the characters you'd created?

This may sound like a strange answer, but I was surprised with the level of humanity and realism that each of them brought to their characters.  You get so used to bad acting in TV and films (and my personal opinion is that most of it is pretty bad), that when people come off like human beings it's a gift.  I feel each of our leads had this gift in spades.

27.  If Angus Macfadyen had not been available to accept the role of Alva Keel, who is the most likely actor to have played him?

Long before Angus's name came up, we seriously considered trying to get Donald Sutherland.  He read the script, we met with him, but it was clear that his interest wasn't there, so we moved on.  Once the network saw Angus - and Skeet - they knew we had our guys.

28.  What were the cast and crew like to work with?

Between Greenwalt, Skeet, Angus and myself there were a total of nine temper-tantrums, twelve screaming fits, five threats to quit the show, three stern lectures, two hundred hurt feelings, one phone hang-up in mid-sentence - and ten thousand instances of sheer joy and gratitude.

29.  What is the significance of using children, teens or young adults (in the case of "The Patient") to portray either evil or the possibility of it?

Well, first of all, I have two kids, so I know they're evil.

I think kids on screen are like Rorschach images; we can easily project onto them a whole range of emotional qualities, both good and evil.  I think Allisyn Ashley Arm's performance as Amelia Wye, the Little Girl in "Little Miss Lost" was both frightening and heartbreakingly sad.  And Jacob Smith, who played Tommy Ferguson, gave a performance every bit as real and nuanced as Haley Joel Osment in Sixth Sense. 

30.  Where did you get the idea for Sodalitas Quaerito?  Are Paul, Alva and Evelyn the only members or are there others we haven't met yet?

Because we loved the idea of a man investigating "miracles" but did NOT want to do a show about the inner workings or politics of the Catholic Church, we decided to have our cake and eat it too. Sodalitas Quaerito was designed to be an organization engaged in "parallel lines of research" with the Catholic "miracle hunters." 

Was it secretly a part of the Catholic Church?  Was it older than the Catholic Church? These were things we wanted to imply without ever having to come down solidly on either side of the question.  Hundreds - thousands - of hours were devoted to defining what SQ was, and we never came up with much more than, "Well, it's this group that investigates weird stuff, and this Keel guy thinks some of the weird stuff may be puzzle pieces in a larger mystery.  And we'll figure out the rest later."

We were heading in a direction that would have explained that SQ was NOT a secret international club with hundreds of members and ripe opportunities for stunt casting, but rather one of a loosely connected chain of fringe groups, each of which investigates the paranormal but none of which shares the same idea about what it all means.

I think the network would have loved the first version, but David and I liked the second because it felt more real.  When you research ghosts, or UFOs, or Bigfoot on the Internet, you don't get big umbrella groups - rather you get a bunch of little fiefdoms, small groups of people who spend most of their time denigrating other researchers in their own fields instead of combining their efforts and finding real answers.  I love this.  David and I wanted to create scenes in which Keel would interface with people from other groups to get particular bits of information - but meanwhile, they would think he was crazy or on the wrong track, and he would think the same of them. 

And whenever Paul would ask these people about Keel, they'd just roll their eyes and say, "He's out of his mind."  But of course, so are they, in the exact same way - and Paul would find himself back at square one.

31.  Give us three words to describe your feelings since Miracles premiered.

God is nowhere.

32.  Six of the planned thirteen episodes were aired. Are the remaining seven already filmed? If so, how about a DVD release?

There are thirteen completed episodes - six you've seen, seven you haven't.  Our hope is that Sci-Fi Network, or another cable outlet, will pick up the full thirteen and show them.  Beyond that, it's hard to say what is realistic to hope for.  A DVD release would be fantastic.  The shows are so beautifully shot and produced, better than most movies.  I'm not sure yet what it would take for this to happen, but we're looking into it.

Editor's Note:  To show your support for a Miracles DVD, go to http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/, sign up, and vote for Miracles to be released on DVD.  Votes are then tallied, ranked, and forwarded on to the appropriate channels.

33.  Are the cast members able or anxious to continue Miracles?

My guess is, if the audience and network interest is there, the cast would be more than happy to continue their characters' stories.

34.  What's your next creative project going to be?

I'm anxious to get back into features.  As I mentioned earlier, Greenwalt and I are in the early stages of writing a movie for Spyglass Entertainment to produce.  After that, we shall see...

I will also be writing another pilot for Touchstone and Spyglass, the subject of which is yet to be determined.

35. (...Etc). What's the story behind the death of Keel’s mother? Who is Paul Callan’s father? Was the actual identity of "God" on the show in question, or ever to be revealed? Is Alva related to Paul? What's Paul’s most important quest? Where does Alva Keel actually live? (Other than the SQ office?)

I'm going to take a rain check on these.  Some questions are answered in the unaired episodes, while others have answers, but are for another day.  And some have no answers at all - and most likely never will.

36.  Is there anything else you'd like to tell the fans?

Thanks to everyone who submitted a question.

I suppose the day will come when I'm sick and tired of talking about Miracles, but it hasn't come yet.  The whole thing feels so unfinished.  My deepest wish is for those of you who are interested to see the final seven episodes.  And I want you to know that work is being done even as I write this to make sure that happens.  One way or another. 

Be well.

© Copyright 2003 Angela D. Mitchell and MiraclesHQ.com.  All Rights Reserved.

Editor's Note:  Several fans wrote in to ask about the genesis of Hatem's acclaimed screenplay for the film The Mothman Prophecies.  These questions have been discussed in detail by Hatem in the following terrific interviews: at Tildanet, at http://www.sphosting.com/tildanet/richardhateminterview.html and at http://www.cinecon.com/news.php?id=0202011, at Cinema Confidential. Enjoy!