Script Scribe

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1999 | 12:19 p.m.

Baby I hear the blues a-callin' ... or is that Madeline DiMaggio?

No relation to the death-defying baseball legend, this DiMaggio is a professional screenwriter who has worked as a story editor and creative consultant to Paramount Studios and NBC. Over the past 25 years, she has written close to 40 hours of film produced in nearly every phase of the television and film industries.

Most recently, DiMaggio collaborated with Ellen Wallace (who co-wrote the Academy Award-winning film, "Witness") on the 1998 made-for-TV movie, "Alibi," starring born-lucky thespian Tori Spelling.

Cutting to the chase (hey, good TV lingo), I enlisted (begged) DiMaggio to participate in (carry) a story about her craft and assist (save) me in a whimsical effort to create a new episode of the award-winning NBC situation comedy, "Frasier."

Our collaborative effort is featured in the accompanying story. But first, more character development on Madeline D.

The prolific, industry-savvy DiMaggio teaches her two-day UNLV Continuing Education seminar, "Screenwriting: Writing Scripts That (Of Course) Sell," on Feb. 27 and 28 at the John Wright Hall.

The weekend workshop is split into two sessions. The first examines writing for television, including movies-of-the-week, half-hour situation comedies and one-hour dramas. The second-day seminar focuses on writing for feature films.

"I make more money teaching than writing," DiMaggio, who resides in Pacific Grove in Central California, said. "I teach to keep writing, because you never know when you'll go through a dry spell."

DiMaggio's "Alibi" script was worth $50,000, and she'll be paid that sum if the movie is repeated. A half-hour sitcom script can be worth as much as $16,000, and an hour drama around $23,000.

"But you can't count on that money," DiMaggio said. "One of the instructors I've met while teaching said, 'You know what your problem is? You're still trying to write.' You can make a lot more money teaching full time."

DiMaggio has conducted similar workshops at National Writers Seminars in Denver, New York, Seattle, Portland and Dallas. She's also lectured at San Francisco State University, the University of New Mexico, San Diego State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

DiMaggio's television credits include some of the more, shall we say, eclectic installments in TV's decorated history. She started with the Telly Savalas police drama "Kojak" and spent years mired in hourlong, cops 'n' robbers dramas such as "Switch," "The Bionic Woman," and "Starsky and Hutch," delving into the complex psyches of testosterone-addled cops and electronically enhanced women.

"It's easy to get pigeon-holed in this industry," DiMaggio said. "For a while, all I could get was cop shows."

She later moved into situation comedies, working on "The Bob Newhart Show," the barely remembered "The Tony Randall Show" and the infamous ode to jogging shorts that creep up, "Three's Company."

"I got started in this around 1974, when I was just out of college and all I had studied was acting," DiMaggio, who graduated from Northridge (Calif.) State with a bachelor's degree in drama, said. "I was trying to break into acting, and I had a friend who was also trying to do the same thing, and we made it a goal, on a lark, to write ourselves a part in a 'Kojak' script."

DiMaggio came up with a script entitled, "Death is Driving you Home."

The plot: As a prank, a woman calls a mortician asking that a dead male body be removed from the home of a friend. However, the only male body at the friend's home belongs to her husband, who is very much alive.

UNTIL ...

A mysterious stranger (O.J.?) sneaks in to the friend's house and slits the throat of her husband. As if by divine intervention, the mortician arrives moments later to retrieve the body, which is still warm. Questions abound as to why and how the mortician was tipped off about the fresh corpse, who would commit the crime, and which bald Greek private investigator should be called.

Then Telly -- er, Kojak -- is summoned, Tootsie-Pop in tow, to spearhead the criminal investigation. The prankster friend is a suspect, as is the unsuspecting widow, but the story is rife with surprising plot twists. The script ended with Kojak beating the crud out of some punk, then painting the town red with a very fine lady.

Anyone hoping to catch this episode in syndication will be disappointed: The episode never made it to air after countless rewrites.

"Writing the first one was a lot more difficult than I thought, but challenging," DiMaggio said. "I was a much better actress than a writer, but I wanted to be in the business and acting wasn't happening. So I kept writing and found it to be very exhilarating."

More so than acting?

"Acting is probably more fun, but in television that's not where the real intelligence is," she said. "The smart people are the writers."

The most successful writers are those who strike gold with a hit movie or pilot.

"If you have a hit show or a hit movie, you're set for at least five years," DiMaggio said. "Even if you're bad, you'll be set for five years, because it takes industry people five years to figure out that you're bad."