Note From Michael
In 1974, I had just finished directing my first movie, "Westworld," which was a science fiction story about a theme park with robots. For my next project I wanted to do something completely different.
I wrote a documentary-style movie about what happened during 24 hours in an emergency room. I thought the screenplay was terrific, but nobody would make the movie, finding it too technical, too chaotic and too fast-moving. It sat on the shelf for the next nineteen years-brought out every five or ten years, for updating, and for the studios and networks to look at, and reject yet again.
Finally NBC made it as a TV pilot. And then it became a series.
