HOLLYWOOD - Several of Hollywood's top TV and film writers have told the Los Angeles Times that last month's terrorist attacks have forced them to shelve projects that they had been working on for years and significantly alter others. Most of the writers suggested that they are no longer able to turn out scripts in which lawmen -- police, the FBI, the CIA -- are depicted as villains.
Three Kings writer John Ridley remarked, "I was doing a miniseries at ABC about Wen Ho Lee, which is a true story about this Asian-American who was basically railroaded by the FBI. We were ready to go. After Sept. 11, it's officially on hold but it's basically dead because the story is: the FBI and government conspired against this guy, largely. The feeling is now even in real life, or in the approximation of real life -- a docudrama -- you can't talk about how the government has done these bad things. It's weird. I understand the need to support our country; at the same time, when something they really did to somebody is being muzzled, you're walking a fine line."
However, writer-producer Dean Devlin (Independence Day) suggested that the studios may be more concerned about their "corporate image" ("a good thing") than with public tastes. "I was so shocked the week after the event when I looked at the video rentals," he said. "All the movies about terrorists were renting through the roof."