EMMY AWARDS

"Brothers & Sisters"

A playwright goes to Hollywood

PULITZER PRIZE-nominated playwright Jon Robin Baitz flirted with television for years before creating "Brothers & Sisters" last season. He wrote episodes of "The West Wing" and "Alias" but, in general, played hard to get. But when ABC decided to develop a family drama, Batiz's longtime friend, producer Ken Olin, recommended the playwright for the job. "It was a long shot for all of us," Baitz said.

After 20 years of writing plays, Baitz found the work of making a television show to be tremendously challenging. "It was really hard to keep going and navigate the notes and the changing agendas and the changing needs," he said. "I wanted to do something other than be a playwright in my life so I persisted and persisted well past the point when it would have not been considered churlish to give up."

He knew nothing of the six-part structure that keeps television shows moving at a smart clip, or how to keep dialogue from getting too talky, but what he did bring to the table was a particular view of the human heart and, as he put it, "the nature of human business."

He fought to keep the show, a sprawling family drama, from becoming a parody of itself. "I insisted the show be adult," he said. "That it not present an artificial world of Botox and gleaming suburban falsity."

He also learned to stop apologizing for what he didn't know. "It was a struggle for me to learn the structure of these stories. My natural inclination is to get in the way of that," he said. "But I've learned not to apologize. They did not ask me to do this because I'm an adept TV writer. They asked me because I'm a particular playwright with a particular voice."

And after writing 15 episodes of the show last season, Baitz will now take a step back. He will continue to advise but will only write scripts for stories that especially appeal to him.

So has he already lost interest in television? Just the opposite. He's already planning on developing other shows.

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