Kelley's King Of All TV Writers

Awards galore are further proof that scripter is best ever

With his unprecedented double victory at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, winning the show's two most prestigious TV honors (one for ABC's "The Practice" as Best Drama, the other for Fox' "Ally McBeal" as Best Comedy), writer-producer David E. Kelley has locked up bragging rights atop the TV world.

As television writers go, he's the best. Not just the best this season, or the best of the current generation. In the history of TV, a history that encompasses Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling, Kelley is the best ever.

"I don't think that's a stretch at all," agreed Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

"Without question," Thompson said yesterday, "he is the most interesting, most accomplished, most subtle and most literary writer that this medium has ever, ever produced."

Where Chayefsky made his TV reputation with a few solo home runs such as "Marty," and Serling by a combination of live dramas ("Patterns," "Requiem for a Heavyweight") and anthology shows ("The Twilight Zone"), Kelley has been toiling, and succeeding wildly, in the vineyards of weekly series television. His characters grow and their relationships change, in ways so complex and constant to be almost unprecedented.

How does he do it?

Kelley's secret for writing, he recently confided, isn't so much a secret as a method.

Most of the time, he thinks of character first and plot second ("Especially on 'Ally,' I just close the door and think of these people, and of what would be interesting to happen to these people"). And when it comes to plot — specifically, to courtroom battles — Kelley writes by taking sides, but without favoritism.

"When I'm doing the closing arguments, when I'm talking for one attorney," Kelley said, "in my heart and my mind, he's absolutely right. Then, when I start the rejoinder, I'm in the other person's head, and they're right." (Not exactly the way they wrote "Perry Mason.")

It's a style Kelley began in 1986-87 as a writer on the first season of "L.A. Law," and has served him fabulously ever since. Just look at the Emmys, an even more weighty measure of TV success than the Golden Globes.

During the past nine years of Emmy competition, the timespan in which Kelley has risen to the rank of executive producer and been primarily responsible for his shows, five of the Outstanding Drama Series have been his: NBC's "L.A. Law" (after Steven Bochco left) and CBS' "Picket Fences" (which Kelley created) each won twice, and at the most recent Emmys, "The Practice" also won.

During that same time, Kelly also won twice for best writing with "L.A. Law."

Likewise, actors speaking Kelley's words have won 13 Emmys, and shows under his David E. Kelley Productions banner, but subsequently run and written by others, have won another four.

That's just the quantity of the awards. The quality of the shows, and Kelley's staggeringly prolific output, make his feats that much more astounding (this season alone, he will have written more than 40 of the 46 or so scripts for "Ally" and "The Practice").

How do you explain such artistry, and writing speed, in one person?

"My theory is," Thompson jokingly suggested, "he's got a pact with the Devil."

Which, come to think of it, might just explain his marriage to Michelle Pfeiffer as well.

The Kelley Bio File

Hometown: Waterville, Maine.

Education: Princeton, class of '79 (captain of the hockey team; his father, Jack Kelley, coached Boston University hockey team before moving to pro ranks). Law degree from Boston U., '83.

Law Life: Practiced law in Boston for three years at the firm of Fine & Ambrogne.

Big Break: Captured the attention of top TV producer Steven Bochco with a movie script he had written while working as a lawyer. The film, "From the Hip," went on to be made in 1987, starring Judd Nelson.

To Television: Joined Bochco's hit "L.A. Law" in 1986 as a story editor. Became executive producer in 1989.

To His Credit: Branching out as producer, writer and show creator following "L.A. Law," Kelley co-created "Doogie Howser, M.D." (with Bochco) and then on his own created "Picket Fences," "Chicago Hope,'' "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice."

Personal: Married actress Michelle Pfeiffer in 1992; they live in Los Angeles with their two children.