It began in Summer 1993

While doing the ascent of a mountain, somewhere in the French Alps, I imagined a perfect murder taking place in the universe of  climbing.

In this summer 1993, I just have ended my first script, a murder mystery entitled Le Combat des Rois (Battle of the Kings) and was waiting responses from the producers and actors I sent my material. 

After have worked during a dozen years as an executive in consulting, industry then banking, I wanted to do something fully different, to involve myself in a creative process much more in accordance with my personality.

To have been able to complete a story was for me a first success and I was willing to write another one as soon as possible. 

 

Climbing a mountain provided me a flash of intuition:  an exciting perfect murder could be set up there, a fake accident.  I was therefore thinking of characters, motive, mobile,  means  and  this insignificant little detail that enables a smart cop to make the perfect murder fail.  To be used to impersonate Columbo just for kidding, especially in incongruous situations, helped me to make me find  a relevant plot;  just because Columbo was a smart  detective.  A friend listening my strange Columbo improvised tirades, gave me the kick off:  not only you play very well Columbo but it seems you are thinking like him; why not writing a Columbo episode with your mountain perfect murder ingredients? 

Why not?  Simply because I couldn’t imagine I was able to.  But if ?  If my story was very creative?  Something nobody would have imagined before? 

Columbo investigating far from his usual west coast universe… Why not in Italy? Nobody knows where exactly Columbo’s roots are located.  Possibly in Venetia, in the Eastern Alps also named Dolomites, where mountains are mostly huge vertical walls, a set where the opening scene of Cliff Hanger was shot.  And little by little, while hiking and climbing, came to me the ingredients of my story.

 

 Come back in Paris end of August, I remember me on Le Pont des Arts, working day after day, polishing my murder, building the characters, the motive, the clues and eventually the fight between Columbo and the murderer.



November 1993

The treatment of Rupture Fatale was ready to be registered at the SACD, the French society of playwright authors and screenwriters.  I also submitted there my opus for a prize dedicated to a first script, vainly since it was returned at the first step of selection.

Nevertheless quite satisfied with my story, I planned to set up a screenwriting team and used the Fusac (French USA Connection) for hiring young Americans living in Paris.  After have read about thirty applicants résumés and met a dozen of people, I eventually chosen three nice girls, two of them, Jenny Taillat and Pamela Greenwell having married a French, the third, Kristy Essick having followed her boyfriend who was completing his studies in Paris.  We made an agreement according which half of benefit would be for me and the other half shared between my partners.  Our goal was to complete in English within six months the revision of my original treatment then the dialogue.  We would submit then our spec to Universal Studios.  Happily for the process, we were unaware of US producers policy:  only is read unsolicited material when submitted by a WGA literary agent.

 

This period was really very exciting.  After I had made my original opus be well understood by my partners, we did an effective job together, completing the new treatment quite quickly.  The English title we chose formerly was:  Fatal Breaking.
Later we opted for Fatal Break.

 

Writing the dialogue, second step of the process, claimed an exacting organization since it was now impossible to go on working still together.  I therefore imagine a process that occurred to work pretty well:  each of us was in charge of one fourth of the characters, Columbo naturally being for me!  We planned workshop sessions for each dialogue sequence:  the two or three involved met in order to outline the dialogue before each of us was writing separately one’s characters lines.   And each week the output of workshops was polished during a whole team session.  We decided  to called our team the Paris Columbo Script Team.



May 1994:  my climbing accident, close to be fatal...
When in late May 1994 forty pages of the dialogue were already written, the process had to be  suddenly stopped by a climbing accident, not a fake this one.  I was the victim, seriously injured:  hospital, surgery then a long time to recovering before a long physical therapy in a specialized center.  Meanwhile had Pamela and Kristy to go back to America.  I nevertheless decided to send the material we’ve completed…quickly returned in September by April Raynell, Peter Falk’s assistant at Universal Studios.
I discovered then the usual words of US producers :  “unsolicited …WGA registered  literary agent …”