Book overview
ER: The Oral History is a deep dive into the show that began the modern medical drama phenomenon, and it contains new interviews with over 60 people, including John Wells and Noah Wyle (showrunner and star of the original ER, respectively, and executive producers of HBO's The Pitt), Eriq LaSalle, Laura Innes, Ming-Na Wen, Paul McCrane, Rick Rossovich, and Goran Visnjic.
Long before Jurassic Park was the embryo of an idea in Michael Crichton's mind, there was ER. A medical student who dreamt of a career in Hollywood, Crichton did what any aspiring writer would: he created a script based on time working in a high-octane hospital emergency department. Of course, nobody wanted it. It wasn't until Crichton turned his attention to dinosaurs and his 1990 novel Jurassic Park became a megahit - and a mega-movie franchise - that Steven Spielberg's camp asked the former doctor what other ideas he was kicking around. Producers weren't interested in Crichton's dream to make a hospital film. But, they were looking for new television series programming and thought there might be something even bigger in the concept than a movie. And, thus, ER was born.
Despite some resistance from NBC's top brass, the Warner Bros. Television drama became an overnight hit with its high-adrenaline storylines, realistic dialogue, and bona fide (not to mention hot) stars in the making in the cast, including Julianna Margulies, Noah Wyle, Anthony Edwards, and an actor who didn't end up amounting to much named George Clooney. ER premiered opposite the popular CBS drama Chicago Hope and quickly cannibalized its competition. It would, in its heyday, average 35 million viewers per season (in an era before streaming and DVRs), and was either the number one or number two most watched show on television for six years.
Over the course of its fifteen years on air ER would feature weddings, births, break-ups, death, and medical conundrums in just about every form you could imagine. Although stars like Clooney and Margulies would come and go, ER introduced (or, in some cases, re-introduced) the world to actors like Maura Tierney, Mekhi Phifer, Linda Cardellini, Ming-Na Wen, and Scott Grimes. It won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and was nominated a staggering 124 times. As popular as Grey's Anatomy is now, there would be no Grey Sloan Memorial without County General.
