CRYSTAL

a TV Pilot
About a Psychic Detective

by Robert Locke

Read CRYSTAL on the Web.

Long before Patricia Arquette created her unforgettable character in the TV series Medium I created the character of Crystal Lenore in this pilot I titled CRYSTAL. That was 1979 when I registered it with the Writers Guild of America.

The pilot never went anywhere, was perhaps never even read by a producer although I did have a string of good, competent agents back then who did shop it around. One of them was fired, one of them went into cartooning. None of the agents I liked and who liked me ever seemed to last in agenting, oh sigh and sigh again.

Oh, wait, I do remember that the beautiful and talented Anne Francis wanted a crack at it, and she submitted it to her agent, and I got a meeting with a producer at 20th Century Fox, as I remember, who wanted to turn it into a comedy with a current funny-man on TV. That industry is just cracked. How do they ever get ANYthing produced?

I myself was never any good at schmoozing and talking up my plays and teleplays, but I remember really liking CRYSTAL. I still do, I realize here in 2015 as I have been running the old paper manuscript through PDFPen and bringing the lost formatting up to date. Yes, I like it very much indeed. Wish it had gone somewhere back in 1979 when it was a fresh, new idea.

But, oh, that's so like me. I got busy with the rest of my life, returned to Northern California to attend rehearsals and performances of The Dolly at American Conservatory Theater and Front Row Theatre Company. Lost track of my life when I found out just around that time that I had this brand new disease — not yet even given a name— that was killing gay men in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City. See that story at, Our Last, Real Estate.

Also at that time I saw Clayton Bess's off-and-on career starting and stopping, too. Oh, lost track. Yes, so like me. All I knew how to do was write and act.

So, yes, read CRYSTAL on the Web. I'm sure you will be immediately engaged. I know I was.
Bob, 2015