Veteran TV writer/producer Steven Bochco pulls no punches in his new memoir, “Truth Is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television.”
“I wanted to be as candid as I could about my life and career. I might step on some toes or piss a few people off, but that wasn’t my intention,” says Bochco, 72, who’s responsible for the iconic series “Hill Street Blues,” “Doogie Howser, MD,” “LA Law” and “NYPD Blue.” (His newest series, “Murder in the First,” airs on TNT with star Taye Diggs.)
But Bochco had another motive in writing the book: He was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of leukemia in 2014, which required three rounds of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transfusion.
Here, Bochco talks about his health, his book and his legacy.
How are you feeling?
I feel great, really good. I have no issues. I go for a blood draw every couple of months and everything is fine. I’m two months away from my two-year anniversary [of his bone-marrow transplant], which is considered a milestone in terms of saying I’m cured. I have no restrictions on my activities, work, diet or anything.
The book includes an e-mail exchange with your older sister, Joanna, who declined to possibly donate her bone marrow to you after your diagnosis. You write that you haven’t spoken to her since. Has that changed?
Nope. That [relationship] is just sort of gone. I don’t care. I have not spoken to her or communicated with her since that day. I don’t imagine I ever will again. It’s complicated.
Did you decide to write the book after being diagnosed?
When I was sick I thought, geez, I might not come out on the other side of this, and if I do … it would be an interesting look at a 50-year career that’s had some ups and downs — but a lot more ups than downs, juxtaposed with the fact that life is an equal opportunity offender. It doesn’t care how many Emmys you’ve got: Surprise! You’ve got leukemia! I thought I’d like to leave a coherent chronology of my entire adult life for my kids and grandkids. Should they be interested, it’s there.
How did you come up with the book’s title?
I know how it feels to read in print about something that might not be complimentary, but as they say in the law, ‘Truth is a total defense’ if, in fact, what is printed is true, and there’s not a false word in it. I couldn’t make this stuff [in the book] up. And, quite candidly, I don’t care. I don’t mean to be cavalier, but that’s not why I wrote this book.
You hinted in 2008 that you were finished with network TV, but you returned with “Murder in the First.” What changed?
A couple of things. [“Murder in the First”] is cable so it’s kind of a looser environment than broadcast TV — we’re not endlessly nitpicked and bothered. So I never have to deal with that sort of intermediate layer that had become truly absurd, culminating with my experience with [ABC’s] “Commander-in-Chief” [in 2005, starring Geena Davis as the first female US president]. That was just a horrible experience, and that’s what really soured me. I thought, if this is what network TV is becoming, I just don’t want to play in the sandbox anymore.