R.I.P. Steven Bochco

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...creator-741199

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Steven Bochco dies: Innovative producer behind NYPD Blue, L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues was 74

Bochco, whose three biggest hit shows won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series within seven years of each other, died in his sleep Sunday after battling cancer. Bochco underwent a stem cell transplant in 2014 after he was diagnosed with leukemia. Bochco was nominated for an Emmy 30 times, winning 10, with the multiple series he co-created dominating the TV landscape throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including NYPD Blue, L.A. Law, Murder One, Doogie Howser, M.D., Cop Rock and Hill Street Blues. Bochco, says Cynthia Littleton, "reveled in pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. Behind the scenes, Bochco ... expertly leveraged his status as an A-list showrunner. In 1987 he commanded a still-unprecedented six-year, 10-series deal with ABC. Bochco in his prime helped usher in the contemporary Golden Age of TV dramas by insisting that NYPD Blue, which ran from 1993 to 2005 on ABC, move the needle on the content restrictions that had traditionally defined broadcast TV. Bochco often used the phrase '… and the Republic didn’t fall' when asked about the controversy stirred by his shows."

ALSO:

• Stars pay tribute to Bochco: "It was his vision, style, taste and tenacity that made me love watching TV," tweeted NYPD Blue's Sharon Lawrence
  Disney CEO Bob Iger called Bochco "a visionary, a creative force, a risk taker, a witty, urbane story teller with an uncanny ability to know what the world wanted"
  Read an excerpt from Bochco's 2016 memoir, Truth is a Total Defense

Dennis Franz pays tribute to Steven Bochco: He had to talk me into playing NYPD Blue's Sipowicz

"I consider Steven to be a leader and a visionary in television," Franz, who starred as Lt. Norman Buntz on Hill Street Blues and played the iconic Det. Sipowicz on NYPD Blue, said Tuesday in reaction to Bochco's death. "He left such a beautiful legacy of so much memorable work, which to me puts him in an icon status." Franz was nominated eight times for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning four Emmys, for his role as Andy Sipowicz. But Franz recalled having to be talked into playing his most famous role over lunch with Bochco, six months before the initial NYPD Blue script was written. "I read about my guy, and I thought, 'Who is going to care about this guy?'" Franz recalled. "He gets shot at the end of the pilot, and I thought, 'Who is going to care if he lives or dies? He is a womanizer. He is a drunk. He is a racist. He is a loose cannon. He is a bad cop and bad man.' And I expressed those feelings to Steven, and he said, 'You know, you will find a way to make him sympathetic.' And I asked how I was going to go about that, and he said, 'It is inherent in your personality. You have this.' And never did he say, 'You're right, we'll change the character.'"

ALSO:

• Kim Delaney says "Steven changed my life," from her Emmy-winning NYPD Blue role to the Philly series he created for her
  Amy Brenneman, who met her husband on NYPD Blue, says of Bochco: "Steven, thank you for my marriage and my life in Los Angeles. Thank you for your artistic courage which taught me how to have artistic courage of my own."
  "Steven Bochco was not about bull or baloney. He knew that life was too short for that stuff," says TV critic Tom Shales
  Adam Scott: "Steven Bochco generously gave me my first real tv job in 1995 on Murder One"