This was the final CBS Schoolbreak special I would work on. I had worked on my first in 1987 and had learned the genre well by this time. David Eagle was a great producer and this was my fourth project with him. It also gave me the chance to work with producer Arnold (Rescue 911) Shapiro.
The concept was simple but effective. Four kids with four stories. We took the four areas kids commonly get in trouble with guns and told each story twice, once where a gun was used and once where the teen chose not to use a gun. It was an exciting idea and I'm proud of the resulting film.
We filmed this on Super 16 in LA in the fall of 1993 with a tight budget. Despite the serious subject we all had a wonderful time making this ambitious project.
The reward for our hard work was having the project bumped up to prime time and shown on both CBS and Fox simultaneously. We were later nominated for a Prime Time Emmy and I was very excited when we won in September, 1994.
I had already moved to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a song writing career when the awards were held in Pasadena so the win was a wonderful close to my "Hollywood" days. I'll never forget standing with my fellow producers on stage and unable to form a cohesive sentence!
But this project is not about me or our Emmy Award. I hope that somewhere at least one kid saw our film and changed his or her mind about using a gun. I may never know but just the thought makes me smile every time I think about the days we all worked so hard on this film.
Michael Killen