Hack Diary

The Morse Code: ass-kicking cabby David Morse takes his home town and his production crew on one hell of a ride.

Episode 1: Welcome To Philly.

by Paul Julien Freed

Editor's note: Every Friday night, millions of Americans get a peek, albeit a TV-dramatized one, of Philadelphia via Hack, the cop-cum-cabbie show airing Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS. Chances are, you've seen the production crews take over a neighborhood and wondered why Philly, what's it like shooting a series here and what Hollywood interlopers think of our town.

This week, City Paper introduces "Hack Diary," written by Paul Julien Freed, husband of Hack producer Nan Bernstein Freed. The weekly series will take readers onto the set and into the minds of the series' cast and crew.

Enjoy the ride. — Howard Altman

We are driving south on the New Jersey Turnpike from the Berkshires of western Massachusetts at nine o'clock on a Monday night, heading toward another one of life's unknowns. It is just after Fourth of July weekend and, stuck in the middle of holiday traffic, we are impatiently looking for the exit that will take us west across the river to Philadelphia. My wife is the producer for a new one-hour dramatic series scheduled to begin airing on CBS in September. Hack will film in Philadelphia and star David Morse and Andre Braugher.

Why Philadelphia? A story about a cop kicked off a big-city police force driving a taxi in the middle of the same metropolitan area can be shot in any city in the country. It can be mounted in New York or Los Angeles where crew bases and sound stages already exist, which would certainly be logistically easier and financially more responsible. So why Philadelphia? The simple two-word answer is David Morse. Morse is an actor who eludes many viewers' memories until they are reminded of all the roles he has played, all the movies and TV series in which he has appeared. Suddenly, people launch into a stream-of-consciousness muse about how much they liked him in The Green Mile, Twelve Monkeys, Contact, Proof of Life, St. Elsewhere, etc., etc., etc. Trust me on this because you can count me among the legion of babbling admirers. CBS wanted David Morse for the series and his family lived in Philadelphia, which is why my wife and I find ourselves leaving the Turnpike at Exit 4 to drive the last 15 miles west into Philadelphia.

Presentation counts for something. Driving into a major urban center should feel dramatic and important. Maybe growing up in New York City spoiled me. When you drive into Manhattan, The City looms up in front of you like Oz's Emerald City. The skyline can be seen from a great distance, whether approaching from the airports in Queens or from the Turnpike in Jersey. But when we exit onto 73-West, we are faced with the look and feel of America. As we drive on, shopping malls, fast-food joints and car dealerships spring up on both sides of the road. I've experienced this continually in the United States over the last few years. Rolling through Cherry Hill and Camden, we could be almost anywhere in the country. After all, what is the difference between the fast-food french fry in Cherry Hill and the one in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Delray Beach, Fla., or Syracuse, N.Y.? The "mallization" of America threatens to consume and homogenize us all.

Finally, we round a bend in the road and glimpse the blue-lit towers of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. And round another corner to find ourselves on the bridge itself, viewing the skyline of Philadelphia for the first time. What awaits us on the far side of this bridge? What new experiences will we find? Who will we meet? And most importantly, how will things work out for us with Hack?

On the city-side of the bridge, my wife and I quickly find our way into Center City, where we have rented an apartment in the newly renovated Phoenix, across from Love Park. Pulling up to the front door, both of us are immediately struck by the number of homeless people in the park across the street. It reminds me of Manhattan in the mid-'80s when the gap between the haves and have-nots widened beyond the watery distance between Camden and Philadelphia. Back then there were people sleeping on the sidewalks up and down Columbus Avenue on the West Side of Manhattan. Are we returning to those times of hardship for so many? Or have these people merely disappeared from our consciousness for the last number of years? When walking our two dogs later that night we are forced to weave our way around occupied sleeping bags covering the ground. Just like the old days, I think.

Within weeks the homeless people magically disappear from the area as if they had never existed in the first place. Who moved them? And where were they moved? I have this vision of another neighborhood in Philadelphia waking one steamy summer morning to find a spanking new population living on their streets. Are they now asking the same questions we did?

Paul Julien Freed is a film, television and theater producer, director and editor who recently produced and directed a documentary film, titled Hoops, about a championship high-school girls' basketball team.