TVSquad

In 1974, in between creating The Godfather and The Godfather, Part 2, Oscar-winning writer-director Francis Ford Coppola made a film that was just as seminal as the Mafia dramas: The Conversation.

It was in many ways a small picture, starring Gene Hackman (in a brilliant performance), and including some people on the brink of stardom, Cindy Williams (pre-Laverne & Shirley), Teri Garr (pre-Young Frankenstein) and Harrison Ford (pre-Star Wars and Raiders). The Conversation won the top prize as the Cannes Film Festival.

Now, AMC has given Tony Krantz (24), the go ahead to produce a pilot based on the film. It'll be set in the early 1970s and remain true to the film's premise: the story of Harry Caul, a professional sound man, a guy who can plant bugs and catch conversations using tape recorder and surveillance equipment, but is isolated and uncomfortable with human contact. In the film, Harry hears a conversation between a young couple and is unsure whether the information he's heard -- or thinks he's heard -- should be handed over to his client.

The Conversation was a taut thriller and very much a character driven piece. Krantz has been working on making a TV series of it since 1998, and he has two first-rate screenwriters penning the script, The Usual Suspects' Christopher McQuarrie and Band of Brothers' Erik Jendresen. This is the second series greenlit by AMC this week.

By leaving the story in the '70s, the series will avoid a lot of the pitfalls that exist if you set it in 2008. Technology today is far more advanced -- this was the pre-digital age remember -- and it's also a time when there were different laws regarding wiretapping and surveillance. For TV fans, the early '70s has been a rich vein of storytelling, including CBS's Swingtown and ABC's new season BBC-transplant Life on Mars.

Krantz nearly got The Conversation on ABC two years ago, but the network wanted too many alterations and the project failed to come together. Before that, in 1995, Kyle MacLachlan was cast as Harry in an aborted NBC mounting.

With their new attitude about dramatic series -- thanks to Mad Men and Breaking Bad -- AMC could be the place where Krantz finally can get The Conversation series off the ground. Still to be determined is if Coppola will be involved. The filmmaker, whose last picture was the hugely unsuccessful Youth Without Youth in 2007, should at least be consulted, in my opinion, just out of respect.

While many movies have turned into awful TV series -- for every success like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Friday Night Lights there's a waste of time like My Big Fat Greek Life and Shaft -- The Conversation strikes me as the kind of material that would work really well on TV, especially in light of today's attitudes about listening in on phone conversations and the rights of privacy.

I also have great faith in what the folks at AMC are doing these days because Mad Men and Breaking Bad are superior TV.