Mendelsohn: It All Worked Out Perfectly

Executive producer Carol Mendelsohn has watched CSI grow up.

Mendelsohn has been with the CSI franchise since it first began, and she has remained with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation for the entire ride. "I've been here really since day one," she said. "Then Anthony [Zuiker] and our other partner Ann Donahue and I co-created CSI: Miami and CSI: New York." Eventually, Donahue fell in love with Miami. "She left CSI to run the Miami show, and that is what she does. Then eventually, we created CSI: New York, and Anthony left CSI to go run New York. So there were three of us and three shows," Mendelsohn explained. "It all worked out perfectly."

Mendelsohn said that she doesn't have anything to do with Miami or New York "other than being a cheerleader", but she said that the work the three of them did together was crucial to the success of the original show as well as the existence of the spin-offs. "Ann, Anthony and I, were the little footsoldiers at the first few seasons of CSI, really trying to find the show and develop the show and make it what it is," Mendelsohn explained. "So none of these spin-offs would exist without the collective effort of Ann and Anthony and I, and all the writers and directors that worked so hard on CSI those first few seasons."

Going from a writer to a producer is "a natural transition that you make if you have any longevity in the business," according to Mendelsohn. She is an executive producer for CSI, and being a showrunner includes responsibilities "other than script-writing duties." She went on to say that "[i]f you're going to be a show-runner on a TV show, you run a multi-million dollar, and in the case of CSI a $150 million, business, so you have to know how to produce." Mendelsohn herself has an overall responsibility for the show. This includes writing, editing, casting, music, publicity, promotion, merchandising and other tasks that are all involved with creating a successful show like CSI, not to mention that she must deal with any problems that arise. Some aspects of the creative process, such as editing or music, are not dealt with directly by Mendelsohn. She said that "the people who do that work on the show are so much better at it than me," and that means that she has "been able to hand off all those responsibilities."

"[M]ost people in the world don't know that I've written almost every episode," Mendelsohn said. "I usually don't put my name on the scripts. I write a few scripts that I get credit on every year, but the first five seasons of CSI, every single script that went on the air went through my computer." Even though she did a lot of the work, she didn't take the credit. "I wrote so much of it those first few seasons, but I get paid a nice salary for what I do and I learned early on from Stephen Cannell that you don't put your name on other peoples' scripts, even when you're the boss. Even if you write every word of it, you don't take money out of their pockets."

Mendelsohn said that writing for a television show is not easy. "Truly, when you write for TV, it's a job. It's also a passion, but it's the job that you have," she explained. "Television, to me, the audience and the fans tune in to see the characters. On CSI, yes they also tune in to see the science and the weird stuff and the twists and turns. But sometimes it's actually more difficult to write a procedural and still find the humanity and the fun organically within each scene. If it was just dry science, nobody would watch." In the end, writing a TV show is "just really, really tough and you always feel like you have homework," she said. "You always feel like you have to study for a test. You always are facing a blank page. You have a production machine that every seven or eight days needs another script. It's very, very difficult. It's like running a marathon every year, not a sprint, and it's not for the faint of heart."

Although Mendelsohn said that doesn't like attending autopsies, she did say that she enjoys doing other types of research for CSI. "We made the decision from the beginning to be true to the science," she said. "The only time we ever take any liberty with the science is in the time it takes to process D.N.A. or other evidence because obviously it takes two weeks or a month. The show's over in an hour." Mendelsohn said that the show utilizes "experts all around the country and around the world" to ensure that the show is as accurate as it can be. "Whatever we need for each particular episode, we learn for that episode," she said. "We do all of our research. Many seasons I've asked the writers if they turn in scripts, or any of us do, we also have a package of materials with all of our underlying research so that the director, so that anybody that has a question, the actors, its there. You understand what the science truly is, what it states, what we're trying to prove. It makes the show very fun because we're always learning."

"I love it every time we go to Vegas and hang out with the real CSIs," Mendelsohn said. "It's just fun." She also enjoyed going to Chicago for the unveiling of "CSI: The Experience", which is a travelling museum exhibit that uses the show to teach about science and forensics. However, it wasn't the research she enjoyed the most, or even the exhibit itself. It wasn't about the science at all. "We just hung out," she explained, "and it was really the most fun I've had on the show."

The entire interview with Mendelsohn can be read at The Cornell Daily Sun.

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