Why I wrote ADONAI

In the early 1990s I production designed the TV series HIGHLANDER. It was a blast balancing the period stories and the present-day world that principal character Duncan McLeod navigated. When I wasn’t actively looking for locations, in meetings, or at the drawing-board I spent a lot of time with writers David Abramowitz and David Tynan discussing the evolving stories. Can we do Mongolia, Steve? How about an Indian Mughal palace? A medieval monastery? Yeah, I could. And I did, all that and more, for the duration of the series. It was a creative high point design wise.

One day during a lunch discussion David Abramowitz said, “I try to balance McLeod’s imperative to survive with his need to help his fellow man within the constraints of the prime directive for our immortals; There can be only one.”  My response was, “That’s very Talmudic, David.”  To which he nodded and replied, “Yeah. It is. I come by it honestly.”

The Highlander immortals, the good and the bad, always ended their long lives losing their heads. We never really found out the why of it all.

And that got me thinking.

What if a man had a thousand years, two thousand years of life? What would he /she do with their time? What would I do? Me, I’d learn as much as I could. Experience as much as I could within the ethical boundaries I was brought up with. I’m a creative not a warrior.

So, I spent my mornings driving to work daydreaming around those questions. Who would this guy be? How did he come to be? Where would he spend his time? What would he do with his days? But the problem that I really gnawed on was the why of it all. Then one morning on the Lions Gate Bridge causeway my principal character revealed himself to me, emerging from the background of my religious education.  I just didn’t see him until I had wandered through a jungle of possibilities and, from that moment on, the basis for ADONAI had a solid groundwork from which to develop.