<p><font color=yellow>Corinne Marrinan</font> has worn many hats on <i>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation</i>, starting out as an assistant and transitioning to Associate Producer, handling the many media tie-in products spawned by the show, including novels, DVDs and games. In season nine, Marrinan stepped into a new role on the show: staff writer. Marrinan took time during her hiatus--which the Academy Award winner is using to work on her latest documentary--to speak with CSI Files' <font color=yellow>Kristine Huntley</font> about what goes into writing for a hit television show. <p><b>CSI Files:</b> You just finished up your first season as a writer on <i>CSI</i>! What was your first year on staff like?<p><b>Corinne Marrinan:</b> It's funny because being there for so long--it's been almost nine years since I came out here to work on the show. And I've been on it in so many different capacities that it really wasn't much of a dramatic transition. Part of that may have been that when I was working on my first script, which was a freelance spec, which never happened, I was still doing my other job. So I had this crossover period when I was doing my other job and I was working on this script and so when [<font color=yellow>Suzanne] Que [Reed</font>] took over what I was doing, there was a period when I'd be in the writers' room breaking somebody's story and then we'd go on a break and Que would have a bunch of questions about my previous job. So I kind of felt like it was just another extension of the many things I have always done at the show. It wasn't like starting a new job. Later in the year Que got the hang of [my old position]. Things had come up about the museum project or the DVD special features and she'd just say, "Well, what would you do?" We just had that crossover period. By the end of the year, I was pretty much just doing the writing and realizing that yes, this is pretty much a more than full time job in itself!<p>My final act as the Multimedia Producer was when <font color=yellow>Billy [Petersen</font>, Gil Grissom] was leaving the show and a lot of the affiliates wanted a live interview with Billy and it was just getting to be way too much. It was like thirty people who wanted to come interview Billy on camera. So CBS publicity called me because they know I make documentaries and they know I've known Billy forever and said, "Hey, will you do us a favor? Will you do Billy's final big interview, and take all the questions that everybody has and just do one big interview with him? And then we'll send the tapes to all the different affiliates." So in the writers' room, I'm breaking my story and they're like, "Can you do this for us tomorrow?" So I took a break from my script and went and did an hour-long interview with Billy, which turned out really well actually. We'd never done that before--I'd never interview him for anything. It's hard to interview somebody you know; there's so much [the interviewee] leave out because you know the other person knows the answer. So you just go, "Oh, I'm not going to tell that anecdote because she was there!" And your brain kind of shoves things to the side that you know the other person already knows. It worked out pretty well. That was my last thing I did before moving over.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> Do you think that interview will end up on the season nine DVD set?<p><b>Marrinan:</b> It will, actually. As it should be, you won't know that I'm interviewing him--it's just footage of him. He did all the work; I didn't have a camera on me.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> What's the writers' room at <i>CSI</i> like?<p><b>Marrinan:</b> Well, it's different all the time and it really depends on the different combination of people in there because at any given time, you have a writer that's on set, a writer who is off writing their story, you have somebody in editing who is editing their episode, so depending on where you are in the shuffle, you end up with different combinations of people and you're either working on your own story or working on someone else's story. I honestly couldn't tell you what I like better! I really do like being in there [working on somebody else's story], maybe because it's a little less pressure. You know you're not on the spot as much and you can just relax and try to come up with ideas that help the other person. But it's different all the time. Somebody's writing on the board or brings in new research, or sometimes we get <font color=yellow>Daniel Holstein</font> or one of the tech advisors in for a week so we try to get as much information from them as possible. So we'll have a week of forensic-intensive story breaking. If we're going into a world, we'll watch a documentary or film on that world. Sometimes we'll just all sit around and watch something to get ideas out of it. Or we'll watch old episodes if we want to structure an episode like one we've done in the past. Like <font color=yellow>Allen [MacDonald</font>] and I, when we were breaking <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season9/if_i_had_a_hammer.shtml">"If I Had a Hammer"</a>, the first thing we did was watch <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season4/invisible_evidence.shtml">"Invisible Evidence"</a> because it had a similar courtroom structure, and we of course changed the structure as we went along, but that was a starting point for us. We said, "Okay, let's watch 'Invisible Evidence' as a successful structure for this kind of thing, and let's go from there." That's what it's been like; you never know what to expect. You come in and <font color=yellow>Carol [Mendelsohn</font>, executive producer] is like, "You come in, rewrite with me, you go in the room and break a story with Allen"--it can change day to day. <p><b>CSI Files:</b> Your first episode for the show was <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season9/let_it_bleed.shtml">"Let It Bleed"</a>. How did that story evolve?<p><b>Marrinan:</b> The B-story <font color=yellow>David Rambo</font> and Carol came up with the idea for and then David and I wrote it together. The A-story was my spec; there was no B-story. It was just an idea that I had come up with based on the funny things in life. I drove by [this] creepy, good-looking tropical aquarium supply place once. It was this windowless dump of a place with really crudely drawn fish and underwater life cartoons on the outside of it. And you just look at this place with the handmade sign and you say, "Man, that's got to be a front for something!" There were never any cars in the parking lot. So I was thinking about that place and also, I've always been drawn to and nauseated by the invention of the blood transfusion and how when they first developed that technology, how crude and painful it was. If you look up online, you can see what the first blood transfusion kits looked like--they're really grotesque! To think that they had to make so many mistakes before we realized that you can't just mix any blood type with another blood type. So people would die and they wouldn't necessarily know why but it was that trial and error that led to discovering the RH factor and the A-B-O blood typing system. So I just had these two randomly different ideas. The fish store kind of sparked this idea in my head about what goes on behind closed doors in that kind of place, thinking, if you had an aquarium business, what kinds of drugs could you run through it? It seems like a perfect front because you have so many chemicals coming in and out. That's where I looked up some information and found the science behind atropine, which is used for both stunning tropical fish for transport and medicinal use in humans and for cutting cocaine for psychedelic purposes. It was kind of this weird selection of notes that merged and from there I just kind of strung them together and I put together and spec and they decided to make the spec. We went back into the room and moved some scenes around and changed a few things here and there. But I was really pleased with how similar it ended up being to the original story. I really didn't expect it to, once we went back in the room, to bear that much resemblance [to my original idea]. That was gratifying.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> How soon after writing the episode did you get the offer to join the staff?<p><HR ALIGN="CENTER" SIZE="1" WIDTH="45%" COLOR="#007BB5"><p>To read the full interviews, please click <A HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/interviews/corinne_marrinan2.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
A really interesting interview! :bolian: CSI's a show I've come and gone from over the years; "If I Had A Hammer" was an ep I caught this season, and was really impressed with, and had me suddenly wondering if I was missing out with the show again. It was really interesting to get some insights and thoughts from the writer about the episode, and the show as a whole, where it's been and where it's going - especially given the breadth of work she's undertaken over the years. Thanks very much
Awesome interview, thanks for sharing! It was long too - lots of information. "Deep Fried and Minty Fresh" was kind of an odd one, but all three of Corinne's episodes were good - I'm looking forward to seeing more from her as season ten rolls around.