By Thomas O'Connor; Thomas O'Connor covers arts and entertainment for The Orange County (Calif.) Register.
Published: May 4, 1986

''Making a TV movie is just four things,'' said producer Larry Thompson, easing his Rolls-Royce convertible out of Beverly Hills toward the Hollywood Freeway. ''It's story, stars, wardrobe and close-ups.''


''Television is a medium of close-ups, stories of intimate relationships. That's why you see so many docudramas,'' added Mr. Thompson, the executive producer of ''Convicted,'' a new TV film starring Carroll O'Connor, Lindsay Wagner and John Larroquette. The two-hour movie, which ABC will broadcast Monday, May 12, at 9 P.M., is based on the true story of Douglas Forbes, a Tennessee man who was freed in 1980 after spending five years in prison for a series of rapes he did not commit.

In the way it was put together, in its casting, storyline and financing, ''Convicted'' is typical of much of the current crop of TV films. Because of the assembly-line speed and comparative economy with which they are made, TV films have evolved into their own Hollywood sub-industry.

''It is a business separate and distinct to itself,'' said David Lowell Rich, the film's director. Mr. Rich has made more feature-length films for television than anyone else, 48 in all, including the first ever broadcast, ''See How They Run,'' on NBC in October 1964. (Earlier in 1964, NBC, citing violent content, had refused to broadcast what was actually the first movie made for television, ''The Killers,'' starring Lee Marvin and - in his last film role - Ronald Reagan. The producer, Universal Pictures, released it theatrically instead.) In the years since the form originated, the made-for-TV movie has become a prime-time staple. This season, the three major networks are together presenting 103 new TV films (not counting mini-series), a dozen more than last year and the most ever in one season. Based on their current plans, the three networks could show as many as 110 new TV movies during the 1986-87 season.

''In terms of ratings,'' said Bruce J. Sallan, vice president in charge of motion pictures for television at ABC Entertainment, ''TV movies consistently outperform theatrical films when they're shown on TV, and have for the last three or four years.''

At CBS, which has presented more TV films than either of the other two networks during the past five years (56 this season alone), these movies are an economical source of counter-programming. ''When a 'Dynasty' is running away with a huge number in the ratings,'' explained Steve Mills, the CBS vice president for TV films and mini-series, ''instead of trying to put an expensive new series in there and getting beaten over the head, we put TV movies in and try to do a respectable number.'' The strategy has worked most recently for CBS on Sunday nights, he said.

Apart from their added value to the networks as pilots for potential series, movies made for television have expanded from a mix of thrillers, mysteries and westerns in the 60's into what now seems a kind of national bulletin board of social problems. Even as American theatrical films have moved to elaborate escapist fantasies, such as ''Superman,'' the ''Star Wars'' trilogy and ''E.T.,'' the networks have developed what has been labeled the ''social-disease-of-the-week syndrome.''

This season's TV films have assayed a catalogue of contemporary concerns: terrorism, wayward teen-agers, nuclear waste, mental illness, alcoholism, the homeless, sexual abuse of children, prostitution, bisexuality (and transsexuality), and, with ''Convicted,'' the failings of the criminal justice system.

''One likes to have a happy ending to a story, but no one forces you to do that now,'' said Frank von Zerneck, the independent producer responsible for such exploitative TV films as ''Portrait of a Stripper'' and ''Portrait of a Centerfold,'' as well as for the more substantive retelling of the terrorism that marred the 1972 Olympic Games, ''21 Hours at Munich.''

''With series TV, characters have to end up happy at the end in order to come back next week,'' Mr. von Zerneck said. ''But with TV movies, lead characters can die or change their behavior. There are no rules.''

Some network executives worry that the social-problem trend has gone too far. ''There are only so many burning issues that can be rehashed over and over again,'' said Mr. Sallan of ABC. ''The focus is in some ways almost trivializing all these issues.''

Even the dominant stars of television movies are performers who have primarily made their reputations on the small screen, such as Elizabeth Montgomery, Farrah Fawcett, John Ritter, Valerie Bertinelli and Miss Wagner, who achieved fame as ''The Bionic Woman.'' ''Convicted'' is the fifth TV film the 36-year-old Miss Wagner has made in the past year.

''Because a person is a feature-film star doesn't mean they'll be a big star on TV,'' said Richard M. Rosenbloom, president of Orion Television, which produces network films and series. ''In TV movies, 'Tonight, Valerie Bertinelli' means more than 'Tonight, Meryl Streep.' ''

Last month, ''Nobody's Child,'' a CBS ''fact-based'' drama about mental illness, featured the television veteran Marlo Thomas; it easily outdistanced its ratings competition on NBC, ''Beverly Hills Madam,'' even though the latter offered Oscar-winner Faye Dunaway and the titillating subject of high-priced call girls.

The going rate for such recognized TV names is from $250,000 to $300,000 per picture, usually for 20 days of work. ''If you can do two or three of those a year, it's a very comfortable living,'' noted Mr. Rosenbloom.

Although the networks are refusing to pay production costs that have swelled the price of making a two-hour movie from a top of $350,000 in 1970 to as much as $3 million now, TV movies are still made for a fraction of theatrical-feature budgets.

''There's less perfection,'' said Mr. Rosenbloom. In comparison to feature films, he said, ''you shoot more pages of script a day. You do less complicated shooting, fewer takes.''

''Because the networks' need for these films is so great, the production time keeps getting shorter and shorter,'' said Mr. von Zerneck. ''Regularly, these days, movies are ordered with a delivery date in as little as 10 or 12 weeks.''

A veteran film and sound editor, who asked not to be named, believes that the results tend to be mediocre.

''We're not talking good film making,'' the editor said. ''The attitude is to do whatever you need to basically get the material on film, get it cut, and keep the networks happy. There's no time for quality work to occur. What you end up with is something that's O.K. at best.''

''In some cases, it does diminish quality, no question about that,'' said Tony Masucci, NBC's vice president for television movies. ''It's not an ideal situation for us, either. We try to give pictures enough lead time, but we have to make some 35 a year.''

Because of the mounting differential between production costs and network fees, most of the major studios have abandoned TV films to independent producers who can make them on comparatively thin budgets, like the Mississippi-born Mr. Thompson, 41, an intense, soft-spoken entertainment lawyer and agent (his clients include Donna Mills, William Shatner and Cicely Tyson).

''If you're making an 'Out of Africa,' you wait for what they call 'magic hour,' when the sun sets,'' said Mr. Thompson. ''But when you're doing a TV movie, like 'Convicted,' you don't have time for that. Magic hour is just getting it done. ''You tend to write scenes which have less cost,'' Mr. Thompson said. ''You don't see a lot of foreign locales. Also, in feature films, you get a bigger flow within a scene, part of the dialogue shot here, part there. In a TV movie, you tend to get it all in one location.''

While Mr. Thompson was evasive about his budget, others estimated the film's cost at slightly over $3 million. ABC, according to Mr. Sallan, is paying a license fee of ''about'' $2.5 million for two airings of ''Convicted'' over a four-year period. Like all independent producers, Mr. Thompson is gambling he can make up the deficit - and ultimately a profit -through foreign, video cassette and, especially, syndication sales.

To save on labor costs and take advantage of favorable currency rates, many of today's TV films are made in either Canada or Mexico; Toronto has emerged as a major production center. And producers who do shoot in the United States are increasingly using nonunionized technicians and craftspeople.

''Convicted'' was made by a ''split crew,'' a mix of union and nonunion workers, according to the film's supervising producer, Paul Pompian, who called the savings ''significant.''

The 20 shooting days and $3 million budget for ''Convicted'' are normal for a TV film but half or less of that for a typical theatrical feature. By contrast, the current theatrical release ''Murphy's Romance,'' with no special effects and a relatively small cast headed by James Garner and Sally Field, cost $11.5 million and was shot in 55 days last year.

ABC only gave the final green light to ''Convicted'' on Feb. 24 of this year. To deliver it for the May 12 airdate the network planned, during the May ratings sweeps, ''We only had 10 days of pre-production, which normally should take six weeks,'' said Mr. Thompson. That, added Mr. Pompian, ''is no way to make a picture. You should never start shooting until you have every location locked in.''

''Everyone expects the look of a feature film in 20 days of shooting,'' said Mr. Rich, the director of ''Covicted,'' who is 65 and, in addition to his 47 other TV films, has directed a dozen, forgettable theatrical features. ''The trick is to make it look as good as you can,'' he added, ''but obviously you have to cut corners.''

Even as he spoke, technicians scrambled around him to set up lights and the camera in a large, ground-floor cafeteria in the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building, where the district attorney's office had earlier stood in for a Tennessee site. During a break in the previous day's shooting, Mr. Rich and Mr. Pompian had dropped into the cafeteria for coffee and abruptly decided to reset a scene written for another office interior to a cafeteria setting.

''I rewrote the scene last night because that fits better in the schedule,'' said Mr. Rich.

In another move to conserve time, Mr. Rich instructed his cameraman to use ''flat'' lenses, instead of a zoom, in shooting the cafeteria scene. Although it would sacrifice ''certain values visually,'' he said, ''this way he's not going to have to put as much light on this scene.''

In a day in which seven of roughly 150 scenes were filmed, Mr. Rich rarely called for even a second take of each shot. Nor did he attend the daily screenings of the previous day's footage. ''What's the point?'' he said. ''In a TV movie, you're not going to be able to come back and do it again.''