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Melinda Metz and Laura Burns - The writers who invented Roswell High

A meeting of minds
  How did you first get together?

Laura We were both book editors, editing series books for teenagers and we were working at a publishing company called Parachute Publishing. They did the R.L. Stein books like Goosebumps.

We met each other there and started working together on some of the series. We were doing plots together, writing outlines, and we realised that it just was much easier to come up with a book plot with each other than it was sitting in a room by yourself, so we started working together.

They couldn�t separate us and so they just eventually gave up and left us We were a team. Then we started, maybe six years ago, talking about how we would rather be working for TV. We�re huge TV and movie fans.

Mel We thought the kind of plotting that we did would translate really well. Because we were always doing serious book so we would always be doing arcs.

Laura And you�d have a character who contributed over 12 books instead of 12 television episodes, so we thought we�d be good at it. We talked for a long time without doing anything.

Inventing Roswell
  How did you come up with the original concept for Roswell?

Mel At Pocketbooks, the publisher, one of the VPs came up with the idea of Roswell High. Just basically aliens in High School. Laura was working at a different company then�

Laura After we met each other at Parachute Publishing I had left and gone to a different company. Around the same time Melinda had decided to take the plunge that editors usually take, she was going to go and be a writer full time.

So it was good timing for both of us because I got to this different company and they wanted me to develop this idea, Roswell High, for Pocketbooks. I had come up with the tone of it, using the wackiness of Roswell.

Mel I came up with the name Crashdown and the wacky alien theme.

Laura Basically I came up with the characters and the set-up and rough outlines of plots. Then, because Melinda was going to be a writer and I knew she would be perfect at it, I was able to hire her to write the books.

Mel And then we kind of fleshed it out more together. Laura had the main characters sketched out and the main arc.

Laura Then Melinda made them loveable and wonderful and the television rights sold on the strength of her first manuscript.

Mel That�s how it started on its road to TV. It was completely unexpected. That was really the first thing other than a novelisation of an episode of Goosebumps that I�d written. I never thought the first thing I would write would turn into something like this.

TV beckons
  Was TV always in the back of your mind, or was Roswell High written as a book first and foremost?

Laura No, we wanted to make the change and go and become television writers, but I don�t think that we ever thought [the book would be the way in].

Mel No, it didn�t really occur to me. It happened really fast. The first book was due maybe like a month after [the TV people became interested]. So I was caught up in finishing the first manuscript, I wasn�t really thinking beyond that.

Laura We thought we had the skills ourselves to go and become television writers. We had never thought of doing it by developing a book and turning it into a TV series.

Mel We were going to write spec scripts and try and get an agent, we just hadn�t done it yet.

Crash course
  Is working in TV what you expected?

Laura We wrote two television pilots for Regency Pictures and 20th Century Fox and neither of them got picked up, but we did write them and we realised that we were right, we do know how to write.

Mel The great thing about being on staff is, we always felt we knew the plotting and characters part. But we don�t really know anything about production so we�re really getting a crash course.

Laura This is our first staff job on television and we�ve been doing it for two and a half months now. So we are complete novices, complete beginners, we don�t know how to make a TV show and that�s what we are here to learn.

It�s just very strange and wonderful that it�s on Roswell. We were trying to get a job on any TV show that would have us and we�re so happy that we ended up on this one.

Older and wiser
  How much has Roswell grown into its own life as a TV series?

Mel The pilot and the first episode of season one have a lot of overlap and then they really have gone off in two different directions. They are alternative universes of each other.

I find it fun just to see what other writers did starting at the same point, to see what other people do with the same aliens and the same powers and the same basic relationships.

Laura It�s never occurred to us to compare the books to the show, because it�s a very different kind of story telling that you can do in a book versus on television. It needs to be so much more visual obviously on television and also, the books were for children.

Mel The books were for young adults.

Laura Sheriff Valenti is one of the characters that�s really different on the TV show versus the books, because in the books he was just pure evil.

Mel The books were for teens, and [in that type of book] you don�t usually give the adult characters their full back story.

Valenti felt this way because his father was obsessed with aliens. So he didn�t really have much motivation except being bad.

Mel He wanted to catch them, put them away and experiment on them.

Laura The show reaches an older audience and it�s fun to plot for these people as they�re getting older.

Mel [There�s] a lot of different kind of stories. And [the characters] are already older than they were in the books.

Separate lives
  In the early stages, were you consulted about the series?

Laura It was very separate. We were in New York doing books and they were in Hollywood doing a television show.

The publisher was the one who had sold the television rights and so they had more contact with Jason and the other people doing the show than we did individually.

Mel The books and the show are so different. The characters on the show have different back stories, and both sets of characters experience different things.

They�re really just too different to try and work them back around. It just wouldn�t make sense for the show characters, it would be inconsistent for them to start behaving like or experiencing things that the other characters did.

Laura We get asked that question a lot, and as a writer I would almost be bored doing the same story again.

The show is its own thing. We very much follow Jason Katims� vision because he�s brilliant and he knows exactly what he wants the show to be.

Mel And we love what he did with the show.

Laura Yeah, we love it, we were big fans.

Mel I also wrote six books between Roswell High, so when we started here my book series of Roswell High was all wrapped up. They got their happy ending and everything. It�s over so it�s fun to get back into that world but it�s different.

Fingerprints of fear
  Tell us about your current project.

Mel It�s about a girl who can touch a fingerprint and know the thoughts that the person who left the finger print was having at the moment that they left the print. I think I need a more condensed way of saying that.

At first she thinks she�s going crazy, and then she touches a finger print and realises that someone wants to kill her, which is the way the story starts.

Do you think there�s TV potential in that one as well?

Mel I don�t know. The TV rights did sell but I don�t think anything is really happening with it right now.

Roswell, The Next Generation
  If there was a spin off from Roswell who would you like to see in it and why?

Laura The joke that we have on staff is that there�s the Valenti and son spin off, Valenti and Kyle. They�re PI�s or something like that.

Mel That�s one we always joke around about. Other than that � I personally think that the Crashdown should become a franchise and there should be Crashdown restaurants across Route 66 or something like that, with all the stories that happen in them.

Laura If they have children you could always have the next generation. Roswell, the next generation. That�s what we�ll do.

Romantic centre
  What do you see as the main themes of Roswell?

Laura I think its heart is very much in the human elements of it. That that�s what Jason [Katims] really responds to and that�s where he wants the show to go mostly.

They�re aliens but they�re also just teenagers, and I think everyone feels like an alien when they�re a teenager. He wants to keep it focused on the relationships between the characters and what their emotions are, what their friendships are.

All of this is clearly against a science fiction backdrop but I would say that its actual heart is the romances, especially the Max and Liz romance. They�re sort of the Romeo and Juliet and everything is hung on them. One of the episodes in season two, The End of the World, that Jason wrote, it�s the perfect balance.

Mel I agree, it�s the perfect mix of science fiction and romance.

Laura It works incredibly well on both levels and that�s the goal, to have that kind of balance.

Love for Isabel
  What are you working on at the moment on Roswell?

Mel We�re focusing a lot on Isabel at the beginning of season three. Isabel�s got a new man in her life.

The boy aliens have always been allowed to have girlfriends but poor Isabel�s always been very unlucky in love. Now she�s finally come into her own and got a real relationship and it will probably get very serious very fast.

Laura The characters have changed a lot over the course of season two. A lot happens to them, and they have to grow up faster than they thought. In season three we�re dealing with a whole new level of maturity for all of them.

Mel They�re all making big decisions about what they want their lives to be like. At the beginning of season three, you see them in a way that you�ve never seen them before.

Alien head lollies
  What sort of merchandising would you like to see?

Laura If you look around the Crashdown here there�s all kinds of crazy alien merchandise already. It makes me laugh every time I look at a giant alien head filled with lollypops. It�s very silly.

Mel They�re thinking of doing a soundtrack, which will be great because they have such great music on Roswell.

(Mel thinks for a moment) Waitress uniform, Roswell antennas, lunch boxes�

Laura If we had lunch boxes that would make me thrilled, that would be fun.

Real Roswell
  What do you think really happened at Roswell?

Laura You know, we�ve never talked about this.

I believe the weather balloon story really.

Mel I don�t know. I spent a few weeks in Roswell when I was first writing the books and it seems most of the locals are dubious. I�m just not sure, I�m undecided.

Laura I like the weather balloon theory because it seems completely believable to me that the government would try to cover up a weather balloon ridiculous spy plan of theirs. That they were covering up a weather balloon is very funny and completely in line with what the military would do.

Mel They made such a huge thing of it, instead of saying "It was a weather balloon to spy on the Soviets".

You don�t want to know really, it would be sad if they found it out because you like the mystery so maybe we don�t want to know exactly what happened there.

End of the World
  What were your favourites episodes of season two and why?

Laura End of the world. It�s one of the first episodes but in my mind it was the one that actually kicked off the season and set the tone for it, it�s deeply romantic.

It�s a very classic perfect science fiction set-up of your future self coming back to change the actions of yourself in the present tense. It�s a great, simple, elegant science fiction construct. What Jason Katims, who wrote the episode, did with it was to take the science fiction construct and put the Romeo and Juliet romance right into the same construct.

So Max comes back from the future and tells Liz "I love you, we�re completely meant to be together, we got married, we had this wonderful life together and guess what, you have to stop it from ever happening again. If we get together the world will come to an end".

Literally, what could be the more dire consequences of star cross love?

Mel And [Max] says, "you know you can never tell me because I wouldn�t believe you, I wouldn�t let you go."

So it�s a heartbreaking episode because Liz is put in this horrible position of having to push Max away without being able to tell him why.

Laura It�s a great Max and Liz story and it�s a great science fiction story and the stakes are so high both with the romance�

Mel ...and the end of the world.

Laura The stakes are high for the planet Earth and also for Max and Liz�s romance. It�s just this perfect melding of the two, so that�s my favourite episode of the whole show so far.

Roswell Christmas
  What about A Roswell Christmas Carol appeals to you?

Mel Another episode from season two that we both really loved is the Christmas episode. Because it�s very touching with Max healing these kids who have cancer but it�s really funny too. Isabel as the Christmas nazi [is very funny].

Laura Isabel is very focused on having the perfect Christmas, and she will have the perfect Christmas no matter what it takes. They all call her the Christmas nazi behind her back, and this is the season that she realises that they consider her to be the Christmas nazi.

Mel Just the looks that she gives the different characters were very funny. She would like turn and give them a look�

Laura ...and they all fall into line and do just what she wants. So, it was very funny and it was a nice use of the aliens� powers. Max has been a healer all along so it was refreshing to get back to that aspect of his personality, that he is this force for good.

But there was also the question of how much should he do. He�s not god, should be healing people or shouldn�t he? It�s a morally ambiguous question for him.

Mel At the beginning of the episode there�s a man that he doesn�t heal because it would reveal who he was. He�s haunted by the thought of this guy, and it brings up the question of if you have the power what are your responsibilities. How do you keep yourself safe and still be a good person?

By the book?
  Out of all the actors that got cast in the show who was closest to your vision?

Laura I think Michael. Brendan Fehr has a gruff yet funny and charming persona that our Michael had too.

Mel It�s that good-heartedness covered by a lot of testosterone. I think that Max is quite a bit like the Max in the books.

Laura The Max and Liz relationship is pretty close.

Mel It�s definitely the heart of the book series too.

But some of the others, like Maria, are very different. She�s sort of funny in both, but in different ways. I do think the cast is amazing. Whether they�re like what I was thinking of when I was doing the books or not, in that alternate universe way, I just enjoy them both.

Kyle in the books was just awful but he�s one of my favourite characters now. He�s very funny.

Publication plans
  Will you return to book writing in the future?

Laura I�m much more into the TV and films thing.

I edited books for many years and I�ve edited hundreds of books and I don�t want to write them.

Mel I�m just finishing up the Fingerprint series, I have one left.

I think that some time in the future I would still want to write books. It�s so different, you can go into people�s thoughts and you don�t have to worry about budget.

But I got really lonely being a book writer. I like the collaborative process of being on staff, it�s much more suited to my personality. I would like to do TV much more and maybe squeeze in an occasional book once in a while.