Ironically, one of TV’s most popular franchises in history may owe its life to a fl aw in its creator’s vocabulary. When CSI mastermind Anthony E. Zuiker signed up for an elective in forensics at Las Vegas’ Chaparral High School, he thought he would be making like Quincy, TV’s then-popular medical examiner. Instead, Zuiker had inadvertently joined the forensic debate team, thus accidentally discovering a love of writing and speech.
 
During high school and college, Zuiker advanced through the national circuit of forensic debate, mostly writing his own material to perform at championship matches. When a friend, future CSI scribe Dustin Abraham, gained attention in Los Angeles while performing one of Zuiker’s competition monologues about a mentally retarded man watching his wife give birth, a William Morris agent tracked down the story’s author and offered Zuiker the chance to write for the silver screen, launching the one-time tram operator’s new career in Hollywood.

The Genesis
A few years later, Zuiker again found unintended inspiration when his wife and high school sweetheart, Jennifer, urged him to sit with her to watch the Discovery Channel forensic science show The New Detectives. Zuiker obeyed and ended up reconnecting with his childhood love of forensics—forensic science, that is.

“Once I sat down and watched the show with her, I was hooked,” he says. “At one point they pulled this long, blond hair follicle out of the driver’s seat and explained that there was a tag cell attached, which means that the hair was yanked out in a struggle. And I said to myself, ‘You can really realize all that just by one hair follicle?’ From that point on, I was very intrigued by how forensic science could provide a whole different spin for a cop show.”
 
Shortly thereafter, another of Zuiker’s screenplays caught the attention of Jonathan Littman, and Zuiker pitched the Bruckheimer Television exec his concept of a show about forensic science detectives in his hometown. “I chose Las Vegas because I know it, and because I wanted the show to be about the graveyard shift,” he explains. “When I researched actual CSIs there—in real life called Field Services—they were riding around at three in the morning, getting lobster bisque at Caesar’s Palace for their lunch break and getting calls about missing hookers.”

That first pitch presented to ABC also included the visual effects that have become a hallmark of the CSI franchise: those close-ups on bullet-fi ring, fl uid-spattering and fi ber-tweezing that give the series their visual edge. “We wanted to make sure we showed the minutiae of the science that was so compelling as to put people away, at such a point of view that you go, ‘Wow!’”
 
Finding a Home
 Zuiker, inexperienced in TV at the time, remembers that as the pair ultimately pitched the series to CBS President of Entertainment Nina Tassler, “I shook her hand, shut my eyes, and just said, ‘The show is called CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.’ When I was done, I opened my eyes, fully expecting her to be gone. But she said, ‘I love it. Start writing.’” In the resulting script, which he completed in just three days, the fi lm buff paid homage to his infl uences, drawing upon the fl ashback and point-of-view-shifting techniques used in Pulp Fiction and Run Lola Run.
 
“I was just creating what I thought would be cool for the viewer,” he says. “It was ignorance-is-bliss type thinking. Because the prevailing wisdom was that fl ashbacks and point-of-view versions are crutches in television—that they never work. Now CSI does them, and they’re a staple of television. Going against all the things that are a recipe for success is what made the show a success.”
 
As that success has grown to include two spinoffs, set in Miami and New York, Zuiker and his team are now spread across three CSI shows. Yet Zuiker is confi dent that there will be great shows for years to come. “We just have to stick with the timeless formula that was created in the pilot,” he says. “That really big teaser that grabs you, the red herrings, and a great mystery with twists and turns, really championing your city—all with the Bruckheimer ‘feature television’ cinematic look and feel.”
 
In the seven seasons since its debut, “CSI has defi - nitely changed the face of television,” Zuiker says. “It killed a lot of older shows—and TV can never go back and be any other way ever again.”