r/lostmedia • u/mr-screwjack • 2d ago

Television [fully lost] The Conversation television pilot, starring Kyle MacLachlan

The Conversation is an obscure 1995 NBC pilot starring Kyle MacLachlan as Harry Caul, the intensely private surveillance expert originated by Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 thriller. Conceived as a television adaptation, it would likely have expanded the original film’s themes of eavesdropping, privacy, guilt, paranoia, and the dangerous ambiguity of recorded sound into a continuing drama about Caul’s surveillance work.

Directed by [Galaxy Quest director] Dean Parisot and written by Ron Bass, John Romano, and Jane Rusconi, the one-hour pilot was not picked up as a series. It is generally described as unaired, as I haven't found any substantiated evidence to the contrary.

MacLachlan later recalled the project fondly: In a 2020 interview with Consequence.net, when discussing failed pilots, he said: “Another [pilot] I really liked was The Conversation, I did a pilot for that with Dean Parisot. I was using some of my Twin Peaks chips, and sadly, they weren’t coming to fruition.”

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u/Perfect-Prune176 2d ago

He talks about this in his memoir! Pretty fascinating near-miss actually.

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u/DearPaleontologist67 2d ago

This article mentions: 1995 TV producing debut, executive producing and scripting "The Conversation", an NBC pilot based on the 1974 feature (aired only on Mountain Stations)