Crichton on screen: Westworld, ER and the adaptations

Most authors watch Hollywood adapt their books. Michael Crichton also directed movies, wrote screenplays, created one of the longest-running prime-time dramas in TV history and picked up an Academy technical award along the way. His official site points out a rare double: in both 1995 and 1996 he had the No. 1 book, movie and TV show at the same time (The Lost World, Congo and ER in 1995; Airframe, Twister and ER in 1996).

Here's a guided tour of Crichton on screen, from the films he directed to the adaptations made by others. No plot reveals.

Behind the camera

Crichton's directing credits begin with Pursuit (1972), a thriller about a government agent racing to stop a nerve-gas plot at a political convention. A year later came the one most people remember.

Westworld (1973). Crichton wrote and directed this MGM film about a futuristic resort where guests play out Old West fantasies with lifelike androids, until the machines start to malfunction. Yul Brynner plays the relentless Gunslinger, with Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as the vacationers. According to the AFI Catalog, Crichton first tried writing the idea as a novel, then decided it worked better as a film about people acting out their movie fantasies.

Westworld also has a place in effects history. To show the world through the Gunslinger's eyes, John Whitney Jr. worked with Information International, Inc. to break each frame into a coarse grid of colored blocks. The credits list them for "Automated image processing," and the effects site befores & afters calls the look "one of the first major 'firsts' in digital visual effects." Crichton's official biography goes further and calls Westworld the first film to use computer-generated special effects. That broader claim is widely repeated; befores & afters describes the technique more narrowly, as digital image processing.

Coma (1978). Crichton wrote and directed this adaptation of Robin Cook's medical thriller. After her best friend falls into a coma during routine surgery, Dr. Susan Wheeler finds similar cases at her prestigious Boston hospital and starts asking why. It's a doctor's-eye thriller from a director who had been through Harvard Medical School himself.

The Great Train Robbery (1979). Crichton adapted his own novel about a daring Victorian gold heist, loosely based on a real 1855 theft. Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down star. In the U.K., it was released as The First Great Train Robbery. TCM notes that Connery performed his scenes atop a speeding train himself, ducking under low bridges, with no stunt double.

Looker (1981). A plastic surgeon who has made small alterations for a group of models starts investigating when his patients begin turning up dead, and the trail leads to a high-tech computer company called Digital Matrix. Crichton wrote and directed it.

Runaway (1984). Tom Selleck plays a sergeant on the Runaway Squad, a unit that deals with defective robots, while Gene Simmons plays the electronics genius turning helpful machines into killers.

Physical Evidence (1989), a legal thriller, rounds out his directing credits.

An Academy technical award

In 1995, Crichton shared a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Jack C. Smith and Emil Safier for computerized motion picture budgeting and scheduling. It's a good reminder that he was a programmer, too.

ER: the script that waited 20 years

Crichton first wrote ER in 1974, he said, "as a record of my experiences as a medical student in a hospital emergency room." For years, studios turned it down. Crichton recalled that they found it "too technical, too chaotic and too fast-moving."

Around 1989, Steven Spielberg called about an emergency-room project, and Crichton mentioned he had one, too. They started developing it together, but Spielberg got interested in dinosaurs, and the project was shelved. It eventually landed at NBC as a TV pilot. Crichton is credited as creator and was an executive producer with John Wells.

ER premiered on Sept. 19, 1994, and ran until April 2, 2009, over 15 seasons. Crichton's official site counts 124 Emmy nominations for the show. Crichton's own Emmy came in 1996, when ER was named best drama series. The show also earned a Peabody, and his pilot script won a Writers Guild of America award. If you want to see what made the show feel new, start with the pilot. The speed and medical jargon that studios once balked at are the whole point.

Adapted by others

Crichton's books have been a steady source for Hollywood. Here are the major film and TV versions, in order.

• The Andromeda Strain (1971). Directed by Academy Award winner Robert Wise, with the satellite coming down near a remote New Mexico village.
• The Carey Treatment (1972). Blake Edwards directed this version of A Case of Need, the novel Crichton published as Jeffery Hudson.
• The Terminal Man (1974). Directed by Mike Hodges.
• Jurassic Park (1993). Steven Spielberg directed, and the screenplay is credited to Crichton and David Koepp. The AFI Catalog says Universal paid a $1.5 million purchase price plus $500,000 for Crichton to write the script. The Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films that followed credit characters created by Crichton.
• Rising Sun (1993). Philip Kaufman directed Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes and Harvey Keitel for 20th Century Fox. Screenplay credit is shared by Kaufman, Crichton and Michael Backes. The AFI Catalog notes that the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans protested the film.
• Disclosure (1994). Barry Levinson directed Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Crichton was a producer.
• Congo (1995). An expedition heads into the African Congo in search of diamonds pure enough to power advanced lasers.
• Twister (1996). Not an adaptation: an original story Crichton co-wrote with Anne-Marie Martin, about tornado chasers caught in a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma. He also produced it.
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). Based on his 1995 sequel novel.
• Sphere (1998). A team is sent to the ocean floor to study a spacecraft thought to be at least 300 years old. Crichton was a producer.
• The 13th Warrior (1999). Based on Eaters of the Dead, with Crichton producing.
• Timeline (2003). A group of archaeology students is trapped in 14th-century France.
• Westworld (2016–2022). Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy turned the 1973 film into an HBO series that ran four seasons before HBO canceled it in November 2022.

Where to start watching

1. Westworld (1973). Eerie, influential and the clearest look at Crichton as a director.
2. The ER pilot. Crichton's script, nearly 20 years in the making.
3. The Andromeda Strain (1971). Robert Wise's version of the breakout novel.
4. The Great Train Robbery (1979). Pure fun, and Connery on the roof of a moving train.