Tintinalli takes on Tinseltown
It's been more than
a month since Judith Tintinalli was cast under the lights, but
she will tell you she still feels the glow.
| 
Gone Hollywood,
Back to Reality Judith
Tintinalli takes a quick break for a photo op in her real
ER, UNC Hospitals' Emergency Department. The professor
and chair of Emergency Medicine is the author of the standard
guide in the field, and it's been used by "ER"
since the show's debut in 1994. |
Being on a hit TV show,
even for only a few fleeting seconds on a single episode, can
have that kind of electrifying effect, she said. And Tintinalli
suspects that effect could linger even if her brief appearance
should end up on the cutting room floor by the time the episode
she is in runs on Feb. 5.
Since she returned from
Hollywood, everybody she saw at UNC Hospitals had some question
or comment about "Dr. T" being on "ER."
The mere prospect of her
appearance was enough to catapult her into a degree of local
fame as the "News & Observer's" Tar Heel of the Week on
Dec. 14.
"It has a contagion,"
Tintinalli said. "It was certainly an honor to be there."
| Cameo
could appear Feb. 5
Joe Sachs, a supervising producer and
writer for "ER," said the show will try to feature Judith
Tintinalli on camera "so her friends and family will recognize
her" in the episode now expected to air Feb. 5 at 10 p.m.
on NBC, but he cautioned that he couldn't guarantee that
Tintinalli's cameo will make it into the final cut.
|
Of course, real-world accomplishment
might not earn you a sidewalk star on Hollywood Boulevard, but
Tintinalli is a star in her own right within UNC Hospitals.
As the "N&O" story
revealed, Tintinalli runs the Emergency Department that she
was instrumental in transforming 12 years ago. But it is her
book that caught the eye of "ER" executive producer Joe Sachs.
Tintinalli is editor-in-chief
of "Emergency Medicine: A Comprehensive Study Guide" -- a 10-pound,
2,043-page reference book that is as ubiquitous in a modern
emergency room as a Bible is in church.
In real ERs, it is commonly
referred to as simply "the Tintinalli."
Since "ER's" debut on
Sept. 19, 1994, the show's scriptwriters have referred to it
often to give the show its air of accuracy and authenticity.
Her invitation to make
a cameo appearance on "ER" was the show's crafty way of letting
Tintinalli -- and her book -- take a well-deserved bow. Appropriately
enough, she gets to play an emergency room doctor for the show.
Getting
it right
Outside, the Warner Brothers set for "ER" looked like a
giant airplane hanger; it's the same building where "Casablanca"
was shot in 1941, two years before Tintinalli was born.
When she first walked
on the set, her mouth dropped.
The set featured not only
trauma rooms and defibrillators but the same tile and colors
that she saw as a young doctor.
"I said, `Oh my
god, this is an ER of the 1970s. It was so real."
As were the actors and
actresses.
They wore no makeup and
none of the women had their hair done. And, as the filming began,
she discovered that they even got the body posture right.
"They held their
pens the way a nurse would do. They sling their stethoscopes
the right way."
They didn't roll out the
red carpet, but they did bring out two directors chairs for
Tintinalli and her husband Burton Fox, who accompanied her on
the trip.
"That part was very
cool," she said.
Tintinalli said she sat
in rapt attention as she watched what could best be described
as a precise choreography of chaos.
The day they were there,
they were supposed to do two shots, each lasting for only a
few minutes when the show airs. They were supposed to do the
first shot in the morning and the second shot in the afternoon.
But the first shot proved
to be problematic. They ended up filming 15 to 20 takes from
8 a.m. until 3 p.m.
Cameras are everywhere
for each shot. There is a camera for close-up shots, for background
shots, and a hand-held camera with a gyroscope in it that can
give a scene its frenetic energy and movement.
Over the course of a season,
the cumulative episodes for "ER" are equal to 11 full-length
movies, Tintinalli learned.
After a break, they returned
to the set at
4 p.m. and finished up
the second shot by
6:30 p.m. This is the
scene where Tintinalli is supposed to appear.
The idea was to get her
into a scene where her face could be seen long enough for family
and friends to recognize her back home. Getting her in that
kind of shot was a more complicated business than Tintinalli
imagined.
In the scene, she is standing
behind a counter a few feet away from actress Maura Tierney,
who has received an Emmy Award nomination for her portrayal
of Abby Lockhart, a former medical student who resumed her nursing
career in the ER.
As the camera zoomed into
a close-up of Tierney, it would pan across Tintinalli.
It's a funny scene in
which Tierney's character and another woman talk about the plight
of single women and how "right now they will take any kind of
sex."
"You learn what
a gift acting is. You have to know the timing and you have to
know it intuitively. You have to know what to do and you have
to be able to repeat a scene over and over again and do it with
the same energy and spontaneity each time."
When her shot was completed,
she and her husband were escorted to the set where actor Noah
Wyle -- who plays Dr. John Carter in the show -- was shooting
a scene treating AIDS victims in Africa.
The scene was supposed
to be outdoors -- on a hot and rainy night.
But they were indoors
-- and a water pipe overhead was spewing out water that resembled
rain but was freezing cold.
Everybody inside the building
wore boots, ski pants and parkas to stay warm.
"When it came time
for their shoot the actors got to take off their clothes and
pretend they were hot."
It was there, too, where
they got to meet film star Thandie Newton, who was playing Makemba
"Kem" Likasu, an administrator in the Democratic Republic of
Congo's Ministry of Health who falls in love with Carter.
Newton came up to her
during a break in the shooting and told Tintinalli, "It is such
an honor for you to come to our set."
"I said, `No, you've
got it backwards. It's an honor to be invited.'"
Book will endure
Of course, it still remains to be seen whether Tintinalli
will be in her scene on Feb. 5.
But, alas, there is an
ephemeral quality to a TV show, even one as long-running as
"ER."
But not "the Tintinalli."
Long after "ER" hits the
dustbin of cable, "the Tintinalli" will remain front and center
in real emergency rooms everywhere.
As Tintinalli explains
it, "The book has a life of its own."
The book, first published
by McGraw-Hill in 1979, is now in its seventh edition and has
been translated in languages from Turkish to Polish to Portuguese.
Years ago, the American
College of Emergency Physicians passed a resolution that her
name will remain on the book even when the time comes that she
can no longer serve as its editor-in-chief.
The book, with its distinct
red and white colors, has made several brief appearances on
the show as well. And every time, Tintinalli said, her phone
has started to ring.
