David E. Kelley on Creating Ally McBeal
and that Darn Dancing Baby
by Billy Ingram
No question, Ally McBeal was a seminal sitcom / dramedy of the late-1990s. A Top 20 hit beginning in 1997, the show attracted some 13 million viewers at the series’ peak. Winning 2 Golden Globes, the first after the show had only been on the air for 13 weeks, Ally McBeal was the first hour-long series to win the Emmy for Best Comedy.
The internet Dancing Baby was perhaps the first that most Americans were introduced to the World Wide Web. It was super-hip for a minute that had everyone talking over the water cooler. That’s the kind of heat TV producers dream about.
Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley was interviewed about this groundbreaking series to the Television Academy.
David E. Kelley talks about the voiceovers used early on in the series: The voiceovers too were meant for a departure of what Allie was thinking versus what she was saying or how she was behaving. We were able to actually discard the voiceovers pretty quickly in the series. We used 'em occasionally as we went on, but less and less so. And that was because we had Calista who had a face that you didn't have to tell the audience what she was thinking. Calista could say one thing and with her face fill the audience in on what was going on inside. So that again, was just, we got lucky there. That was an ability of an actress that just allowed us as storytellers to be better at our craft.
David E. Kelley on the dancing baby: Well, the Dancing Baby… I wish I could remember the name of the person who created it, but you can go and find it online, nothing. And my assistant came in, said, “you've got to see this.” I didn't even have a computer or get on the internet, “you've got to see this crazy dancing baby.” And, uh, she pulled it offline somewhere. And I looked at that and I said, oh my God.
I was both riveted by it, but I was kind of scared at, at the same time. All I knew is I had to have it. And I thought that that could be the manifestation of Allie's biological clock. That would be pretty cool because here she is excited, maybe she wants to have a baby, but it's the most frightening thing known to mankind at the same time that that's the perfect fantasy for that. So we reached out to the person who had designed it and they said yes. And then the Dancing Baby became part of the show. But that was somebody else's creation where we were the complete manufacturer of that.
In a separate interview series star Calista Flockhart said, “I went into David’s office and he showed the Dancing Baby to me on the computer screen. I had to mimic the baby’s dancing and thought it was really brilliant - and the baby was a bit creepy but it worked well.
One of the first viral videos in the mid-late 1990s, the "Dancing Baby" was created by animator Michael Girard; it was also known as "Baby Cha-Cha" or "the Oogachacka Baby”.
