'Pushing Daisies' was honored with an award from the Casting Society of America, winning an Artios Awards, the Hollywood Reporter says || James Cromwell, who played Zefram Cochrane in 1996's 'Star Trek: First Contact,' broke his collarbone in a fall off his bicycle last weekend, Yahoo! News reports. He's expected to fully recover. || ABC's 'Lost' will return to Wednesday nights starting Jan. 21. A clip show will run at 8 followed by a two-hour premiere. || All of the Star Trek movies could be coming to Blu-Ray as early as next year, Digital Bits says. Paramount had supported HD-DVD, but has conceded defeat to Blu-Ray, and is now moving to the format || SciFi Channel's 'Warehouse 13' has completed its creative staff with the likes of Jack Kenny, David Simkins, Drew Greenberg, Stephen Scaia, and others || 'Pushing Daisies' was honored with an award from the Casting Society of America, winning an Artios Awards, the Hollywood Reporter says || James Cromwell, who played Zefram Cochrane in 1996's 'Star Trek: First Contact,' broke his collarbone in a fall off his bicycle last weekend, Yahoo! News reports. He's expected to fully recover. || ABC's 'Lost' will return to Wednesday nights starting Jan. 21. A clip show will run at 8 followed by a two-hour premiere. || All of the Star Trek movies could be coming to Blu-Ray as early as next year, Digital Bits says. Paramount had supported HD-DVD, but has conceded defeat to Blu-Ray, and is now moving to the format || SciFi Channel's 'Warehouse 13' has completed its creative staff with the likes of Jack Kenny, David Simkins, Drew Greenberg, Stephen Scaia, and others ||

'Pushing Daisies' Has Roots In 'Dead Like Me'

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By ALAN STANLEY BLAIR
Source: TV Guide
Oct-17-2007

Life as a pie-maker is hard enough, but when you have the rather unusual ability of bringing the dead back to life, things can be just a little bit more difficult. And who would have thought that the original idea for raising the dead came from taking the lives of the living?

According to TV Guide, the concept of ABC’s latest series "Pushing Daisies" was initially intended to be a small plot twist in Bryan Fuller’s deathly series "Dead Like Me" that was cancelled after only two seasons on Showtime. The show focused on the life of George Lass (Ellen Muth) who was given the job of grim reaper after being killed by a rogue toilet seat from a Russian space station.

Although the terms of her job were to take the souls ready to leave the living world, Fuller said that eventually George was set to discover "she wasn't able to collect some souls because somebody was coming along and bringing people back to life [with a] touch."

Fuller left the show to work on another wacky drama for Fox called "Wonderfalls," however that series also bit the dust before its time. When he joined the “Wonderfalls” team, Fuller kept a hold of his anti-reaper idea until the right time to develop it came along. And when it came to crunch time, Fuller couldn’t help but pull on one of his favorite films for inspiration -- "Amélie."

"Really sad things happen in it," Fuller said. "But you never get bogged down in the sadness. Like Daisies, it's really about human kindnesses."

But when it comes to "Pushing Daisies," one thing was clear from the start: He wanted it to be original, funny and have a completely unique feel to it. To do this, Fuller called on the talents of production designer Michael Wylie who used "conflicting patterns in different colors” to create the most eccentric looking sets possible.

"My goal was a storybook come to life. I wanted everything to look almost like an illustration,” he said. “There's a chef that comes in and [makes] new pies every time we shoot there."

To read more of the interview, check out TV Guide by clicking here.

"Pushing Daisies" airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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