Esprit de Corpse

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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

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That's funny, we were just thinking the same thing about you. A mere three and a half years ago, Zuiker harbored showbiz dreams while making a living shuttling casino hoppers back and forth on the Mirage hotel tram. In 1998 he nabbed his first screenwriting credit for a straight-to-video actioner called The Runner. William Morris came calling after an actor friend of Zuiker's used a monologue from the film as his audition script. That led to Zuiker penning Wannabe, a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle about next-generation mobsters, currently in development. And then came CSI.

While writing the pilot, Zuiker received a call from Bruckheimer Films (producer of Coyote Ugly and Gone in 60 Seconds), which was in the market for a TV project. As luck would have it, the two went together like scalpels and cadavers. ''Some films that I've made are called process movies,'' says Jerry Bruckheimer. ''[They]take you inside a world that you'll never be a part of but would love to see how it works... Top Gun, Enemy of the State, Crimson Tide, that's what they do, and that's what this thing does.'' Bruckheimer, who has a development deal in place at ABC, brought the pilot to the Alphabet, which turned it down, as did NBC and Fox. Finally, it made its way to CBS senior VP of drama series development Nina Tassler, who bought it on the spot, hoping it could lure even more of the premenopausal demographic to the Eye. ''Survivor was just starting to bring that audience in, and they were looking for something younger and hipper,'' says Zuiker. ''So when I came in with this, it was just perfect timing.'' Adds Tassler of the Survivor fortuitousness: ''You couldn't have asked for a better platform to promote this show, maggots and all.''

Although CBS had Zuiker tone down some of the gore in the pilot after squeamish test audiences gave it a thumbs-down (a particularly bloody bathtub scene and a shot that showed maggots oozing out of a gunshot wound were the chief offenders), the network thinks the show's premise is, well, dead-on. ''Forensics are just good mystery shows. If you deconstruct what forensics is, you're just assembling clues and solving a crime,'' Tassler says. ''The good thing is that there are also gizmos and gadgets and procedures that enable you to visualize the accumulation of information.''

There are also some pretty captivating characters wielding those gizmos. ''[Grissom's] a guy who shut down his personal life in order to do what he does,'' says Petersen of his alter ego. As a result, it takes a corpse to really get him jazzed. ''He's more aware of the glory of humanity in death than he is in life.'' Providing the extroverted yin to Grissom's antisocial yang is Helgenberger's Willows, an ex-stripper/single mom for whom the CSI gig is the centerpiece of a new, responsible life. Despite the pair's good looks and breezy rapport, Zuiker has officially nixed the possibility of the two hooking up. Which is fine with Helgenberger. ''I don't think she really wants a relationship,'' she says. ''I think she would love to be able to just have casual sex on an as-needed basis.''

And, fainthearted test audiences notwithstanding, Zuiker vows to use blood and guts on an as-needed basis as well. ''There'll be gore, but it'll be gore in terms of science,'' he says. ''If we have to take a maggot and slice it in half — because maggots preserve what a body has ingested for two more weeks — that's a science that I don't want to not get into because I'm afraid of a maggot being cut in half.'' In fact, Zuiker doesn't plan to back down on any of the show's edginess. Or, as he puts it, ''We're not afraid to do anal swabs in the first 25 minutes.''