Jake Huebner, Producer, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2021-2022, Sloan Mentorship, Columbia University

Project Type: Pilot

Genre: Drama

Length: 60 pages

Field of Science: Engineering

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

The opening focuses on events away from Frank Lloyd Wright the architect, but these are the events which kick the dramatic conflict of the series into action. It’s 1914. A young John Lloyd Wright, the 22-year-old son of Frank Lloyd Wright, stands on a corner of a busy street in Chicago. He is outside of The Rookery, a magnificent building containing the office of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture practice. Inside, we see a Frank Lloyd Wright far from the man we think we know and love. Smeared in the press for his infidelities and without a new building project in years, his office looks like a ghost town when we first meet him. John is excited that his father has invited him to his office and it’s clear that it has been quite some time since they have seen each other. When John, an aspiring architect in his own right, enters his office, it is clear that Frankis using him for the appearance of being a family man. When Wright’s potential client clearly sees through his ploy and walks out, Frank blames John. When John says that he intends to become an architect, he and Frank enter a bitter argument that ends with John walking out, pledging to move his family to California and never speak to his father again.

At Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, the married couple hired as groundskeeper and caterer, Julian and Gertrude Carlton, are hard at work preparing for a weekend of entertaining the guests of Mamah Borthwick, Wright’s mistress. We quickly see that something is not right with Julian. He talks to himself, sharpens his axe, and stockpiles more kerosene than the Wrights and any guests will ever need. Gertrude wants to get him some help, in this era meaning he may be committed to a restrictive and inhumane lunacy asylum, and she is relieved when he explains his strange behavior away as a result of being overworked. We end our teaser as kerosene begins to trickle into a guestroom at Taliesin that has been wedge locked from the outside. The guests scream as we cut to the outside and we see that Julian has set the room ablaze and is running down the hallway towards Mamah carrying an axe.

We’ll begin to interweave this period in Frank’s life with a more youthful Frank, a man just a bit younger than his son John is when we meet him in the teaser. It’s 1886 and he is building his first project, the interior of Unity Chapel on his family’s plot of land in Spring Green, WI. Through the use of CGI in the form of reverse time-lapse photography, we will literally be deconstructing Taliesin in order to establish Wright’s deep connection to his family land as we get a glimpse at the formative years he spent there. We’ll see both the preternatural talent Wright possesses for design as well as the unhealthy relationship put upon him by his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones Wright. Annatouts Frank as a boy genius, but more so than offering encouragement she seeks to realize her own unfulfilled aspirations through her socially awkward wunderkind son.

Jumping back to what remains of Taliesin in our present (1914), we’re in the same physical place where Wright built the still-standing chapel as a boy. We see what’s left of the burned Taliesin just a few hundred feet away. We see the aftermath of Julian’s rampage which has left 7 guests murdered, including Wright’s mistress Mamah. Much of the property is still burning. As underequipped rural firefighters try to combat the blaze, investigators and detectives descend on the scene. They find Julian in a nearby shed where we first meet him drinking a form of arsenic. Arresting him in the act, he is thrown in jail as they begin to try to understand his motives, which is increasingly difficult due to the poison damaging his esophagus to the point that he is unable to speak. When press descends on the small town, racial tensions are stoked to the point of a mob showing up at the jailhouse Julian is being held in.
Wright’s business associate in Chicago delivers to him the horrible news. Wright is an emotional wreck. He remains largely silent but makes arrangements to travel to the site to begin to make sense of the tragedy and loss of his prized building. John and his wife learn of the news and discuss whether or not to go on with their move or not. John swears it off entirely but ultimately agrees to extend an olive branch back out to his father when he is convinced by his wife.

The pilot episode culminates with Wright’s wife, Catherine supporting Wright through this tragedy as they begin their journey from Chicago to Spring Green. She is assuaged by his promises that this will be the last time he ever cheats on her. The press and public allow Wright back into their good graces as expressed through a vast outpouring of sympathy. Wright receives a condolence letter from a woman whom we will find out to be both a prominent socialite and a covert morphine addict. As Wright begins to correspond with her, he almost immediately backslides into his next adulterous endeavor and establishes his immoral temptations and absence of self-control as major themes of the show.