'Road' less traveled

Scott Rosenberg can't quite believe that ABC picked up the pilot for "October Road." After all, the show doesn't have any toe tags or latex gloves.

"Given what's on TV, I do feel like we snuck one by," says Rosenberg, a Needham native and the show's executive producer. "Everyone's out there looking for the next 'Lost' or '24,' and here's this little show."

About a successful novelist who returns to his Massachusetts hometown to reconnect with friends and family, "October Road" has nothing in common with the hardboiled crime dramas that predominate these days. But it's got believers at ABC, which debuted the show last Thursday in the prized 10 p.m. time slot after "Grey's Anatomy." The show did more than respectably in its first week, retaining about 70 percent of the "Grey's Anatomy" audience, or 14.3 million people.

"It's the best time slot on television," Rosenberg says. "But that comes with pressures of its own."

No kidding. Two shows already have been bounced from the coveted spot, including "Six Degrees," whose star Bridget Moynahan made headlines recently when she revealed she's pregnant with Tom Brady's baby. Ironically, before Moynahan dated Brady, she was with Rosenberg for three years.

"I'm like the Cris Judd of Boston," says Rosenberg, referring to the dancer who was briefly married to Jennifer Lopez. "When Bridget began dating Tom Brady, my life became like a bad Ben Stiller movie."

Failed romances aside, Rosenberg, 42, has managed to stay busy -- and successful -- since graduating from Boston University and embarking, almost accidentally, on a career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

"I had no idea what I was going to do after college, so I followed a girl I liked out to California," he says. "Basically my career is predicated on a stalking situation."

Writing what he knew, Rosenberg eventually banged out the script for "Beautiful Girls," the fine 1996 film about a musician who goes home for his 10th high-school reunion and reconnects with his blue-collar buddies. If the story sounds familiar, it should: "October Road" is loosely based on "Beautiful Girls," which was loosely based on Rosenberg's life.

"Needham was a very different place when I was growing up," he says. "My friends were all snowplow drivers and landscapers."

The movie, whose ensemble cast includes Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, and Natalie Portman , upset some of Rosenberg's friends, who didn't appreciate seeing themselves on the big screen. Nonetheless, some of them appear again in "October Road."

"It cut a little close to the bone," admits Kurt Matthies, a friend of Rosenberg's for 30 years and the inspiration for Dillon's callous character in "Beautiful Girls" and Eddie on "October Road."

"Do you think Matt Dillon is a good guy in that movie? No? Then you understand my point of view," says Matthies, who owns a landscaping company in Needham. "But we got over it."

Today, Rosenberg remains tight with his high-school pals. The gang goes away for a ski weekend every winter and, believe it or not, the topic of Hollywood almost never comes up.

"When Scott's back here, he's the same [person] he was in high school," says Matthies. "Honestly, he's not that much different. He's just worth a little more."

As a writer, Rosenberg says it's been a relief to work on a show that doesn't rely on forensic science or explosions for its dramatic tension. As the screenwriter of egregious action-adventure movies such as "Con Air" and "Gone in Sixty Seconds," he's written his share of pyrotechnics.

"This has been tremendously liberating," he says. "You don't sit there and say, 'Well, it's been 20 pages, time for a car chase.' "

Maybe not, but the early reaction to "October Road" is that the show, which stars Bryan Greenberg as the novelist, Laura Prepon as his ex, Tom Berenger as the father, and Geoff Stults as Eddie, could stand a little more sizzle. Variety wrote that "the soft-focused drama feels like a Hallmark movie stretched into series form."

"Scott's brilliant at creating people that seem real but are fictional," says co-executive producer Gary Fleder , a fellow BU alum who directed the first few episodes of the show. "Instead of another cookie-cutter procedural show, we wanted to do something dealing with relationships, families, and the pressures we all feel to conform to what's normal."

Like "Beautiful Girls," the TV show is set in the fictional Massachusetts town of Knight s Ridge . But, also like the movie, "October Road" was shot elsewhere -- in suburban Atlanta.

"We wanted it to feel autumnal, perpetually like fall," Rosenberg says. "And, surprisingly, we got that New England feel in Atlanta."

Although he spends much of his time in New York or Los Angeles, Rosenberg often comes back to Brookline, where his mother lives, when he's got work to do.

"Most of my friends here are married with children," he says, "so there's nothing for me to do but write."

Rosenberg says he has stayed in touch with Moynahan since she took up -- then broke up -- with Brady, though he acknowledges that the actress' relationship with the star quarterback left him feeling ambivalent about his favorite football team.

"It was hard for me to be a Pats fan, just as certain people now probably aren't the biggest Victoria's Secret fans," he says, a reference to Brady's new girlfriend, lingerie model Gisele Bundchen.

But about Moynahan as a mother, Rosenberg has no doubts. "Aside from the fact that the baby's going to be the most beautiful child in the world, Bridget was a three-sport captain so the kid's going to be the most insane athlete," he says. "Bridget is tremendously loyal and fierce, and she'll be a great mother.

"On her own? She kind of reminds me of Sarah Connor from 'Terminator,' " Rosenberg says. "Who knows? Maybe [Brady] will get a look at the kid and want back in."

Considering his penchant for drawing on personal experience, it's reasonable to wonder if Rosenberg might someday write a rollicking tale about a writer, an actress, a Super Bowl champ, and a supermodel.

"If real life inspires great stories for artists, Scott has several years ahead of him of wonderful writing," Fleder says, laughing. "This is only the second act."