Michael Crichton (Coma) Coma

Crichton abandoned medicine because he thought the profession was dehumanizing patients

Michael Crichton graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1969 and never practiced a day. He had been writing thrillers under pseudonyms since his second year of medical school, publishing fast enough to pay tuition while keeping his real name clean in case the writing career collapsed. By the time he had his MD, the writing career had not collapsed. What had collapsed was his faith in the profession. (wikipedia, michaelcrichton.com)

In his 1988 memoir Travels, Crichton described the disillusionment that drove him out of medicine and eventually into Coma:

"Much of medicine, as it was practiced in those days, I simply didn't agree with. I didn't agree that abortion on demand should be illegal. I didn't agree that patients had no rights and should shut up and do whatever the doctors told them to do. I didn't agree that, if a procedure presented a hazard, the patient shouldn't be worried with the facts. I didn't agree that terminally ill people should have treatment forced upon them, even if they wished to die in peace. I didn't agree that, when malpractice occurred, doctors should cover it up." — Michael Crichton, Travels (1988) (book, not available online)

That passage reads like a plot outline for Coma. Every grievance -- patient ignorance, institutional cover-ups, doctors playing god -- shows up in the film's conspiracy.

His directing career ran from Westworld through The Great Train Robbery

Coma was Crichton's third feature as director. He had debuted with the TV movie Pursuit (1972), then written and directed Westworld (1973), the first theatrical film to use 2D computer-generated imagery. He went from Coma directly into The Great Train Robbery (1979), adapting his own Victorian heist novel with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. After that came Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984), before he left directing entirely to focus on writing novels and creating ER (1994). (wikipedia)

All five features share a premise: a system built for human benefit escapes human control. In Westworld, the robots malfunction. In Coma, the hospital harvests organs. In Looker, digital imaging erases real bodies. Keith Phipps at The Dissolve identified the engine that drives all of Crichton's work:

"Systems squeeze out the human element... Crichton hates the way systems squeeze out the human element, from the practices taught at Harvard to science that closes off the possibility of an unseen world." — Keith Phipps, The Dissolve (2014)

Crichton fought MGM to keep the female lead

Robin Cook's novel had a female protagonist. MGM wanted to recast the lead as male and pursue Paul Newman. Crichton refused. In a January 1978 Harvard Crimson interview, he framed the fight in terms that went beyond a single casting decision:

"I wanted to do a movie about a woman who wasn't a hooker or a housewife." — Michael Crichton, The Harvard Crimson (1978)

He elaborated on the MichaelCrichton.com page for the film:

"When we started work in 1976, the recent women's movies had not yet appeared. Coma had that rarity — a strong heroine with an important job and hence a personality structure similar to a traditional male's." — Michael Crichton, MichaelCrichton.com (n.d.)

The fight paid off. Coma arrived a year before Alien gave audiences Ripley, and Bujold's Susan Wheeler became one of the first genre heroines whose authority derived from professional competence rather than physical dominance.

He adapted someone else's novel and found it liberating

Crichton's other directorial projects were all adapted from his own work. Coma was the exception. He found the distance useful:

"I found it much easier to adapt someone else's work than to adapt my own... Writing original screenplays is more fun. But Coma to me is very interesting... it's the kind of story that I like, because it's based on a premise that is not impossible." — Michael Crichton, MichaelCrichton.com (n.d.)

His medical background gave the adaptation a procedural authority that most genre directors could not replicate. He used his clinical rotations at Boston City Hospital to ground the film's environments, drawing on memory to, as he put it, "establish a tone, a political atmosphere." (thecrimson)

The film made him an enemy of the medical profession

After Coma opened in February 1978, Crichton became what one account described as "public enemy number one to anesthesiologists and chronic-care clinics." Organ donation rates reportedly dropped 50 to 60 percent in some cities. Hospitals removed the number 8 from operating room doors. The Illinois Eye Bank was deluged with inquiries from people wanting to sell their eyes. (movieweb, afi)

Sixteen years later, Crichton created ER, which portrayed a friendlier, more relatable side of the medical profession. Observers noted the symmetry: Coma as the indictment, ER as the rehabilitation. Whether the rehabilitation was deliberate or coincidental, the two projects bracket Crichton's lifelong engagement with the institution that trained him and that he could never fully trust. (movieweb)