The first time I remember ever having any thoughts that ultimately wound up relating to EDEN, I was reading the paper and saw an article about a woman who had been in a coma for three months. When she finally woke up, they asked her how she felt, and she said, 'Itchy.' It made me laugh and I clipped out the article and pinned it to my bulletin board. Soon I started thinking to myself, where was she all that time? She wasn't dead. She had brain wave activity. Was the period of time she was in a coma just like the snap of the fingers to her, or did she experience a sense of time passing?

All my life I've had flying dreams, and soon the feeling those dreams always evoke in me began to couple itself with my thoughts about this woman. At around the same time my best friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She ultimately went into a coma and died. That, too, became a part of the mix that became EDEN.

Years later, after I finished the script and we were already in production, I suddenly realized that the character of Helen was based on still one more piece that I had long ago forgotten. When I was just a kid, maybe 9 or so, there was a girl who was the older daughter of our dentist. She was 14. She had polio and wore a leg brace. I had a terrible crush on her and thought she was the most beautiful, brave person I ever knew. I was shocked when I realized that the feeling I had for Helen, this character I had created, was exactly the same feeling I had for this girl from my childhood.

That's part of where this story - about a woman who can't deal with the life she's been given and finds a completely unique way to escape from her trapped existence - came from.