This image was lost some time after publication.

Maybe all that crap Don Johnson was spewing after the Emmys last weekend television becoming the dominant medium, movies becoming a "boutique business," his new WB series Just Legal being our generation's Birth of a Nation, etc. wasn't so crazy after all. The LA Times reports today that the once taboo act of film auteurs "crossing over" to the realm of television (I believe the technical term is 'slumming') is not so taboo anymore:

Early last year, Taylor Hackford was getting restless. He'd spent months in a suit on behalf of his film "Ray." Setting up the film's distribution deal, taking studio meetings and campaigning for Oscars came with the territory, but what Hackford really wanted to do was ... direct.

When longtime friend David McKenna asked him to helm the pilot for "E-Ring," his NBC Pentagon drama that premiered Wednesday night, Taylor signed on. "I found myself almost a year and a half without being on the floor actually shooting and directing actors, and I didn't like that," Hackford says. "I loved the idea of jumping into something fast and getting intensely into it."

The Oscar-nominated director has a lot of company. In what has become an annual rite of migration over the last few years, feature filmmakers flock to a once-scorned realm to direct (and often executive produce) TV series. This fall, the transfusion of feature film talent continues unabated with a new crop of drama pilots shaped by movie directors.

While moving from movies to television may no longer be considered a demotion, the reverse trend is proving to be a gigantic step up; television writers and directors are now proving themselves boffo-profitable on the big screen. For every Taylor Hackford or Brett Ratner delighting to the snappy turnaround of their new medium, there's a J.J. Abrams and Judd Apatow, for whom working fast and under budget is second nature. Of course, being talented helps, too.