#41 The Incredible Kenneth Johnson

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:15

Alright, Marc, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week is no exception. Welcome, everybody, to Episode 41 of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin. Show. I'm your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for another week. Have fun, and find we're going to have this week. I gotta tell you, I got a special guest today. writer, director, producer, creator of V, the bionic woman, the Incredible Hulk TV series. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. KENNETH Johnson is with us today.

And we're talking bigfoot, Bionic Woman, V and so much more, you're gonna love it. And it's coming up in just a few minutes. And you know what else takes just a few minutes, folks interrupting a conversation you're having with a good friend, family member, boss, mentor, whomever it may be and say excuse me, boss, mentor, family member, whoever you may be. Have you taken the time to listen to live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show. It's an amazing pop culture podcast hosted by Jeff Dwoskin. I know you'll love it. And you should subscribe and listen to all the episodes today, right now stop what you're doing. And go and do it. What? Oh, well. I mean, maybe after the surgery doctor, sir. But then fully subscribe and commit to listening to live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show, you won't regret it. It's changed my life. And I'm sure it'll change yours. Change the script. However you feel comfortable with it. You know, that's the gist, you know. So if you do that, and make sure you're subscribed yourself, make sure you sign up for my mailing list. You can go to my website, Jeff is funny.com sign up for the mailing list. I also tweet a newsletter. You can sign up from there as well at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter. And it also if you want to support the show, it's another small way you can do that is buy me a coffee.com slash Jeff Dwoskin show you can buy me a coffee. I'll drink the coffee. I'll think about you. You know. So good stuff.

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If you are just stopping by if you saw Kenneth Johnson's the guest this week. Oh my gosh, I gotta check that out. Make sure you check out past episodes also last week with comedian Alonzo Bodden Episode 40 recently we had Depressed Darth on if you love Star Wars humor check out depressed Darth on Twitter and Instagram. Of course, we had the lovely Candy Clark from American Graffiti recently on the show as well sharing amazing stories from American Graffiti and the man who fell to earth with David Bowie.

But this week, I'm excited to talk to Kenneth Johnson. As a child of the 80s v. The miniseries had a huge impact on me. I was obsessed with V love it to this day. So when I got to talk to the creator of V, it was very special. And I'm excited to share this conversation with you ladies and gentlemen. Here's my chat with Kenny Johnson. All right. Hi. I'm excited to welcome to the show, writer, producer, director, creator of so many iconic characters and shows including the bionic woman, the beloved Incredible Hulk TV show, and of course, V. Welcome to the show. Kenny Johnson.

Kenneth Johnson 4:50

Thank you very much, Jeff. It's a delight to be here and look forward to hearing what you have to have any questions about.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:57

It's a delight to have you here. I'm excited. I was I was Going through I always thought of this show as sort of my Comic Con dream come true right to be able to talk to all these great people. And as I was kind of going through pairing I realize like, oh, I've gone out of my way at Comic Cons to meet Lindsay Wagner, the bionic woman, right. Got my picture with Lou Ferrigno, the Incredible Hulk. And I do want to kind of dive into V i rewatch the entire series I forgot how into 80s action starring Marc Singer I was.

I met him at a comic con too and had a photo with him. So I realized like I have a lot of your full collections.

Kenneth Johnson 5:35

The Kenny Johnson collection not available at any store to you. I've got I've got a great photo when we did the first Bionic Woman Convention on the bionic con, I think it was in 2006 in Florida, and, and I hadn't seen much of Lindsay in the last 25 or 30 years. They asked if I'd come in and and we had a wonderful sort of reunion. And also they surprised me by bringing in Louis Ferrigno and Marc Singer at the Kennedy Johnson Memorial Con and got a great photo with the four of us together, it's really startling to see and each one of them brings back such great memories of the times that we had and the fun that we had at Universal. And then later with Marc at Warner Brothers. It's funny I always looked at my jumpstarting at Universal as kind of like graduate school with pay because it was really kind of on the job training. And I wasn't interested in TV much to begin with. But Harve Bennett convinced me that he does. And he offered me a job where I could be the producer. And he told me that the producer hired the writer and the director and that was a an opportunity I could not resist my whole time there though was learning and Parvo is used to say you know, Kenny doing one hour episodic television is the greatest training in the world for making movies or for waging war. Because if you can get through that and do it and do it well and with any level of quality at the same time, he said it's just a great place to learn. So it really was like grad school with pay if I have not gone to any film school prior I was in the drama department is what is now Carnegie Mellon University and was then Carnegie tech, the drama department, which was the premier drama school in the country. It was a theater school, there was no film or goodness knows no television, they look down their nose at that. I had this great theatrical training before I had come out, but I hadn't hadn't really done the school training except what I had managed to pick up in college by running a Film Society for four years. And it was a good dual education.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:35

You look in the mirror and you created. Like if anyone created just one of the things you created. They'd be like, Hey, I'm pretty good. Like I did I I made just a bionic woman. You put on your pants, you create the bionic woman, the Hulk show v so much more.

Kenneth Johnson 7:51

Yeah, it was. It's interesting, because so often, if you're, you're really count yourself very lucky in this business, if you are able to create one project that become truly iconic, like the bionic woman did, I always was interested from the time I was in about ninth grade in theater, when I was when I was in ninth grade, I had saved up my money and bought a tape recorder, a reel to reel, you know, in wait about 7000 pounds and was the size of a suitcase, right? And I was you know, doing stuff did you do what kids do here with your voice and playing back and all of that. And at the same time, I was reading an anthology of shorter science fiction works. And one of them was the script that Howard Koch had written for Orson Welles called the War of the Worlds. And it was the the script that wells had done on the radio at CBS in 1939, and scared the bejesus out of the country because they thought he made it sound like it was a real invasion happening out. And I said, this is cool. And I got a bunch of my ninth grade friends together, and my tape recorder, and we made our version of the wels broadcast, I of course, reserved the role of Orson Welles for myself put it together and just sort of directed it with my other friends. And we added the music. Anyway, we It was a whole hour long show on tape. And I played it for one of my teachers in high school who said, this is really cool. And she let me play it for one class, and then a bunch of other classes wanted to hear it. And so pretty soon I became known as the drama guy. And I sort of fell into it. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was really functioning sort of like a producer, director, even at that early age. And the next year when I was a sophomore, they asked me if I would play the role of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, which was going to be the Christmas production that year at the high school. And I said yes, and I and I took on the role and was the standard version of the story by Dickens, but it just sort of laid there at the end it didn't have a really nice ending to it. So I did some digging and I turned up an old recording I think it was of Noel Coward reading it the story and at the end, he did this wonderful little short, 3040 seconds summation. This sort of brought the whole piece together and I asked the drama coach, I said, look at the end Play, can I just sort of step down for the curtains as Scrooge and just do this last piece and I surely saw, that's great when I thought it needs music. It's the music. So the choral department 60 voices of our chorus, terrific chorus was going to be singing. So I went to the choral coach and I said, What music Are you going to be doing? And they showed me some of the Christmas carols and stuff and I said, Okay, how about this one, you do a holy night, and when the curtains closed, you start going how they should start singing but not the words just doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. And I'll step out on the stage and I'll do my little speech and then you have them sing out when they get to this point in the music that we do to play. The curtain closes I step out under the under the stage of the old gymnasium, which we were we'd had and I had this one blue spotlight on me, and it was snowing outside, swear to God, yeah, they see their cars. They're going doo doo, doo doo, start doing my smite vital speech. Well, that was a Christmas for you. And I may tell you that Tiny Tim did not die. He's alive and growing stronger. Day by day. If I now every Christmas when I'm in an elevator and Whoa, holy night starts, I start doing my Scrooge and I timed it. So that just as I got to the end, this Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone. And at that point, the whole 60 voice chorus full voice sings Fall on your knees.

It was fine, Jeff and I were standing backstage. And my little heart was going pee pad. And I said I have to be in the theater. And that's when I decided in 10th grade. That was what it was. And so I was focused on that through junior and senior high years where I played the lead in the senior and junior class plays and then got luckily auditioned for and got into Carnegie. And I noted in the Carnegie catalog that you could specialize in directing, writing, lighting, design, costume design, production design, but if you were in the directing major, you had to take everybody's classes. And I decided to do that because I didn't know where I was gonna end up. But again, as you can see, by putting together that little Christmas thing, finding the speed the speech and then adding the music to it. And then it was already I was producing and directing. So I guess it was meant to be I just never looked back, you know, been very lucky, ultimately, and quickly decided that I really wanted to focus on film, which was frustrating to Carnegie because there was no film equipment. And my freshman year, I was befriended by a guy who was a senior I met in my first week as a freshman. He was a senior, and he ran this thing called the film arts society where he showed a classic movie three different screening times on Thursday afternoons, and four, I think it was three bucks. He got 14 movies each semester, right? And I helped him sell tickets. And when he was graduating, I said who's going to take over the film society? And he said, I thought you were I said, I don't have about film Bellotti of crazy and anyway I did ended up taking it over. And so through my sophomore, junior and senior years, I was running the Film Society and I was getting this sort of cinema tech training. But I'd always been a movie fan Jeff, what bill introduced me his name was Bill pence. What bill introduced me was the cinema. And I saw foreign films that I had never even heard of in silent films that I'd never known existed from all over the world. And so by the time I had gotten out of Carnegie, I had that not only the Stanislavski theater training from the drama department, but I'd seen all the same movies that Truffaut and Godard was seeing in the Paris Cinematheque, and I realized that, that I really wanted to be in film. You know, that's how it all sort of developed from the beginning into producing, directing and TV.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:25

Awesome. Let me ask you a question. The $6 million man before you moved on to create the bionic woman you worked on the $6 million man from my memories. One of the things that goes hand in hand with remembering the $6 million man is remembering Bigfoot. Bigfoot,

Kenneth Johnson 13:39

right? I still have is send you a photo of it. I in my office here I have the ceramic cast of Andre the Giant foot that we used there. We used it in the in the Bigfoot episode. We also used it when I did the Incredible Hulk. I said, Oh, I can use this again. It sits down on the floor of my office. Downstairs here. Bigfoot was in everybody's consciousness in 1976. I think it was when I wrote it. And I knew it was something that would grab an audience and and it just sort of fell together. I was answering fan letters just the other day. That's what's one of the things that comes up a lot in the fan mail. But when you go back and look at it, in the DVD release, I actually did a commentary on it. I had not directed it to be so much interested in it that I went back and we went through it and I got to meet Andre when when he before he even spoke English and could say his name in anything but French and it was a very, very sweet guy and I was so happy to see him turn up in the Princess Bride. I mean the perfect casting right?

Jeff Dwoskin 14:38

No better cast him in there.

Kenneth Johnson 14:40

The way I got into the The 6 Million Dollar Man was because of the bionic woman. When I first came I had some success back in New York and live television and and music shows and stuff in New York when I was just 20 years old. I was producing and directing and CBS and wapi x in New York I was asked by Westinghouse broadcasting to join the Mike Douglas show in 1966, the Douglas show was the first daytime talk show for people who are your age and don't even remember it. Westinghouse realized that there was an opportunity in daytime television to do a show like Johnny Carson or something of a talk variety music comedy show in the daytime. And it had started in Cleveland is a local show where they just sort of they were like, out of town tryouts. You know, how then Broadway shows will try out in Boston or someplace? Well, they tried out the Douglas show in Cleveland for like a year and a half, and then began to move it into syndication. I worked on it as an intern while I was still in college at Westinghouse. And they even offered me a job when I graduated. But I said, No, I want to go to New York and make movies which was a mistake, because I got to New York, and they said, Why don't you come to New York, we're not making any movies here are that many anyway, but after a couple of years success in New York, I was invited to join the mike Douglas show, which then blossomed into about 150 stations, and was the major The only daytime talk show in the country. Oprah, of course, had a huge audience. The Mike Douglas show audience was 10 times the size of Oprah's we had 80 to 90 million people tuning in every week. And everybody in the world came through there. And I didn't want to do it. But the guy who was he had just been hired as a young executive producer on the show, told me he'd let me do a lot of film, just what I wanted to do. And he seduced me. He was very good at producing things. His name was roger ailes, who later became, of course, the head of fox news that he created and all of that when I worked with Roger, I did not see him get involved in any untoward things. The only person I ever saw Roger hit on was Richard Nixon, who he talked into hiring him when Nixon was running for president and Roger said he could get Nixon elected, and Nixon believed in and Nixon was right. And that was the beginning of what became Roger and all other kinds of stuff. But I've been back at the Douglas show. And when he left, I took over as executive producer, I was 25 years old. And I was the I guess, the youngest executive producer in the industry at the time, and it was a humongous show. But now what I wanted to do, Jeff, I really wanted to make films. So I finally just after a season, gave it up and came to the west coast, and my friend Steven Bochco, who'd been with me at Carnegie in the drama department, Steven made it out to the coast before I had and had gotten his foot in the door at Universal Studios, where he was just a fledgling writer. This was long before Steve created Hill Street Blues, and LAPD law and NYPD Blue and all the others that he did. He was just a young writer at Universal. So listen, Kenny, I know you want to direct and be a director. But if you write, you can control your own destiny more. And because actors can do bit parts and work their way up. And writers can write on spec and hope somebody buys the script. But if you're a director, they either give you the money to do it or they don't. And I said but Steve, I'm not a writer. I don't know how to do that. I'm not I was terrible at it when we were in college, but he convinced me to take a crack at it and really dragged me kicking and screaming into writing. And I discovered actually, that I could do it better than I thought I became a great writer, Jeff have unproduced screenplays, most of which are still sitting on my shelf today. And one of them was a very strong comedy called the stuntman about a fledgling stunt man, Burt Reynolds almost bought it it was he had just made a deal for something else. And we were disappointed. But Steve gave the script to Harve Bennett who was a big executive producer at Universal, who has had done rich man, poor man and a lot of miniseries and that sort of thing. Steve introduced me and Harmon I hit it off. And part was also producing the $6 million man, which was in it's coming into its first full season, that had been a midseason replacement. And now they were starting their first full season and they had no scripts. And they were desperate to get going. And he asked me to bring him some ideas. And the first one that I brought him was well, I said, Why don't we do the Bride of Frankenstein? Because you know, you've got this guy with these weird legs and arm and shouldn't he have a mate hard love the idea. And so did Frank price who was running universal? And they say, yeah, go and do it. And I created the the character of Jamie summers and wrote the script for the bionic woman. When I was finished. They called me and said, Look, we really liked the script, but it's too dense. And I said, I told you it was I talked to you're trying to have me do too much. It's a love story. It's got to be personally. He said, Yeah, yeah. And I know what I said, What do you want me to cut? I said, No, we don't want you to cut anything. What should I make it longer? I said, Whoa, really don't get paid twice. You do that? Okay, I'm in. So I stretched it out and created the two parter that became the bionic woman and heart sort of took me under his wing because he saw that I had some producing chops as well as writing and I knew that I wanted to be a director and do more more film, and it was hard that as I said, convinced me to take the job because the producer got to hire the writer and the director. So there I was producing six male by then the bionic woman was just going on the air as the episodes of six mil, and it took the breedings really high up and suddenly that $6 million man was on everybody's lips, and then very quickly after that, they decided to spin it off and asked me to create a spin off show and being the executive producer of a show. One hour episodic television show Jeff is like living in a garbage disposal, particularly if you're a guy that is doesn't think of himself as a writer like cattle did Steven Bochco introduced me to Steve Carroll, who was also a young writer at Universal at the time he had just been, I remember when he gave me the script for a new pilot that he had written called The Rockford Files, and just sort of kicking off at the same time with the boomers sort of the class of 1980, at Universal Studios that we think of ourselves, Steve Carroll had given he managed to give me a couple of directing silent assignments and writing assignments before heart, it was really hard that took me under his wing and said, Okay, take it and run with it, kid. And I did. And for a while I was writing and producing both series at the same time. And there are some guys in this town men and women who love that. And to me, it was like, No, it's not what I want to do. Because when you're executive producing one show much less to you don't have any time to direct because directing means you're on the inner, you're prepping for seven or eight days, and then you're shooting for seven or eight days. And then you're doing post after that. And when your executive producer, you got to do that 22 times over simultaneously. And while you're juggling 12 balls on a mop. It was tough. So I split it off from six mill, but I had a lot of fun with Lee Majors. I saw him Incidentally, last year, for the first time in a long time, the Hollywood museum down on Vine Street was opening a bionic exhibit Bionic Woman and six mill and they asked me to come down and sort of cut the ribbon and be there with Lee and I hadn't seen him in 2530 years. And he was still the same guy. And I knew back in the day, he was this Oklahoma boy. Oh, just you know, come on. Hey, how you doing Kenny? You know, and he sounded the same had the same sense of humor. He looked terrific still. And we had a great afternoon together just laughing and remembering the Bigfoot stuff. When we did Bigfoot. There's a scene where in the ice tunnel, I wrote the script where Sasquatch is carrying the unconsciously through this ice rotating ice tunnel. And my production manager said what are you talking about? This is a one hour episodic television show. We can't build rotating ice tunnels. What are your nuts? And I said, Teddy can only take you for a ride onto the back lot. And I took him right into this thing on the universal tour where the trams drove through this ice tunnel that rotated and it through your equilibrium off and it was crazy. And he said, Oh, we can use this. And I said, Yes, Teddy. And it's free. Oh, okay, that's cool. The problem was trying to film in it, Jeff, because we get set up and get ready for a shot and then we'd start the tunnel rotating and everybody on the crew would fall over. And I don't exaggerate, it really dies. All right, I know how we can solve this. Open the door at the end. So you can see the horizon. If you can see the horizon, you won't fall over wrong. The effect of that rotation around you to your peripheral vision just totally screwed with your head and everybody was falling over. And then Andre had to carry Lee right down the middle of the pipe and at least said it took me a sense of Kenny he's gonna drive me on my ass. He can't do that. He can't even stand up in here, man. Come on. any device. 350 pounds. Don't kill me, man. I said lovely. I told him the secret of how to do it. Because I told showed Andre that if you look down and not out, if you look straight down at the floor, as you're walking, you can walk a straight line as soon as you looked up, it was all over that may be in the DVD commentary that I did on the Bigfoot episode. It was a funny day of trying to film that's for sure.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:21

That is an awesome story. It's so cool to hear how those evolved. That was good. So I do want to I want to cover v i want to talk about v v was like one of those miniseries that I saw. I watched it with my dad. I hadn't seen it all the time. And I actually I just re watched it. Um, it was funny how I remembered all the beats I may have filled in a little bit, you know, because it's been 37 years. It's great. I think it's considered I think one by many people that do one of the greatest TV miniseries ever. And it is it really is.

Kenneth Johnson 23:51

There's some interesting aspects to it, too. It's the still to this day, the only miniseries that was made without any movie stars in it, or even really any TV stars. I mean, Marchad had some notoriety from Beastmaster. But you know, wasn't really what you'd call like Bill Bixby in terms of notoriety, you know, on the hook, and I asked Brandon Tartikoff, who was then president of NBC at the time about that, I said, you sure you don't want to put any stars? He said, No, we don't need any it's this. It's the concept than the way you've executed it. That's going to work. And so he was convinced to that. And to this day, it is I am told we had a 40 share, which was in North America alone was like 80 or 90 million people tuned in. And then when it was went overseas, the following year, it out rated the rating of the Olympics in 84, around the world like two to one and it is somebody pointed out to me recently the highest rated work of science fiction in television history, which is pretty amazing. It was a challenge, that's for sure.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:49

And while they may not have been famous at the time, Robert England was in it. He went on to become fraying and Nightmare on Elm Street. As I watch it now. I feel like a lot of those actors went on to Do a lot

Kenneth Johnson 25:00

afterwards. No question. And there's a very funny skit you can find online. It was a show that the comedy show that Bob did Bob England did where he was trying to take a girl back to his apartment and impress her with his readiness. And she kept saying, Yeah, but tell me about Willie and V. And Robert made a really funny piece out of it. And this video piece, I'm not sure it's on my website. But it's you can find it you know, Robert Englund, as Willie and YouTube and it's really, really funny, and he was wonderful. And just exactly the guy that I wanted. He told me when he was out doing public appearances for Freddy vs. Jason, few years ago, they'd have these press conferences, and all that anybody wanted to ask him about was v was really freaking out the people who wanted to publicize their movie. And a one of the press conferences. They said, Look, does anybody have a question? It's not about v. And all the hands came down. Robert just really had a belly laugh. That's so

Jeff Dwoskin 25:56

funny. That is so funny. He was so good in it and so different, so different. Well, here's what's funny, like, I'm sitting there watching, and I'm kind of, you know, just really tuned into it. And I'm thinking to myself, Now, keep in mind, just anyone listening. This is written in on TV in 1983. So 37 years ago, had you written this today, and put this out this exact movie today? Yeah. And then people would have been like, Kenny, Yeah, a little too on the nose with your Donald Trump parallel political stuff. We get it. But you know, this is a little too on the nose. We

Kenneth Johnson 26:27

say yes, yeah. If you go to my website, which is just Kenneth johnson.us. There's some very, very telling artwork, where we see the visitor leader as Donald Trump is an artist that did a whole billboard sized graffiti work in France last year, a year and a half ago with the same thing with we're here to be your friends. And as a matter of fact, on the Billboard even put to the heroism of the Resistance Fighters past present and future this work is respectfully dedicated, which was the title card that I put it as you know, at the beginning of the beat, and when I saw it, it was all in French did the translation I went, Oh, my God, no, you're right. And as a matter of fact, we were endeavoring I discovered in the last few years back that I own and control the motion picture rights to the and we have been endeavoring to set it up as a as a movie as the first of a movie trilogy with the two sequels being drawn from my novel The the second generation when the news first came out, I had a lot of new best friends Jeff you know, all the studios were calling as a guinea pig you know, am offering really just obscene Lee large amounts of money to buy the rights, but I had concerns about sort of getting sidelined. I know what happens with studios very often. So I said no, and you know what happens when you say no, and Hollywood Jeff, they go, Yeah, okay. We understand how much money do you really want, you know, and I'm saying no, guys, you don't get it. It's about protecting my baby, because I had seen people try to remake reimagine the bionic woman and reimagine the Incredible Hulk. The first two movies that they made were just terrifyingly awful. And I didn't want that to happen to me. And I decided my wife Susie really put it into focus for me when she said, Would you prefer that the movie never got made than see it get made wrong by the wrong people. And I decided Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. So we are, have been an art in the middle in the midst of trying to set up the the trilogy, at this point as as a remake of the original miniseries follow it on to its conclusion in the second generation, which picks up the story 20 years after the visitors first arrived, so very strong piece and your parents set up a couple of times and then had it fall apart because there was no ink in the pen when they sat down to write the check. But we're hopeful it'll it'll still happen but I'm glad you feel it. It's it's still timely it to me it's always been like Spartacus, and the revolt of the slaves or the American Revolution or apartheid or any of those stories where an oppressed people are fighting back against a an Uber powerful opposition, something that I think really bears retelling and certainly there are fans out there all over the world that have been champing at the bit to be able to see the story itself which

Jeff Dwoskin 29:09

obviously parallel the Holocaust and the Nazis taking over and the imagery of the the visitor suits and they're the altered swastika the A Bernstein character who was in the Holocaust who was reminding people and saying, you know, you have to you have to be careful, you can't let these things happen. You have to be aware of what's happening, right, his constant thread throughout, but it was interesting as I was watching this is you have the big the big lie.

Kenneth Johnson 29:36

And that's exactly right. It's the big lie. You have it. You

Jeff Dwoskin 29:39

have the big lie, you know, hey, we're here to to help you. We're gonna give you stuff we're gonna make your lives better, right? And then then they turn on science. If anyone listening you this, this was written in 1983. Okay, so they turn on science and they make science the enemy science is against all of us. As a matter of fact, they could have cured cancer, but they held back They were trying to get money. They're against you, the scientists are against you so envy, the scientists are kind of like the Jews were like they were kind of just shoved out exactly into vermin. Then you get people believing the lies, and then they turn on the media. Oh, we have to remove the media, fake news, which you're seeing on this TV. But these people, this isn't real. This isn't right. We're good. We're helping you everything you think you see, even now you're seeing it. You're not seeing.

Kenneth Johnson 30:25

That's right. And then you have then we have had last in the last few years, a president who is standing up and saying, don't believe what you see and hear literally those words, you know, and I can't tell you how many times people have commented to me about that in the last four years. And how many times that my inspiration initially for it was having read I was a big fan of Sinclair Lewis who wrote Elmer Gantry and Aerosmith and a lot of wonderful novels. But in 1935, he had written it can't happen here, which was about as you know, the the rise of fascism in America happening like it was happening in Germany and Italy with the idea of well, this is America can't happen here. And good God, man, it's exactly what we have been living through for the last four years, including the the use of the media, which was something was a lot of the reviewers commented on at the time when V first came out about the way that the media was woven through the entire piece. It's really key. Because in order to take that kind of control, you have to control what people are seeing and hearing you have to control the the communications and if you can control the communications, even in this day and age, suddenly you can have a numerous amount of very, very dangerous power.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:37

Oh, yeah. And then martial law became the fame the visitors with help with the government Institute's martial law envy, again, everyone, this

Kenneth Johnson 31:44

is 92 for the protection for our protection, you know, right

Jeff Dwoskin 31:47

propaganda everywhere that visitors are friends, really, friendship is universal. So the truth becomes the enemy, which is exactly what we've been living through, media becomes one sided, you have only one side of the media being presented. And then families which is interesting, because I remember watching at the time when Donovan's mom turns them in and they all split, but that became everyone's family in the last four years. Well, yes, this hatred in this these lies and the manipulation of the truth, literally split families in half, right. It's a you know, who changes V for visitors to victory to kind of turn that Rebel on?

Kenneth Johnson 32:23

If you are going to do it, do it right.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:26

Exactly.

Kenneth Johnson 32:27

Leonardo Cimino bless His sweet soul. He, he absolutely captured what I was, what I was looking for, and what I you know, what I wanted to accomplish in the in the piece, and some things don't change in the new movie that we are planning. It has been updated to an interesting degree. And but I can't talk too much about it yet.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:48

Sure, sure. I just wanted to also kind of point out that you had, there's a scene where I had to stop it and write this down where Donovan asked Martin, who was a leader of the fifth column was the visitor aliens who are against what the visitors are doing. And they're talking about, Martin is talking about his leader and how the leader took over and this is under his command, and none of it says, Well, how could you have a leader like that? And the answer is, charisma, circumstances and promises. And then no one spoke up until it was too late. I wrote that down because I was like, that was one of the things I was like, if Kenny had written this right now, people would be like, come on, Kenny, we got it, you know, like Donald Trump. This was 1983. I mean, like the patterns, it kind of speaks to why this story is so universal and timeless, because we don't learn the lessons that we need to learn. And we do have to be, you know, I go to you in religious school, you're retaught the Holocaust. So you don't forget that it happened. And these these stories are so important, because we do have to look ourselves in the face and and kind of realize after everything that just happened, and then surgeons on the Capitol, and these things can happen, they can and then the interesting thing when Donovan's mom says Why is she doing well, there are power, they're empowered, they are power. And and you have to take it in taking advantage and survive at the expense of other people is what these people do when they want to be at the top of the Angela.

Kenneth Johnson 34:09

Yeah, that's and that's what I was most interested in doing was, was taking a group of everyday ordinary people. You know, there were no presidents and generals and fighter pilots and all of that sort of stuff in V there as you know, they were ordinary people like you and me living in an ordinary neighborhood. And I wanted to show how, when the way that people react to power V was never about aliens and science fiction stuff and reptilian races, and all there were no aliens or any of that stuff in the original screenplay at all. I had intended it to be a grassroots fascist takeover story, very much like what's happened in the country lately. And Brandon Tartikoff was concerned that they the people who wouldn't get fascism as well as they would if it was like the Chinese or the Russians or somebody and I didn't believe they could sustain that kind of an occupation of the US and then Jeff sanski, who was Brandon's vice president at the time later went on to run CBS and TriStar and Sony and a lot of other things. And a big great friend, Jeff said, How about aliens, Kenny? And I said, you know, no, no, no, I don't want to do that I done the India create the bionic woman. And then you create the Incredible Hulk for series television. And then, you know, I was very aware that in this town, the pigeonhole gets smaller and smaller. And like I did War of the Worlds in high school and got labeled the drama guy. Right now I was looking like being labeled like the sci fi guy, and I didn't want to have that kind of a career, I wanted one that was much more broad and fully versed. And, fortunately, I did get a lot do a lot of other things, too. Certainly, the things that I become the most well known for are pieces that have evolved what I've always called sort of speculative fiction, or one step beyond reality. And the beauty of working in that kind of genre, Jeff, is that you're working in metaphor. And sometimes the metaphor comes amazingly close to the real world, which we saw have seen happen in vi recently. And that's why we're so eager to do the new version of it, which will not be a reimagining my intent is to do a really very faithful remake of the original, although it's bringing up the Holocaust situation by a couple of generations by using a different backstory for the families. That was the Bernstein's it's a story that bears telling how everyday people react to power how some will suck up to it like the Vichy French did in World War Two. Others will try to just keep their head down. Well, I'm not Jewish, I'm not a scientist, and they will come after me. If I don't bother them, or the people who are the people that say, No, no, no, no, this power is being abused. And we have to fight back against it with our lives if we have to. And they of course, are the ones that become the heroes of the resistance and and that story doesn't go away. You know,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:53

it really does as I was kind of researching this and I realized there was that book that you wrote, you know, it's one thing like as a little boy watching V and then V The Final Battle and then just now going back and rewatching it as a boy, I was like, Whoa, but right now watching it. V The Final Battle. I was happy to find out you wrote a book clearly is not what No, because I've learned that you didn't, actually Well, someone named Lillian Weezer. Wink wink.

Kenneth Johnson 37:18

Lillian Weezer was my golden retriever at the time. That's great. But she has her own IMDB page, which is exciting.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:24

That is Yeah, so I was I was excited because I was like, because the end of Vi is very they're looking at they're trying to get the enemies of their enemy to come say, right, exactly. And that entire thing gets completely thrown away. I can't imagine that Elizabeth alien baby would have been as missing.

Kenneth Johnson 37:39

No, I you know, I spent the summer of 1983 with three brilliantly talented writers Diane rohloff, Peggy Goleman and Craig buck, who helped me to conceive and write the story for what we were at the time calling the conclusion. He later became known as the final bugger on final battle. And but we were Warner Brothers and I had a falling out the end of that summer and, and I left the studio because I would they were not honoring my contract, they had breached the contract in really ugly ways. And it got handed off to other people who really didn't get it. And Brandon was I heard, he saw the changes that they had made on the script. But by then they were too deep. And then they couldn't back away. And all of my friends who worked on it, both crew and cast members told me don't ever watch it, Kenny, because he you won't be able to do so I say I took their advice. And I never watched it. And I don't know maybe you've heard me. So tell this quick story was i the only time I ever saw 30 seconds of it by accident. Once Jeff I was turning channels, I said what am i What's that? And I realized, Oh, it's a scene from the sequel, The final battle and I watched it for 30 seconds and turned it off. Because I watched them make every mistake they could possibly make in 30 seconds. My friends who are right, I would never survive seeing the whole thing. Unfortunately, the the did very well in the ratings, not as well as our original Wii. But it obviously still did a big number. But the review was were not as kind and particularly when they compared it to what we had set out to do and the quality that we had invested into into the original and some of them made reference to the fact that part of the reason for that was because I was not there. So I got some of my best review. Back candidly, in the sequels that we're doing the the final battle does not come into. It's free. It never existed. And we go from the message having been sent out along with the first alien baby being born first of the hybrid and then we pick up the story 20 years later and we see what's become of the world and it's not a dystopia. It's not so bad, really. On the surface particularly it's really good on the server the ASTM people yes the scientists live in their own nice communities because we need to protect them the war babies who are part human and part alien are now referred to by both of the pure species as the dregs, and they are the lower class, they are like children of German soldiers with French women than Vietnamese women with the American soldiers, kids that nobody wants or likes or you know, wants to be associated with. And they become a very pivotal part of the story in the in the sequels. And so it's, it's really an exciting project determined to get it off the ground and on the screens.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:26

Well, I couldn't be more excited to hear that and, and I can't wait to see it. And I know I do know you got to go. Thanks for staying a little extra over.

Kenneth Johnson 40:35

You're welcome.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:35

I can't thank you enough that I have a million more questions. But another time,

Kenneth Johnson 40:39

I'll be happy to do it again another time, particularly if we can get these pictures up and rolling. Now you'll have to come to the set and hang out and then we'll certainly come back and visit here somewhere. That would be fun for me to Jeff,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:50

that would be amazing. Thank you, Kenny so much. I can't I'm trying to get over the fact that I'm talking to you. But thank you so much.

Kenneth Johnson 40:57

It's my total delight. I really appreciate it Jeff, it's people like you that have kept this project alive as well as so many kind things about my other work over the years. I am deeply, deeply appreciate appreciative of that. And it's why I really try to answer personally all of the gazillions of emails that I do get from people around the world because I it's given me such a great connection to my audience to be able to be directly in contact with them. And certainly visiting the cons are terrific. Marc and I were down in, in San Diego last in 19, July of 19 to announce the blu ray edition of the end here. You walk into this airplane hangar where this 4000 people standing on chairs because they like your stuff. No, that's it's so exciting. And to be able to be one on one with them and and keep my focus on what it is that they expect from us as the pre creators producer and director of the movie versions that really keeps us keeps our focus straight ahead.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:55

Amazing. I'm looking forward to a million more amazing things from you. And thank you again so much.

Kenneth Johnson 42:00

Thanks Jeff, Take care.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:02

Oh, how cool was that? I hope you all enjoyed that conversation I had with Kenny Johnson. Don't forget to check out his book v the second generation and cross your fingers with me. I hope those movie projects get off the ground. Can't wait to see those would love to see those. You know what else I'd love. I'd love to see you every Wednesday at 9:30pm. Eastern when I go live with crossing the streams with a bunch of buddies of mine every week. We talk about great TV shows that you should be streaming I guess I'll let one cat out of the bag. You should be streaming v the miniseries on Amazon Prime check that out. But definitely come visit us. It's a live show. We engage with the audience and it's Wednesdays at 9:30pm. Eastern. You can find us on youtube at the Jeff Dwoskin show channel. You can follow us on Facebook where we go live there facebook.com slash Jeff is funny. You can catch the replay at my website Jeff is funny.com or an igtv or Facebook if you miss it live. All right. We're nearing the end of the show. So you know what that means. It's time for the hashtag trend of the week. That's right. This is the time where we read tweets from tweeters who played fun engaging games on hashtag ground up with hopes that one day their tweets would be read live on live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show this week's hashtag hashtag The reason Bigfoot is hiding. That's right. And Kenny creating the iconic Bigfoot character and the $6 million. Man we're going deep into hashtag The reason Bigfoot is hiding. This was originally brought to us by Astro tags that weekly game on hashtag Roundup. And here we go. Here are some compelling reasons why Bigfoot is probably hiding to protect his beard supply are more likely so his ex wife can't claim child support from him. That's definitely a possibility. Or this one. He was a real chunky teenager and was tired of being max so he went into hiding until he gets buff. The only trouble is he's lazy and let's fast food so much. He's still fat. But one day, you'll all see he'll be buff, then I'll be sorry. That sounds like a pretty reasonable reason that Bigfoot would be hiding. Oh, here's another one he owes. This monster tree pity. This one might be on point. The hype is too much. His feet are average at best. Oh no. You know they say about average feet. Oh, this one is probably very likely. Hashtag. The reason Bigfoot is hiding. His wife's parents are in town who wouldn't go hiding after that. Here's another reason he might be hiding. He told his wife to calm down. Never do that folks. And finally hashtag The reason Bigfoot is hiding. He's competing with Waldo for the world Hide and Seek championships. Whoa, there we go. All right, ladies and gentlemen, hashtag The reason big pot is hiding another fun game from hashtag ground up. As always, all the tweeters will be retweeted at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter and will be listed in the show notes. retweet them, show them some love. Also grab the hashtag roundup app from the Android or iTunes App store's totally free play along and one day one of your tweets might end up on an episode of live from Detroit that Jeff Dwoskin show fame and fortune awaits you. All right. Well, thanks, everyone. I can't believe it. We're at the end of yet another episode. Episode 41 has come and gone. Thank you so much to Kenny Johnson. Thank you all for coming back week after week after week. I can't thank you enough. Thanks for subscribing, liking Telling all your friends. And I'll see you next week.

Announcer 45:38

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Jeff Dwoskin show with your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Go repeat everything you've heard and sound like a genius. catch us online at the Jeff Dwoskin show.com or follow us on Twitter at Jeff Dwoskin show and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai