THIS MAN TELL HULK WHAT TO DO?

interview with Kenneth Johnson

          When Frank Price, then head of Universal Television, invited director Kenneth Johnson to develop a Marvel Comics super hero into a series, Johnson didn't want to be involved. He'd already turned "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman" into hits, and was so anxious to move out of the realm of the super hero. Uh uh, he said in so many words, no thanks. Not interested. He was also not interested in the human torch, Ms. Marvel, Submariner, and Captain America, which were offered to him the same time as the Hulk. Johnson was dubious about the potential for developing viable television characters from comic book heroes. "THeres a level of fantasy you achieve in comic books or animated cartoons that becomes silly as soon as you give it real form and shape, and as soon as it becomes silly you've lost your adult audience. You may still keep the kids but if you don't have the adults you'll never have a successful TV show I would be intersted in doing." Then it occured to johnson that there may be more to the hulk that just big green muscles----there was, he decided, a strong show to be developed by concentrating on the "Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde" aspects of The Hulk and combining it with the concept embodied in the old TV series "The Fugitive,""...making the character a reluctant super hero, one who hates what he becomes and is desperately trying to make his curse go away. That approach appealed to me because of the deep seated phsycological feelings that all of us have , that we all have a "Hulk" of one form or another inside of us. With some people it may be drink or drugs, or whatever they may be trying to control. It can be a cathartic experience for the audience to identify with and say, 'Yeah I can sympathize with him because I have something like that inside me.' Also theres the other audience response I think the show gets which is: 'Oh boy, I wish I could turn into The Hulk sometimes and lay the people who'r giving me a hard time!" "we've explored a raction on the program, by the way, and David Banner always says, "No you don't because it's primitave and uncontrollable." Another reason Johnson ultimatley ended up doing The Hulk is that he doesn't wear a funny costume. He doesn't run around in a mask and tights, which to me are impossible to make work except in a ridiculous campy way. They work in comic books, but they don't work on the screen with real people. I think Batman is the only exception, and that was an outrageously campy show. Granted, The Hulk is a big green monster. Nonetheless, he is an outgrowth of a normal human being." How much influence did the Incredible Hulk comic book have on the TV show? According to Johnson, not much: "I didn't prepare any script material until I read the comics. I went back and looked through the Hulk's origin, and a few of the early and more recent issues, probably half a dozen all together and decided I din't want to have anything to do with them. They were too much larger than life for me. He was fighting leapord men from outer space, and lizard people, and mole men. When I took the roject on I said: 'The only way I'll do this is if we play it absolutely realistically, as this is a real man with a real problem. There are no aliens or robot monsters that he comes in contact with. I want to play it like "Jekyll and Hyde," and blend in Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" in as well." "I wanted him to be a sympathetic monster who cannot control his fate, but is seeking to do so." Because of his concept for the character, Johnson made many changes from the comic book Hulk, changing Banner's first name from Bruce to David for instance. "Alliterative names are comic-booky and silly, like Lois Lane, and Clark Kent. A name like Bruce doesn't have the degree of adult intelligence that david has. David Banner is solid, different, not alliterative, and not a comic book name." Johnson also dropped several important supporting charcaters from The Incredible Hulk. There were no characters in the comic book who were of a meaningful nature. Rick Jones, the teenager who was in the origin, vanished after a few issues because Stan (Lee) realized he was in the way. General Thunderbolt Ross and his daughter betty become really unimportant when you're doing a personal story, as opposed to a big "operation greenskin" in which the entire armed forces are massed against this creature. TV and the comics, Johnson seems to feel are two entirely different media. "Things that work in a comic book format don't work in a realistic format With real people on television." This realistic format was always kept foremost throughout planning The Hulk television show. "From the beginning Stan Lee and I have tried to envision a show, so that the positions coming out of Banner come out being The Hulk. Obviously there are some episodes which are generally called survival shows-- in which we deal with a normal human situation and drop The Hulk into it. Theres no question about that. It's a show that could happen to you or me, except it's not you or me it's David Banner, and that puts a whole different texture on everything. "A great number of plots specifically derive from the problem that Banner has. They're situations that could not happen to any other person." Johnson and Lee also felt strong about keeping The Hulk the focus of the stories. "Whenever you do a show in which the hero doesn't have an active participation, then you're not doing it as well as you should. It doesn't matter whether it's The Incredible Hulk or whether it's The Rockford Files or even Greatest Heroes of the Bible. You want your principle characters to make a difference in the lives of the people they encounter. In that way all televison series indeed, all drama are alike. You want your hero to have an effect, and that effect will vary according to who he is and what his character is." So, despite himself, Johnson found he was becoming excited by the possibilities inherent in the character, which eventually overcame his "tremendous reluctance to get involved with anything that had a comic book origin." "I'd been accused of being a comic book show producer. I think an enormous number of people where therefore terribly surprised with the first Hulk pilot film-- which I wrote, produced, directed-- because it wasn't what they expected. It was astonishingly adult... done with such a level of style that it was impossible to make light of or ignore. It was a really powerful show. "what we're trying to do on a daily basis is to keep the show realistic, to keep the humor adult and enjoyable as opposed to easy and silly, and to really get into some substance. The kind of shows we've done in the last year are indicative of that. We did a show about a retarded kid who had things in him which he could not control himself. We set one show in a disco, but the story was about teenage alcholism. We also had one about a professional football who turned into a Hulk on the field and couldn't control himself-- he was hitting after the whistle blew and seriously injuring people. We're going to continue with that approach-- the small, personal story way, with the lonely man on the road trying to stay alive and conquer his beast that lurks inside him. "That being the case I thought the only other running character who would be important was a strong antagonist like the inspector in Les Miserables, who was continually dogging Jean Val Jean, and who could provide an element of jeapordy and constant tension in the story. Hence I created the investigative reporter, Mcgee. "There's a major subplot and continuing story in every episode, which is Banner's trying to find a way to make himself human again. That idea gets plugged into every show, and is a motivation which drives him from one place to the next in many cases. Theres also a very strong subplot, which concerns Mcgee's slow unraveling of this mystery. "For example: we did a very important show last season called "The Mystery Man" in which Mcgee and Banner were together but Banner was bandaged up and has amnesia. Mcgee knew this man had something to do with The Hulk but he didn't know exactly what it was . At the end of the show Mcgee saw the Metamorphisis of the man in the bandages into the monster, so then he had a peice of information that he never had before, which is that the creature is a man who becomes The Hulk. It was a very powerfl new peice of information which again gets plugged into the subsequent shows, and has given Mcgee a whole new lease on life and a new strength of purpose to go on. It's something we're playing up very heavily this third season. We even did a two hour show this season in which Banner revealed to his father and sister that he was alive--which was a very potent emotional episode for us." Johnson had avoided the 'tune in next week approach for several reasons: "we're never sure which are going to be our strongest episodes, and exactly what order we're going to be able to put them on the air. Also there is the syndication factor to be considered. It is more dificult for a show to be syndicated if the viewer has to follow the story on a week-toweek basis. Another reason is that if we have a number of writers handling the scripts, and it's difficult for them to coordinate the plots among themselves. We never know which scripts are going to some in first, and how many of them are going to be useable. We tried that approach with cliffhangers which I produced for NBC last spring, and it proved to be very, very hard to bring off. "Continued stories also limit the concept somewhat. The way we're doing to show now it becomes a true anthology. One week Banner can be dealing with a rock star, the next week he can be in a rodeo, the week after that he can be a bellboy in a hotel, or working in a steel mill, or with sharks at sea world, or driving a cab. I don't think we ought to try to tie it in too much to a specific ongoing story. What we're trying to do is put the Hulk into arenas which he can be most effective and promotable. We also want to put Banner with character who are going to be appealing and sympathetic, and whom the vieweres are going to care about. "the idea to see The Hulk at a rock concert, for example, tearing up all the equipment while the kids think it's part of the act. At the same time that particular sow was about the metamorphisis of a man into a star, and we drew a paralell between David Banner becoming a monster and a kid who's become a hot singer overnight becoming a monster in his own right. We also did a two hour episode called 'Los Indios' in which Banner flew down to the Brazilian jungle with a group of rich teenage girls on a field trip. He stowed away on the plane to try and seek out a doctor who may be able to help him toward a cure. We put him in the midst of a primitive South American Indian society which looked upon him as a god and the girls as his wives, and that enabled us to wring a lot of humor, jeapordy, and fun out of the story." How much of this humor , jeapordy and fun continuse to surface in The Incredible Hulk is, of course up to both johnson and the writers. Will it be difficult for these writers to keep coming up with frsh ideas? "It's always difficult but, after all Marvel has been coming up with comic book stories for more than fifteen years, so it can be done." For now, Johnson is pleased with The Incredible Hulk and optimistic about the future of the show. "I think the way it (the show) is done is the only way it could be successful on TV--and it certainly has been. Theres a dgree of class and style in our show that is just not in any other show on the air. "thats what we're trying to maintain-- to improve on a day to day basis."