He captured the world's imagination with NBC's legendary
V mini-series in 1983. Now, more than a quarter century later, Kenneth Johnson watches as someone else once again "re-imagines" one of his original ideas. ABC's rebooted version of his eerie classic about otherworldly occupation continues to falter in prime time, despite impressive premiere numbers last fall and a Lost lead-in this spring. But that isn't stopping Johnson from pursuing a deal to write, direct and produce his own independent (and likely 3-D) feature version of his vintage creation.

Here, in this exclusive interview, the creator of iconic '70s series The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk and the force behind the late '80s TV adaptation of Alien Nation shares his views about revisiting—or, as is often the case, seeing others revisit—his made-for-TV gems.

CM: So tell us about your proposed and much-anticipated big-screen V.
KJ: In my effort to turn V into a motion picture—I own the movie rights—one of the things I’m very, very careful of is to protect the original in the sense that there are a lot of important reasons why V was successful to begin with. I wanted to be certain I wasn’t going out and trying to reinvent the wheel but rather (fulfill) the expectations of what fans remembered, loved and wanted.

So that’s what we’re endeavoring to do. I have a number of financial sources circling. I’m waiting for one of them to put down their landing gear. I have yet to find a deal where either I’m really comfortable with the deal or I’m really comfortable with the people who are presenting it. But I must say right now at this moment there are three sources circling particularly very closely. I’m about to run off to Europe as a matter of fact this afternoon to talk to some of them personally just to see if they’re as real and sincere as they appear to be.

If I’m gonna do it, by God, I want to do it right, where nobody’s disappointed and everybody’s drawn into it.

Will ABC’s "on-the-bubble" V reboot hamper your plans?
No. V, even though it’s … back on the air and being put on after Lost, is a struggling situation. They’ve had a lot of difficulties as I understand. And I wish them well. Because, why not? There’s no reason the TV version can’t work simultaneously with the motion picture version. Star Trek has done that for years.

It must be nice to be taking ownership again of one of your many recently “re-imagined,” iconic TV originals.
Certainly there have been a great number of producers, writers and directors—many of them my friends— who’ve done a lot more films and series than I have … But somebody once pointed out to me: “Gee, Kenny, you did The Bionic Woman. You did The Incredible Hulk. Then you did V.” And a lot of people include Alien Nation in that, too.

I grew up making (these series). I was the youngest producer on the lot of Universal at the time. The lowest paid, too, incidentally. What I always strived for when I created those projects was to do shows that I would care about watching, that I felt had a substance and a depth that was beyond the … commerciality of them. And I think a lot of times when things get re-imagined by other people, they just are grabbing at the surface as opposed to what was really making it successful, which was not only all the people involved originally but more so the fact that there was depth of substance underneath that really was the driving force.

V, for example, was never about big spaceships and lizard people. It was about power. That was the theme that was resonating through it. And The Incredible Hulk wasn’t just about a big green guy crashing through walls. It was about a man struggling to find and maintain some level of self-control. And Alien Nation, of course, was about intolerance and prejudice. And The Bionic Woman was sort of exploring how an ordinary person deal with extraordinary circumstances that suddenly turn her into something more than she appears to be.

I think it was all of those thematic depths that were lurking underneath that made the shows as popular with the audience’s imagination as they did. And I think that’s why they’ve held up for so long. And I think to take a title or a character and say, “We’re gonna do that again” … it’s really tough to marshal all the various elements that make something so iconic.

You’re in good company. It seems networks are now re-envisioning pretty much all the ‘70s and ‘80s classic series.
The interesting thing I think about my particular situation is of all the guys who’re having their stuff remade—like I just saw my colleague Steve Cannell’s Rockford Files is about to be remade—(is) of all the people who’ve been able to make iconic stuff to begin with, I’m the only one who’s been lucky enough to make four iconic shows, as you pointed out, and all four of them are being remade by other people.

On one hand that must be flattering and exciting. But on the other hand is it a bit tiring or frustrating to hear, “Well, here they go again. And they want to bring in their own people”—often guys in their 20s or 30s?
The process, I think, can sometimes be frustrating. I frankly would not have wanted to go back and try to remake The Bionic Woman. I did it and I did what was right at the time and I’m very proud of it. The same with The Incredible Hulk. I could not imagine … Several people have approached me in fact with, “Well, why don’t you pick up the television series again?” And I said, “I’ll be happy to do that as soon as you can bring Bill Bixby back, and Jack Colvin. Then I’ll be there.”

On V, Warner TV owns the television rights. They can literally do whatever they want. I’ve never had a bad feeling about younger people wanting to come in and do something because I was a young guy. And if they have the talent and the ability to take something and make it successful, more power to ’em. What frustrates me, I suppose, is when you have created a gem and someone wants to match that experience again. It’s a very, very daunting challenge and, I think, very, very difficult for anybody to have success at that.

As far as V is concerned, as much as I admire all of the work that they’ve been endeavoring to do on the new series, they’re coming at it from a whole new perspective and a different point of view. And it’s just not the way that I would’ve done it. But they’re gonna do it the way they want to do it anyway, so everybody wins, I guess. (Laughs.)

That’s great that you maintained the feature rights. You weren’t involved in NBC’s 1984 mini-series sequel, V: The Final Battle, or weekly series spun-off from your legendary mini-series?
No. I supervised the writing of the six-hour sequel, and then I parted company with Warner Bros. over some creative and quality issues. They handed it off unfortunately to a group of people who really didn’t quite get it. All of my friends who worked on that six-hour sequel told me, “Kenny, don’t ever watch it. It’s crazy to see what became of the script that was so good to begin with.” To this day I’ve only accidentally (seen a bit) … I was channel surfing and came by this scene where I was, “Wait a minute, I know this scene.” And I watched it for 30 seconds and I turned it off. I watched them make very possible wrong choice they could make in 30 seconds. I could never take seeing the whole thing. So to this day I’ve never seen that version.

They tried to do a one-hour episodic series of V back in the ’80s that I heard was even more of a disaster. It only last about 13 weeks or so.

So my focus is on getting the movie made and getting it made the way I truly believe the international audience wants to see it. I’m in touch with via e-mail literally thousands of people from all over the world—over half of them women—who are eager to see a continuation of what we tried to do to begin with.

Many wonder how current technology and aesthetics will render your vintage V look and feel as “more realistic.”
One of the things I always get amused about is when they talk about all of these (classic) shows, including V, and they sometimes they say, “They were sort of campy shows.” No, wait a minute. Sometimes I want to write to journalists and say, “Do you understand the meaning of the word ‘camp’?” Camp is self-conscious. What we were doing was not that.

We were doing our shows the best we could do, and indeed all of our characters were going on real human emotions and real people. And if the hairstyles and the bell-bottoms and the special effects you think are not up to today’s par, well, of course they’re not. They’re 20-30 years old. The new Wolfman doesn’t look a lot like the Lon Chaney Jr. version either.

When I see words like that—“cheese” and “camp”—I think what sometimes people really mean to say is “charm.” There can be too much focus on style over substance.
You just put your finger on the core of it. As soon as we begin to become interested in the latest cool car chase or the latest cool visual effect or whatever, then for my money we’re out of the movie. We’re not in the middle of the story as we should be (and) the director and writer haven’t done their job of bringing me into the story the way they need to. And that’s what I’ve always endeavored to do as a writer and particularly as a director.

If you go back and watch the old episodes of The Bionic Woman, people are sort of surprised to see that Jaime Sommers never threw a punch at anybody. She never hit anybody. Neither did Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk. I think the lack of humanity had a lot to do with the fact that the remake of The Bionic Woman and later the two movies that were done about the Incredible Hulk really struggled.

The one that Ed Norton did was a lot closer, and … the director went on record numerous times saying the debt they owed to the original series with what they were trying to do. When I saw the trailer, the first few scenes of it, I thought, “Wow, this is getting back to heart I what I did.” The shots were framed exactly as I’d done them originally. But then this big green CGI man comes crashing out of the street. And I think, “This is a disconnect. It just doesn’t work.” You would not put a real human being into a Shrek movie. It doesn’t work. It’s a stylistic disconnect.

You just can’t put real human beings in a real setting with a seven-foot guy who looks like he’s out of a video game. It doesn’t work for an audience particularly when what they were expecting was an emotional connection to the humanity of the original.

I was trained in the classics at Carnegie Mellon. You do The Six Million Dollar Man, you create The Bionic Woman, you create The Incredible Hulk, and you know what happens in this town, Chris—

The fans, the audience, are a part of the equation that to me seem to be forgotten. It surprises me that people about my age have so misguided these re-imaginings at the studio or network level. The original Bionic Woman, for instance, had heart.
You just put your finger on it. That’s exactly right. I sort of thought (the remake) was in trouble right from the beginning. I saw clips from the pilot and I thought, “Wait a minute. Who’s this other bionic female?" We don’t do the evil twin until about season three. When the evil twin shows up in the pilot I thought, “Uh-oh. We’re in trouble here.”

They were sort of trying to do Alias or something. In spite of the incredible challenge that (Bionic reboot executive producer) David Eick had he even sort of admitted when the show went off … I read an interview where he said, “We never figured out what it was about or how to do it.”

Even Lou Ferrigno’s raging Hulk wasn’t as overwhelmingly dark as the re-imagined Bionic Woman. By the way, I must say that while growing up I couldn’t get that famous line out of my head: “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” It became sort of my mild-mannered-but-tired-of-your-crap mantra.
It’s funny. The line you saw him deliver was in the main title of the show each week. That was take two. In take one, Bix came out and was playing it angry. I said, “Wait” and I went up to him and said, “Bix, it’s a joke.” And he said, “Oh … right!” And then he went back in and delivered it with that wonderful little half-smile and twinkle in his eye. And I put it into the main title every week of the series because that little layer of humor and humanity was something I knew that the audience would really connect to and was really the core of the character of Dr. David Banner.

It’s so funny how the line has become iconic itself. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon even did a movie called Dogma where they even named the character McGee so they could say the whole line to him. It’s very gratifying.

Another thing that became iconic in its own right from the show was the musical theme, which Joe Harnell and I created. As soon as you hear that music you get this rush of poignancy and pathos, and it still resonates today. It’s amazing.