Exclusive Interview with Gary Scott Thompson

Gary Scott Thompson: Right now we have besides myself 1..2..3..4 7 writing entities because we have a writing team. We're still missing one, we're trying to get that last person in place. I may wait until we get the back 9 pickup or a little bit further in so we have a bigger pool to pick from. Right now, writers are still attached to previous shows that haven't been officially designated dead yet, or they're stuck on other projects. I just want to get a really good person who's a good fit with what we already have.

Gary Scott Thompson: A couple are. I have one guy from Vegas who has been with me since the beginning, Matt Piken, and he and I actually developed a NASCAR pilot together for NBC 6 years ago. Great script, it's just trying to get all the rights to NASCAR and all the cars and all the owners and the drivers turned out to be a big problem (laughs). And then I have another guy who was there with me last season Rob Wright who was on Crossing Jordan, Walker Texas Ranger, Charmed and a bunch of other shows. Then I have writers from Lost, from Prison Break, got a feature guy, another guy besides myself, someone who was on the first two seasons of Smallville. We're kind of all over the map which is how I like it. that way we can bring in some really cool ideas.

Gary Scott Thompson: The mythology is cool, we've been working with that and just come up with some really cool stuff. One of the things I loved about the original series, and by the way I'm a fan and watched when I was a kid, was the fact that it was Michael Long, shot in the face, he was a detective, we're gonna give him a new face and a new name and he can never go back to that. To me, that was the whole point of what it was about. Once you did that, it's going to follow you anywhere.

We sort of had to backpaddle, and the good thing about what they did - and by the way I had nothing to do with the 2-hour (movie), I was brought in afterwards to do the series - the good thing about what they did with it is they left it almost a blank slate. There are a few things, but everything that was there we can either fill in and embellish or basically discredit in some way and say no that's not the truth. Actually that's open very well for us mythology-wise. One of the things we're going to play with is Mike's military background, and there's a couple of little secrets in there that I'm not going to reveal to you right now, but there's some fun stuff. And then the other thing we're doing too is just the car- I really want this car to be super cool and super hot. We've gone back in and we're really redesigning the whole Attack Car, and that's going to be a big secret we're going to hang on to as long as we can (laughs), exactly what the car can and can't do.

We're dealing with a sophisticated audience that's seen a lot of car movies and as my kid said to me when we're sitting watching the 2-hour, he goes "big deal, our car can talk". And I'm like "OK, well you got me there" and then I said "OK but can your car do THIS". And that's the thing that we're going to bring to the series and it's going to be really cool.

Gary Scott Thompson: Believe me, I get that. And that's one of the things when I sat there watching it too. Now I know they were up against the strike, and they had limited time and limited budget, so I can't fault them for what they did, they did what they did and now we're just going to take it to another level. When I came in, I went look, here's the deal. There was the original Knight Rider series which we all love, there was the 2-hour movie, and now there's the new series. And they share in common a car named KITT, different car in some cases, and there's going to be some people from the 2-hour movie who are carrying over to the new series. And we're going to see some new faces too. That's sort of what I told NBC when I came in. I said look, if you're going to do the 2-hour again this isn't for me and if you're going to do that on a weekly basis I'm not your guy. I'm the guy who wrote The Fast and the Furious, I have a reputation, and that reputation's going to be on this show so I need to make it cool.

This has to be super cool. And it has to be super cool every week. And there has to be really cool gadgets, and technology-wise, we're at a level where stuff should be way beyond what we're seeing now, and that's where we want to go. And actually tomorrow afternoon all the writers are going up to Microsoft in Seattle to see their office and home of the future, and their gadgets of the future, which we're talking 10, 15, 20 years down the line. They're gonna let us go into the secret lab. I'm pretty sure they're going to strip us naked to go in there (laughs) and wipe our minds after we come out, but we are at least going to see some of the cool stuff. And taht's where we want to go. We put our feelers out not just to all the car companies, but to all the techno companies too, asking hey, what's down the line in 10, 15, 20 years. How far til this, what's gong to happen here.

Those are the steps we're taking, the fact that this car is that advanced. And we're going to deal with that artificial intelligence on the level of why was this car created? In the original series, there was the whole "one man and his car", basically the Lone Ranger that Glen Larson did which was fantastic and it worked there. It's just that in the new day and age, what exactly is the purpose? And that again goes into our mythology which is super cool and we're going to have a lot of fun coming up with that.

Gary Scott Thompson: I DO like cars! (laughs). Yeah, I was a fan growing up. I'm so a motorhead, and grew up with my grandfather and my uncle and every weekend we were out working on cars. I never owned a new car I think until I was married. It was always old cars that you had to fix yourself. My grandfather used to say "if you can't take it apart and put it back together again, you shouldn't be driving it." My grandpa had a junkyard, actually a truck junkyard, a wrecking yard, it was two-and-half, three acres where I worked since I was 12 years old. Worked my first forty-plus hour week when I was 12, and would go out there and cut the cars up, and the trucks... strip them down, and put them back together. This is a great story, because I'm 12 and working for 50 cents an hour - slave labor basically - plus we had an hour off for lunch which he never gave me. And as well he picked me up, it was supposed to be at 8, he's picking me up at 6, supposed to drop me off at 5, he's dropping me off at 7 at night. So it really was more than a 40-hour week.

So I'm like grandpa, this is 50 cents an hour, this is like slave labor. He goes, see that pick-up over there? and he pointed to a 1959 GMC pickup.  And I go yeah. He goes that's the first pickup I ever owned. And he had a line-up of pickups. He had a '59, a '69, and I think it was an '81, and he kept them all. And he goes see that '59, the first pickup I ever owned? He goes at the end of the summer, that pickup is yours. I'm like, OK this is awesome. This is the greatest job I ever had. So I work all summer long, I get to the end of the summer, and I go hey grandpa give me the keys. He says what are you talking about? I go give me the keys to the pickup. You said it was mine. He goes you can't drive you're not 16. Come back when you're 16. So I had to work for him until I was 16 years old. Sixteenth birthday, I go give me the keys. He goes what are you talking about? I go give me the keys, you said it was mine. He goes it is yours but you can't take it out yet. It needs some work. He made me rebuild the entire thing. Rear end, transmission, and engine. Every single thing on it changed, every single hose, every wire, every everything before he would let me take it out. And then he gave me the pickup.

Gary Scott Thompson:(laughs) Yeah, cause that's my grandpa. Unfortunately he passed away just last year. But he was a cool dude. Just in terms of motorheads. His 1969 pickup and wrecker were running on propane. He had built them for propane. So he was way ahead of his time.  Burned cleaner, I thnk that pickup has 400,000 miles on it now and it's never been opened up once. That's how clean it is. So I guess I'm a bit of a motorhead. (laughs)

Gary Scott Thompson: They had talked to me about it during Vegas, but I was too busy doing Vegas and I was doing other development and writing features as well. I think they were just asking what I thought, if I had thoughts on it. And then after I guess the 2-hour... Some time during the strike I think it was first floated that hey, there's this thing we want you to look at. And I'm like we're on strike so we can't really talk. And then the strike killed Las Vegas which is my show, and I sort of became a free agent and there were a couple of studios and networks who wanted me and they said would you take a look at this Knight Rider thing. And I did, and they asked my opinion, and I said do you really want my opinion? Because that's always a loaded question in Hollywood when they ask your opinion. Most of time it's like we want to hear how good it was. And I told them if you really want my opinion I'll tell you what I think, OK? And so I told them, it didn't really look like you advanced anything. You need to reinvent this. If you're going to go to series, you need to reinvent it. It's really got to be something cool. And something cool every week. So we started talking about what to do, and they really kind of just said how would you make this a series? And I said this isn't making a series.

Gary Scott Thompson: Basically, you're the boss. You're the guy in charge. You do everything. Boss is the best word to say. You run the writer's room, break all the stories, you take the direction, you figure it out. You're the liaison between the show and the studio and the network. You're the public face of the show, per se. As well as the actors and the car and whoever else is in there. You're really the one who makes the decisions, and unfortunately deals with the consequences if they're not good (laughs). So that's kind of what it is.

Gary Scott Thompson: Dave's on the writing staff. He's a valuable part of the writing staff. There are other people on the staff as well who come from other places. Davis Bartis and Doug Liman are executive producers as well as myself. I'm the guy who does the day-to-day operations. I'm the day-to-day guy. Everything you deal with on a day-to-day basis goes through me. That's basically what a showrunner is. You deal with the actors, the set, the director, the studio, the network, all the writers, the writing, editing, everything.

Gary Scott Thompson: I will write the first episode.

Gary Scott Thompson: Well no actually it's not. Going forward. Always pushing forward. Basically the first episode will be the template of what the series is going to be. You don't have to have seen that 2-hour, let's put it that way. That's what the idea is. What I really want to do, what we're striving for... The Knight Rider fans are going to come because they'll be curious and it's our job to make sure they stay, to give them everything that they want. What I really want to get is fans who didn't show up, or the fans who just though eh, that's that kitchsy show from the 80s, why are they redoing it... I want them to see that first promo and go holy crap! This is Knight Rider? I gotta see this thing. That's what we're shooting for here. To get a new audience. and to get a female audience. We're doing some fun things to try and entice that audience in.