Exclusive Interview with Gary Scott Thompson - Part 2

Gary Scott Thompson:(laughs) I can't speak for NBC, I can only speak for myself...(continues laughing)

Gary Scott Thompson: It will not fall the same way in terms of direction because we have a direction we're definitely going. We have a mythology we're going to follow. I can't speak for Bionic, I wasn't there, and I don't know what went into whatever. There's things that everybody, an audience has to understand. There's not just a protocol, but there's a series: we have to go through studio, we have to go through network, we go through standards and practices, a bunch of hurdles we have to jump to get stuff on the air. I think Battlestar is a really good example, by the way, of something that was reinvented. And I loved the original, and I love the new one. That's really sort of prototypical of what we want to do here, is something that people who love the original are going to love the new one too. And also bring in a new audience.

Gary Scott Thompson: The mythology connections will be there. yes, there will be more mythology. There is a mythology to what we are doing.

Gary Scott Thompson: No, we'll still have that. Michael Knight will still be there, he'll (Mike) still be his son, that we don't look at as mythology. We look at that as a reality. That's the reality. the mythology is, let's just say, his whole Iraqi war service and what happened. And the mythology of who's running this... Why was KITT built? For what purpose?

Gary Scott Thompson: Why do you build another car, unless there's another purpose? And what is that purpose? Because if you think about it, it's like big deal, it's a car. But there has to be more to it. And that's the mythology we've come up with. What is that "more". What are they really doing?

Gary Scott Thompson: No no no... We want to jump in. They'll be close-ended episodes. if you see an episode, you're going to think it's great and have a blast watching it. If you see the whole thing you're going to think it's even better and have a bigger blast and be able to follow. Mythology-wise, they're called "arcs", and character arcs, and that stuff too there is a bigger picture to it. But you'll be able to come in the middle if you wanted to an see and episode and go ohhhh, that was cool, that was a blast. So they're very much close-ended episodes, and yet they have mythology arcs and character arcs so you can follow them. It's more enriching if you see a whole season, you'll go "oooohhhhhh..." as opposed to "woah, that was really cool." You'll be able to put a lot more pieces together.

Gary Scott Thompson: The Turbo Boost... yeah, we're still trying to figure out exactly how to make that work. Because Turbo Boost in the 80s is going to be something totally different today. And look, hey, it's the equivalent of NOS on Fast and the Furious. You push the button and you go. One of the things we talked about this morning was hey, let's but nitro in there too and see what happens. Or hey, let's do this. What exactly is the Turbo Boost? What's going to be our version of the Turbo Boost? And that's something I know the fans sorely missed. It's one of the reasons why I watched as a kid, and loved to see that car jump. But also it's problematic in terms of jumping a car (laughs). They get destroyed when you do it and Ford's not going to give us an infinite amount of cars. The way we have it tricked out, that Shelby's about 155,000 dollars. It ain't a cheap car.

Gary Scott Thompson: We talked about that. The CG doesn't look that great when you do it solo, so what we really want to do is marry the two, and do a reality plus CG-enhanced. It's one of the things we do. It's just a matter of what is that Turbo Boost. We want this all to be based in a reality. You're talking about cars that already park themselves, that talk already, that's what we drive around in today. They're working on cars that are going to drive via the highway with sensors that aren't very far away. We just want to stay in some sort of reality, which is if you push the button, much like NOS, what happens? Or much like a drag race with the nitro. Those are the things that we're talking about. A lot of the stuff we're still working on and trying to figure out, but a lot we've got down pat.

Gary Scott Thompson: Good movie, huh?

Gary Scott Thompson: No, they sucked. My name's not on them (laughs). Except for the second one, but I was only story.

Gary Scott Thompson: It's funny, because that's one of the things I said too. I said look, that's one of the things I know how to do as a director and as a producer which is get in the car and make that thing go. And that's really what we want to do. When you do a big wide helicopter shot you don't know if you're going 30 mph or 300 mph. You have to be inside there. And one of the things we're going to come up and do is what we affectionately call "the KITT cave" where we have a sort of base where we can come flying at 100 mph into that cave and retro-fit that thing for everything and do some really cool things and then send it out on its mission. But we want to see it take off, we want to see it blast. So we have to get inside and see, as in Fast and the Furious, telephone poles flying by like picket fences. And that's the secret to it. We definitely want to do all that stuff. Again, on a television budget and doing it every week, it holds you back with what you can do. But we're going to try and do everything we can.

Gary Scott Thompson: Well yes, you can amortize it over the entire series. Yes, that is a benefit. And also, once we figure out how to do it correctly it becomes cheaper to do each time you do it. Once you do it once you go oh ok, if we do this and this and this we can do the same thing for less money. We'll figure it out. I have a mantra that's in the writers' room which is "Fast, Furious, Fun." And the other one is "Embrace your inner twelve-year-old." Twelve-year-olds are extremely sophisticated now. They all have cel phones, they all run computers, they all have seen Transformers and all these movies that we're going to emulate. If someone starts going down a path, they go "embrace your inner twelve-year-old". Or don't foget "fast, furious, fun." That's what we want to do. We want to have fun with this. And still have a mythology, and still have really cool characters and a great dynamic between them.

Gary Scott Thompson: Yup, you did. It doesn't exist any more though (laughs). It's been torn down.

Gary Scott Thompson: Well Vegas was cancelled so I don't know. It got cancelled on a cliffhanger that said "to be continued" and I know that when I walk down to ben Silverman's office there's going to be more stacks of boxes of baby booties since all the fans are sending in booties to save Danny and Delinda's baby and he's been begging me to make them stop. And I'm like dude, I don't want to hear this, you're the one who cancelled the show. We're talking about boxes and boxes. A lot of people talked about it. One of the writers who was from Vegas said hey, we should have Danny and Delinda walk through and not say anything, with a baby in their arms and just walk through an episode. And kind of look at Mike and wink or something. But no, as of right now there's no plan for that (laughs). By the way, it wouldn't be a bad idea considering the amount of fans of Vegas, at least to pull them over (laughs).

Gary Scott Thompson: There's not a lot of shows you can watch with your kids and we want to create the kind of show that you can watch with your kids. And your kids are getting one thing out of it and you're getting a completely different thing. And the example we've actually been using in the writers' room is the Pixar movies like The Incredibles and Toy Story, how me as a dad is laughing at something completely different than my kids and we're both having a great time. Whether we're going to be able to pull that off I don't know but that's our goal is to at least try. So that your kids can sit there and go "cool", and the parents can go "cool", and you can all get something out of it. Obviously we're going to push the envelope as much as we can especially in terms of the cars and what the cars can do. We'll see what else we can get away with.

Gary Scott Thompson: We start shooting in June. We've had the writers assembled for... I guess a good month now and they're beating the stuff out, figuring what this is.

Gary Scott Thompson: We actually have a 13-story, but we also have a 22. I've also got a 26 in case it goes to 26. I don't plan on this going one and out. I don't plan on going 13 and out. I plan on going an entire season and then into next season. That's my goal.

Gary Scott Thompson: I'm under a two-year contract.

Gary Scott Thompson: Thank you, I appreciate that. The only thing is show up and watch! (laughs) And give us a chance to get it right. We're certainly trying. The other thing is we obviously don't want to give everything away in the first episode, so we actually sat down and we're doling out cool things that this car can do throughout the course of the first 6-7 and even into 13 we're going to find out some more interesting things that it can do. If you miss the Turbo Boost in one, don't think that it won't show up in two, or some other thing. And we've got some really cool things planned for this show. It's going to be our version of the Turbo Boost, we just have to figure out what it is. It can't just be a Turbo Boost because that's already been done. We have to come up with something that's just as cool, or actually cooler. It's the cool factor as I like to tell everybody. If it's cool, we're going to do it. It's going to be a good show.

Gary Scott Thompson: All right, talk to you soon! thanks Neil.