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25 years after the original television miniseries, the story of V
continues in a brand new novel from creator Kenneth Johnson and it
sounds like a trip to silver screen may be next.
{sidebar id=1}Johnson -- whose tv credits also include Alien Nation, The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk -- talked with IESB about the new book and where V might be headed next.
Having grown up with V, I jumped at the chance to talk to Johnson about this continuation and am happy to say that the man doesnt begin to disappoint. He obviously cares a lot about his creations and it looks like V: The Second Generation is going to be well worth the wait.
IESB: How did this sequel novel come to be?
Johnson: I had done an original miniseries 20 years ago and around 2001, Warner finally got around to doing a DVD release and I went back to remaster the whole thing. It had only been recorded in Mono at the time because they didnt want to spend the money back in 1982. They said, Nobodys broadcasting in stereo! and I said, No, but they will be. So when we did the DVD release, I got them to cough up a little money so that we could go back and remaster it. I was standing on the dubbing stage and watching the last scene where Faye Grant, my leading lady, sent a message into deep space trying to contact an enemy of the visitors hoping that the enemy of my enemy might be my friend. She even talks at the time about how it could take years and maybe even a generation before such help might possibly come back. People had talked to me over the years about redoing V in one way or another and I had never really been interested in doing that because I felt that I had kind of gotten it right the first time and didnt want to mess with success. But a little bell went off when I was watching that scene and I said, That could be kind of interesting. I wonder what would happen if I picked the story up 20 years later. What has become of the world? Where are we? What might happen if we did, indeed, get through to somebody who suddenly knocks on our back door and says, were here to be your friends or are we? That set me off and from there my first thought was to do another mini-series following up on the original. I talked to Warner because they own the TV rights since I was under contract for them when I wrote it originally. They liked it. We sold it to NBC in the room. Then -- it was not like my first experience with Brandon Tartakoff when I sold the original V 20 years ago. Brandon had essentially said, I love it Kenny. Heres a check. Go out and call me when youre done. The new management at NBC was not quite so visionary or so helpful and after about two and half years of essentially dicking around with us, we pulled it back away from them because we realized they just didnt get it. They didnt have the money to do it properly or the vision to get behind the piece. In the course of all that, I began to realize that it was really a pretty good story and that Id really enjoy turning it into a novel. Itd allow me to explore in a little more depth the characters and their relationships and the inside of their heads what was going on. So while we were still trying to get it set up as a miniseries, I took it upon myself to turn it into a novel. A number of publishers were very interested but we ultimately went with Tor books because they had had some involvement with the original V novelizations that were done back in the 80s. It turned out to be a really great thing and were all really pleased with the way it happened.
IESB: The original mini-series had a strong political message behind it. Is this one an updated look at politics or are you taking it in a completely different direction?
Johnson: Its interesting you say that, Silas. The original V was never about spaceships and science fiction aspects and all that stuff. It was about power. I had been very intrigued by a novel by Sinclair Lewis written in 1935 called It Cant Happen Here which was about a fascist takeover of the United States. When I read the novel I thought, Wow. That would be really interesting to use some of those ideas. I used some of those ideas as inspiration. What would it be like if America underwent a cataclysmic change. Thats where V really began. There a script I wrote that had nothing to do with spaceships or reptilian people at all. It was really about a grassroots, fascist rise-up in the United States. When Brandon Tartakoff read it he really wanted to do it as a mini but he was concerned that Americans wouldnt really get fascism. There had to be an outside force that did this tyrannical takeover. I didnt believe that the Soviets or the Chinese could do such a thing but where else could it come from? When the idea of aliens came up, I wasnt very pleased because having done The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk, I was looking to move a little bit into the real world. But the more that I looked at it, the more I realized that I could do a really, really wonderful allegory by having this force coming in. In the 80s, there were these two superpowers who were really vying for supremacy in the world The Soviet Union and the United States. Now, of course, the Soviet Union is gone and there is but one hyper-power in the world and thats us. So that makes V: The Second Generation a little more of direct allegory today because one of the aspects of the novel is an exploration of the responsibility a hyper-power has when theyre the only ones who control power. Like I said, V was always about power. It was about people who were in power and who abused it. People who sucked up to that power like the Vichy French did in World War II. People who said, Well, if I just keep my head down and dont bother them then itll pass and maybe they wont bother me. Ultimately, its about the people who realize that the people in power are abusing it and saying that they need to be taken down at all costs. They, of course, become the resistance and the heroes of the piece as they were in the original V. What Ive done in The Second Generation is sort of amplified that and I have a world where the media is totally controlled and everything that we see or hear is filtered through the visitor propaganda machine. Its a bit like France was in the mid-40s during the war where you could still have your cappuccino on the Champs-Elysees if you didnt mind rubbing shoulder with the Wermacht soldiers walking up and down the street. You could still go to theater in Paris in the evening but, of course, the plays were carefully censored and anyone who was saying something they shouldnt was summarily disappeared. If you were a member of the Jewish faith your days were definitely numbered and you wanted to stay away from those who might bring you down. It was a time and place where you couldnt even trust the people you were sleeping with. Husbands and wives and children were notoriously turning each other in for their own benefit and their own gain. At the same time, the world was still going on on a day-to-day basis. Thats what Ive posited is going on in The Second Generation. The world is going on. Yes, they have taken our water. About half of it has been taken now. The idea is, though, that theyre going to clean it and theyre going to bring it back. Sort of like dialysis on a planetary scale and everythings going to be fine. Lets just stay the course and trust us. Trust your leaders because we really know whats best for you. Dont ask too many questions and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, that sort of echoes whats been going on in America the last few years which is part of what I was seeking to do. When the Visitor leader arrives and has the big rally at Candlestick Park, I patterned it off of the Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1935 which Leni Riefenstahl documented in her brilliant propaganda documentary Triumph of the Will. When you look at what the leader says, its a little scary because it really sounds like it has come out of American diplomats mouth in the last eight or nine years. Its wonderful to work in a genre that allows you to use that sort of metaphor and allegory and make people think, This sounds a little too close to home. Maybe I should be thinking and listening a bit more to whats going on around me and whats coming over the television every night.
IESB: I have a younger brother who can take or leave most genre Sci-Fi but hes always loved V. Do you find that fans of V are generally like that in that they dont necessarily fit into the fanboy mold?
Johnson: Its interesting and theres a couple of aspects I should mention as far as thats concerned. First of all, the normal sci-fi fan if you had to characterize him and it would be a him would be teenage type more often than not maybe early twenties but the interesting thing about all of my work in this genre from The Bionic Woman through and including The Incredible Hulk, V and Alien Nation my largest audience, Silas, has always been women. I did an audience breakdown, demographically. My largest audience has always been women 18 to 49. And then men in that age range and then teenagers and then kids. That was true of all those shows and its very unusual. When V first went on and had an audience of 80 million people, clearly there are not 80 million science fiction fans in the United States. It appealed to a much broader audience and its not like I set out to that. I didnt say, Im going to write stuff that will particularly appeal to females. Ive always proceeded from a standpoint of writing and creating characters and stories that I felt would be really character-driven and relationship-oriented. I think that thats, perhaps, why so many so many, many women have wound on to V and to all of my work. And thats very rewarding because I was trained in the classics at Carnegie Mellon University. I was trained in classical theater. Ive always tried to have an underlying substance in everything Ive written or created so that theres a surface patina that will make people want to tune in or pick up the book. When they get into it and realize the depth of character Im trying to portray and the depth of story and the thoughtfulness that Im trying to get into the work, that really makes them hang around. Its rewarding and its particularly rewarding that not only the critics responded so well to my work over the years but theres an audience thats much, much broader than the standard sort of sci-fi audience.
IESB: If the books a big success, is there any desire to then try and take it back to television?
Johnson: Well, the television miniseries market has virtually gone away. As you probably know, there are no more movie nights on any of the major four networks. NBC Sunday night movie and the CBS Monday night-whatever are all gone. FOX, long ago, gave up doing TV movies or miniseries. So thats really the roadblock we ran into. There are still places doing miniseries and thats on the cable networks but most of them are very branded and V would not find a natural home on, say, the Cooking Channel or even really on Lifetime. The Sci-Fi channel, actually, really wanted to do it but Warner and the Sci-Fi channel hadnt been able to make a deal on anything. Its a corporate problem that Time-Warner has with NBC/Universal. Its like Ford and Chevy trying to get together and make a car. A number of high, high-profile projects including a big Stephen King miniseries and a George Clooney miniseries, they just havent been able to make a deal and weve gone in again and again trying to make a deal. Everyone just wanted too many pieces of the pie and it was a very frustrating place to be. On the other hand, I own the motion picture rights to not only the original miniseries but Warner has worked out to let me have the rights to V: The Second Generation as well. So now theres some very serious talk in town about bringing V to the motion picture world and doing, perhaps, a remake of my original miniseries first and then following it up with one or two movies. Certainly in V: The Second Generation Ive got enough material for at least two sequels. So were in serious conversations with that. Or we were right up until the writers strike. Now were sort of stalled until that passes. But theres a lot of very interesting things happening with V, particularly in the motion picture world, because people have to come to realize the enormous fanbase that V has around the world. When I did that DVD, Silas, I did a directors commentary and gave an e-mail where people could reach me if they had questions or comments. Be careful what you wish for! Thousands and thousands of e-mails from people all over the world have just been pouring in. I printed only a small amount of them but if I printed them all, theyd reach from my floor to my ceiling. Theres just that many. I answer all of them and its incredibly rewarding to see that that fanbase is out there and primed and waiting and, again, the e-mails come not just from 14 year old fanboy types but come from people who say, I was ten, eleven, twelve years old when V originally aired. Now Im late 20s/early 30s and Im realizing that its so much deeper. More substantive and about so much more than I realized when I was ten years old. Its really incredibly rewarding to have contact with all these people around the world. And for every one that writes, theres 10,000 that dont but still feel the same way. Its amazing how many come from places other than the United States. Probably about a third of them I get come from virtually every country in the world. Its very cool to have created something like that that people respond to. One of the things I miss from doing television is that on television its kind of like a drive-in theater where youre watching with other people but you have no direct connection to them. The thing thats so great a movie theaters isnt the big screen but the fact that youre in a room with 600 other people and you really get a sense of that audience thats there with you. Thats the best feeling in the world. Theyre responding to what youve done and the e-mails are sort of an extension of that. It allows people to applaud or to ask questions or to just sort of cheer you on and say, Yes, we want more! Thats been particularly rewarding as far as the novel is concerned. People are just champing at the bit to get a hold of this novel and see whats happened to the characters they loved or hated and see who these new people are. To see who these allies are and who The Second Generation heroes are.
IESB: Lets step away from V for just a moment; You also created the Alien Nation TV series. Is that something you might return to one day?
Johnson: I think the Alien Nation ship has sailed, unfortunately. Weve been back to FOX a couple of times trying to point out that immigration is sort of big issue right now. The people who were there at FOX when I originally did it are no longer there and the new people have their own ideas of what they think should be on. Thats very frustrating but, on the other hand, we just put out a DVD set of the five Alien Nation movies that I did after the show was originally cancelled which was like a gift from the gods, incidentally, to be able to get all of us back together. We had so much fun doing those Alien Nation movies. It was great because every minority thought it was about them. I loved working in an area where I could talk about intolerance and oppression. When FOX first approached me about doing Alien Nation, they thought they had Lethal Weapon with aliens. I didnt want to do that. I was tired of aliens, Silas. I felt like Id been typecast in this one thing. But I saw one scene where the alien family of the alien cop, George, had one little shot in the movie. They were on the porch, waving. I thought, Waitaminute! Who are they?! What is it like to be the worlds latest minority? To be the latest people off the bus? I went back to FOX and said, Look, Im not interested in doing Lethal Weapon with aliens but In the Heat of the Night could be really intriguing. So we did it for one season and then the five movies and now weve got the box set which is really pretty cool. I produced it for FOX. It was out in the fall at Best Buy as an exclusive but its about to come out in April in a wide release. Its terrific because not only are all five movies there in really great transfers but I did directors commentary on all five of them. I put together a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes filmmaking so you can see what we did and how we did it. And I got the whole Alien Nation gang together in my living room last year and had four video cameras running. I just let them talk about what it was like doing the show. When you watch this thing, you can just see how much fun we had and how much fun we still have. Theres a lot of casts of old TV shows that dont even want to see each other anymore, much less hang out. But this group weve all stayed together like a family and each of them would come back in a second if we could ever do any more. But in the meantime, its nice to have the DVD of the movies coming out so that people can revisit what we did and see the behind the scenes and photo galleries and production art and all that extra stuff.
IESB: Ive been happy that The Incredible Hulk is finally coming out in season sets.
Johnson: Oh yeah! You know, on Friday I just recorded the commentary for the big Prometheus episode I did which was a two-hour piece that opened the fourth season. Probably the biggest, most ambitious piece I did on television except for V. It was great to see it and see that it could still play, you know, pretty well. So my commentary is going to be on there and they also did interviews with three of my producers; Bob Steinhauer, Karen Harris and Jill Sherman. Karen and Jill wrote their first script ever for me on the Hulk. I hired them as story editors and then moved them up to Executive Story Consultants and by the time wed got to the fourth season, Id made them producers. They were just terrific. Theres on-camera stuff with all of them and I think a little bit with me as well. Universal tells me that theyre going to release all of them seasons three, four and five -- this summer. Im still waiting for the accurate date yet but probably around the new Hulk movie which, incidentally after the first one was so bad and did so badly at the box office when they decided they were going to do a second one, they said, Gee, maybe we should make it more like the original television series. Make it a little more character driven. I thought, Wow, what a concept! Maybe I was doing something right? I even saw a photo the other day on the net and I thought it was Bixby sitting in the big medical rig where he gets his gamma overdose and I looked again and realized it was Ed Norton sitting in exactly the same thing I put Bix in all those years ago. So thats a good sign, I think. People should check my website: www.kennethjohnson.us and all the info is there about everything I know up to the minute.
IESB: I remember my brother, years ago, was looking for V items on Ebay and was getting frustrated because you cant search for the letter V.
Johnson: I know! Youll get a gazillion things. You can try V: The Original Minseries, but youll still get all kinds of other stuff. And theres people whove made bogus guns and costumes and all that kind of thing. Its amazing the kind of phenomena it was when it came out. Its still among the top 15 highest-rated miniseries ever in the history of television. It still is the highest-rated science fiction miniseries ever. When it went up against the Olympics in 1984 when they broadcast it overseas, it outrated the Olympics two to one. The reception was extraordinary. I think one of my favorite stories is that South African government bought it and this was during the time of Apartheid because they thought it was a good example of white people and black people working together. Then the next day all over Soweto and the other townships there were big, red Vs spray painted everywhere. It was exactly the sort of thing that I hoped would happen.
V: The Second Generation hits bookshelves on February 5th!
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