Nearly everyone on Earth has seen at least one episode of a Stephen J. Cannell TV show. Whether you grew up in the 70s with The Rockford Files and Baretta or the 80s with 21 Jump Street, The A-Team and The Greatest American Hero. But since the mid-90s Cannell has just been writing novels and producing low budget films. His latest picture is one of his few horror projects. It is called Demon Hunter and it was just released by Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Demon Hunter stars Sean Patrick Flanery as a half human/half demon who fights to save the world from a vicious demon bent on forcing possessed women to bear his children.
Buy Demon Hunter
Daniel Robert Epstein: Im not going to get to speak to you on February 5th so happy birthday.
Stephen J. Cannell: [laughs] Thank you. But you get to a certain age and your birthday is the least important thing on your annual list of things to do. Im 65 this year.
DRE: But youve accomplished so much.
SJC: Still Im not a guy that looks back very much. I just finished a new novel and now Im working on a screenplay. You cant sustain yourself with the stuff you did in the past.
DRE: How did you first get involved with Demon Hunter?
SJC: We found the script which was written by a guy named Mitchell Gould who is also a really good stuntman. When we talked to him about making the movie he said he would call in favors with all his friends and to do the stunts. It was a great deal on that level. We thought the script was very clean so it didnt require a lot of rewriting.
DRE: The villain, Billy Drago, seems like a guy thats must have been on your 80s TV shows.
SJC: Weve worked with him a few times. Hes an amazing actor but our initial idea for that character was that hed be like a guy from WWE Smackdown with big muscles all over him. We even had artwork drawn up with the character as a weightlifter type guy. But we just couldnt cast it. We kept bringing guys in and we didnt feel that they were scary enough. They were large and menacing, but they didnt have that spark of insanity that we needed. So I was sitting in a casting meeting one day and I said, Lets just go the other way and bring in the creepiest strangest guys. They dont have to be big and muscular but they do have to play really evil. We read a whole bunch of guys and Billy was the one we picked.
DRE: Looking at all you projects over the years you havent been involved with a lot of horror.
SJC: No, I havent and the reason is that when I was doing television most of it was not horror. There were a few things that were science fiction horror but it wasnt a staple of television. Maybe there were would be one a year and that was before cable got so popular of course. Also I got locked into the cop action adventure mode because you get classified by your hits.
DRE: What are you favorite horror films lately?
SJC: I thought Saw was amazing.
DRE: I loved Saw.
SJC: It was very clever, very dark and very disturbing. I thought The Grudge was a really good movie. I cant list you a hundred of my favorite horror movies because I dont go to very many movies in general. I wake up at 4:30 am to write so I end up watching them at home.
DRE: Demon Hunter is being released directly to DVD. What do you think of the burgeoning DVD market?
SJC: I think its a wonderful thing for actors, writers and producers. There is a whole new market that can actually sustain the budgets of these films.
DRE: Did you ever try to get this released theatrically?
SJC: Whenever we make a picture we hope to get it into the theatre. But if you dont have Tom Cruise, it can be difficult. Also anything can go direct to video if it gets a bad test audience, so there still are no guarantees. Its a hard game in this low budget market to get anybody to release theatrically. Certainly Saw and Cabin Fever were made in this budget range. Those got good releases so its possible.
DRE: Im sure youve worked with many of your crew and producers for many years
SJC: Yes and no. Some people Ive worked with before and others were new finds for me. You try to get people who know how to do this kind of project. You dont go to old friends if they dont have the chops to do it.
DRE: I was getting to the point that even though every production had its own set of problems I bet this was a very smooth shoot.
SJC: Its exactly what it is; it has its own set of problems. I hired a director Id never worked with before, Scott Ziehl, but I looked at a lot of his previous work. For Demon Hunter he did a really good job of keeping us on schedule and shooting good film. We tried to isolate out our action sequences and our CGI where we needed it. When I made The Greatest American Hero pilot, no one thought we could the flying look good because the Superman movie had just come out and that flying cost a million dollars. My whole budget on the two hour The Greatest American Hero pilot was about two and a half million dollars. No one believed that we could fly him on that budget. But I sat down with the director and we figured out how to do it for a tenth of what the Superman movie cost. Thats part of what you have to do, you have to figure out new ways to solve problems with the budget considerations. You dont ever want to have your viewer look at something and think it looks cheap or cheesy. There are a few things on every picture that I wish I could do better but were always trying to give you the best quality.
DRE: Were you on the set of Demon Hunter much?
SJC: I would go everyday, first thing in the morning. Then Id usually hit the set again on the way home in the afternoon. I dont usually haunt a set unless theres some reason for me to be there. But I always have another producer on the set for my behest.
DRE: Being a big executive, your day must be filled with meeting after meeting. What goes on in those meetings?
SJC: It depends on what it is. I have a lot of careers, Im an actor, Im a TV host, Im a writer, Im a producer, I direct sometimes. Im now being considered to host a TV series, so Im having meetings on that. Those are very different from the ones when Im producing something that I bought or written. Now Im basically contributing opinions as talent as opposed to being the guy who is going to solve the problems. Even though Im used to running a studio or being in charge, you cant go in as talent and start to act like youre producing a show. Sometimes when I get scripts as an actor I go, oh boy, Im not sure this dialogue is right. I could sit down and rewrite the dialogue but that isnt what they hired me to do. Then I have to sit down and figure out how to make it work. Thats the challenge of being an actor.
DRE: What show are you going to be on?
SJC: I dont want to talk about that yet because I never talk about things until they are real. Im working with a company that has a lot of credibility and theyve come to me and asked me to host this thing. Ive done things like that before. I hosted a show called U.S. Customs Classified for a year. It is fun.
The meetings are all different. I met with a very big actor yesterday for lunch to talk about a project that he and I might do together. Wed never met before so we wanted to feel each other out and see if there was a chemistry between us. That was the lunch. Something may come of that, it might not, youre pushing a lot of agendas forward and youre not sure often which ones are going to happen.
DRE: Congratulations on receiving the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award from the Writers Guild. You must be thrilled.
SJC: Yes, especially with that award. Normally Im a little skeptical of awards, even when Im winning them. Maybe it comes from my learning disabilities and I was the kid that always had to stay after school. When people are awarding you, you think Who are you kidding? But this one is nice because of the people who received it before me like Steven Bochco, Larry Gelbart, Rod Serling. When you look at that list of writers, they are some of the best that ever worked in television so Im very flattered.
DRE: I talked to Perry King [who starred in Cannells TV show Riptide] a few days ago and he said the networks dont make the best stuff anymore. Whats your feeling on that?
SJC: Ive been trying to stay out of television because I did so much of it. I did over 42 shows and thats a lot of television. Not all of those were hits but a good percentage of them were. When I sold my studio in 1995 I made a promise to myself that I wouldnt go back. Thats when I decided to become a novelist and I just finished my thirteenth novel. Ive been doing these low budget movies which are really fun for me, because unlike television, theres very little interference. Theres something nice about doing a script where everyone agrees upfront that is what they want to make. Sometimes I might put it through a couple rewrites but we basically agree that this is a script we all want to do. That makes it so that there isnt a whole lot of arguing over the material. Unlike a TV series where every week a new script comes in and the network has an opinion. Admittedly some scripts are better than others. Anybody who ever produced a TV series will tell you have your weak episodes. But all the second guessing doesnt produce the best result. I understand if youre a network executive being frustrated because youre sitting in the back seat watching someone else go the wrong way. Some people are really good at being able to deal with that frustration and be positive forces to help your show go where it needs to go. Others are very destructive because of that frustration.
DRE: Do you have an edgy show you want to do?
SJC: I did a pilot for TNT last year which was really edgy. They came to me and wanted me to do something so I pitched them a serial crime show called The Dark but it didnt get on the air.
DRE: Hows The A-Team movie going?
SJC: Its going slowly. Im not sure how close we are but at least theres interest in getting it to where we want to go. I want the movie to be ten times better than the series. If were going to make a movie its got to be its own thing. It cant be a copied version of what the series was. Weve got to bring the idea into today. It needs a different tone than the series which was like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
DRE: How do you compare it to that?
SJC: It was the lunacy of the comedy. An anvil hits Wile E. Coyote on the head and he shakes it off. Thats what it was with The A-Team. We crashed helicopters and the guys walked away. It was ridiculous! But that was the tone of the show. I dont want to do the movie that way.
DRE: How do you think Michael Manns Miami Vice movie is going to change the landscape?
SJC: I think hes a brilliant writer and director and it will hopefully be everything we all want it to be. If anyone can do it, its Michael. He has my utmost respect. I know him but were not golf buddies or anything like that. But Im such a huge fan of what he does.
DRE: Are you poised to jump if the Miami Vice movie is a success?
SJC: I want to. Its been a slow process, I wont lie to you.
DRE: How about The Greatest American Hero movie?
SJC: Coming along, same with 21 Jump Street which is at Sony now. Weve got a script I actually like and were going to move forward pretty quickly. [Alias writers] Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec wrote the script and Im producing it with Neil Moritz. I feel pretty good about that one.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Demon Hunter stars Sean Patrick Flanery as a half human/half demon who fights to save the world from a vicious demon bent on forcing possessed women to bear his children.
Buy Demon Hunter
Daniel Robert Epstein: Im not going to get to speak to you on February 5th so happy birthday.
Stephen J. Cannell: [laughs] Thank you. But you get to a certain age and your birthday is the least important thing on your annual list of things to do. Im 65 this year.
DRE: But youve accomplished so much.
SJC: Still Im not a guy that looks back very much. I just finished a new novel and now Im working on a screenplay. You cant sustain yourself with the stuff you did in the past.
DRE: How did you first get involved with Demon Hunter?
SJC: We found the script which was written by a guy named Mitchell Gould who is also a really good stuntman. When we talked to him about making the movie he said he would call in favors with all his friends and to do the stunts. It was a great deal on that level. We thought the script was very clean so it didnt require a lot of rewriting.
DRE: The villain, Billy Drago, seems like a guy thats must have been on your 80s TV shows.
SJC: Weve worked with him a few times. Hes an amazing actor but our initial idea for that character was that hed be like a guy from WWE Smackdown with big muscles all over him. We even had artwork drawn up with the character as a weightlifter type guy. But we just couldnt cast it. We kept bringing guys in and we didnt feel that they were scary enough. They were large and menacing, but they didnt have that spark of insanity that we needed. So I was sitting in a casting meeting one day and I said, Lets just go the other way and bring in the creepiest strangest guys. They dont have to be big and muscular but they do have to play really evil. We read a whole bunch of guys and Billy was the one we picked.
DRE: Looking at all you projects over the years you havent been involved with a lot of horror.
SJC: No, I havent and the reason is that when I was doing television most of it was not horror. There were a few things that were science fiction horror but it wasnt a staple of television. Maybe there were would be one a year and that was before cable got so popular of course. Also I got locked into the cop action adventure mode because you get classified by your hits.
DRE: What are you favorite horror films lately?
SJC: I thought Saw was amazing.
DRE: I loved Saw.
SJC: It was very clever, very dark and very disturbing. I thought The Grudge was a really good movie. I cant list you a hundred of my favorite horror movies because I dont go to very many movies in general. I wake up at 4:30 am to write so I end up watching them at home.
DRE: Demon Hunter is being released directly to DVD. What do you think of the burgeoning DVD market?
SJC: I think its a wonderful thing for actors, writers and producers. There is a whole new market that can actually sustain the budgets of these films.
DRE: Did you ever try to get this released theatrically?
SJC: Whenever we make a picture we hope to get it into the theatre. But if you dont have Tom Cruise, it can be difficult. Also anything can go direct to video if it gets a bad test audience, so there still are no guarantees. Its a hard game in this low budget market to get anybody to release theatrically. Certainly Saw and Cabin Fever were made in this budget range. Those got good releases so its possible.
DRE: Im sure youve worked with many of your crew and producers for many years
SJC: Yes and no. Some people Ive worked with before and others were new finds for me. You try to get people who know how to do this kind of project. You dont go to old friends if they dont have the chops to do it.
DRE: I was getting to the point that even though every production had its own set of problems I bet this was a very smooth shoot.
SJC: Its exactly what it is; it has its own set of problems. I hired a director Id never worked with before, Scott Ziehl, but I looked at a lot of his previous work. For Demon Hunter he did a really good job of keeping us on schedule and shooting good film. We tried to isolate out our action sequences and our CGI where we needed it. When I made The Greatest American Hero pilot, no one thought we could the flying look good because the Superman movie had just come out and that flying cost a million dollars. My whole budget on the two hour The Greatest American Hero pilot was about two and a half million dollars. No one believed that we could fly him on that budget. But I sat down with the director and we figured out how to do it for a tenth of what the Superman movie cost. Thats part of what you have to do, you have to figure out new ways to solve problems with the budget considerations. You dont ever want to have your viewer look at something and think it looks cheap or cheesy. There are a few things on every picture that I wish I could do better but were always trying to give you the best quality.
DRE: Were you on the set of Demon Hunter much?
SJC: I would go everyday, first thing in the morning. Then Id usually hit the set again on the way home in the afternoon. I dont usually haunt a set unless theres some reason for me to be there. But I always have another producer on the set for my behest.
DRE: Being a big executive, your day must be filled with meeting after meeting. What goes on in those meetings?
SJC: It depends on what it is. I have a lot of careers, Im an actor, Im a TV host, Im a writer, Im a producer, I direct sometimes. Im now being considered to host a TV series, so Im having meetings on that. Those are very different from the ones when Im producing something that I bought or written. Now Im basically contributing opinions as talent as opposed to being the guy who is going to solve the problems. Even though Im used to running a studio or being in charge, you cant go in as talent and start to act like youre producing a show. Sometimes when I get scripts as an actor I go, oh boy, Im not sure this dialogue is right. I could sit down and rewrite the dialogue but that isnt what they hired me to do. Then I have to sit down and figure out how to make it work. Thats the challenge of being an actor.
DRE: What show are you going to be on?
SJC: I dont want to talk about that yet because I never talk about things until they are real. Im working with a company that has a lot of credibility and theyve come to me and asked me to host this thing. Ive done things like that before. I hosted a show called U.S. Customs Classified for a year. It is fun.
The meetings are all different. I met with a very big actor yesterday for lunch to talk about a project that he and I might do together. Wed never met before so we wanted to feel each other out and see if there was a chemistry between us. That was the lunch. Something may come of that, it might not, youre pushing a lot of agendas forward and youre not sure often which ones are going to happen.
DRE: Congratulations on receiving the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award from the Writers Guild. You must be thrilled.
SJC: Yes, especially with that award. Normally Im a little skeptical of awards, even when Im winning them. Maybe it comes from my learning disabilities and I was the kid that always had to stay after school. When people are awarding you, you think Who are you kidding? But this one is nice because of the people who received it before me like Steven Bochco, Larry Gelbart, Rod Serling. When you look at that list of writers, they are some of the best that ever worked in television so Im very flattered.
DRE: I talked to Perry King [who starred in Cannells TV show Riptide] a few days ago and he said the networks dont make the best stuff anymore. Whats your feeling on that?
SJC: Ive been trying to stay out of television because I did so much of it. I did over 42 shows and thats a lot of television. Not all of those were hits but a good percentage of them were. When I sold my studio in 1995 I made a promise to myself that I wouldnt go back. Thats when I decided to become a novelist and I just finished my thirteenth novel. Ive been doing these low budget movies which are really fun for me, because unlike television, theres very little interference. Theres something nice about doing a script where everyone agrees upfront that is what they want to make. Sometimes I might put it through a couple rewrites but we basically agree that this is a script we all want to do. That makes it so that there isnt a whole lot of arguing over the material. Unlike a TV series where every week a new script comes in and the network has an opinion. Admittedly some scripts are better than others. Anybody who ever produced a TV series will tell you have your weak episodes. But all the second guessing doesnt produce the best result. I understand if youre a network executive being frustrated because youre sitting in the back seat watching someone else go the wrong way. Some people are really good at being able to deal with that frustration and be positive forces to help your show go where it needs to go. Others are very destructive because of that frustration.
DRE: Do you have an edgy show you want to do?
SJC: I did a pilot for TNT last year which was really edgy. They came to me and wanted me to do something so I pitched them a serial crime show called The Dark but it didnt get on the air.
DRE: Hows The A-Team movie going?
SJC: Its going slowly. Im not sure how close we are but at least theres interest in getting it to where we want to go. I want the movie to be ten times better than the series. If were going to make a movie its got to be its own thing. It cant be a copied version of what the series was. Weve got to bring the idea into today. It needs a different tone than the series which was like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
DRE: How do you compare it to that?
SJC: It was the lunacy of the comedy. An anvil hits Wile E. Coyote on the head and he shakes it off. Thats what it was with The A-Team. We crashed helicopters and the guys walked away. It was ridiculous! But that was the tone of the show. I dont want to do the movie that way.
DRE: How do you think Michael Manns Miami Vice movie is going to change the landscape?
SJC: I think hes a brilliant writer and director and it will hopefully be everything we all want it to be. If anyone can do it, its Michael. He has my utmost respect. I know him but were not golf buddies or anything like that. But Im such a huge fan of what he does.
DRE: Are you poised to jump if the Miami Vice movie is a success?
SJC: I want to. Its been a slow process, I wont lie to you.
DRE: How about The Greatest American Hero movie?
SJC: Coming along, same with 21 Jump Street which is at Sony now. Weve got a script I actually like and were going to move forward pretty quickly. [Alias writers] Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec wrote the script and Im producing it with Neil Moritz. I feel pretty good about that one.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
I do sorta wonder about the whole "make movies out of tv shows" thing tho - ya mean there aren't enough old movies and comic books out there to make new movies out of that you haveta make a movie out of a TV show?