ewind to the year 1983. May sweeps is coming, and ominous-looking posters are appearing at bus stops and other locations around the country. The clever advertising campaign--which culminated in a blood-red V being painted across the promo poster--caught the attention of jaded viewers, who tuned in to NBC's four-hour, 15-minute miniseries, V, in record numbers.
Creator, writer and director Ken Johnson--who's currently in discussions with The SCI FI Channel about future projects--takes some time out to reflect on the groundbreaking miniseries about alien oppression. (Photo courtesy Dena Vaughan)
V is scheduled to be released on DVD in July.
What first gave you the idea for the original V miniseries?
Johnson: I had read a book by Sinclair Lewis written in the '30s, called It Can't Happen Here, which was about a fascist takeover of the United States back in the '30s. And I was intrigued by the notion of what it would be like if America were suddenly under an enormous sea change. I wrote a script which had nothing to do with aliens or anything like that. It was about a fascist takeover of the United States. It was a very strong piece about a grass-roots vigilante group that grew in national popularity until suddenly we were living in a different country.
How did that idea transform into the alien invasion saga we saw on screen?
Johnson: I was talking to Brandon Tartikoff, my friend who was running NBC at the time, about other stuff, and he asked what I was doing. I mentioned this; it was a feature script. He got very excited and wanted to read it, and thought it would be a great miniseries, but didn't think Americans would get fascism. He said, "Couldn't it be the Soviets or the Chinese?" But I didn't believe that either of those forces could sustain a protracted occupation of the United States. And then my friend Jeff Sagansky, who was sort of Brandon's second-in-command at the time, said, "How about aliens, Kenny?"
Although aliens weren't your first choice, did the futuristic concept allow you to explore the themes you wanted to explore?
Johnson: I realized I could do a metaphorical piece about what it's like to suddenly be confronted by a very strong power. V was always about power, and how people who are in power take advantage of it, how other people will suck up to it, as the Vichy French did during World War II, and how some people will ultimately fight against it--which is where the Resistance came from.
If you look at V carefully, there aren't a whole lot of spaceships and lasers in it; it's mostly drama, it's about how people react to extreme situations. In the first cut I had in the editing room, there was no spacecraft, no matte paintings, no spaceships and lasers and all of that--it was fabulous, because it worked so well as a drama, because the actors and the performances were so strong that I knew once I added all of the gravy of the sci-fi aspects of it plus the musical score and all of that, that it was really going to take everybody's head off.
Today's big effects films seem to lose sight of the story and characters when faced with the bright lights and big explosions of special effects.
Johnson: [Laughs.] That's right. When Independence Day opened, I got some of my best reviews for V, because a number of reviewers said, "Gee, this looks familiar." [Often] they lose the human connection, and I try to avoid that. What's important to me is how someone reacts to a situation and how they come away from it.
Once you made the shift from feature script to miniseries, how did you settle on the length of the show?
Johnson: Ultimately, it was 4 hours and 15 minutes, and we couldn't cut it. So Brandon went to the affiliates and got an extra 15 minutes the first night it was on. Which was pretty astonishing. And it proved to be enormously successful.
How much time did you have to prepare for the film?
Johnson: Normally, you have four months or so to prep a picture as complicated as a four-hour miniseries. And at the time, V was the most expensive miniseries ever made. But from the day Brandon said go to the day I said "Action!" was two and a half weeks. I look back now and [wonder], how did I do that, exactly? I still haven't quite figured it out; it was a challenge. And fortunately I had a terrific crew who'd worked with me on The Incredible Hulk, and some of them back to The Bionic Woman, so we spoke a good shorthand.
How long was the shoot?
Johnson: We shot 55 days, 50 days in local locations and five days on the stages--and that's including five days that we had to reshoot because one of my leading ladies--Dominique Dunne--was murdered four weeks into principal photography.
When it aired, V made a huge splash then, and even today, the franchise has its fans.
Johnson: It was the highest-rated show the network had had in two and a half years; Brandon told me it really helped turn the network around.
After years of nudging Warner Bros., you've finally had the chance to revisit V to put together the DVD. How does the miniseries hold up, nearly two decades later?
Johnson: Aside from one Fernando Valenzuela joke, which sort of ties into the Dodgers of that era, and one shot of the old video game Space Invaders, which is terribly outdated now, you could put the picture on tonight and it would play as fresh as ever.
What special extras did you do for the DVD?
Johnson: All of the dialogue is exactly the same, although we've made it sound a little better. The sound effects are completely remixed and remastered, because originally I had wanted to dub it in stereo back in '83, but Warner's wouldn't let me do it, because they didn't want to spend the money at the time. So they spent the money now; I spent longer redubbing it than I spent dubbing it originally. We remixed the whole soundtrack so it's in stereo surround sound now. I had to go back and literally recut all of the sound effects, so it's a whole new sound-effects track. It's pretty dazzling--the helicopters now fly from left to right.
Also, when John McPherson, my director of photography, and I photographed V originally, we anticipated a foreign theatrical release, so we framed it for a 185 aspect ratio widescreen. And that's the way the DVD is released, in letterbox, and it looks, finally, as it always was intended to look. The negative has held up remarkably well; I spent a week last year to make color corrections to make it look even better. And there's a director's commentary, for which I did a lot of research--I dug out all of my old call sheets and cast notes so I could make the commentary as informative as possible. I'd hoped to include the gag reel, also, because I have a very funny reel of outtakes from the picture, but ultimately too many actors wanted to be paid for that, or wouldn't clear it.
Is there any hope for a revival V?
Johnson: No, I don't think so. Even from the dubbing stage, I called the guys in charge of long-form TV over [at Warner Bros.] and said, "It would be sort of interesting to do V: The Next Generation, wouldn't it? The sea levels have now dropped 50 feet, and [stars] Marc Singer and Faye Grant are the old Yoda/Obi-Wan Kenobi types, and there's a whole generation that's grown up under repression."
And they sort of ho-hummed and said, "No."
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