KNOTS LANDING

[Chris B]

Now that I've watched more of season 7, I understand what everyone meant. It's not that the male characters were weak before, but now they're really driving story. With the exception of Richard, I don't recall that happening much before. Now you have Gary, Joshua and Mack all in lead stories with Abby, Cathy, Karen and Laura supporting them instead of the other way around. It's a nice change, but I do wish Joshua's story lasted longer. Not to say the writing isn't good for the women, but now the show seems more even.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE what he has done with Lilimae. She's a total irrational bitch and reminds me more of the Lilimae we first met. Once she quickly reconciled with Val she was viewed as a sweet old lady, but they did have a dark past. I think Paulsen is doing a good job of revisiting that. Val is amazing to watch as well. Such a quiet strength, but she can't quite hold it all together. I love his writing for the Dallas characters.

The introduction of Jill Bennett and Peter Hollister continues to impress me. Jill's story is so intriguing and you have no idea where it's going. I love her scenes with Karen. Latest episode I watched she met Gary and you see that twinkle in her eye. You also have Gary cheating on Abby in the same episode. It's just building and building and building. I feel this is my favorite season after season 4.

My current rankings:

1. Season 4

2. Season 7

3. Season 3

4. Season 5

5. Season 6

6. Season 1

7. Season 2

Can't wait to see where I place the final 7 seasons. Originally those were my favorites.

Edited July 20, 2011 by Chris B

[Paul Raven]

David Jacobs interview from 2005. Lengthy,but a must read for KL fans.

CONVERSATION WITH DAVID JACOBS

London, December 19th 2005. Shortly after the appointed time of 4pm, KNOTS

LANDING fans Jason Yates and James Holmes receive a call from series creator

David Jacobs in California. "I'm a little late calling because I was

watching our village idiot on television," he explains.

Jason: David, welcome to KNOTS LANDING Net and thank you very much indeed

for joining us.

David: It's nice to be here.

Jason: Oh, great stuff. We've got questions from all over the world from

fans all dying to ask about KNOTS LANDING. Of course, the DVD is coming out

in March. Are you excited about that?

David: I'm looking forward to it. I've enjoyed the process - I enjoyed the

process on DALLAS, which I wasn't so - although I created DALLAS, I wasn't

so directly involved as I've been with KNOTS - and yes, I'm looking forward

very much -

James: Because you were good on the commentaries. I must say, it really

helped having you there on the DALLAS commentaries. You were a good, sort

of, moderator.

David: I didn't do the KNOTS commentaries because of a complication that

came up with um .. oh no, I'm not gonna get into that.

(Jason laughs.)

David: It was difficult for me to do.

Jason: Oh dear, oh dear...

James: Oh what a shame, what a shame.

Jason: I think people were very much looking forward to the commentaries

because there's so little information on the early years of KNOTS LANDING.

David: Er, well I'll have to give it to you - I mean, this interview.

James: Yeah.

Jason: Yeah.

James: This is the alternative commentary!

(Laughter)

Jason: Fantastic, fantastic! OK, I'm gonna kick off now with the first

question from abbylexis, who is in the US of A and he says, "Hi David, How

close was your original script of KNOTS LANDING in 1977 to the 1979 pilot

... Was there a couple that resembled Gary and Val and was the show going to

be introduced through them?"

David: That's a good question, and the truth would be I would have answered

it differently a few days ago. I was hunting through something and I found a

memo I'd written October 27th 1978 which talks about the changes I was gonna make from the original presentation. Just to tell you what probably most

people know by now, KNOTS LANDING was the original idea which preceded

DALLAS. We, Michael Filerman and I, took the idea to CBS. I was new to

television then, but I was getting fairly hot because I'd managed to be the

only person who could keep a story editor's job on a show with very

demanding producers who were wonderful and -

James: Sorry, what show was that?

David: It was called FAMILY.

James/Jason: Ah!

David: I was the story editor. It was really my first job and, um, they had

sort of gone through story editors, and they didn't go through me. So that

alone made me a sort of a - even though I was brand new and already

thirty-seven years old - it was enough to get me meetings. So Michael

Filerman, who was the, um, development executive at Lorimar Productions and

I went in with the KNOTS LANDING idea, and, um, the people at the network

said, after we'd presented it, "You know, we're looking for something like

that. We wanna get into that area, the idea of domestic drama, maybe

continuing drama, and - but we want something to start with something a

little glitzier, a little more of a saga." And they said saga, you think of

Texas. And they said they also had Linda Evans under contract, so maybe look

for something there for her. So I went home and looked for it. You know,

started with - thinking of Linda Evans - DALLAS.

Jason: Yeah.

David: After DALLAS became a - um - was started to climb and it was clear

that it was gonna be a hit, I went in with another show called THE LAST

ISLAND, which - um - CBS always turned down the idea I came up with.

Jason: Wow, what was that about?

David: Pardon?

Jason: What was the outline for THE LAST ISLAND?

David: THE LAST ISLAND was a show that took place on, um, a place like

Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket or East Hampton, New York - a summer place,

with one Monday morning, all of the, um, the men, or most of the men, got on

the train or the ferry boat and went back to the city, and - but by noon of

that day, the people on the island realise that something's happened and

they can't be in contact with anybody else, so it was - there's no contact.

I mean, if they phone the city, the phone will ring but no one will answer

it.

Jason: Wow, it's like a - it's almost a LOST before LOST -

David: It was a bit like LOST -

Jason: Yeah -

David: - but it didn't have supernatural, um, element and what it really was

was a combination of, um, Apocalypse and Utopia.

Jason: Right.

David: Because within a day or two everyone had to decide - and the reason

it was summer, the middle of the summertime, is that I wanted, you know,

fairly well-to-do people living in rentals, where the people on the island

were in their rec. vehicles for the summer, which is how it happens in a lot

of these places, but with Labour Day approaching - also, who kept track of

laws anymore - um - it was gonna be overpopulated. And - um - so it really

meant it was about building a new society, but it also meant a division of

people into orders and into - um - you know, the democracy group and the

chaos group, so it was interesting. It was more political than LOST and, as

I say, less supernatural. But it was a lot of people living on an island.

Jason: It sounds very, very interesting.

David: It was good. But when I pitched - after that, Bob Silverman was in

charge of the studio and he said, "Well, that's pretty good, but you know-"

and then he pulled out the pages that we'd left for them a few years ago on

KNOTS LANDING, or a year before on KNOTS LANDING, and he said, "Is there any

way we can make this a DALLAS spin off?" So, the short answer to the

question is, making it a DALLAS spin off, um, is what made it considerably -

you know, quite different than - I just took one of the couples and made it,

you know, Val and Gary who had already been created on DALLAS and putting

them into the KNOTS LANDING mix, but when you have four couples and you

change one, you sort of have to change the dynamic all the way around.

Jason: Wow.

DJ: However, once I wrote the script, remarkably little changed from the

script and the pilot as you would see it.

Jason: Interestingly enough, David, just picking you up on that, we actually

have a copy of your original shooting script and, just comparing it to the

pilot that was actually broadcast, the two scenes that were cut - one

involving the character of Laura and there was another, I think, with the

Wards - what was interesting is that the small scenes that were cut were

almost the long running arcs. Do you remember having to make that decision

in the-?

David: Yes. We cut the scene with Laura because, um, when we screened it, it

got laughs.

(Jason and James chuckle)

David: And the reason it did is we had painted everybody - it was - you

know, with the Karen Allen character bringing, you know, strange boys into

her father's and step-mother's bed, it just became one too many - um - just

the one thing that stretched credibility. It became too DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES

- but we didn't know that yet because it wasn't on, um, there was no

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES then - but it was, it kept getting a laugh and even -

we were actually, um, dubbing it for sound, when the sound man, you know,

who looked at it in the morning, laughed and I said, "We gotta get rid of

that scene."

(Jason chuckles)

David: However, it didn't change our perception of who Laura was.

Jason: No, no.

David: We did a show couple of episodes later called "The Lie."

James: Oh yes!

Jason: One of the best shows -

David: One of my favourite KNOTS LANDINGs ever. And, um, that episode

essentially substituted for the missing scenes because it told us who Laura

was.

James: And that's really interesting, that episode, watching in retrospect,

because it deals with date rape, the concept of which hadn't really -

David: I'm sorry. Deals with what?

James: Date rape. Date rape.

Jason: And it dealt with the idea of rape during a date.

David: Yes. Oh, date rape.

Jason: That idea, which was a very controversial, um, subject that had never

really been explored on television at that point.

David: Yeah. You know, I never thought of it as date rape. It's just a woman

who's gone to a bar to pick up a man and picked up the wrong man that day,

you know. I mean, she went there to pick him up to get laid, you know.

Jason: Oh it's very interesting now, watching some of the early episodes,

especially in the first season, because of course now some of these issues

you wrote about at the time really resonate today, perhaps for slightly

different reasons.

David: Oh, oh I think definitely.

Jason: We have a question here from montyc who's in Boston. He says, "Hi

David, Who was your favourite KNOTS LANDING character and why?"

David: It's very hard to answer that question. Karen, Michele Lee's

character, was - made the speeches that I would have made about subjects, so

she sort of was my - um - my footprint (Jason chuckles), but - um - she was

different. And also, I never had to - I never had a problem hearing Karen,

you know. She and I spoke the same way. But - um - I had other favourite

characters in different ways. I loved, um, Donna. I loved Abby because I

loved the way she played it. And, you know, she made it very easy to write

her because, um, she was so outrageous, you know - "That's not true that I

want half a fortune ... Half of Gary's money is not a fortune, it's half a

fortune-"

Jason (Laughing): One of the most fantastic -

David: "-all of Gary's money is a fortune."

Jason: Yeah!

David: And, um, those lines came so easily to me. I liked the character. I

guess I liked, um, I have to say I liked Sumner and Paige, because they were

so easy. They were so real that you could go either way with them. They

could be heroic or they could be despicable and remain believable. And, um,

I just liked them all. I loved every character. I liked them all. I mean,

(David and Jason laugh) I really didn't have anybody - I loved Lilimae.

Jason: Yeah.

James: Oh Lilimae!

David: And I remember Val and Gary were terrific. In the first season, when

Michael said, "Let's break them up again," I said to him, "Michael, how many

times can we break them up?"

(Jason laughs)

David: It turns out, you know, an infinite number of times.

Jason: It's interesting you talk about Karen. I wonder if you could possibly

discuss the evolution of Karen. She seemed to be more rebellious and flawed

in the early seasons. For example, she has a wonderful line in Season 2,

where she refers to Sid and says, "It's not easy being married to a saint."

And in later years, the same comment is echoed by Kevin Dobson's character

of Mack. I'm wondering if you could discuss Karen through her evolution.

David: Well, Karen in the beginning was limited by her - well, we made Karen

a little bit harsher in the first season than we otherwise would have

because we were toying with the audience. And because it was a DALLAS spin

off, the natural question was always, "Well, where's your JR? Who's your

JR?" And so, even though Michele Lee herself is a very likeable person, and

even if she's being over the top she's a person of great enthusiasm, she's a

person of great strength, in the pilot anyway, we were sort of pushing the

possibility that she was gonna be roughly our equivalent. I always wanted to

project the idea that we weren't DALLAS, it was a different scale from

DALLAS, that whoever we had wasn't gonna be as successful as JR. But later

on, the line "being married to a saint" was - Don Murray was so sweet, you

know, and so rational all the time that, um, her enthusiasm, or the size of

her enthusiasm, sometimes grew shrill and - I don't remember the context in

which she said "It's difficult being married to a saint" - but it's true,

Sid had - you know, even the way he ran his business was totally moral. He

was a totally moral kind of guy. Then later on, when Kevin makes the comment

to her, it's really about her - um - if I recall, it's really about her

correctness, you know, her dedication to her issues.

Jason: Yeah, it seemed as though perhaps ... I'm wondering, looking back on

the show's life, if perhaps some of the early years, if there was more

conflict and drama within Karen's relationships with the other characters

than there was later on.

David: Um, I think we did with Kenny and we did with -

Jason: - with Richard Avery, with John Pleshette's character, there was a

lot of -

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, part of that was her loyalty, her

loyalty to Laura and to, um, Ginger.

Jason: Yeah.

David: You know what it was, also? That in the early years, too, the show

dealt much more with, um, with the relationships, um, in the show. Now they

always dealt with that, but the stories became more melodramatic. They

became bigger and more convoluted and more, um, well, melodramatic is the

word. And, when the show started, I wanted it to be more of a - um -

domestic show and not get into these big issues but, yes, problems in the

beginning. I mean, just with the shooting, staying on the air.

Jason: I think one of the most successful things about the early years was

Karen's relationship with her daughter Diana, but apparently it wasn't very

popular with viewers. Do you-?

David: Diana wasn't popular with viewers.

Jason: Yeah, but Claudia Lonow is such a wonderful actress. When you watch

the shows now, she stands out, I mean she really shines -

David: You see, now we're in the era of much greater television realism, and

of post- oh, what's that television show ...?

Jason: SIX FEET UNDER or-?

David: MY WORLD SUCKS or something. What was it-?

James: MY SO-CALLED LIFE!

Jason: Oh yes.

David: MY SO-CALLED LIFE!

(All laugh)

Jason: You liked that?

David: And even though that show wasn't commercially successful, it still -

it was enough - it was noticed enough that it moved - but we had kids like

that on [KNOTS]. I mean, we, you know, Claudia was - the character of Diana

was very strong willed. And, um, I think on - although I think - I now think

she was very real and she is a terrific actress -

Jason: Oh yes -

David: - when you - people then were still in the mood for television as a

corrective.

Jason: I see.

David: You know, the family had to be - because that was the good family - I

mean we deliberately made, you know, one of the boys - the middle boy - was

very shy and awkward, and the youngest was a crowd pleaser who would tell

you what he thought you wanted to hear. But, um, Diana and then ... Tonya -

Jason: Tonya Crowe, yeah.

David: What was the character called?

Jason: Olivia Cunningham. Olivia.

David: Olivia, oh man! She had the greatest arc of all, you know, I think.

Jason: And did you think about perhaps softening the Diana arc? Because it

seems to me that you wrote really strongly for her, right up until the end,

through the five seasons she was on the show. Diana was given sharp, very

hard hitting arcs, but you never gave into the public's dislike of the

character.

David: No, we - um - no, we didn't. We thought that she was - um ... We had

the Diana we had, and we were - we thought she worked. I mean, Claudia is

very strong herself and, you know, sometimes sitting in dailies, you would

say, "Are we sure she's not too strong?" But what we did do to kind of

balance that was to, um, put her into very difficult situations. You know,

there - I love the scene where she - there's one scene where she's behind

bars.

James: Oh, when she's testifying.

David: Yes.

James: And Mack's watching her through the two-way mirror.

David: Yes.

James: That's fantastic, yeah.

David: And to put her into situations that would make her - um - work a bit

better. I really wasn't aware that she was that disliked. I never found her

harsh but - was she only in five?

James: Yeah. She left at the beginning of Season 6, I think, after when

Karen was shot.

Jason: Yes, at the beginning of Season 6 they wrote Claudia Lonow out.

James: She sort of phased out during Season 5 after Chip dies.

David: Mm, yeah.

Jason: Yeah. We have a question here from cijidunnerox in West Hollywood,

California, and he says, "Hi David,

I'm so excited" - presumably, to be asking you a question - "I've heard you

created the role of Laura Avery with Constance McCashin in mind. Is there

any truth to that?"

David: Yes, there is.

Jason: Constance McCashin's wonderful, isn't she?

David: Yes, she's wonderful. I really went to bat for her, for her to play

that part. Even after we shot the pilot, the [network] people wanted Patty

Duke to play the role. And I'm glad we did because she was the only

character like that, you know, she was very - she worked on the show. In the

mix.

Jason: Was she in one of your shows, one of your earlier shows?

David: Yes, I did a show called MARRIED THE FIRST YEAR. It was the first -

it was right after DALLAS. Actually, it was the first pilot that I wrote ...

and we shot five episodes ... and she was the wife of the father of the

bride. It was about two kids who get married right out of college - out of

high school - and the girl's parents are separated and, um, are divorced and

the dad has remarried and Constance was his wife and, um, she was very

bitchy.

James: Oh, really? Was it a similar character to Laura? Was there that kind

of - Laura would have that kind of sarcastic -

David: Yes, but Laura had that, you know, that soft side. She starts as a

victim ... you know, the husband was irresponsible. I like the idea that we

saw Laura grow up on KNOTS LANDING.

James: Yeah, because funnily enough, after that episode "The Lie", it could

have easily gone the other way. She could have become the Sue Ellen type

character.

David: Absolutely. And then, I think the strongest show was the one - it may

not have been the strongest episode but the one that's the strongest for her

- is when she has to ask her dad for money -

James: Yeah.

David: - to get Richard out of trouble, because Richard is always in over

his head. And it's after then that she takes - she only agrees to ask for

money if, from now on, she's taking charge of the finances.

James: Yeah, that's a turning point for her, isn't it?

David: Yes.

Jason: Mm, it's really interesting. I mean, I think there's general

disappointment that Laura perhaps had less screen time as the show went on.

Certainly, for the first three or four seasons, the character of Laura is

shown a lot, and then there seems to be a change in terms of how much screen

time she's given. Could you discuss the evolution of that?

David: She was given less screen time because the - it wasn't a conscious

decision, but the couple of Richard and Laura was becoming less interesting,

because, um, as she was becoming successful - there's that awful scene, um,

not really an awful scene, but it sort of makes you cringe - where he buys

her, when she's working in real estate, when he buys her a new car, a Buick

-

Jason: Yeah!

David: - and then her boss comes round with a new Mercedes.

Jason: Yeah!

David: And once she achieved a certain independence, they become less

interesting - but wait a minute, I don't think I agree with you that she got

less screen time, because once she marries - once Sumner comes into the

picture, she gets the best - I think they ... for two seasons, they have the

best written and some of the deepest scenes that we have in KNOTS LANDING.

Jason: I would certainly agree with that.

James: I think what happened when, if I've got this right, when the

Lechowicks took over the show, I think in Season 8, that's when the whole

Empire Valley story line was completely dropped, and it seems almost that

Laura was the character that suffered, because that was - she and Greg -

Empire Valley was something they seemed to debate about a lot, and once that

was out of the picture, she had sort of very little to do.

David: I really don't remember how it happened. It wouldn't have been Lynn

and Bernie doing it on their own. I mean, it was - at that time, we were

having to begin to pare down the cast anyway. And, um, remember Richard left

before Laura did.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah ...

David: And that's when producing KNOTS LANDING began to lose its fun, um,

because I felt we were cutting off limbs, and um ... However, the

compensations were sometimes wonderful. I mean, the fact that we - I think

the way Laura died, went off and died, gave us some of the greatest scenes

that we ever did.

Jason: Yes, we have some questions about that which I'll come to. Joshua

Slow, who is also in L.A., says, "Mr. Jacobs, let me first of all say that

I've always admired you for staying true to your artistic convictions ... TV

GUIDE once called Joan van Ark 'incomparable.' And you yourself were once

quoted as saying something to the effect of, 'Joan is definitely a lunatic,

but I say it with affection.'" He asks, "Was she ever difficult to work

with? Did her own ideas for Val's evolution ever clash with your own?"

David: No. Joan was the easiest to work with of the principal actors and - I

probably shouldn't be telling you any of this - just to say, that when we

had a new script, and I was always very - always invited everybody in the

cast, you know, to give me a lot of input, Joan would come over to the house

on Sundays and she'd bring toys for the children, flowers for my wife,

because she felt guilty about interrupting our Sunday, and she'd do about

thirty-five minutes of apologies -

Jason: Oh, that's very -

David: And there'd be a [script] problem and then I'd say, "Oh, OK, let's

look at it. Yeah, you're right." ... and within an hour or so, all would be

fixed. Um, when Michele would call and come over, she say, "Ah! I love this

script! It's just, there's one or two bits ..." And when she was finished,

when she'd left, I'd sit down at the typewriter and write, "Fade in."

(All laugh wildly)

David: Joan was always, um, over apologetic.

Jason: Actually, David, it's interesting because we spoke to Kim Lankford

last week, who had nothing but good things to say about you, but she did say

that she felt that perhaps she should have stood up for her character of

Ginger a little more. She felt that the Valene and Karen characters -

overrode I think is the word she used - overrode some of the things - the

direction she wanted to go in. Do you think that the Wards were well written

for?

David: No, I don't think so and I have an excuse. I don't always have an

excuse -

Jason: OK!

David: - sometimes I just say I just didn't get something -

Jason: Yeah!

David: - but the original concept for those two was way, way too, um,

lascivious for the time. I mean, he was - this wasn't in the pilot, this was

something that came very early - but he wanted to get into the music

business so badly ... and he had a boss who sort of was turned on by Ginger,

and he [Kenny] wanted Ginger to sleep with him.

Jason: Wow!

James: Ah!

David: And, and, and - she was gonna do it and - um - I mean, very

reluctantly and really upset - but, um, I mean, that degree of, um - the

network didn't let us do it. So it was hard to make them - I mean, we made

him a philanderer, but - um - well, just think about that opportunity. I

mean, that that would have opened up into - um - a good story.

Jason: When did that change, in terms of the Wards' original concept?

David: Well, we never - we never filmed that.

Jason: Oh, you never filmed it.

James: But that same situation happens with Richard and Laura - in the first

JR crossover episode - where Laura sleeps with an old college friend, an old

flame -

David: Yeah, but it's not at Richard's urging.

James: Yeah. No.

David: Is it at Richard's urging? No.

James: I can't remember.

Jason: Oh no, it's not at his urging.

James: Oh no, it's at the other - you're right.

Jason: Yes.

James: It's at the other guy's urging.

Jason: Yeah.

James: That's right. Sorry.

Jason: It's really interesting. But, um, I think Kim was - she thinks she

should have stood up for Ginger a little bit more, and perhaps - but I think

that's really interesting. Most KNOTS LANDING fans don't know your original

concept for the Wards.

James: No.

David: It was hard to - it was very difficult, um, for - I think at the end,

maybe she thinks I could have stood up for keeping her character in the

show, because ... James was much more philosophical about it, but we just

had to lose some of the cast.

Jason: Yeah. Apparently, you had an idea for a spin off at some time or

other for the Wards?

David: We were gonna have a younger group and they [the Wards] were gonna

take it there, you know. The same as Gary and Val were sort of DALLAS that

spun us into KNOTS LANDING, we had talked about taking the Wards and

spinning them into another community, a younger ensemble, but we didn't do

it.

Jason: No, obviously. It would have been interesting, I think.

James: Would that kind of been sort of a vaguely kind of MELROSE PLACE type

set up?

David: It wasn't really being set up, because it was - it took KNOTS LANDING

a while to get that kind of - like 1984 or 85 before KNOTS really clicked

and we felt secure enough, but it was never a mega hit, you know, to - it

was only later that we talked about spinning it off, and then we had a

different concept.

[Paul Raven]

ason: We have a question here, David, again from cijidunnerox, and he talks

about the writing on the show. He says, "Right from the very beginning a

number of the actors on the show were writing scripts, John Pleshette, Don

Murray, James Houghton, many of which were season premiere/finale episodes.

Was this something that they came to you about or did you ask them? Was this

beneficial to the show do you think?"

David: Um, to be honest about it, John was the only one that, um, really was

a writer.

Jason: Right.

David: Um, well, I guess we'll get into it anyway, but John was a very good

writer and, um, wanted to write one. Don had written, but he was primarily a

director, you know? And that two-parter that opened, um -

James: "Hitchhike".

David: - that opened the second season, I don't know how good that was. Um,

we worked on that a lot together. You know, we worked on, um, fixing it up.

I - The network and the studio always encouraged us when the actors wanted

to write or direct, because it was a way to pay them more money without

paying them more money.

(Laughter)

David: Without going, you know, having to set the precedent of higher

salaries.

Jason: Yeah.

David: But I never liked it because I thought it was unfair to directors and

writers, you know ...

Jason: Mm. We have a question here. A lot of questions have come in about

the character of Lucy Ewing. [Refers to a question from cijidunnerox] "Many

have wondered about the lack of Lucy's appearances. Is there any particular

reason she never appeared more often?" I know you've said publicly that they

were two completely different shows, but "do you think Lucy would have

worked in KNOTS LANDING or not?"

David: No, I don't. She was too - um - I don't think any of the DALLAS

characters worked on KNOTS LANDING. They were two different shows, two

different scales ... KNOTS LANDING was not another DALLAS. It was so

different. KNOTS LANDING was scaled to life. In DALLAS, Bobby could go into

a bank and say, "I need $200,000,000", which was big money in those days,

and the bank would say, "OK, come back at 2 o'clock."

Jason: Yeah.

(A bus screeches to a halt in London.)

David: I think your tea is ready.

(Jason and James laugh.)

David: And, um, every time we had - I thought they were the worst shows we

did.

Jason: It's like Joey from FRIENDS appearing in THE SOPRANOS, isn't it?

There's a complete lack of scale. There's something huge and over the top,

and something subtle and realistic. It's strange, isn't it?

David: Right. And Charlene, who was fine on DALLAS, as - um - boy, she was

really outrageous as written, in the beginning, we'd never go that far -

but, um, you know, even her acting style, even the acting styles on DALLAS

was way more stylised. And KNOTS was ... theatre performances, you know. We

did one episode with her, with Lucy, and then it was - they never worked. I

never liked them.

Jason: Mm. And [referring to a question from Fountainbridge] "how did you

create the character of Mack for Kevin Dobson?" Could you talk to us a bit

about that?

David: Mack was, um, well, it was clear after Don Murray left that we needed

another man, that we needed a man for Karen and, um, we let the season of

mourning go. You know, we said, "Let's just have her mourn this season." And

we brought in, um -

Jason: Stephen Macht.

David: - Macht to be her brother, you know, just to provide a male in the

house. But we clearly needed something, and the - um - Kevin had made a

pilot. The show went on the air. It was a show called SHANNON. It was about,

um, a New York cop whose wife dies. His name's Shannon and he's got a baby.

Shannon moves in with his in-laws so they can help him raise the baby. And,

um, it was a pretty good show, but it didn't make it. But I liked it, and as

soon as we found out he was available - which happens more than you think on

television - it happened with PAPER DOLLS. When PAPER DOLLS didn't get

picked up for a second season, we went "let's go get that blonde!"

(Jason laughs)

David: And when Alec Baldwin's show, the medical - what was it called?

Jason: He was on a hospital show, wasn't he?

James: DOCTORS or something.

Jason: Something like that.

David: Yeah, right before. When that didn't go, when that was cancelled, we

said, "Let's go get him."

Jason: And could you talk to us about Donna Mills? We've got a question from

abbylexis who says, "In another interview you gave for KNOTS LANDING Net,

you mentioned that Abby was always planned from the beginning. Does that

mean that when the four couples were written, her character had already been

written?"

David: No, she hadn't been written, but we knew that everybody would be

looking for JR - we knew the whole time we were gonna bring in - that it was

gonna be a woman.

Jason: Oh, you did?

David: Oh yeah. Definitely decided. Oh yeah, cos I remember seeing

actresses. And we had a very different kind of woman in mind.

Jason: Did you?

David: We wanted her to be all the other women's friend. You know, we wanted

her to be, um, not as quite as glamorous and not quite as cute as - remember

the difference between Donna Mills before and after KNOTS and the Abby

character. Before that, she was really cute. Afterwards, she became

glamorous.

Jason: Yeah.

David: But her roles had really been all PLAY MISTY FOR ME kind of roles,

victims or weak characters, you know, likeable characters, and we didn't

think of her at all.

Jason: Wow. And how did Donna come up? What happened?

David: The network, um, a guy at the network, CBS, named Tony Barch called

up and said he had two ideas. And I was always very mean to him, not mean to

him but, you know, in a light hearted way.

Jason: Yes.

David: And he said, "What about making Abby" - this was when I gave him the

bible for the next season and we were talking about it - "what about making

her Sid's sister?" So I said, "Tony, that sucks! That's the most ridiculous

idea I ever heard!"

(Jason laughs)

David: So I hung up, and Michael was sitting in the office. I said, "He

wants to make Abby Sid's sister." And then we looked at each other for a

second and I picked up the phone and called him back, "If you tell anybody

this is your idea, we're not gonna do it!"

(Much laughter)

David: Then he called back and he said, um, "How about Donna Mills?" I said,

"Tony, we're trying to go in the complete opposite direction to that!" But

in that case, it wasn't so much realising that he could be right, but we got

another phone call. We got a phone call from her agent saying she would come

in. Now, Donna was already a pretty, you know, already a working actress

with a pretty good career. And ordinarily you'd just make an offer, but - so

her agent said, "She wants to come in and meet with you." And she came in

and she was fun and terrific and, um, but when she left, we still had - I

said, "I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if this is gonna be right."

And, um, the phone rang again and it was her agent and, this couldn't have

been five minutes after she left, and it was her agent saying - oh no, it

was the casting -

Jason: Barbara Miller? Was it Barbara Miller?

David: Yeah it was Barbara Miller, saying she wants to come in and read for

the part - which ordinarily we wouldn't, again, ask an established actress

to read. And we said, "OK". She came back that afternoon and she read and

she was great, and it meant reshaping the role a little bit, but, um, not

that much. You know, she still came in, she drove up in the Volvo station

wagon. She had the kids in the back. It was very middle class. Just

separated from her husband. And it worked. It was wonderful.

Jason: Yes, it certainly was. There's a question [from abbylexis] wondering

why there was always an empty house between the Averys and the Wards. "Had

you always planned that she would live there?"

David: Um, I think - yes. In fact, I hadn't thought about that. We left that

one because - by the time we started filming the pilot - I don't know if we

thought about it before the pilot, we might have just chosen the best four

houses on that cul-de-sac, but - or the four houses that worked best for us,

but, um ...

Jason: It was very noticeable in the first season that there was a featured

house right next to the Averys that was completely empty.

David: Didn't we put some kids in that house that kept running out from time

to time?

Jason: You saw sometimes a child, a little girl on a bicycle, yes, coming in

and out in the background occasionally, and there was a caravan parked

outside for a while, a camper van - um -

James: There was that family - what was that family called?

Jason: The Beckers, the Beckers.

James: The Beckers - that we never saw!

Jason: That we never saw. Did you - was that a running joke in the

production team that -

David: Yeah. Becker, um, was the name of the person who - one of our

directors.

Jason/James: Ah!

David: And, um, yeah, but that's right - we were always holding it for Abby.

Jason: Oh, that's wonderful. And can I ask you about the cul-de-sac? Why

there? Did you look at others? Because there's a lot of cul-de-sacs in that

area, aren't there? Was there something special about that particular street

that you loved?

David: No.

Jason: No.

(Laughter)

David: They all looked exactly the same. So - I mean, they might not have

all been exactly the same, but you know, they were -

Jason: Yeah.

David: - it was pretty much the same and, um, I imagine the location

managers found the one that ... What we wanted - because it was so, it was

actually quite far from the beach - is we wanted something on a hill, so

that the cars - we could film a car going down the hill, and then go to

Redondo Beach which was miles away and, you know, have them turn in as if it

had just come down that hill, and then, in one shot, take it to the beach to

make it seem that we were right by the sea.

Jason: Well it did appear that way. It was very well shot.

David: So that's all that was. We just wanted it on a fairly steep hill.

Jason: And what about the idea for Gary and Abby getting together? Could you

talk us through that whole story line? Where did that come from and what

were your feelings on that?

David: You know, um, it was when Gary - that was one of the few things that

was dictated by DALLAS.

Jason: Really?

David: That - um - you know, he had to come into money.

James: Oh, because of Jock dying?

David: Because of, you know, when Jock died.

Jason: Mm.

David: So therefore, um, we had to make him rich.

Jason: I see.

David: And therefore (chuckling) he was the obvious partner for Abby.

Jason: Yeah.

David: And that was really - that worked out.

Jason: Were you concerned at all about, um, leaving the character of Valene

bereft and alone, in the sense that you'd done that with Karen's character -

not voluntarily, because of Don Murray leaving. Were you concerned about

breaking up the couples at that point?

David: I was always - um, they used to make fun of me all the time - "How

many times can we break them up?" And Michael would say, "All the time."

(Laughter)

James: It's interesting, because of this whole comparison with DESPERATE

HOUSEWIVES, but somebody [Joshua Slow] made a really interesting point on

the website that it's almost that KNOTS LANDING became Abandoned Housewives,

who then sort of reinvented their lives. And from what you're saying, it

happened - none of it was planned. Because of Don Murray leaving, Karen was

left alone. Because of Jim Davis dying in DALLAS, Val ended up alone. And

John Pleshette leaving. So it all happened organically, that these women all

kind of reinvented themselves.

David: Right - but, BUT - there are things that happened to our women that

were not - they weren't planned from the beginning - but it was a really a

matter of KNOTS LANDING growing with the times.

James: Yeah.

David: That, in the beginning, none of the women - except for Ginger who was

a school teacher - none of the women worked.

James: Yeah.

David: Or - worked at jobs. And, um, within, oh I think within three or four

years, they all had careers. So, um, that was a sort of a matter of running

with the times.

Jason: We have a question from Australia, from Seaviewer who says, "KNOTS

LANDING was the only one of the major eighties prime time soaps that never

recast one of the leading roles .... Was this a fixed policy, or was it

decided on a case-by-case basis?" And he's also curious to know if you ever

come close to recasting a part when an actor left instead of writing the

character out.

David: No, I don't - I never liked recasting on television. There's a few

little pet things that, um, I had with Michael, but I never liked recasting.

I never liked, um -

Jason: But Jason Avery changed several times, didn't he? Poor little - Laura

didn't know who - what he looked like! (Laughs)

David: Kids change anyway, you know. I mean, that you can't help.

Jason: Yes, yes.

David: But I wouldn't - but that's not a major character. Oh, I think there

were supporting characters that might have been -

Jason: Yes, yes.

David: But, um - or, you know, somebody's doctor, but, um, I didn't like the

idea of recasting. It was more interesting - When Lilimae left, when Julie

left, and then when again Michael and I felt the need for an equivalent

character, we didn't even think of bringing in anybody else. We just brought

in another, you know, woman of a certain age.

Jason: Mm. Lilimae, was - I think - one of the most successful characters on

the show, and certainly brought some of the strongest scenes and some of the

strongest writing. A terrible, terrible shame to lose her and Constance in

Season 9. Did that affect you personally, in terms of the kinds of stories

you wanted to tell on the show?

David: Um, it didn't affect the kinds of stories. The departure of Laura

gave us stories.

Jason: Yes.

David: Um, just as the departure - I mean, if you do it well, the departure

of characters - um - it started with Don Murray, you know. I didn't wanna

lose Don, but he wanted to go and, once it was decided that "all right,

we'll let him go", um, I was challenged by the idea. It starts with you

thinking, "Oh what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?", you're pulling

your hair out - if you have any hair -

(Laughter)

David: - and then you say, "Well, we can do this and that" and all of a

sudden, you become - you begin to get stoked, you know, by the

possibilities. Um, that wasn't true of Julie - because, um, Julie's presence

on KNOTS LANDING was never, um, integral, in the sense that - except for

maybe the Red Buttons story or - oh no, I guess the Alec Baldwin story, too

- they weren't really about her, you know.

Jason: Yeah.

David: And - but I adored Julie, first of all because she was Julie, I mean,

she's great, and also because she was terrific for the rest of the cast and,

um, it was terrific to have her there. It was terrific for us, frankly,

because nobody's going to behave like a prima donna with Julie Harris

around, you know, and Julie Harris is no prima donna. Julie Harris once

asked me to change a line. One line, in all the years she was there. And I

did, I made sure -

James: What was the line?

David: - and in the dailies, she had took back - made the other line work.

It just - it went against her grain not to.

Jason: Can you remember what it was? Do you remember?

David: Yeah. In the script, she said, "Gary," with whom she - or Val - is

estranged at the time. She said something in there, she said, "Well, score

one for the blond kid." And she [Julie] said, "Can I just say, 'Well, score

one for you?'" And that was it, that's all. And I went to dailies. She said,

"Score one for the blond kid." She did it great as well.

Jason: Wow.

David (chuckling): It's like - it obviously kept her awake that she had

asked for a line change. And I missed her badly. But Laura's leaving opened

up the Sumner character. What do you do with your child? What do you with

the - and then, I think the way we did it too -

Jason: - was stunning.

David: I thought the way we did it was great, and -

Jason: Talk us through that process, because I know you improvised those

episodes.

David: Oh well, that's even later, but I mean just Laura's decision. Laura's

decision not to share her death with her husband, you know, to go off,

leaving, go to Minnesota, you know, and she just wasn't gonna share it with

him. And it gave him a lot to play.

Jason: And it rang true for the character because Laura was quite, um, I say

prickly ... but Laura was certainly quite reserved in certain areas, and it

really rang true that she would actually behave like that.

David: Yes, I mean - yes, absolutely.

James: Because she had that thing, I remember - I think it's when she tells

Karen that she's pregnant but thinking of leaving Richard, back in Season 3,

and Karen goes to hug her and she says, "Don't touch me. I don't know why

but I just don't wanna be touched." And that whole - it's just a very

unique, very Laura - just a wonderful thing about the character, that within

a - for want of a better word - melodramatic show, she was not a dramatic

person.

David: Yes. Absolutely true.

Jason: And just keeping with the Laura arc, we've got a question from

Bradley and he asks you, "Many have speculated about the original intentions

of the Ciji Dunne/Laura relationship. Was it ever in your mind that they

were having a lesbian relationship?"

David: No.

Jason: No.

David: It was just fun. They were having fun with Richard.

Jason: Yeah. John Pleshette said he thought it was implied, rather than -

David: Well, maybe he believes it. I mean, the way we wrote it - once we

decided to fool around with it - was, um, "Think what you want."

Jason (laughing): Yes -

David: I mean, the funniest thing I thought was, the funniest line I

remember from that - Diana Gould was the writer - was, um, when he asks,

"Which one is the man?"

Jason (laughing): Yes!

David: And - I mean, leave it to Richard to think that, you know, in a

relationship between women, one of them would have to be a man!

Jason: Yes!

David (laughing): That was a terrific little thing though. That was

particularly funny.

Jason: Did you ever get into any particular issues with the network in terms

of the adult themes on KNOTS LANDING? I mean, even to imply in a jokey way a

lesbian relationship on television at that time - was that ever an issue?

David: Did you ever see the comments I made about why KNOTS LANDING survived

so long?

(Laughter)

Jason: This is your favourite quote!

James: I can't quite bring myself to say it!

Jason: Is it something about they forgot to cancel it?

David: Yes, the network forgot to cancel it.

Jason: Yeah. Is that your-?

David: Yes, that's my answer. The network didn't - the network gave us so

little trouble because they didn't read the stuff. They didn't! "Why is he

sending stuff to us? Is this on our network?"

(Much laughter)

David: It was all DALLAS, all DALLAS.

Jason: Yes.

David: And, um, the only time we had issues were when, um, when one of the

people would - one of the executives would, you know, the developers, the

ones that represent the network to your show, would realise he'd been

ignoring us, so he'd come in with his heavy notes on the next script ... but

they didn't pay much attention.

Jason: Can I ask you also about - keeping with Lisa Hartman - Lisa said

recently that when she came back to show in Season 5, having been killed off

as Ciji, that you originally planned for a much darker story line where she

tortured Gary, almost in a VERTIGO sense, in a Hitchcock sense. Do you have

any memories of that?

David: We had talked about it, that she really was Ciji, but, um, I don't

know what - I just didn't see how we could make it credible. Certainly not

as credible as VERTIGO.

(David and Jason laugh)

David: Well, we did have that aspect of it though where he's trying to make

her - you know, she even says, "I'm not Ciji." And then finally he says,

"It's not Ciji, it's you." But it, um, we never - that aspect - that story

to me is not one of our great stories, but I just loved having Lisa on the

show.

Jason: Mm mm. Wow.

David: Because she was an absolute doll to work with.

James: But it's funny because Ted Shackelford said that was his favourite

scene - when he first sees, um -

Jason: Cathy.

James: Yeah, when he first sees Cathy in the hotel.

David: Yeah.

James: "Holy [!@#$%^&*] - it's Ciji."

David: But you know that we changed her. We wanted it to be so certain for

the audience that it's not absurd, that we really changed her. And Mike

Filerman's mother and daughter, who lived in Chicago, called him up

afterwards and said, "Was that her?"

(Laughter)

Jason: Fantastic.

James: She's sort of heavier and she's kind of slightly butcher and blonder.

Harder looking.

David: She was blonder.

Jason: Yeah. She looks like an ex-con. I mean, she has just come out of

jail, but she really looks as though she's done time.

David: Yeah.

Jason: The character.

David: Yeah. Well, there you go.

Jason: Good stuff. Also, Michael Filerman's quoted as saying that he felt at

times KNOTS LANDING was "wishy washy" in terms of its villains, and I wanted

to ask you, {referring to an abbylexis question] when Val's babies were

stolen, Donna Mills said that originally the writers had intended for Abby

to be more complicit in that.

David: Right.

Jason: Do you remember that?

David: Yeah. No, that's absolutely true.

Jason: Yeah, and what was your feeling about that?

David: I hated the story so much I didn't wanna discuss it.

(Laughter)

David: I hated the story so much that - um - and it was the best story!

(Laughing) It was the second best story. I thought it was just venal.

Jason: Really?

David: And despicable. (Laughs) I just hated it, but - and Richard Gollance

was a writer at the time who suggested it. I saw Michael's face light up.

"No way." (Jason laughs) So then I was overpowered on that. And - um - also,

it was my partnership with Michael. We had a way of way of - I could see -

his face would light up and then if I didn't do it, I'd be punished.

(James laughs)

David: Because he (laughs) - he'd sulk for a year, you know. But he was - um

- when that face, when that look came, it meant there was great story

material.

Jason: Right.

David: And then Donna also really objected because there's no saving her. I

don't know that was being wishy washy, though. It was a matter of - again,

the fact I - we tended to give stories to characters who were 180 degrees

away from them. You wanna have somebody with a dope addiction? Give it to

Karen. She was the one who was least likely to do drugs. You wanna have a

show about a mother's dedication to her daughter, you know, in a terrible

situation? Give it to Abby. Get Abby out of the night-clubs, lock her in the

house with her daughter, you know. And, um, you wanna see some of the

tenderest scenes ever? Give them to Devane.

James: Mm.

Jason: Yes.

David: Because he's the one that's so tough.

Jason: He was wonderful at those scenes. William Devane and Constance

McCashin together were quite -

David: Oh, they were great.

Jason: - extraordinary.

David: Great.

Jason: Almost like - um - those two film actors, the old -

James: Tracy and Hepburn.

Jason: Tracy and Hepburn.

David: Tracy and Hepburn. Um, yeah. Constance didn't want us to use her

material on the reunion show, and I thought it was a shame because it was

amazing how many - we had three of their scenes, um, planned.

Jason: You do miss the presence of the Averys, and Constance and John

Pleshette in the -

David: Yeah, right. We had a couple of great scenes with her and John - one

of the scenes from "The Lie", when he comes in and thinks she's been raped.

James: Oh, that's fantastic.

Jason: That's a wonderful -

David: That's a great scene.

James: And there's hardly any dialogue in it at all.

David: I know, I know! It's a wonderful scene, and then the scene - we had

the Buick scene. I don't know if it would have stayed, but it was one of the

ones we picked.

Jason: We've got an interesting question from Ireland, from a lady called

Moe, and she says, "How important do you think the long running, supporting

characters like Peggy, Carlos and Mort & Bob were to the series?"

David: They were all terrific. I think every series needs those familiar

faces and, um, you know, television is, to me, always a family. Steven

Bochco says, "All successful television shows are cop shows, whether they're

cops or not." And I would say, all successful television shows are a family.

And I think it's true, both of those statements. Because cops are families,

you know, they're people who are all in it together. They might not love

each other, but they're all in it together. There's always a family

structure, and the same thing is true. And when you have a family or when

you have a neighbourhood, as KNOTS LANDING was, or a family like DALLAS,

then I think you can meet the same people, um, that you like. When I walk

the dog in the morning, there's a continuity to it, you know, a few words

that I have with each one. And even a function that different people have-

Jason: We loved - our personal favourite was Marcia.

James: Yeah!

Jason: Marcia, we loved Marcia.

David: Marcia I still see. In fact, I'm gonna stop by Marcia's today.

(James laughs)

Jason: Oh really? Can you please pass on our regards from England -

James: Yeah, yeah.

Jason: - and tell her she's much appreciated and can she get me a coffee and

two bagels, please?

(James laughs)

David: What a character she is.

Jason: She was fantastic. And moving onto the show in its later seasons, do

you think that the new characters that were introduced were as successful as

your original characters, such as the Williams' and Linda Fairgate and the

characters that came later?

David: No. I don't think they ever do on any show. And, you know, DALLAS had

the same problem because they always had to replace, um, they had to replace

characters as the show went on. But if you notice, unless the characters

wanted to leave, they always went back to the same core. A television show

that lasts a long time, in my opinion, has its, um, conflicts built into the

structure, um, and not into every story. One of the reasons I don't - I let

myself - let ourselves - get into melodrama occasionally - because that

carries you along. It allows you to - um ... A show like THIRTYSOMETHING -

THIRTYSOMETHING was, of course, wonderful - but, um, you could predict from

the beginning that it wasn't be going to be able to sustain itself. And, in

fact, the only way it did is by going into much more melodramatic stories.

Jason: Yeah.

David: You can't keep the scale real, um, and finally the stories don't

matter so much as the behaviour of the characters, and the

inter-relationships of the characters. So the later characters, I liked how

they served for the moment, you know, but if they weren't part of that

original group - um - I thought Alec worked but, you know, he was planned

only to work for a year.

Jason: And Doug Sheehan, the Ben Gibson character, was very successful, I

thought. The way you introduced him, it was almost as if he'd been there

from the beginning.

David: Yeah, that's true. That's true, but he still - he served his function

and - um - also he was so sweet, so likeable. When Gary would start to come

around, you know, you had to have them rooting for Gary.

Jason: I thought Ben Gibson reflected the softer side of male nature. Do you

know what I mean?

David: Oh yeah, absolutely. Just as Don Murray did.

Jason: Mm.

James: Yeah.

David: And, um, I mean, none of them - but, you know, it wasn't - our canvas

was not - we had a pretty good billing. Who's that guy? He was with the

Wolfbridge Group. I don't even know what the Wolfbridge Group was.

(Laughter)

David: To this day. But it's still - um -

Jason: Mark St Clare, I think he was.

David: - it worked - um - and yeah, the - and also the later characters, I

don't know. I truly believe that KNOTS LANDING ran maybe two or three years

too long. I think we were just - it was tough in those last years and we

actually turned down the opportunity to have another year - um - because,

well, we would have had to cut some more characters. As it is, we weren't

being able - we couldn't use our characters every week. It was getting to be

a chore, you know. A chore. And it wasn't - it didn't seem fair to the fans.

Jason: And also, whenever a character was introduced in the later years,

they always turned out to be something that they weren't. As a plot device,

it seemed to be a recurring theme that somebody would be introduced, like

Johnny Rourke or even Paige -

James: Or the Williamses, and it was always - they were never quite what

they seemed, and -

David: Yeah, I never even thought of it that way, but of course you're right

- but, having said that, I think I should add that I thought that, um,

Michelle Phillips was great.

Jason: Oh yes.

James: She was the exception. She was a fully realised - you knew who you

were getting straight away.

David: Yeah.

James: Wonderful character.

Jason: Yeah. Can I say, David, with regard to the Michelle Phillips'

character, is what really echoes now, watching the original year, is how

close, how resonant she is with Sid Fairgate's first wife.

David: That was Claudia - um -

James: Nevens.

David: Claudette Nevens, right. Um, that's interesting. I've never heard

that before.

James: Yeah, she fulfils the same function with Karen. She's a kind of

sophisticated woman who seemingly has it all, because she's lived all over

the world and blah blah blah, and she sort of sneers at Karen's life, but

secretly she wants it. But I guess -

(While waving his arms about, James inadervently presses the connection

button on the phone. Silence. Jason presses it again.)

Jason: Hi, David. Are you still there?

David: Yes.

James: Sorry, sorry.

Jason: We hit the wrong button.

James: But, um, yeah, if Karen represents the viewer, it's sort of a

reinforcing thing for them that Sid and Mack choose Karen -

David: Right.

James: - over the sophisticated ex.

David: Yes. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's true. Also, in the

last couple of years of the show, I didn't - I wasn't on top of it the way I

had been earlier so - and I always urged the writers to take it some place

else.

Jason: Mm.

David: Um, it's amazing how hard that is to do, to get somebody to believe

you! (Chuckles) We're doing a DALLAS movie now, and I'm the only one that

keeps complaining about the script, that it's too much like DALLAS.

James: Really?

David: That's - you know - that's - and it'll change over time, but the

reason I said I didn't wanna write it is because I've already written it.

Let's have somebody young and hip and modern, somebody that can create a

DALLAS for the 21st century.

James: And how's that coming along?

David: It's gonna be fine, but it's - but - um - it is interesting to be in

this role because their assumption, the assumption of the studio and other

people, is always that I'm in there trying to protect the franchise. I'm

not! I don't wanna protect the franchise! (Laughter) I wanna reinvent - I

want it reinvented.

James: I think the one concern that fans have, that they're a bit nervous

about, is that it's gonna be a sort of broad comedy parody thing.

David: I hope not. It isn't now.

James: Oh, good!

Jason: That is good to know. Just finally, David, with the DVD coming out,

do you expect KNOTS LANDING to reach a new audience and, if so, what do you

think people will take away from it?

David: That's a good question. I don't know. I always-

Jason: Because with DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, with the comparison between the

two shows, I think there's going to be a lot of people buying this DVD

who've never seen one episode of KNOTS LANDING.

David: I don't know. I don't know. I tend to think, but - that as it's, you

know, it's discovered on the soap channel or discovered, that that - I would

- but I must be wrong - I tend to, used to, think that DVDs were bought by

people that had seen it before, not by people that - people who wanna relive

it - but that where you really get your new viewers is on the - when it's

rerun. I don't know. I haven't got an answer to that question. I don't know.

Jason: It's a very KNOTS LANDING response - "I don't know."

(James laughs)

David: Well, you know, it's just - it's odd. I thought THE KNOTS LANDING

REUNION would be seen by more people, but then it was on Friday night ... So

I don't know. I don't know. What I hope for - I always hope for, you know,

everybody to discover it.

James: I think, from the early years, what's really interesting is that,

unintentionally, it's sort of like a time capsule piece. It's like a period

piece, in the way that something like DALLAS isn't, because that was so much

it's own world, that -

David: Right.

James: - that KNOTS sort of captures a time, like - I can't think of many

other programmes that do.

David: Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. Michele would be delighted to

hear you say that.

James: Oh. (Laughs)

David: Oh boy, I have to go. Just realised what time it is - um -

Jason: We'll wrap up for you. Just quickly before you go. Just a nod to the

theme music. Jerrold ... Immel?

David: Jerrold Immel, yes.

Jason: Who passed away recently, I believe.

David: No, he didn't.

James: No, that's someone who wrote some incidental music. (Laughs)

Jason: Oh, OK. Jerold's still with us. No problem. Wonderful theme. Do you

remember your first memory of hearing the theme?

David: Sure. Well, we got him because of the success of the DALLAS theme

and, um, I asked him to do MARRIED THE FIRST YEAR.

Edited July 28, 2011 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

Thanks for that. I didn't know CBS asked for one more season. I can see why they said no - the show was a mess in those last few years.

I don't really agree that Laura's death opened Greg up. I thought it shut him down and limited his story options.

I also thought the Dallas crossover episodes were a little better than he gives them credit for.

Nice to know more about things like the purpose of the Ciji/Laura relationship.

I didn't know about why they had some actors write episodes. I certainly agree with him about that Hitch Hike episode. It is so badly dated, and was probably dated even then. Unfortunately the show brought back the "poor but proud folk against Karen" in that disastrous paintball vigilante story.

[Paul Raven]

John Pleshette interview.He hated LML and Bernie.

Veteran character actor John Pleshette has played unpleasant characters his entire life. From President John Kennedy’s murderer in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977) to slimy movie boss Gary Blondo in Murder One (1995-97) to Larry David’s weirdo therapist in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2001), Pleshette has crawled into the creepy and annoying and found fascinating human beings there. On Knots Landing, Pleshette not only played unscrupulous lawyer Richard Avery from 1979-83, he built him from the ground up, inspiring stories and laying the bricks for one of the most successful series in television history. Pleshette sounds the way he did in those classic days and almost looks the same, too. With his wry sense of humor in full force, he speaks to us from his home in Los Angeles.

Arthur Swift: It’s terrific to be talking to you. Thanks for sending your picture and bio.

John Pleshette (proudly): You can add The Sopranos to that bio, too. I just shot an episode.

AS: The Sopranos! That’s my favorite show!

JP: Mine too. It’s going to be the fourth or fifth episode of the season but unfortunately it won’t be on until January I think. They really don’t want you to say too much about it. They tell you at the table reading, “Now please don’t tell your friends about this. It’ll be found out eventually but please keep the secret of what character you’re playing.”

AS: Fair enough. I won’t pry then. Congratulations and welcome to Knots Landing Net. I’d like to make the theme of this interview anecdotes. Any stories, recollections, funny things that happened, please, jump in at any time and tell us.

JP: I wonder how much you know then about how Knots got started.

AS: Probably not as much as you.

JP: My wife is a woman named Lynn Pleshette. She runs a small literary agency but it’s done very well. She’s sold The Truman Show and Memories of a Geisha, Cold Mountain,Shipping News. Well her ex-husband is David Jacobs. So in 1975 Lynn and I moved out here (L.A.) and David was in New York writing architecture book reviews for the New York Times and young adult things. When we came out he decided he missed his daughter Albyn and came out too. David wrote a story for the show Blue Knight, it was a cop show and then wrote some episodes of Family. Lynn became his agent and got him the job writing the pilot for Dallas.

AS: So his ex-wife became his agent? You and Lynn were married at the time.

JP: Yes she began representing David. Now most people don’t realize how Dallas originated. It came from Blood and Money, the Tommy Thompson book. It was a murder book, a very lurid book, a big Texas kind of thing. A huge, huge success and the network was looking for a big Texas story with these elements. So that’s where David’s story became very appealing to them

AS: Why not turn Blood and Money into a show?

JP: Because I think somebody else owned the rights to that but the idea of a Texas story was so hot that they needed something. David wrote Dallas and then they were looking for something afterward. David had actually written Knots Landing before Dallas but Dallas was important to them originally. (After Dallas was on) the network then said, “Whatever happened to Knots Landing, that suburban thing?”

Now I had been in a lot of movies at that time; I just had done Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was an intriguing movie, based on the premise if Oswald hadn’t been killed by Ruby – what would have happened? David Greene directed it; he did Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man and many others. I played Oswald. So when David approached me to do Knots I was doing pretty well and wasn’t interested in episodic television. Lynn always said that her ex-husband turned me into a schmuck. (Laughs)

But this part was a lot of fun. The first year or so he wanted it to be like Family – issue oriented, self-contained episodes. (Knots) was loosely based on the movie No Down Payment with Joanne Woodward and Tony Randall. A 50s movie about married couples in Southern California.

I started writing at the end of the first season. The episode when Ted Shackelford’s character had a drunken experience, it was a two-part episode (“Bottom of the Bottle”). After that I had carte blanche to do what I wanted and wound up writing nine episodes.

AS: Why did they give you carte blanche?

JP: They liked what I was writing and wanted me to do more. See, the problem with the show was how do we get these people to interact with each other? The brilliant thing withDallas was that all these rich and powerful people were able to interact with each other by living together. It was absurd but no one questioned that they all lived in the same house. They should have had properties all over the world!

I said, unless you get them into business with each other, how do you keep them talking to each other after a while? In a regular neighborhood a dog might misbehave or someone’s kid might break a window but other than that, nobody cares! That’s how I got the idea of putting them in the car dealership.

AS: You were taking a very active role in the writing and even story creation early on then.

JP: Yes, you can say that. So when did Don Murray leave?

AS: After the second season.

JP: Right. He wanted to leave. He sort of lost interest in it; I think he thought the show was going to be more about him. But there was all this discussion about how he could leave the show. I said, let’s kill him. And people said, oh you can’t do that. It just isn’t done. And I said, yes. If we really kill him, every time one of these characters is jeopardized the audience will feel like that character is going to be killed.

So I wrote two season openers, I think I wrote the one when he died, and later in the season I wrote “Night.” It’s every actor’s dream to write his own nervous breakdown, you know. I wanted to direct but they wouldn’t let the actors direct in those days. That was why I left the show.

AS: But then actors were allowed to direct later on. What precipitated the change?

JP: It coincided with David and Michael leaving the show. David was in charge of writers and Michael approved directors, the look of the show, wardrobes, sets. I know they spill over into each other, but Michael felt strongly about actors not directing each other. But when Lynn (Latham) and Bernie (Lechowick) became writers David and Michael began easing out. A season after the Lechowicks came David became less and less involved and eventually they took over.

AS: What did you think of the Lechowicks?

JP: I can’t stand them. I think they’re awful people. They were about to move back to Texas because they had been struggling so long. They were in contact with Lynn (Pleshette) and asked her is there anything you can find for us? Lynn met with them and she talked to David and they went from having no career to running the show.

Lynn was their agent and she got a big deal for them, but one day they said, “We need a bigger deal” and got someone else (to represent them). I had been writing for the show and they gave me a hard time every time I worked on it. That’s what happens when you have a husband and wife team or two people together, it becomes difficult. They were also kind of disliked by the people on the show; the writers they hired liked them but not many else.

AS: What did you think of their creative style?

JP: I think when the show started it tried to be about something. Don Murray had been accused of rape, Constance was actually raped, there were a lot of issues. By the time the Lechowicks took over it really had become a soap opera. Rich people in soap operas don’t deal with issues; the problems of real people aren’t sensationalistic and lurid. I think the Lechowicks had a certain playfulness but the show got more tawdry as it went on.

AS: You worked with them in my favorite Knots episode, “Birds Do It, Bees Do It.”

JP: Yes and that was the last one I ever did. Bernie told me with great glee that he had written it in two days. That’s not what you want to hear as a writer. (Laughs) For (Birds Do It) every one of the ideas I had to make it funnier was shot down. The only thing I got through was when we had Karen wearing a trenchcoat over sexy lingerie and in one scene I found a young woman who looked like Michele with the same height. So we had her walk past Michele in the hallway, both wearing trenchcoats. That was something I was able to slip through.

Then in that show we had Michael, he went camping and he’s going to make it with this girl. The Lechowicks, they were totally PC people, they had to show that if he was going to have sex that he took out the contraceptives and was being responsible. So I showed Michael with a pack of like five rubbers. I wanted to show him take four out and put one back but they wouldn’t allow it.

But there was a funny story with Michael in those scenes. Remember the part when all the kids he was with fantasized over their favorite stars? They were talking about Julia Roberts and the girls said Mel Gibson was whom they wanted to be with. Well it turned out that Mel Gibson was shooting on a neighboring stage. I was able to get in touch with him and asked him as a joke if he would come over and surprise the actors when we were shooting that scene. So we got Mel Gibson to come over to the set. We put him into a backpack and hiking gear so he would fit in with the scene. And the girls were totally unaware of this even though word had gotten out and we had 3 times as many crewmembers hanging around the shoot. When the time came there was a knock on the door and they just died when he walked on the set. They loved it; he even got a girl to sit on his lap. We shot all that. It was great.

AS: Why didn’t it make it on the air?

JP: Well legally we couldn’t do that. We would have had to pay him and it would have been a big deal. I think it might be on an actor’s reel somewhere. But that was my swan song.

AS: Why did it end that way?

JP: They were furious that I criticized the script. They were infuriated by attempts to make it funnier. I think that show could have been funnier.

“I said, let’s kill him. And people said, oh you can’t do that. It just isn’t done.”

AS: Let’s get to some questions from our Knots Landing forum members.

Christine from Germany asks

Were you satisfied with the way your character was written out or would you have preferred a different exit for Richard. After all we never knew what happened to him until he showed up again for Laura's funeral and that was 5 years later!

JP: I thought the ending was fine. He either leaves or he dies; there wasn’t another way to do it. This left him open to returning.

AS: And was it just because you wanted to direct?

JP: I had had it. I wanted to do other things and directing was one of them. I really liked this cast. No tempers, no stress. I had a great time with Michele, with Donna. It was a nice community and I had a certain amount of control over the material. But there was only so much you could do with Richard Avery. The show became much more glamorous and I’m not glamorous. Richard was a jerk. If you’re not playing a villain, you might as well play a jerk.

Shari from Clermont, Florida asks

John, thank you for answering our questions! What was the best part of working with Constance McCashin? You both played off of each other very well. I really enjoyed Richard on the show, and in later episodes sure missed your famous BBQ's!! Take care, and thanks!!

JP: We just had a very nice working relationship. It took a few years to develop though. Her husband is a very successful film director, Sam Weisman, but at the time he was an actor. And I think Constance wanted him to get the part that I played. So the first season Constance was kind of prickly. When I made a suggestion, she sort of bridled. After that though it was great. On a show like this you have a creative energy that builds and it was obvious with us I think. Back then they were against actors directing each other.

AS: When you were a director were the casting decision yours? For the smaller parts I mean?

JP: Most deferred to me in the casting. I was able to get a lot of my friends in. Not that they weren’t good actors (Laughs), but they were still my friends. In fact I was able to get Zane Lasky in there and who was the other guy?

AS: Mark Haining.

JP: Right, Zane Lasky and Mark Haining. Zane was in a play I was doing and Mark I believe came from an acting class, and they wound up there for a while. They became a running joke, those two characters, which was great. And people probably don’t realize that Bill Devane and I are actually very good friends. We wrote scripts together and Billy, Eugenie (Mrs. Devane), Lynn and I went out together many, many times. He’s a very funny guy and it’s funny that we wound up having the same wife on the show.

KissTheCook from West Hollywood, CA asks

Hello John, first off let me say that your portrayal of Richard Avery was just amazing and I would like to take the time to thank you for your hard work. I would like to know which storyline involving Richard was the most challenging for you as an actor and what were some of the things you drew on for inspiration?

JP: Most challenging was the “Night” episode. I thought that since I wrote that script that it would be easier to act but it turned out to be harder for some reason. Maybe it’s the process of being a writer that makes it more difficult acting it. I did a lot of research, though. I contacted a police psychologist and tried to draw the story from what they do, what their approach is to real life hostage situations. Once someone like that (a hostage taker) reaches the point of despair how do they go on?

Something else that I drew on for acting as Richard was cooking. Personally I’m a very good cook and I do all of the cooking at home. So the idea of a restaurant was mine and I thought it would be good to show that aspect of me. And you know, the name of the restaurant, “Daniel”, was from Constance’s child who she had on the show.

AS: This is along the same lines, but lkc1 from Manchester UK asks

What was your favourite Knots storyline and which storyline did you really dislike/would have liked to change?

JP: Different episodes draw upon different aspects of you as an actor. Certainly the stuff with Donna was fun. That was a funny story too. We had this hot tub scene to do and I had to take the straps off her bathing suit. We had to get around Standards and Practices on that one. Well the day we were shooting the hot tub wasn’t filled with hot water, so when we got there the water was freezing. The guy who was supposed to fill it was a type who started drinking at 6 am and was fired after that. (Laughs) Anyway, they kept trying to throw hot water in there but it really wasn’t working. So I started drinking champagne and after three glasses I didn’t care about the temperature at all. But Donna was still freezing and every time I touched her she shivered. When the network watched it they thought she was having an orgasm. Every time I touched her, a new orgasm. They said, “This is the hottest scene we have ever seen.”

I don’t think of storylines, but the people you worked with. Trying to think of an anecdote here … there was a show when we had a biker gang, down in Torrance, bikes on the beach, fairly silly episode. Don Murray and Ted Shackelford show up on the beach and try to rescue the women. Ted said, “I can run down the hill on my own, I don’t need a stunt double.” Well sure enough, he tripped as he was running down the hill and got scraped up. And when we did “Bottom of the Bottle,” Ted slipped in a fight scene and actually broke his arm. It wasn’t scripted but his arm was in a cast in scenes that came later that episode.

AS: And I guess it healed over the summer since it was the finale.

JP: That’s right.

“If you’re not playing a villain, you might as well play a jerk.”

Chris from Winston-Salem, NC asks

Hi John... I thought you did a great job with Richard Avery... so when I say... I didn't like him; I am not talking about John Pleshette. With that said, did you LIKE Richard Avery? In other words, was he really a jerk or just a good guy in a bad situation?

JP: I think both those things are true. You can’t play somebody you don’t like. Tyrone Guthrie, the famous director, once said to Olivier, “If you don’t like a character, how can you play him?”

Bob Philips from the UK asks

Hi there John, how did you feel when you were invited back to appear in the 2 Improvisation episodes after the Laura character had been "killed off". Also was it fun being part of the improvisation or just plain hard work?

JP: I thought it was a lot of fun. It was at David’s house near where I live with Lynn, near the Hollywood sign. We had a catered party for 2 days. I wonder if anything was actually scripted from those days, or anything was written. We basically interacted in character and 98% of this would put you to sleep. But they had nice food and we chatted and made up stuff about our pasts.

AS: Did they use any of this in the episodes then?

JP: I don’t know. They certainly had to invent more than what they had from the improvisation.

AS: Did you wind up liking the finished product?

JP: There wasn’t enough drama I think to fill two hours of TV. It could have been one and probably better. You know, when you’re on a show like this and a main character dies, I think your feelings as actors are disproportionate to its real drama. I think the people working on the show made a bigger deal of (Laura’s death) than people watching did.

AS: Actually, the death of Laura is from my estimates the number one event in the history of the show for our forum members. It’s like people think their mother or aunt died.

JP: Really? That’s interesting. I guess because that was the last realistic tragedy on the show. From there the show got more sensationalistic and less realistic. I mean, wasn’t there someone buried in the cement? Knots got further and further from the audience’s day-to-day experiences. Laura’s death from cancer was something that people could identify with; they lived with that kind of thing everyday.

AS: And Constance was unique for the show, very down to earth.

JP: I think that Constance and Julie Harris were the two best actors on the show. But that’s where the problem lies. Where does Lilimae fit into big corporate buyouts? That’s the kind of thing Donna fit into. Donna was the first real glamour girl and she was followed by Nicollette and a lot of glitzier types. That’s where the show drifted.

AS: But why did this happen if people on the show didn’t want this? Was this pressure coming from the networks to make the show more glamorous? Was it ratings-driven? No one ever seems to know why decisions like these were made.

JP: Well as a show goes along the show runners have more power and the network has less but the network does determine the direction of the show to an extent. Look, the show needed to be bigger for it to sustain. It probably wouldn’t have lasted very long if it stayed exactly as it was in the beginning. The interesting thing about The Sopranos is that these characters never lost their humanity. With Knots, it became more about the shenanigans, Enron-like corporate connections and personal business connections.

Really good shows never lose their humanity. The West Wing has never lost it, even on the grand scale that it is.

Chris Sumner from San Antonio, Texas asks

I was wondering how it was being on Curb Your Enthusiasm? That was the only episode of that show I watched, only because you were in it, and I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen! You deserved a Guest Starring Emmy or Golden Globe for that!

JP: (Laughs) Thank you. That was a lot of fun. That’s a different kind of improvisation that Larry David does. It’s done very tightly and he has high points he wants you to hit in the scenes. But the lines are still ones you come up with.

AS: “The thong.” A comedy classic.

JP: Yes, the thong.

AS: I can see you doing very well as a regular on an HBO series. You’ve done The Sopranos and Curb; it would seem to fit your style perfectly.

JP: Yeah I’d love to but the older you get there are not as many parts. It seems like every actor working now is between the ages of 20 and 40. I don’t work as much as I used to. I do mostly screenwriting now.

“Where does Lilimae fit into big corporate buyouts?”

Lotus Pointe from Philadelphia, PA asks

Hi John! I recently visited the cul-de-sac in person, and it struck me how out of the way it is. How did shooting take place there - did you shoot all the outside scenes say in 1 or 2 weeks, then just do on-set filming, or did you go back and forth from set to the cul-de-sac? Thank you for your time! Love you

JP: Lotus Point? That’s someone’s name?

AS: No it’s a screen name. All of these names are Internet names, not real.

JP: Oh I see. We went back and forth to the cul de sac. It’s not far if you live in L.A., though I can see someone outside the city thinking it is. Here we’re used to driving long distances to go to work. But for me I’d hop on the 405 (freeway) and was at the cul de sac in 15-20 minutes. Usually they bunch up the exteriors in a few days. The interiors would be done in the beginning of the week and the exteriors later in the week. I think there was only one house that wasn’t occupied on the cul de sac so everything was mainly done outdoors.

The furthest location we went to was Bill Devane’s ranch in Thousand Oaks. That’s really far; I think it’s over the Ventura County line even.

AS: How long was a typical episode shot in?

JP: I think they were done in 7 days. By the end they were done in 6 ½ days. The Lechowicks wrote short scenes – one page, two page scenes at most, not the four page scenes of the past. So that involved moving to a different set every time a new scene was shot. It made for a very difficult schedule as time went on.

James from London asks

When Knots first began, I was expecting it to be more of a Dallas type show, with Richard and Laura as the JR and Sue Ellen of the cul-de-sac. Initially, I was disappointed that their relationship took so long to unfold, although this approach ultimately proved far richer and more rewarding. What expectations did you have for your character when the show began, and what was your opinion when Knots adopted a more serialised format in Season 4?

JP: I didn’t have expectations for Richard. As an actor you’re hired to a do a part and you really don’t think of where the character is going to go. As for the serialized format, after the audience is used to watching certain character over time it makes sense to have more continuing stories. So I thought that was fine. I think what was great about Knots for a time in this format is that it didn’t become a soap opera like Dallas or Falcon Crest.

Pam’s Twin Sister from Barcelona, Spain asks

Can you tell us anything about late Katharine Hepburn, with whom you worked in the TV movie Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry? Thanks a lot.

JP: She was great. Such a pleasure to work with her. Terribly hard worker. We had four days to rehearse before we began shooting and I got to really see her during that time. One of the most amazing things about her was, she was really suffering from Parkinson’s but she made it work. She had a way of hiding her pain and becoming the character when it was obvious to everyone how much pain she was in.

Tatianna from Virginia asks

Everyone’s life in Knots Landing twined together, so to speak. If Richard had stayed in Knots Landing, do you think Richard would have eventually gotten involved in dealings with Greg? Also, could you have possibly had a "love interest" in Paige, Jill or Anne?

JP (jokingly): Well I definitely would have liked being with Nicollette. But if you wanted to do something with Richard, make him a powerful character. Make him a Richard III, like an unlikely villain. No one would have suspected Richard to have any power so it would have been interesting to have him pit one against the other and acquire power that way. On shows like NYPD Blue, Bochco has developed a real journey for Sipowicz. With Gandolfini on The Sopranos you have a guy who routinely murders people but is devoted to his family. The idea of a wiseguy going into therapy is brilliant because he really changes over time. On Knots the problem was that everyone was doomed to play the same notes in songs. They didn’t grow.

AS: I would disagree with that. Devane’s Greg Sumner was one character on Knots who definitely kept growing and evolving over his ten years on the show. He was hit with so much but kept the humanity and the interest level high.

JP: Yes, Billy’s a very forceful person and knowing Billy I’m sure his character developed because of the forcefulness he brought to the set. I can see him shaping his character into a way that he wanted. He was great in that role, and really eased into it over time.

AS: Last thing, just for laughs, were Ciji and Laura supposed to be having a lesbian relationship?

JP: Yeah there was certainly an implied lesbian possibility between the two of them. One time I walked into do a scene with them and they played a joke on me by turning around and looking at me with mustaches on. So yeah, it was talked about. I’d say it was implicit and not explicit. I don’t think Laura and Ciji were actually having sex but it could have led to something else.

AS: It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Pleshette. Please don’t be a stranger to Knots Landing Net.

JP: Thanks very much. I really enjoyed myself. Veteran character actor John Pleshette has played unpleasant characters his entire life. From President John Kennedy’s murderer in The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977) to slimy movie boss Gary Blondo in Murder One (1995-97) to Larry David’s weirdo therapist in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2001), Pleshette has crawled into the creepy and annoying and found fascinating human beings there. On Knots Landing, Pleshette not only played unscrupulous lawyer Richard Avery from 1979-83, he built him from the ground up, inspiring stories and laying the bricks for one of the most successful series in television history. Pleshette sounds the way he did in those classic days and almost looks the same, too. With his wry sense of humor in full force, he speaks to us from his home in Los Angeles.

Arthur Swift: It’s terrific to be talking to you. Thanks for sending your picture and bio.

John Pleshette (proudly): You can add The Sopranos to that bio, too. I just shot an episode.

AS: The Sopranos! That’s my favorite show!

JP: Mine too. It’s going to be the fourth or fifth episode of the season but unfortunately it won’t be on until January I think. They really don’t want you to say too much about it. They tell you at the table reading, “Now please don’t tell your friends about this. It’ll be found out eventually but please keep the secret of what character you’re playing.”

AS: Fair enough. I won’t pry then. Congratulations and welcome to Knots Landing Net. I’d like to make the theme of this interview anecdotes. Any stories, recollections, funny things that happened, please, jump in at any time and tell us.

JP: I wonder how much you know then about how Knots got started.

AS: Probably not as much as you.

JP: My wife is a woman named Lynn Pleshette. She runs a small literary agency but it’s done very well. She’s sold The Truman Show and Memories of a Geisha, Cold Mountain,Shipping News. Well her ex-husband is David Jacobs. So in 1975 Lynn and I moved out here (L.A.) and David was in New York writing architecture book reviews for the New York Times and young adult things. When we came out he decided he missed his daughter Albyn and came out too. David wrote a story for the show Blue Knight, it was a cop show and then wrote some episodes of Family. Lynn became his agent and got him the job writing the pilot for Dallas.

AS: So his ex-wife became his agent? You and Lynn were married at the time.

JP: Yes she began representing David. Now most people don’t realize how Dallas originated. It came from Blood and Money, the Tommy Thompson book. It was a murder book, a very lurid book, a big Texas kind of thing. A huge, huge success and the network was looking for a big Texas story with these elements. So that’s where David’s story became very appealing to them

AS: Why not turn Blood and Money into a show?

JP: Because I think somebody else owned the rights to that but the idea of a Texas story was so hot that they needed something. David wrote Dallas and then they were looking for something afterward. David had actually written Knots Landing before Dallas but Dallas was important to them originally. (After Dallas was on) the network then said, “Whatever happened to Knots Landing, that suburban thing?”

Now I had been in a lot of movies at that time; I just had done Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was an intriguing movie, based on the premise if Oswald hadn’t been killed by Ruby – what would have happened? David Greene directed it; he did Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man and many others. I played Oswald. So when David approached me to do Knots I was doing pretty well and wasn’t interested in episodic television. Lynn always said that her ex-husband turned me into a schmuck. (Laughs)

But this part was a lot of fun. The first year or so he wanted it to be like Family – issue oriented, self-contained episodes. (Knots) was loosely based on the movie No Down Payment with Joanne Woodward and Tony Randall. A 50s movie about married couples in Southern California.

I started writing at the end of the first season. The episode when Ted Shackelford’s character had a drunken experience, it was a two-part episode (“Bottom of the Bottle”). After that I had carte blanche to do what I wanted and wound up writing nine episodes.

AS: Why did they give you carte blanche?

JP: They liked what I was writing and wanted me to do more. See, the problem with the show was how do we get these people to interact with each other? The brilliant thing withDallas was that all these rich and powerful people were able to interact with each other by living together. It was absurd but no one questioned that they all lived in the same house. They should have had properties all over the world!

I said, unless you get them into business with each other, how do you keep them talking to each other after a while? In a regular neighborhood a dog might misbehave or someone’s kid might break a window but other than that, nobody cares! That’s how I got the idea of putting them in the car dealership.

AS: You were taking a very active role in the writing and even story creation early on then.

JP: Yes, you can say that. So when did Don Murray leave?

AS: After the second season.

JP: Right. He wanted to leave. He sort of lost interest in it; I think he thought the show was going to be more about him. But there was all this discussion about how he could leave the show. I said, let’s kill him. And people said, oh you can’t do that. It just isn’t done. And I said, yes. If we really kill him, every time one of these characters is jeopardized the audience will feel like that character is going to be killed.

So I wrote two season openers, I think I wrote the one when he died, and later in the season I wrote “Night.” It’s every actor’s dream to write his own nervous breakdown, you know. I wanted to direct but they wouldn’t let the actors direct in those days. That was why I left the show.

AS: But then actors were allowed to direct later on. What precipitated the change?

JP: It coincided with David and Michael leaving the show. David was in charge of writers and Michael approved directors, the look of the show, wardrobes, sets. I know they spill over into each other, but Michael felt strongly about actors not directing each other. But when Lynn (Latham) and Bernie (Lechowick) became writers David and Michael began easing out. A season after the Lechowicks came David became less and less involved and eventually they took over.

AS: What did you think of the Lechowicks?

JP: I can’t stand them. I think they’re awful people. They were about to move back to Texas because they had been struggling so long. They were in contact with Lynn (Pleshette) and asked her is there anything you can find for us? Lynn met with them and she talked to David and they went from having no career to running the show.

Lynn was their agent and she got a big deal for them, but one day they said, “We need a bigger deal” and got someone else (to represent them). I had been writing for the show and they gave me a hard time every time I worked on it. That’s what happens when you have a husband and wife team or two people together, it becomes difficult. They were also kind of disliked by the people on the show; the writers they hired liked them but not many else.

AS: What did you think of their creative style?

JP: I think when the show started it tried to be about something. Don Murray had been accused of rape, Constance was actually raped, there were a lot of issues. By the time the Lechowicks took over it really had become a soap opera. Rich people in soap operas don’t deal with issues; the problems of real people aren’t sensationalistic and lurid. I think the Lechowicks had a certain playfulness but the show got more tawdry as it went on.

AS: You worked with them in my favorite Knots episode, “Birds Do It, Bees Do It.”

JP: Yes and that was the last one I ever did. Bernie told me with great glee that he had written it in two days. That’s not what you want to hear as a writer. (Laughs) For (Birds Do It) every one of the ideas I had to make it funnier was shot down. The only thing I got through was when we had Karen wearing a trenchcoat over sexy lingerie and in one scene I found a young woman who looked like Michele with the same height. So we had her walk past Michele in the hallway, both wearing trenchcoats. That was something I was able to slip through.

Then in that show we had Michael, he went camping and he’s going to make it with this girl. The Lechowicks, they were totally PC people, they had to show that if he was going to have sex that he took out the contraceptives and was being responsible. So I showed Michael with a pack of like five rubbers. I wanted to show him take four out and put one back but they wouldn’t allow it.

But there was a funny story with Michael in those scenes. Remember the part when all the kids he was with fantasized over their favorite stars? They were talking about Julia Roberts and the girls said Mel Gibson was whom they wanted to be with. Well it turned out that Mel Gibson was shooting on a neighboring stage. I was able to get in touch with him and asked him as a joke if he would come over and surprise the actors when we were shooting that scene. So we got Mel Gibson to come over to the set. We put him into a backpack and hiking gear so he would fit in with the scene. And the girls were totally unaware of this even though word had gotten out and we had 3 times as many crewmembers hanging around the shoot. When the time came there was a knock on the door and they just died when he walked on the set. They loved it; he even got a girl to sit on his lap. We shot all that. It was great.

AS: Why didn’t it make it on the air?

JP: Well legally we couldn’t do that. We would have had to pay him and it would have been a big deal. I think it might be on an actor’s reel somewhere. But that was my swan song.

AS: Why did it end that way?

JP: They were furious that I criticized the script. They were infuriated by attempts to make it funnier. I think that show could have been funnier.

“I said, let’s kill him. And people said, oh you can’t do that. It just isn’t done.”

AS: Let’s get to some questions from our Knots Landing forum members.

Christine from Germany asks

Were you satisfied with the way your character was written out or would you have preferred a different exit for Richard. After all we never knew what happened to him until he showed up again for Laura's funeral and that was 5 years later!

JP: I thought the ending was fine. He either leaves or he dies; there wasn’t another way to do it. This left him open to returning.

AS: And was it just because you wanted to direct?

JP: I had had it. I wanted to do other things and directing was one of them. I really liked this cast. No tempers, no stress. I had a great time with Michele, with Donna. It was a nice community and I had a certain amount of control over the material. But there was only so much you could do with Richard Avery. The show became much more glamorous and I’m not glamorous. Richard was a jerk. If you’re not playing a villain, you might as well play a jerk.

Shari from Clermont, Florida asks

John, thank you for answering our questions! What was the best part of working with Constance McCashin? You both played off of each other very well. I really enjoyed Richard on the show, and in later episodes sure missed your famous BBQ's!! Take care, and thanks!!

JP: We just had a very nice working relationship. It took a few years to develop though. Her husband is a very successful film director, Sam Weisman, but at the time he was an actor. And I think Constance wanted him to get the part that I played. So the first season Constance was kind of prickly. When I made a suggestion, she sort of bridled. After that though it was great. On a show like this you have a creative energy that builds and it was obvious with us I think. Back then they were against actors directing each other.

AS: When you were a director were the casting decision yours? For the smaller parts I mean?

JP: Most deferred to me in the casting. I was able to get a lot of my friends in. Not that they weren’t good actors (Laughs), but they were still my friends. In fact I was able to get Zane Lasky in there and who was the other guy?

AS: Mark Haining.

JP: Right, Zane Lasky and Mark Haining. Zane was in a play I was doing and Mark I believe came from an acting class, and they wound up there for a while. They became a running joke, those two characters, which was great. And people probably don’t realize that Bill Devane and I are actually very good friends. We wrote scripts together and Billy, Eugenie (Mrs. Devane), Lynn and I went out together many, many times. He’s a very funny guy and it’s funny that we wound up having the same wife on the show.

KissTheCook from West Hollywood, CA asks

Hello John, first off let me say that your portrayal of Richard Avery was just amazing and I would like to take the time to thank you for your hard work. I would like to know which storyline involving Richard was the most challenging for you as an actor and what were some of the things you drew on for inspiration?

JP: Most challenging was the “Night” episode. I thought that since I wrote that script that it would be easier to act but it turned out to be harder for some reason. Maybe it’s the process of being a writer that makes it more difficult acting it. I did a lot of research, though. I contacted a police psychologist and tried to draw the story from what they do, what their approach is to real life hostage situations. Once someone like that (a hostage taker) reaches the point of despair how do they go on?

Something else that I drew on for acting as Richard was cooking. Personally I’m a very good cook and I do all of the cooking at home. So the idea of a restaurant was mine and I thought it would be good to show that aspect of me. And you know, the name of the restaurant, “Daniel”, was from Constance’s child who she had on the show.

AS: This is along the same lines, but lkc1 from Manchester UK asks

What was your favourite Knots storyline and which storyline did you really dislike/would have liked to change?

JP: Different episodes draw upon different aspects of you as an actor. Certainly the stuff with Donna was fun. That was a funny story too. We had this hot tub scene to do and I had to take the straps off her bathing suit. We had to get around Standards and Practices on that one. Well the day we were shooting the hot tub wasn’t filled with hot water, so when we got there the water was freezing. The guy who was supposed to fill it was a type who started drinking at 6 am and was fired after that. (Laughs) Anyway, they kept trying to throw hot water in there but it really wasn’t working. So I started drinking champagne and after three glasses I didn’t care about the temperature at all. But Donna was still freezing and every time I touched her she shivered. When the network watched it they thought she was having an orgasm. Every time I touched her, a new orgasm. They said, “This is the hottest scene we have ever seen.”

I don’t think of storylines, but the people you worked with. Trying to think of an anecdote here … there was a show when we had a biker gang, down in Torrance, bikes on the beach, fairly silly episode. Don Murray and Ted Shackelford show up on the beach and try to rescue the women. Ted said, “I can run down the hill on my own, I don’t need a stunt double.” Well sure enough, he tripped as he was running down the hill and got scraped up. And when we did “Bottom of the Bottle,” Ted slipped in a fight scene and actually broke his arm. It wasn’t scripted but his arm was in a cast in scenes that came later that episode.

AS: And I guess it healed over the summer since it was the finale.

JP: That’s right.

“If you’re not playing a villain, you might as well play a jerk.”

Chris from Winston-Salem, NC asks

Hi John... I thought you did a great job with Richard Avery... so when I say... I didn't like him; I am not talking about John Pleshette. With that said, did you LIKE Richard Avery? In other words, was he really a jerk or just a good guy in a bad situation?

JP: I think both those things are true. You can’t play somebody you don’t like. Tyrone Guthrie, the famous director, once said to Olivier, “If you don’t like a character, how can you play him?”

Bob Philips from the UK asks

Hi there John, how did you feel when you were invited back to appear in the 2 Improvisation episodes after the Laura character had been "killed off". Also was it fun being part of the improvisation or just plain hard work?

JP: I thought it was a lot of fun. It was at David’s house near where I live with Lynn, near the Hollywood sign. We had a catered party for 2 days. I wonder if anything was actually scripted from those days, or anything was written. We basically interacted in character and 98% of this would put you to sleep. But they had nice food and we chatted and made up stuff about our pasts.

AS: Did they use any of this in the episodes then?

JP: I don’t know. They certainly had to invent more than what they had from the improvisation.

AS: Did you wind up liking the finished product?

JP: There wasn’t enough drama I think to fill two hours of TV. It could have been one and probably better. You know, when you’re on a show like this and a main character dies, I think your feelings as actors are disproportionate to its real drama. I think the people working on the show made a bigger deal of (Laura’s death) than people watching did.

AS: Actually, the death of Laura is from my estimates the number one event in the history of the show for our forum members. It’s like people think their mother or aunt died.

JP: Really? That’s interesting. I guess because that was the last realistic tragedy on the show. From there the show got more sensationalistic and less realistic. I mean, wasn’t there someone buried in the cement? Knots got further and further from the audience’s day-to-day experiences. Laura’s death from cancer was something that people could identify with; they lived with that kind of thing everyday.

AS: And Constance was unique for the show, very down to earth.

JP: I think that Constance and Julie Harris were the two best actors on the show. But that’s where the problem lies. Where does Lilimae fit into big corporate buyouts? That’s the kind of thing Donna fit into. Donna was the first real glamour girl and she was followed by Nicollette and a lot of glitzier types. That’s where the show drifted.

AS: But why did this happen if people on the show didn’t want this? Was this pressure coming from the networks to make the show more glamorous? Was it ratings-driven? No one ever seems to know why decisions like these were made.

JP: Well as a show goes along the show runners have more power and the network has less but the network does determine the direction of the show to an extent. Look, the show needed to be bigger for it to sustain. It probably wouldn’t have lasted very long if it stayed exactly as it was in the beginning. The interesting thing about The Sopranos is that these characters never lost their humanity. With Knots, it became more about the shenanigans, Enron-like corporate connections and personal business connections.

Really good shows never lose their humanity. The West Wing has never lost it, even on the grand scale that it is.

Chris Sumner from San Antonio, Texas asks

I was wondering how it was being on Curb Your Enthusiasm? That was the only episode of that show I watched, only because you were in it, and I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen! You deserved a Guest Starring Emmy or Golden Globe for that!

JP: (Laughs) Thank you. That was a lot of fun. That’s a different kind of improvisation that Larry David does. It’s done very tightly and he has high points he wants you to hit in the scenes. But the lines are still ones you come up with.

AS: “The thong.” A comedy classic.

JP: Yes, the thong.

AS: I can see you doing very well as a regular on an HBO series. You’ve done The Sopranos and Curb; it would seem to fit your style perfectly.

JP: Yeah I’d love to but the older you get there are not as many parts. It seems like every actor working now is between the ages of 20 and 40. I don’t work as much as I used to. I do mostly screenwriting now.

“Where does Lilimae fit into big corporate buyouts?”

Lotus Pointe from Philadelphia, PA asks

Hi John! I recently visited the cul-de-sac in person, and it struck me how out of the way it is. How did shooting take place there - did you shoot all the outside scenes say in 1 or 2 weeks, then just do on-set filming, or did you go back and forth from set to the cul-de-sac? Thank you for your time! Love you

JP: Lotus Point? That’s someone’s name?

AS: No it’s a screen name. All of these names are Internet names, not real.

JP: Oh I see. We went back and forth to the cul de sac. It’s not far if you live in L.A., though I can see someone outside the city thinking it is. Here we’re used to driving long distances to go to work. But for me I’d hop on the 405 (freeway) and was at the cul de sac in 15-20 minutes. Usually they bunch up the exteriors in a few days. The interiors would be done in the beginning of the week and the exteriors later in the week. I think there was only one house that wasn’t occupied on the cul de sac so everything was mainly done outdoors.

The furthest location we went to was Bill Devane’s ranch in Thousand Oaks. That’s really far; I think it’s over the Ventura County line even.

AS: How long was a typical episode shot in?

JP: I think they were done in 7 days. By the end they were done in 6 ½ days. The Lechowicks wrote short scenes – one page, two page scenes at most, not the four page scenes of the past. So that involved moving to a different set every time a new scene was shot. It made for a very difficult schedule as time went on.

James from London asks

When Knots first began, I was expecting it to be more of a Dallas type show, with Richard and Laura as the JR and Sue Ellen of the cul-de-sac. Initially, I was disappointed that their relationship took so long to unfold, although this approach ultimately proved far richer and more rewarding. What expectations did you have for your character when the show began, and what was your opinion when Knots adopted a more serialised format in Season 4?

JP: I didn’t have expectations for Richard. As an actor you’re hired to a do a part and you really don’t think of where the character is going to go. As for the serialized format, after the audience is used to watching certain character over time it makes sense to have more continuing stories. So I thought that was fine. I think what was great about Knots for a time in this format is that it didn’t become a soap opera like Dallas or Falcon Crest.

Pam’s Twin Sister from Barcelona, Spain asks

Can you tell us anything about late Katharine Hepburn, with whom you worked in the TV movie Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry? Thanks a lot.

JP: She was great. Such a pleasure to work with her. Terribly hard worker. We had four days to rehearse before we began shooting and I got to really see her during that time. One of the most amazing things about her was, she was really suffering from Parkinson’s but she made it work. She had a way of hiding her pain and becoming the character when it was obvious to everyone how much pain she was in.

Tatianna from Virginia asks

Everyone’s life in Knots Landing twined together, so to speak. If Richard had stayed in Knots Landing, do you think Richard would have eventually gotten involved in dealings with Greg? Also, could you have possibly had a "love interest" in Paige, Jill or Anne?

JP (jokingly): Well I definitely would have liked being with Nicollette. But if you wanted to do something with Richard, make him a powerful character. Make him a Richard III, like an unlikely villain. No one would have suspected Richard to have any power so it would have been interesting to have him pit one against the other and acquire power that way. On shows like NYPD Blue, Bochco has developed a real journey for Sipowicz. With Gandolfini on The Sopranos you have a guy who routinely murders people but is devoted to his family. The idea of a wiseguy going into therapy is brilliant because he really changes over time. On Knots the problem was that everyone was doomed to play the same notes in songs. They didn’t grow.

AS: I would disagree with that. Devane’s Greg Sumner was one character on Knots who definitely kept growing and evolving over his ten years on the show. He was hit with so much but kept the humanity and the interest level high.

JP: Yes, Billy’s a very forceful person and knowing Billy I’m sure his character developed because of the forcefulness he brought to the set. I can see him shaping his character into a way that he wanted. He was great in that role, and really eased into it over time.

AS: Last thing, just for laughs, were Ciji and Laura supposed to be having a lesbian relationship?

JP: Yeah there was certainly an implied lesbian possibility between the two of them. One time I walked into do a scene with them and they played a joke on me by turning around and looking at me with mustaches on. So yeah, it was talked about. I’d say it was implicit and not explicit. I don’t think Laura and Ciji were actually having sex but it could have led to something else.

AS: It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Pleshette. Please don’t be a stranger to Knots Landing Net.

JP: Thanks very much. I really enjoyed myself.

[YRBB]

I wrote a review for the first episode of Season 6 as I'm watching it for the first time. Dunno if anyone's interested, but here it is:

SEASON 6 EPISODE 1: BUYING TIME

You have to admire the way that they plot this show. In essence, not much happens in this episode (especially if you compare it to the frenetic pace of Seasons 4 and 5), but the slowing down is extremely essential in depicting the myriad aspects of that terrific Season 5 cliffhanger. As it is, that one event has led to several plot points: Karen's shooting and surgery, Abby's kidnapping, Gary's reaction to it, Val and Ben’s shaky relationship, Diana's confrontation of Mac, Greg’s political moves, Laura's involvement; everyone’s swept away by this one cataclysmic event and the episode wisely chooses to depict each and every aspect they can.

Particularly touching was Mac's journey. There are several wonderful moments, such as when Michael stands next to Mac. Mac realizes that Michael needs support and hugs him. Later on, Diana throws Mac out of the house, only to find him at the hospital and tell him she is willing to give it a try. Mac hugs her as well. There are also those glances that Mac keeps giving to the kids, full of guilt and self-reproach for what he has done to their mother. And, of course, that heartbreaking, bawl-your-eyes-out scene were Mac goes into Karen's room and silently whispers that he loves her and that he’s sorry; it’s to do with “Laura's Theme” playing loudly, tugging at the long-time viewer’s heartstrings and reminding them of The Lie and Sid’s accident, as well as that single tear rolling down Mac's eye. Touching stuff.

Talking about touching, quiet scenes, there is also one where Val is looking at babies, when Ben finds her. It’s not exactly explained, but it seems as if Ben instinctively knew where to find Val. The ending is not so nice, however, since Val has no other option than to explain that she still has feelings for Gary.

Of course, the episode has its fair amount of action-packed stuff: The apprehension of the (wrong) limousine, or that terrific scene where Abby manages to call Gary only to be interrupted by Olivia and not get the chance to tell him where she is. Olivia was very close to becoming a Booger because of this but you can’t fault her motivation. What kid wouldn’t run to the phone when they know their kidnapped mama is calling? But maybe Olivia should be more worried about the fact that her brother has a new face. (Sneaky).

Speaking about new things, I enjoyed the fact that, while kidnapped, Abby still found the time to stop by for a quick haircut. Greg also has a new haircut. At least Karen doesn’t.

In the meantime, Laura's floating around, irrelevant and relevant at the same time (which has always been a big part of her charm). Cathy surprisingly calls her and Laura offers to have her back. In a sweet walk-and-talk scene (I still get lesbian vibes from them. They’re especially strong from McCashin and I can kinda see her doing that on purpose. But I’m probably just making that up.), Cathy tells Laura that she is tired of being a recurring character and wants to settle in the credits with some new abusive man who will give her tons of storyline (shhh, I don’t know this!). Weirdly, Alec Baldwin is in the credits but doesn’t make an appearance. Neither does Lilimae! Not, that is really weird. Oh, and we don’t get to see the cul-de-sac at all. Like, weird!

The ending scene is soap opera genius. Simple and to the point. Lee, who has been camp even when unconscious, settles into a terrified look as she asks the rude-then nice-then rude-then nice doctor to tell her everything about her case. In a brilliant move, we learn that there is one bullet fragment lodged too close to the spine and nerves, which will move (we don’t know when), will cause numbness, paralysis and death. Somehow, this prospect, this threat that could materialize at any moment, is light years more exciting and terrifying than a straight-out paralysis. I cannot wait for the moment were Karen first starts experiencing symptoms.

[juppiter]

who cut abby's hair in the limo? this mystery was never solved

[DRW50]

I'd forgotten Diana was still there. Was she just doing a few episodes before leaving?

[juppiter]

Diana is in the first few episodes of season 6 with even worse hair than she had in season 5 before leaving. Claudia Lonow loses her "starring" credit immediately in season 6, however.

[DRW50]

Thanks.

I never thought Cathy and Laura had the same chemistry as Ciji and Laura, although a lot of that was down to Cathy being a non-character. Things happened to Cathy, and she sang; that was about it.

[DRW50]

A January 1992 Digest speculates on whether Lar Park Lincoln (Linda Fairgate) would return as a double to Linda. Lincoln doesn't mention anything about that, but implies there's a possibly she will return.

Too bad it never happened. For me Linda's murder was a huge and very ugly mistake and violated so much of what Knots Landing represented.

[juppiter]

Why do you feel it violated what Knots represented? I thought it was a mistake because Linda was a highlight to me in a season that's not my favorite (season 12) but that is a strong way of putting it.

[DRW50]

Knots Landing was a show which generally treated their main characters with some respect and dignity. They also rarely dabbled in blatant sensationalism. Linda wasn't a core character, but she was an important part of the show. To kill her off in a snuff porn manner, with the tasteless shot of blood running down her shoes (that was like something out of Serial Mom), was a big slap in the face. It told viewers to expect trash.

[DRW50]

[Soapsuds]

I liked Lar she was the bright spot of the last seasons of Knots. The show was a bore after she was killed off.

I remember Larry Riley's AIDS story coming out. His physical change/appearance on screen was frightening to see.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Soapsuds