This material is Copyright 2005 by Kenneth Johnson and may be reprinted with his permission.

On the Shoulders of Giants -- by Kenneth Johnson

Sir Isaac Newton’s huge ego became even more inflated when the publication of his Principia Mathematica, establishing the Laws of Motion, was hailed as the greatest scientific breakthrough in history. Yet on February 5, 1675, he wrote a surprisingly self-effacing letter to fellow scientist-philosopher Robert Hooke. In it, Newton said, “If I have seen further than you it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

A glance back at creative types over the centuries, be they in science or in the arts, certainly underlines that idea: Shakespeare borrowed from, and built upon, the Roman playwrights -- who in turn had mined the classic works of the Greeks.

I had the good fortune of receiving a “classic” education at Carnegie-Mellon University. The Drama Department there stressed a deep and solid study of theatrical literature from the Ancients up through contemporary classics. All of us Dramats were steeped in the best writing that had preceded us. After college I had more time to read on my own and found that I was always drawn to classic works. I was stirred by the epic, poetic adventures of Virgil and Homer (the Greek, not the Simpson). I was amazed to discover that Milton’s Paradise Lost was not only a great retelling of the Adam, Eve and Lucifer story, but also very accessible and a lot of fun to read. As was Charles Dickens.

I also read Greek and Roman mythology, so their gods and demi-gods were stuffed into my subconscious and gave me a classic foundation to build upon (without me truly realizing it). When I created The Bionic Woman I viewed Jaime simply as a real human being who was suddenly given powers beyond human and who struggled to deal with them. But the head of the Psychology Department at Boston University wrote to congratulate me on creating an Archetype: a 20th Century demi-goddess, who was simultaneously a powerful role model for young women. –Yow. I was stunned.

It seems that Jaime had made a transformation into something larger than life on two levels: first as a compelling character within a drama, and secondly as a suddenly-famous image. Lindsay Wagner was mobbed whenever in public because she wasn’t merely Lindsay, she was Jaime. She had burst (like Athena, full-grown from the head of Zeus) into the public’s collective consciousness. And a big green guy was soon to follow.

I was reading Les Miserables when Universal asked me to take on one of the Marvel Comic characters. I realized I could use Victor Hugo’s structure of a flawed fugitive with dark secrets being relentlessly pursued as the basis for The Incredible Hulk. Additionally there was wonderful material I recalled from Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde – which itself had echoed the cornerstone of classic Greek drama: the device of hubris. The word means literally “false pride.” The tragic Greek hero always fell victim to his own belief that he was overly wise. That belief urged him or her into committing acts which brought about tragic -- and highly dramatic -- results. Certain that he knew what he was doing, Dr. Jeckyl (and Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein) tampered with “things better left to God,” and lo, the results were frightening and horrific, leading to tragedy not only for themselves, but many innocents around him.

The hubris of Dr. David Banner, his obsessive, dogged, angry determination to push his experiments beyond the realm of safety, led to a tragic and ongoing horror being visited upon him. He had damned himself like Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and had to suffer the grave and enduring consequences.

Banner’s physical transformation had of course been presaged by the coming of Mr. Hyde, by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and other stories which they drew from historic literature. One of my favorite classics is Metamorphoses. Written in 8 A.D. by the Roman Ovid, it chronicles dozens of fascinating transformations and is still a great read.

So is War and Peace. Yes, I know it’s very big and every Russian has more nicknames than fingers, but if I had never read it I could never have created my mini-series, V. I was amazed by the way Tolstoy introduced so many different characters and then wove them together surprisingly into an incredibly rich tapestry. I studied how he did it. I also chanced to read a 20th Century classic by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. Written in the 1930’s, it was about a sudden rise of Fascism sweeping into control of America. I felt like I’d been hit by lightning: What if the present-day U.S. underwent such a sea-change and came under totalitarian dominance? How would a spectrum of ordinary people react? That’s how V was born.

Another common element which I realized all classic literature shared is that coursing through each work is a theme; a central idea which gives unity to the piece and which the author plays off of the various characters. In the case of V my theme was Power: how some have and abuse it, how some suck up to it while others bury their heads trying to pretend it won’t affect them, and still others rally to fight against it. In researching V, I reread Brecht’s The Private Life of the Master Race and also studied classic works of non-fiction like Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich plus many first hand accounts of the Resistance. I looked again at films like Leni Reifenstahl’s classic, brilliant, terrifying Triumph of The Will and Alain Resnais’ blood-chilling Night and Fog. All of them contributed ideas, visuals, characters and tonal concepts to V.

The best of the Hulk episodes were likewise built around the central theme: the Demon Within. In Banner’s case it was anger. But each week we strove to examine how the Hulk/Demon manifested itself differently: one character’s “Hulk” might be driven by alcohol, another by drugs, and another by jealousy, greed or avarice.

When I was asked to direct Short Circuit 2, I pointed out that though the script was very funny, it would gain in depth and impact if we emphasized the thematic connection to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The studio stared at me. Surely I’d lost my mind. But I explained that the robot, Johnny 5, represented a stereotype, an exterior like Quasimodo or The Elephant Man which prevented people from seeing the pure soul burning within. We rewrote the script and people still laughed, but now they also cried.

I took a similar, classically thematic approach with Alien Nation. When Fox asked me to look at the original feature and try turning it into a series, they envisioned it as Lethal Weapon with aliens. But the single scene in the movie that triggered my enthusiasm was a far simpler one – and much more profound: the alien cop waved to his family on their porch; his alien wife and their two little kids. In that moment I realized that I could do a space-age version of the classic movie, In The Heat Of The Night.

These Newcomers were the world’s newest minority. They faced prejudice and intolerance from nearly everybody. That was an ideal overall thematic foundation which would run through the series and the subsequent movies. I had read many books that dealt with prejudice, from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe to James Baldwin’s Another Country. And I had lived it: I was born in the “classical” Deep South. I had been in bus stations with three restrooms: Men. Women. Colored. As a child I once saw a water fountain that said Colored and I turned the faucet to see what color the water was. I was raised (though in Washington, D.C.) in a very bigoted, anti- Semetic household. For reasons that still confound me, I never bought into it. As I made more Jewish friends, I was startled to learn that many of them were prejudiced against gentiles. The beauty of Alien Nation was that we could face that theme openly and stir people of every race and religion to think.

So my enduring thanks go out to my teachers who opened my eyes to the classics, to the Greek and Roman authors, to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Brecht, Steinbeck, Shaw, Dostoevsky, James Barrie and Thornton Wilder. Particular thanks go to the most literate person in my life, my wife Susie, not only for being the constant Guardian of Quality, but for introducing me to the masterworks of Victor Hugo. These and many, many other giants provided broad and strong shoulders for me to stand upon.

Without all of them, my own work simply wouldn’t exist.