Weiteres Interview über die Entstehung des A-Teams von Stephen J. Cannell

Heute wieder ein Link zu einem sehr gutem Interview zum Thema “Entstehung des A-Teams”.

Stephen berichtet über seine Anfänge und in diesem Zusammenhang auch über Geld und Investitionen. Neben diesen interessanten Daten wird auch die Zusammenarbeit mit zahlreichen Firmen geschildert.

Ich habe für euch hier mal die interessantesten Passagen zum A-Team:

Then he goes in to this whole thing about how he loved the Rockford Files and Tenspeed and Brownshoe and he hated the A-Team. And his whole opinion of me as a sellout was that I’d done two shows he loved and now I’d turned on him. So he decided that he was going to smack me. The whole reason that he put her on the story was to get a negative article.

Anscheinend waren einige Personen nicht so sonderlich scharf auf das A-Team und glauben lange Zeit nicht an den Erfolg.

If you run down the list, the A-Team had the most flawed characters of any show I’ve created. Everybody on that show was dysfunctional.

Interessant, dass Stephen selbst aussagt, dass diese Charaktere die oberflächlichsten und schlechtesten Charaktere waren. Im Nachhinein ist diese Aussage nachvollziehbar. Im Grunde wissen wir über unsere Helden fast nichts, was sich bisher in der Vergangenheit abgespielt hat. Nichtmal die vollständigen Namen sind bekannt.

“My overhead was too low and I had to start acquiring more people. Then along comes the A-Team, which we sold to NBC, and suddenly we have our first big hit. And I couldn’t afford it. It was costing me half a million dollars a week because of all the stunts. And I knew if I took the stunts out, I didn’t have a show. And NBC wasn’t about to give me more money. So we had the whole board of my studio in this office and we did a cost analysis and we realized that we wouldn’t be able to make our payroll in three months.

Ok, dass das A-Team sehr teuer war war eigentlich schon klar. Dass es aber deswegen fast zum Bankrott gekommen ist war mir und ich denke den meisten eigentlich neu. Nur über eine Kredit konnte Stephen das A-Team und sich retten. Zwischenzeitlich wurde sogar der Verkauf an einen anderen Sender in Betracht gezogen:

“My CFO said we were either going to have to get bank financing or we will have to sell the show to another studio. We’d be selling the number one show on television, which could be worth $100 million. But we’ve got to be able to stay in the game to collect.

Hier nochmal die schwierigen Verhandlungen und die unfairen Mittel der Banken:

“We hunted around and finally the Wells Fargo bank said they’d be interesting in financing our show. We worked the papers out and there was one thing that seemed odd to me. They wanted me to put my house up along with everything else. So I called my dad and he said not to do it. He asked me how many times had I met with the bank and for how long had we negotiated. I said we’d met four times and negotiated for six weeks. He said don’t do it. They will make the deal without it. The only reason that they want your house in the deal is that they want you emotionally committed to this deal. They’ll do the deal without making you commit your house. So I kept saying no and they kept saying they wouldn’t make the deal. It went right to the eleventh hour on the deal and at the last minute they agreed to make the deal without forcing me to put my house on the line.”

Hier nun noch der Link zum Nachlesen:

http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/stephen_cannell.htm