Recollections IV – Part 2 – Starsky and Hutch Fiction Archive

Some previously undisclosed background on “Partners,” a few thoughts on “Stand-ins and Stunt Doubles” as well as “Syndication,” then my memories of being there for the tag of “Sweet Revenge.”

Looking back, from 2014, and remembering what it was like doing the research on, and being part of “Starsky & Hutch” from near the end of first season, 1976, through the end of the series in 1979. I was the legal and production researcher on the show, Seasons 2 through 4, and am writing from my own experiences, as I remember them. I have only recently rediscovered Starsky & Hutch fandom and am enjoying sharing some of those experiences. Memory being mutable, events and emotions I talk about may not be as others remember them, so I apologize, in advance, and sincerely hope not to offend anyone.

I’ve been reading S&H fanfic for about a month now, enjoying every minute, and had come across the word, ‘drabbles.’ What a great word! (Whoever coined it, take a bow, please.) After I’d written my main Recollections, and had only a few remaining brief ones, I thought they’d be considered Drabbles, without doing any research into the actual definition of the word. (And me a former researcher!!) I have been informed that my submissions here don’t come under that category and I apologize sincerely if I have misled any readers by using the word in some of my responses to Reviews. It was not intentional, believe me.

“Partners”

I’ve been informed, recently, that this episode is not well liked among S&H fandom and I agree wholeheartedly, but I’d like to tell you how it was almost worse.

Knowing a flashback episode would be written for 3rd season, I wrote my treatment (posted on this site as “Remember?”) and sent it over to the Story Editor, Rick Edelstein. I never heard anything so I assumed it was round-filed, as I had expected it would be, since I had no official agent to represent me. In due course then, I received a script to research entitled “Partners,” written by Amanda Green (Joe Naar’s secretary) and thought, “Ah, here it is.” I took it home that night to read and was appalled.

In the opening sequence, Zebra 3 engages in a car chase, pursuing two fleeing felons, not unusual, so far. But for some unknown, and unexplained reason, Hutch gets very upset and begins screaming at Starsky about his driving, calling him ‘reckless’ and telling him he was going to get him (Hutch) killed, to “SLOW DOWN” and even “STOP”. Now, Hutch had never behaved like that in the nearly three years we’d known him (oh, he’d been tense and angry during the ride down the hill in the Torino-without-brakes in “Kill Huggy Bear,” but not really at Starsky‘s driving), yet here he was, acting completely un-Hutch-like. Then the Torino crashes and the bad guys get away (also contrary to series canon). In the hospital, Hutch fakes amnesia, with truly hurtful, arrogant behavior thrown on top, and shows no indication of relenting through all the ‘reminders’ Starsky uses to attempt to jog his memory. (As I recall, none of the flashback scenes was of the gentle, loving relationship they had shared for 2 1/2 years; they were all hard-edged and mean-spirited. I could be wrong about this, my memory has proved fallible recently, and I no longer have my copy of the original script. Does anyone? I would dearly love to be able to read again the one with Amanda Green as the writing credit. Anyone?)(And it’s entirely possible I’m not remembering the script accurately since I hated it so thoroughly.) And Hutch only confessed at the very end of Act IV, not repentant, even then.

I was flabbergasted, and couldn’t help wondering why Mandy had written such a mean, nasty script? And why had the producers/story editor bought it? Had 2 ½ years of caring, supporting and loving each other meant nothing? I did my required legal report (it was very short, there was almost nothing new to check) but couldn’t get the central concept of the script out of my mind: Hutch lying to his partner/best friend and “paying you back for nearly getting me killed,” a line, as I recall, used by Hutch as his explanation, at the end, for why he’d done it. It made me sick to think of what this might do to the fans, and series popularity. Against the advice of all my co-workers, I wrote The Real Report. In it I attempted to explain why I believed the episode, as written, might irrevocably damage the belief and faith the fans had in the basic premise of the show: trust. I pointed out that, in 2 ½ years, Starsky and Hutch had never lied to each other about anything important (and amnesia would certainly quality as ‘important’); they hadn’t done mean-spirited, nasty things to each other (oh, sure, some of the tags bordered on cruel, but everyone knew tags were supposed to be ‘funny’) and they had never deliberately hurt each other, mentally and emotionally. This episode, as written, did all those things. I picked up and noted each instance of Hutch’s non-canonical behavior, the cruel arrogance and superior attitude of his lines, and his complete lack of sympathy toward Starsky’s mental anguish. The series had carefully built a strong foundation of honesty, caring and trust between the partners. Did they really want to destroy that?

I made four copies only. One I kept for myself (which I can no longer find), one I hand-delivered to Joe Naar, which wasn’t easy since Mandy was his secretary, and one each to David and Paul. Then I waited. And heard nothing, no re-writes, nothing. But I also didn’t get fired, which I had been half-expecting. A couple of weeks later, when I chanced a visit to the set one evening (literally shaking in my shoes, not knowing what sort of reception I might receive), David saw me, before I could duck out of sight, his face lighting up with a beautiful smile, and hurried toward me. He hugged me and told me I’d love the re-write; just wait ‘til I read it! He seemed so pleased, I didn’t have the heart to say anything negative. So, that’s the way we left it. Neither Joe Naar, nor Paul, ever spoke to me about my Real Report, and I never received a rewrite. When the episode aired, I can’t say I loved it. But then again, I didn’t hate it as much as I would have, had it been filmed as originally written. I also noticed the writer’s credit had changed, no longer attributed to Amanda Green, the credit was Rick Edelstein’s. So my real report may have caused someone to look at the script from a different POV, and make some changes.

It is only now, in 2014, with my re-introduction to S&H fandom, that I’ve seen a couple of relatively recent interviews given by David and Paul (was it 2004? That’s ‘relatively recent’ I think, when we’re talking about 35 years’ elapsed time) where they say the idea for “Partners” came from them; that they had hoped to get four or five days’ vacation since their parts of a flashback episode would only take about two days to film. Well, that was really news to me; I had never known where the original idea had come from; I had only wondered why Mandy had hated the boys enough to write the ugly, cruel script she had. But, if what Paul and David said is true, and I do not doubt that it is, it demonstrates better than anything I could have thought of, that people often see things from completely different perspectives. To the production company, and even David and Paul themselves, seemingly, the partnership and friendship was nothing special, they were only doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. They had no concept of what they were creating in the eyes and minds of the multitude of world-wide fans. So an episode of UN-trustworthyness didn’t bother them. I hope the recent SurCons, as well as other events, are beginning to change David’s and Paul’s minds. They were creating iconic characters and a relationship, a partnership, a friendship that would transcend time. And they didn’t even know it.

I watched the episode a few nights ago, for the first time in over 30 years, and I still didn’t ‘love’ it. But, this time, in addition to everything about the fake amnesia I knew I would still detest, I realized it began with the worst car chase in the series’ history. Where the script had simply indicated ‘car chase,’ we were forced to watch the Torino pursue the Mustang under the same underpass four times; the ‘interior’ shots of the bad guys in the Mustang and S&H in the Torino didn’t match the ‘exterior’ shots (the interiors were done as tow-shots along city streets; the exteriors were highway shots {and that damned underpass}); we were treated to close up shots of the bad guy driver’s peddle work and shift changes, plus the tach needle, entirely too many times and none of them matched the exterior shots of what the Mustang was doing. I don’t think I paid much attention to the chase when the episode originally aired, I was so fearful of how the rest of the show would go, but this time, it really got to me; it was a BAD chase. The episode’s director was Charles Picerni, older brother of Paul, who was PMG’s stunt double/stunt driver (see “Stand-Ins and Stunt Doubles” below); an experienced, ‘action’ director; he could have done better. Charles was no stranger to S&H, having appeared in small roles in several episodes. He should have done better, in my opinion.

And what’s with that silly head bandage Hutch is wearing? It was the most unbelievable head wound dressing I’ve ever seen. And since it was applied over his hair, it rode up during the day’s filming, finally almost poofing at the top; it looked ridiculous, I thought. Well, maybe everybody on the show took a vacation from caring during that episode. It’s good that the fandom discounts it almost entirely.

The only exception I’ve seen in my readings on the different SH sites, so far, is two stories by K H Korossy. They’re really good. Personally, I can now visualize her “Partners Again” as the tag (instead of the insipid Dobey-gets-his-revenge one they filmed), and it makes the episode almost bearable for me. Almost.

Stand-ins and stunt doubles

Stand-ins, as many of you probably already know, are wanna be actors who look enough like the principals, with similar height and coloring, they can literally stand in the shot, while it’s being lighted, camera focus lengths are measured, etc., (often a very time-consuming process) instead of taking up the time, and patience of the main actors. Paul’s stand in, whose name I cannot remember after all these years, was a sweet youngster who often seemed to follow Paul around like the proverbial puppy. He even got film time in several episodes, most notably pushing the gurney into the hospital in “Coffin….” He’s the one at Paul’s head. You can see how perfect he was as Paul’s stand-in.

Stand-ins also got a little film time when they doubled Paul and David on “long shot exteriors,” such as the shot in “The Fix” where the Torino pulls to the end of the drive next to Hutch’s cottage, facing the canal (shot from across the canal), ‘Starsky’ hops out and goes up to the front door. That’s not Paul, that’s his stand-in. Lots of long shots such as that (the shot where the Torino arrives at Ginger’s apartment complex, the boys jump out and hurry up the walkway in “Death Notice” comes to mind), either car pulling up to a building or apartment complex, the guys hopping out/getting out/jumping out and walking, or hurrying, or running inside, aren’t David and Paul but their stand-ins. Such scenes were shot by a Second Unit, thus saving wear and tear on the principals, and freeing them up for more important scenes.

As for stunt-doubles, Paul’s was Paul Picerni (known as ‘Picerni’ on the set, in order, of course, to avoid confusion), David’s was Gary (last name has escaped me after all this time. If anyone has original shooting schedules, his full name should be there). Picerni was also the Torino’s stunt driver and you can almost always tell when it’s Picerni behind the wheel because he usually overcooked it into the corners, fishtailing the car shamefully. Gary did David’s stunt driving the few times that was required. Picerni even had a speaking part in at least two episodes, including “Murder at Sea,” that one possibly because he had to drive the jeep in that overly-long chase. Gary, David’s stunt double/driver was behind the wheel of the dune buggy in all the non-in-car up shots.

Picerni and Gary were very good in the fight sequences, almost always managing to keep their faces averted so that you could hardly tell it wasn’t the principal actors doing their own stunts. The only time I recall recognizing Picerni’s face was in “Death Notice.” Starsky and Hutch are hurrying to Ginger’s apartment when her boyfriend accosts them and hurls Starsky into the shrubbery. I was really surprised that they didn’t cut the scene and replace Picerni with Paul for when Starsky crawls out of the bushes to confront the boyfriend, but they didn’t. Even though he’s quite a ways away, you can see that the face isn’t Paul’s, it’s Picerni’s. If you’re looking, that is.

Syndication

When “Starsky and Hutch” was sold for syndication, I got a call from a friend who worked at Channel 5 in L.A.; he was going to have to edit the shows, meaning he would need to cut approximately 6 minutes out of each episode in order to accommodate all the additional commercials. He knew I was a fan, and pretty knowledgeable about every frame of footage, so he asked for my help. Each week, after he received a new episode, I’d go down to their studio and help him decide what footage could be cut. And it wasn’t always obvious: some sequences that might not be critical to the plot, might have music under, which made editing almost impossible. Other scenes, which would seem to be inconsequential to the plot, and therefore a prime candidate for excising, I explained would be vital to the plot of a subsequent episode, or be important reinforcement of a prior episode, and therefore should not be cut. I also, only semi-kiddingly, told him that if he even thought about cutting a single frame of the boys’ silent communications, he’d lose my help. It was a very frustrating and trying several hours each week but I was never sorry I went; I tried to keep the episodes as complete as possible while still adhering to the requirements of the advertisers. And it gave me a chance to spend more time with S&H; always a pleasure.

Final scene, final episode, final season

There was no way in the world that I was going to miss out on witnessing the filming of the tag to “Sweet Revenge,” so I went over to the 20th Century lot that evening, after work, prepared to stay for as long as it took. And it did take a long time. It was a complicated scene, if you recall, with lots of comings and goings, dialog, eating, drinking, a sprinkler system that had to be rigged to go off at the appropriate time, master takes, retakes, cover shots, more retakes, etc., etc. (none of which was being aided by the increasing giggliness of the four principals); all being directed by Paul from nearly flat on his back in the bed.

“Giggliness” you ask? Well, yes. Because, you see, the wine was real. It was pretty awful, but it was real. A case had been bought (you never knew how many retakes were going to be needed) and the cast and crew figured not to waste it. Between takes, everyone was sampling, and getting merrier, with much of the banter involving how great it was that, after four years, the boys were FINALLY in bed together. And going to get WET! What were the censors going to say about that?!! Who cares?! was the universal answer.

And so more wine was passed as more takes were finally marked, ‘print,’ and the ultimate sequence approached: the sprinkler bath. As you can imagine, once the sprinkler went off, that would be it; no one was going to dry the set, and everyone on it, and start over.

I think it was common knowledge that the show wouldn’t be renewed so everyone was sort of having a cathartic experience, and an unofficial wrap party at the same time. Paul actually muffs a few lines and David never giggled like that when he was sober. After all the tensions, stresses and strains of that season, everyone was letting their hair down and just having a good time. When the sprinkler sequence had run long enough, Paul was laughing so hard I think it was the Assistant Director who actually called the required, “Cut! Print!” It was as good a way to end a four-year run as any, I guess, and better than most.

Thanks so much for listening.