by Edward Gross
VISITORS AMONG US: When I spoke to Ken Johnson about his take on "V": The Final Battle, he felt that the filmmakers had lost the edge of what was being attempted in the original miniseries.
DAVID PACKER: Oh, yeah, definitely. In the first one Kenny's idea was to take the story of the Nazis and make it contemporary and see if it could drum up the same kind of human issues. The second one was more like, "Let's see how long people will wait to see what the baby looks like." The second one was bullshit. Everyone involved was just in it for the money, so it didn't have an edge because it didn't have anything going on. I remember they would hand me scenes and I'd say, "Oh my God," because there was nothing to them. One of the neat things about having Ken Johnson as the writer-director-producer was that if you wanted to wander, he would give us more takes. He would have this internal battle going on where the producer would say, "No," and the director would say, "Yes." That was interesting to see. On the second one, if you didn't get it in three, then forget it. The director, Richard Heffron, who is a very nice man, said, "Hey' it's not my show."
VISITORS AMONG US: In other words, he felt like he was the hired help.
DAVID PACKER: Yeah, and I don't dig that. That's not where I'm at as far as my career goes. Sure I want the money, but the work counts, too. I also remember that I got the worst review in the entire world for "V" II. I was in Chicago and I went downstairs to the gift shop, and I saw People magazine, which said, "Everyone in the cast is extremely professional, with the exception of Packer and Tefkin," or something like that. And I sat there and said, "Okay, I don't see how anyone could be unprofessional in a TV show." It's like they said, "Then in the scene when Packer comes in five hours late and didn't call the A.D....." What do they mean "unprofessional?" Later, when I finally saw the completed show (because I hadn't at that point), I was really embarrassed about it. But I loved the first one.
VISITORS AMONG US: What was the problem?
DAVID PACKER: The first four hours had, like, five years worth of stuff in them while the next six hours covered maybe two weeks worth of stuff. It's like putting a lot of cream cheese on the first group of bagels, but when you get to the last ones, you have to spread it on thinly. And we had the best ideas for the stories. We thought it could be a real espionage show, with people struggling to rise to power, lying, cheating and the whole deal. They went the other way with it, because, ultimately, I don't know if people really cared about Robin's baby. Maybe that's what audiences liked, but from our standpoint, what we wanted to see were people trying to grasp power.
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