Each week, on The Incredible Hulk, Bill Bixby, in his role as Dr. David Banner, would stumble innocently into trouble, thus triggering an uncontrollable rage that would transform him into the Hulk. Although he repeatedly warned his arch nemesis, reporter Jack McGee, not to make him angry—“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”—and always tried to control his rage, Banner nevertheless got monstrously angry each week, creating thrills for America and “inserts” for me. 

The term “inserts” refers to a film production process that kept me busy during my three years as associate director on The Incredible Hulk. Of the more than 1000 inserts I directed, none was more challenging than the bee scene. Banner’s hand in the hive, his ripping clothes, the airborne hive and even the attacking bees were shot as “inserts”, so named because they were filmed and inserted into the completed show long after the cast and crew has gone home. The chief reason for this is that it’s cheaper. To keep a show’s star and its full crew on the set costs money; inserts take time. Consequently, they’re done separately, without star or crew. 

An insert’s life doesn’t last much longer than a good bee sting—usually three to five seconds. Inserts underscore important story points, build tension—and sometimes save directors who failed to ‘cover’ a scene adequately during production. When Scene A cannot be cut together with Scene B because of continuity problems, an insert between them can often provide the solution. There are no absolute rules dictating the use or length of inserts, but they’re easy to spot: the weary hands of a faithful mother clutching her rosary beads in prayer for a sick child; the shoes of a killer as he sneaks up on his victim; a car’s speedometer rising dramatically during a high speed chase. Or David Burner (one of Banner’s clever aliases) enjoying anonymity in Fargo, N.D. only to open up the local newspaper and find his picture (insert) plastered over the front page. 

There’s an old Hollywood saw that says that “close-ups tell the story.” Inserts are usually close-ups. “The Hulk” offered diversions from traditional “hand-inserts”: wristwatch and letter writing. To show David surrounded by real bees, for example, required the construction of an 8-foot-square “bee cage”. Except for Plexiglas front and rear walls, the cage was totally screened. Behind the rear wall was a brightly lit white backdrop in sharp[ contrast to the cage’s dimly lit interior. What the camera saw through the transparent front wall was 30,000 swarming bees silhouetted against a white backdrop. That footage was later super-imposed optically over David’s scene to create the illusion of an actual bee attack. Almost as complicated was the shot of David’s hand falling into an active beehive. The bees were real, but their stingers had been painstakingly removed beforehand by Fred Hesper, a pleasant, German-born beekeeper who had done similar chores for the film, “The Swarm”. Hesper subjected thousands of bees to a refrigerated room. Once the bees became lethargic, Hesper and his assistants clipped their stingers one at a time. With the cooperation of a queen bee, the “fixed bees” were placed on a fake hive where Paul LaClair, the “hands” of Bill Bixby in inserts, bravely placed his hands for several “takes”. The bees reacted angrily, but were as helpless as David Banner in a fistfight. 

At Universal Studios, LeClair is the unofficial insert king. Besides serving David Banner, LeClair’s hands have “doubled” for Lobo, BJ (but not the Bear), Buck Rogers, Quincy and Simon and Simon. Like most aspiring actors, LeClair supplements his income with non-acting jobs. Some actors are waiters. LeClair does inserts. It’s a highly specialized and competitive field where a few lucky performers can earn $20.000 to $70,000 a year. But it’s work that many actors spurn, fearful that inserts are a one-way ticket to obscurity. 

LeClair disagrees. “It’s all in the attitude,” he says. “Inserts pay the bills—they’re fun—and they allow me to meet people.” Holding a newspaper steady for five seconds sounds easy, but the job gets complicated if several props are involved, especially when exact timing is required. When hands are used, they must accurately show the action of the character being “doubled” and they must also reflect his mood and motivation, whether the insert involves eating with chopsticks, playing chess or brandishing a gun. Some of the most difficult “Hulk” inserts involved no props, just hands—particularly the hands of a man and woman where emotion had to be conveyed. Nothing can destroy a tender moment more than a bad insert. 

Some basic insert rules are in order here. You need: (1) Matching hands. A beautifully groomed woman writes a love note. The insert cannot show finger bitten nails and weather beaten hands suggesting a woman who moonlights as a diesel mechanic. (2) Matching action. If David Banner holds a picture in his left hand, the insert must not use the right hand. (3) Matching props and wardrobe. When Jack McGee--in shirtsleeves—reaches for a yellow pencil, the insert cannot show an arm in a sweater grabbing a blue pen. (4) Matching lighting. The Hulk runs down a dark shadowy alley at night. The insert should not have enough light to illuminate a Dodger night game. Those are rules I learned the hard way. 

One “Hulk” had renegade bikers breaking camp to escape approaching police. The producer wanted an insert of a biker’s hand shoving his AR-15 rifle into the bedroll on his motorcycle handlebars. I mistakenly told LeClair to use the wrong hand (breaking rule No.2). Sometimes such a mistake can be remedied if the editor “flops” the footage by turning it over. The right hand then becomes the left hand. But the direction of the hand will change, so this will work only if there is no lettering in the close-up. If there is, it will be backwards. In my case, with the biker gang, the insert included the name of a popular motorcycle printed on the side of the bike. The editor assured me the name wouldn’t be noticed, that the TV audience would be too busy watching the hand action. I cringed as the scene unfolded on the air—bigger than life in the insert were the letters ADNOH. It looked like the name of a new Russian import. 

However, another insert in that episode redeemed me. David was beaten up by the bad bikers. David’s shirt, of course, was supposed to rip open. But someone on the staff thought it would also be fun to see the helmet he was wearing split apart. We took David’s helmet, jigsawed it up the middle and split it in half. It was then carefully glued back together and painted to recover the cut. A green Hulk wig was placed over a rubber air bag. The helmet was fitted over the wigged air bag, which was connected to an air compressor. On cue, air filled the bag, splitting the helmet along its predetermined path, revealing the Hulk’s head. It became my favorite “Hulkout”. “Hulkout” was a term coined by our staff to indicate the Hulk’s peculiar method of expressing anger.

In one episode, David was thrown into a prickly cactus patch. To precipitate his Hulkout, the executive producer wanted inserts showing David being ravaged by the cactus needles as he rolled around in the stuff. A normal person would have stayed still or at least had the sense to get up and leave. Not David. He did a prostrated dance of death that should have qualified him for sainthood. In the interest of believability I thought real cactus should be used, but not a real actor, so we outfitted a dummy with David’s clothing and shot his dilemma piecemeal: his arm poking into the cactus; his leg rolling onto needles; his body twisting painfully. It didn’t work. When I watched the results on the Moviola the next day, the dummy looked like a dummy rolling in cactus. Take 2: I convinced LeClair to roll in the cactus but for protection, I put him in a skin diver’s wet suit under David’s wardrobe. Later in that scene, the Hulkout ended in a typical Hulk fashion: the creature growled at the cactus, then destroyed it. In the wide maser shot with Bixby, plastic cacti were used. Inserts, seen close up, demanded reality. The special effects people saved the day. They shaved the real needles off the cactus. Then rubber bands were cut into single strands and threaded individually into each cactus, allowing an inch of rubber to protrude like a needle. On film, it was impossible to tell the difference. 

We again “cheated” successfully in a scene with David looking at bacteria under a microscope. My insert was to show not only teeming, virulent bacteria partying it up on the petri dish, but a laser beam poking through them. With the help of Mark Scott Taylor, technical advisor on “Quincy,” we fitted a small TV camera to a microscope eyepiece to relay the picture to a television monitor. Our film camera focused on the monitor, which transmitted pictures of what appeared to be bacteria cells in the petri dish beneath the microscope. It was really watered-down tapioca pudding, highly magnified. To make the bacteria appear alive, Taylor blew the tapioca around through a glass straw, off-camera. When the straw accidentally strayed into the picture, its magnified luminescence gave it the appearance of a laser beam. We had stumbled onto success. 

One of our last episodes saw the Hulk at a Florida spring training camp. An angry player threw a baseball at the Hulk who hit it into the next state. Over the years the Hulk had thrown countless trees and boulders, a beehive ,bathtub, cannon, park bench, even a rattlesnake, but no insert was harder to film than a 5 ounce baseball sailing into oblivion. Most objects were sent airborne by a special effects device called an air-ram, a contraption resembling a trash can on a top of a pipe through which an air compressor pumps upward of 300 pounds of pressure per square inch. The baseball was so light and small that, when it was shot into the air with this force, the cameraman couldn’t find it in his viewfinder. After numerous, frustrating tries, he finally found and followed several baseballs through the sky. The editor artfully spliced three good takes together, giving the Hulk a homerun that made Mickey Mantle look like a Little Leaguer. 

A key player in our Hulkouts was Lou Ferrigno’s stunt double, Manny Perry, a black body builder and 1977’s Mr. America. While Ferrigno performed many of his own stunts, Perry did the more dangerous ones, as well as inserts involving the popular shirt rips, which were accomplished by “scoring” the shirts (perforating the material with a razor blade) and shooting (in slow motion) Perry flexing his muscles. Shirts were easy. A navy peacoat was harder. A straitjacket was nearly impossible. Razor blades failed. The resilient material finally succumbed to sulfuric acid that weakened the fabric sufficiently for Perry to tear out of it. 

In 81 episodes we Hulked-out (twice per show) on land, in and under water, in mid air, car trunks and engines ,garbage dumpsters—just about everywhere but the office of the CBS executive who cancelled us. It’s no wonder David Banner got angry. He had been (in alphabetical order): beaten, bitten by rats, snakes and spiders; bombed burned, chained, clubbed, crushed, gassed, punched, run over, shocked, shot; and smothered; and had suffered the ultimate pain: sagging ratings. 

The importance of inserts varies with a show’s needs. “Magnum P.I.” and “Dallas” do very few. “ChiPs” might do 10 each show, including several showing spinning tires or a foot slamming on the brakes. The “Dukes of Hazzard” averages six per episode, everything from map close-ups to a “semi” unhooking from its trailer. If you see a bullet rip into a wall next to Ralph in “The Greatest American Hero”, it’s probably an insert. “Hart To Hart” does many intricate inserts reminiscent of “Mission Impossible”—a gloved hand deftly spinning the tumbler on a safe. “Hart” shoots about 24 inserts for each show. A typical “Lou Grant” insert might be a close up of a city-room clock as the deadline approaches on a late breaking story. “Lou Grant” and “Hill Street Blues” do very few inserts. Situation comedies like “WKRP in Cincinnati” usually do none. The Incredible Hulk averaged nearly 20 inserts per show, but one insert we never saw was inside David’s ever-present duffle bag, which contained the world’s largest collection in the smallest space. Where else did he get two fresh changes of clothes every week? 

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