HULK HAS COMPETETORS
TURNING GREEN WITH ENVY
By R. Bowden
St. Petersberg Times,
Florida, Sept 22, 1978
When CBS first aired
the Incredible Hulk as a mid-season replacement last spring,
few critics or network executives predicted a long-run for the
Marvel Comics creation.
Surprise!
By the end of the
second season, The Incredible Hulk was CBS’ number one prime time
show.
It begins a new year
tonight as “the show to beat” at 9PM each Friday.
The star of the show…is
veteran television actor Bill Bixby, who charmed the nation’s
television critics this summer during a press tour in Los Angeles.
Many are the stories Bixby can tell about experiences with “Hulk”.
“We were filming a
show in New York where the Hulk had to run down a city street.
It was about 35 degrees and damp,” Bixby said. “We hadn’t
blocked off the street or anything, so Lou runs by a bunch
of startled people, turns a corner and stops in front of
a jewelry store.
“The filming stopped
and Lou was cold so he went inside the store. Well, this little
old lady sees him, lets out a scream and calls the cops. She told
them she’d been attacked by the Hulk.”
The Incredible Hulk
is one of the most expensive hours in television ($644,000) thanks
to the high costs of special effects and a peculiar problem with
Ferrigno’s green makeup.
“It comes off on everything,”
Bixby said. “We had a scene where Lou was fighting a bear.
Every time the two would clinch and separate, the bear would
have green makeup all over him. And when Lou crashes through a
wall, we often have to reshoot the scene because his makeup
comes off on the wall. That means the wall has to be rebuilt and
the whole thing reshot.”
Ferrigno’s make-up
is also subject to perspiration streaking. While the wall
or set is being readied, Ferrigno lies with arms spread apart
in a refrigerated motor home to keep him from sweating.
Bixby says Ferrigno
often wears a humorous sticker on one arm: “CAUTION: BEING
GREEN MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH”.
It’s more than a joke.
Bixby had his eyebrows
severely singed and his front hair burned during filming
of the pilot episode where he rescues his girlfriend from a burning
laboratory. Ferrigno was blown backwards and slightly injured
in the same show after he pushed a car down a hill. The
car blew up on cue but the explosive charge used by the
filmmakers was so powerful it knocked the big bodybuilder
down and “gave him what looked like a bad sunburn,” according
to Bixby.
Injuries to Ferrigno
are serious, show producer Ken Johnson told me. “For Lou
to get scratched is a big concern to me,” Johnson said “It (a
scratch) is a point off in bodybuilding competition (which
Ferrigno still enters).”
Bixby said when he
was first approached about starring in The Incredible Hulk,
“my reaction was a laugh. It was 48 hours before I would even
read the script,” he said. “Then I thought, if this is done
seriously, this could be big.”
The immediate success
of the show stunned even those involved in its production.
The order commissioning the pilot episode came only three
weeks before scheduled air time—a very short noticde in
television time. “We anticipated an order of six shows,”
Bixby said, “They ordered 12. We had no staff and no scripts.”
Working seven days
a week, the cast and crew completed the first few shows
but each was taking longer to shoot than anticipated. “By the
fifth show we were live,” Johnson told the critics jokingly.
Johnson is the man
responsible for the tone of the show. He has kept Hulk at
a level well above “Spiderman” or “Wonder Woman” or “Batman”.
Johnson says he receives many letters from college graduates
praising the high quality fantasy of “The Incredible
Hulk”.
“We are trying to
tap into the primal thing that makes us all mad.” Johnson
said. When angered, Bixby’s character is transformed into
a green giant who goes on a vindictive rampage.
The transformation
of Bixby into the Hulk has contributed the phrase “Hulk
out” to the language, according to Bixby and Johnson. “There was
a divorce suit filed in California,” Bixby said, “that related
a woman’s complaint.” When the Hulk came on, said Bixby,
paraphrasing the complaint, “her husband put on a green
suit, put on this green stuff and jumped up and down on the bed
and said he was the Hulk. That was the grounds for divorce and
she got it on that basis. Truly,” Bixby concluded.
“The Hulk is the beast
within all of us,” Johnson said. “He allows people
to see acted out feelings they have themselves. It is important
to show (the anger) doesn’t always help.” Johnson continued.
David Banner (Bixby’s character) is left with cleaning up the
mess.
The Hulk became angered
at the telephone company in one show last year, and
took out his feelings on a phone booth. He demolished it.
That scene has been requested by a consumer group that wants to
use it to oppose increased phone rates.
To find topics over
which Banner could become angered, Johnson simply sat down and
“made a list of things that “Hulked me out.”
But “Hulking Out”
is a painful process for star Bixby. While filming the transformation,
Bixby must wear specially made contact lenses to simulate changes
in the pupils of his eyes. “They put a novacate in my eyes,” he
said, “and it lasts
about 20 minutes.” Bixby said he has trouble seeing after taking
out the white contacts and the pain lasts for hours.
Each show required
about 35 costumes for the huge Ferrigno. As David Banner
changes to the Hulk, his clothes are ripped apart by the Hulk‘s
emerging muscles. But viewers have noted that while the
shirt always tears away, the pants never seem to rip. “This is
an American show,” Bixby said,” “so the pants stay. Hey, if you
can believe in the Hulk, you can believe that the pants stay on.”
One thing that sets
apart the Incredible Hulk from other fantasy shows is the believability
of Banner’s pathos. In one show last year the Hulk lets
out a lonely cry of anguish when Banner’s girlfriend dies in his
arms. The scene is a standout and only the cynical could watch
it without emotion.
The new season premiere
tonight opens with David Banner getting married. The show has
not been available to critics for preview, but Johnson did comment
in Los Angeles that “(Banner’s) marriage will not be a lengthy
one.” Pathos. And viewers believe it because
the show’s high quality is meticulously maintained by Johnson.
No one is thinking
now of cancellation but Johnson did promise that if the show is
someday killed by the network, it will have a concluding episode
that resolves David banner’s dilemma. Until then, Banner will
search unsuccessfully for a cure to the overdose of gamma rays
that causes him to become the Hulk when angered.
|
