I had an opportunity to preview the DVD package last week for Talking Television with Dave White. What interested me most about the series, besides the “Reynolds’ return to TV” angle, was its pedigree. Tom Selleck (Magnum, P.I.) executive-produced B.L. Stryker, along with Chas. Floyd Johnson (The Rockford Files), while Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery novelist who created Spenser and Jesse Stone, wrote for the show. In fact, Parker and his wife, Joan, co-wrote one of the five first-season episodes: “Blues for Buder” (directed by Reynolds), in which Stryker finds himself becoming a father figure to an obnoxious young boy (played by a pre-Doogie Howser Neil Patrick Harris). It’s a relationship with dynamics not unlike the one forged by Spenser with young Paul Giacomin in the brilliant Early Autumn, one of the earliest entries in the Spenser novel series.You can find all of Robertson’s comments here. By the way, Parker wasn’t the only well-known crime novelist to pen a script for B.L. Stryker. So did Joe Gores, creator of the DKA series and author of the forthcoming Maltese Falcon prequel, Spade & Archer.
Watching the episode also made me think back to August 1998, when my wife and I interviewed Parker at his home near Boston. At one point in the conversation, Parker brought up his association with Reynolds: “Joan and I did a couple of movies with Burt, when he was doing B.L. Stryker. … Burt gets a bad rap, in my view. I’ve never had anything but pleasant experiences with him. He did the audio for [some of the Spenser books on tape] and he read them well.”
Monday, February 25, 2008
Never Use a Good Idea Just Once
Here’s something I didn’t remember--that detective novelist Robert B. Parker wrote one of the first five episodes of Burt Reynolds’ short-lived private-eye TV series, B.L. Stryker, back in the late 1980s. However, television historian Ed Robertson didn’t forget. He writes in his blog today about that episode, which is among those included in the DVD set B.L. Stryker: The Complete First Season, scheduled for release tomorrow.
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And, of course, there's always my wingnut theory that Spenser's persona was based, at least partially, on Burt Reynolds.
No, bear with me. At the time of his creation, Reynolds was the hottest movie star around, regularly bringing his blend of unapologetic masculinity and self-deprecating smart-ass wit to talk shows and movie screens everywhere. It would be hard to claim he wasn't on Parker's radar screen -- Reynolds was on EVERYONE's radar screen. Hell, one of Parker's first (and best) standalones was Wilderness, which definitely recalled Reynolds' first big hit, Deliverance. And then there's that mustache that Parker sported in all those early author photos. look familiar? The Stryker connection is just one more egg in the conspiracy theory basket.
I mean, come on. A big tough (and defiantly straight) ex-jock who looks like a thug, but is smarter than he lets on, can dress up nice and charm the ladies when he wants to? Doesn't that sound like Reynolds?
It certainly doesn't sound like Marlowe.
in fact, you ask me, Reynolds should have played Spenser right from the start, instead of that affable teddy bear they hired. And given the fact Spenser and Reynolds are more or less the same age (and also "ageless" in a way only literary creations and movie stars can be), I think he could still play Spenser and do a hell of a job with it.
One final thought -- both Parker and Reynolds are long run pros who first hit it big in the seventies, and have refused to fade away, or get drawn into stoking the star-making machinery in the ensuing years, instead concentrating on building a large and diverse body of work. Sure, there have been lapses, but they both rarely get the props they deserve.
It's become the "in" thing among the wet-behind-the-ears pipsqueaks and bandwagon riders to dismiss both, but I wouldn't count either of them out.
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