NBC's Knight Rider takes to the smallscreen tonight.
Val Kilmer - © Scott Alan / Photorazzi
KITT, the talking car at the center of the 1980s action show returns in updated Ford model in a two-hour movie (Sunday, 9 ET/PT) that could act as a back door pilot for a new Knight Rider series.
Justin and KITT
For producer David Bartis, creating a new KITT posed a challenge: Keeping ahead of computer-driven, GPS-directed auto technology.
KITT will now be played by a Ford Mustang taking the place of the 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. The movie features a muscular, limited-edition Shelby GT500KR as part of a marketing and production partnership with Ford. NBC has been one of the most aggressive networks in placing sponsors' products in its shows.
The new crime-fighting KITT still has an artificial intelligence, and originally the voice of the car was to be Will Arnett until a conflict of auto corporate interest arose. KITT is now voiced by Val Kilmer.
Bartis explained how the movie tries to retain the lighter, action-drama tone of the original.
He acknowledges that some fans of the original may object to changes, and spoke to Monsters and Critics along with star Justin Bruening about KITT and Knight Rider.
What was it like working with the new KITT?
David Bartis: Justin, you want to go first on that?
Justin Bruening: Working with the new KITT - that was an amazing experience. Actually, it’s the Shelby Cobra 500GTKR. It’s an absolutely amazing piece of machinery, and all our little bells and whistles that we added to it also heighten the experience.
But it’s great - absolutely a joy. But he gets a little standoffish and stuff and doesn’t talk all the time. But other than that…
David Bartis: One of the things that we were able to do on the show is create something which we called the Pod car and it allowed us to put Justin and Deanna in an actual car, and run the stunts, live action - and record their performances rather than putting them in a car on a green screen on a stage and hope that it looked really good when we matted the backgrounds together.
A lot of the performances you see from Justin and Deanna are actually them in the car on the road, with a stunt driver who is sitting in a cage that’s bolted to the top of the car.
So it’s the real car going the real speed, doing the stunts while they’re doing their performances. And I think you guys will see when you see the final product, it’s an incredible - you feel the moment that they’re feeling because they’re really in it.
It’s not them faking it on a stage. It’s really happening, so that was really - for me as a producer, it brought a level of reality to the performances and the action that was pretty special.
Justin, in real life what kind of driver are you?
Justin Bruening: What kind of driver am I? I’m a very good driver. I got all my points, everything. I’m good. Not to that degree that, you know, he does - KITT does, but definitely I can hold my own.
Mr. Bartis, what made you decide that this was the right time to revive Knight Rider? Did the success of Transformers have anything to do with this?
David Bartis: Transformers definitely played a role in it. It sort of heightened everybody’s awareness for the potential of the show. But to be honest, you know, it wasn’t my idea to bring it back.
Ben Silverman at NBC was the first person to say hey, this is a series that we own that was a classic, iconic series from the 80s. And Ben had a lot of passion for the show. I was lucky enough be on a deal at Universal. They own the show where they’re partners with NBC.
So I got lucky in some ways being in the right place at the right time. But I was also working on another project with Dave Andron, who wrote the sequel and we were sitting in my offices when the folks at Universal and NBC called and said is this something you guys would be interested in?
We jumped on it. For both of us it was something we remembered from the first time it was on TV. So we definitely had a lot of passion for it from our own sort of experience with it on air the first time around.
And then the chance to reinvent it and bring it to a new audience was definitely something that was exciting to us.
Were there discussions about what the tone of this should be like?
David Bartis: We had a lot of conversations about the tone. There was a lot of debate and a lot of discussion. For me personally, I grew up watching a lot of 8:00 lighter, fun action-y shows.
The shows from my sort of childhood are things like Dukes of Hazzard and Rockford Files, and Knight Rider, and Baretta - and shows where there’s sort of this model of the cool guy in a cool car.
They were fun. And you love the fight scenes and the action. The stories and the characters were great. And that was something we felt like hadn’t really been on TV for a long time.
We didn’t want to go dark with this. We wanted to back to sort of the roots of what everybody loved about those kind of classic lighter one-hours.
Justin, what was your interest in this role and explain the process of getting it?
Justin Bruening: Well I went - the process anyway was, I went through it just like everyone else, you know, went to the initial audition and had a few follow-up ones, did the studio test - all of that.
They were gracious enough to hire me. But my interest in this role was when I first got the appointment sheet for the initial audition, I called my agent right away and I said I want to do it.
This is something from my childhood and I was a huge fan. Knight Rider was an iconic figure in my childhood. I’d run around my house in a leather jacket and fight indiscriminate crime in my house.
It’s something that really - I never saw it when it initially aired because I believe it started airing in 1983, so I was about 4. But I watched it when it was syndicated and, you know, I didn’t know the difference.
So that was something that really was a huge part of my childhood. And, everything that David said right before that - it’s the cool guy, a cool car, As a little boy, that’s the best show on television.
Just to be able to take over that role was such an amazing honor.
What is David Hasselhoff’s involvement would be. Was it your plan from the beginning to bring his character back in to cameo?
David Bartis: Well just to go back to your original question to Justin about the process, the amazing thing to me was that we saw Justin the first day of casting. And you never know when you see somebody like the first day and you think they’re great.
You think oh, it’s just because it’s the first time I’m hearing somebody read the words. And, it’s just exciting to be starting the whole casting process.
He set a bar and just - it stayed there and nobody ever came up to it. So it was a pretty amazing experience for us.
In regards to the David Hasselhoff question yes - I mean, we always knew that David had to have a role in this project. We’ve spent a lot of time with him, you know, both before production and in production.
The thing that surprised me the first time I met him was that Knight Rider is something that’s really important to him, and he’s very passionate about, more so than I think almost anything else that he’s ever done -- even Baywatch, which he owned and he was on the air with for 11 years.
It’s still Knight Rider that he really seems to have the stronger connection with. And he had this inherent sort of understanding of what made it work and what the fans responded to.
That was a tremendous asset to be able to tap into and get a sense from him of what elements we would carry over to the new version that he was passionate about and that he felt made the show work for the audience.
He definitely had a role in helping us sort of conceive of what this would be as well as obviously being in it. And I think everybody will be excited to see the way we’ve worked him into the show as Michael Knight.
What was behind the decision to go with the Ford Mustang instead of sticking with the Trans Am?
It’s not really a model they make anymore. And, you know, we had a lot of discussions and debates about how much to reinvent the show and how much to keep the same. And, you know, it was a real balancing act for us.
We knew that we wanted to bring the car to a new audience and reinvent it enough. And that meant going out with a new model. We also knew it had to be American. It had to be two door. It had to have some muscle to it. It had to be exciting to watch.
When you line up sort of all the options available that fulfill those requirements, you know, for me personally it became sort of an obvious choice. And when we started digging into all the different models and lines available, and Ford showed us this new Shelby which isn’t even on the market yet, you know, it kind of blew us away.
We were like that car is just pretty cool. Obviously, for the original fans there’s a lot of loyalty and strong feelings about the car. And we understand that, and we felt the same way. But we also knew that we had to bring the show to a new audience and reinvent it. We made the choice that we thought was the best choice out there. And we’re pretty excited about the car. We’re happy with the way it turned out.
What about the theme music? How have you changed that?
David Bartis: Again, it’s a balancing act. We want to give people some elements that they’re going to be familiar with, but then bring something new to it. So that’s really what we did. You’re going to recognize the theme.
But it’s completely re-recorded, re-instrumentalized and to me it’s pretty exciting. But, what you love about it is there still. Hopefully that’ll go for the whole show.
Justin - did they let you actually drive the real car around?
Justin Bruening: Yeah. I never got to really open it up or anything, obviously. Insurance would have loved that. But they’re - just from Point A to Point B - just little things. But, you know, just turning it on you can hear how much power that thing has.
David Bartis: We didn’t let him do the stunts, but he got to drive it.
If this was not a back door pilot, do you think it would have been made simply as a TV movie?
David Bartis: Obviously that’s a better question for somebody like Ben Silverman. But I think the intent was here’s a way to do a pilot and, you know, cover all the costs because you know you’re going to have distribution for it.
The way we did this - this is not a cheap show. The stunts are huge. The chases and the action are really big. So, you know, I’ve made a lot of pilots and I’ve never had the kind of resources to make a show the way we’ve made this show.
I don’t think that would have been possible unless we were doing it as a movie and we knew it had an air date.
For us it was sort of a win/win. Yes, we’ve got a template for a series now and we got the resources to make the kind of show we wanted to make. And it’s a pretty big show.
Does the movie - we haven’t seen it yet -does it end with any sort of a cliffhanger or anything leading into what would be a series? Or is it close ended?
David Bartis: It’s - again, it’s kind of both. It’s positioned so that we’ve got all the players in place to go to series, but we don’t wrap everything up.
Justin, most of us growing up had either a first car we loved or a car sometime in our life that we really loved. Did you have a car like that?
Justin Bruening: My uncle had a 1977 Chevy Camaro that I absolutely loved. That was the first muscle car I had ever, you know, been around - I mean, minus watching it on TV. It was like, you know, the A-Team and stuff like that - and Knight Rider. But that would be it.
Do you kind of have to get into a weird mindset with a talking car, or is it just, you know, just another, you know, “actor?”
Justin Bruening: Initially it was - it’s a little odd. I’ve never had to do the - kind of the green screen or have to portray a - you kind of hear the - I guess what I would do is I would memorize the lines.
And obviously we had someone once in awhile reading the lines for us and stuff like that. But the moments that we didn’t, you just kind of, you just kind of have to - I don’t know, you have to learn to deal with it. But it’s a little weird at first.
But in the end I mean, it’s - you get used to it and you kind of just imagine that it’s KITT’s voice. And, you know, it’s not that hard because I did it when I was a kid. So it took about a day to get used to it. So it was very easy.
Justin, with your daytime background, I wanted to ask you about the relationship part of the story between Mike and Sarah. Can you talk about the romance there?
Justin Bruening: Yeah. Sarah is Mike’s potential love interest. She was obviously - she was someone in his life a while ago. They grew up together and that friendship blossomed into a romance, but ended sort of poorly.
But, the movie picks up at that specific point so you get when she comes back into his life, so that’s where you get all the nice drama and conflicts and all of that fun stuff that they love on daytime.
Our readers are dying to know about the technology makeover that KITT has on going from a Pontiac Trans Am with smoke bombs to this souped up Shelby GT. They want to know what surprises you have in store for us as far as the capability?
David Bartis: Well there’s obviously going to be a lot of new tricks that the car can do and I’m not going to give them all away. But we - the - it’s funny. One of the most frequent questions we all get asked is does the car have turbo boost?
Justin Bruening: Yeah, right.
David Bartis: So we know how passionate people are about what the car can do and we’ve gone into it really aware that it’s something important to the audience. So we’ve spent a lot of time building in some pretty cool tricks.
I think everybody knows already that the car has the ability to morph. It can shape shift a little bit in ways that enhances its, you know, its handling and its abilities on the road.
It also has some sort of weapon defense systems that are based on nanotechnology that I think are going to be pretty amazing when people see the way we’ve built the effects there.
It’s got a pretty deep arsenal of abilities and tricks there. And the exciting thing for us, if we’re lucky enough to go to series, is that we have this long list of things that we want to roll out and show people in each episode so people will be tuning in to see what’s the new thing that we’re going to reveal. What’s the new trick the car can do.
But I think people are going to be pretty satisfied in the pilot or the two-hour. They’ll see the car has the ability to change colors, shift shapes, defend itself against bullets - things like that, repair itself.
There’s some pretty cool effects that are as good as any effects you’re going to see in a $100 million plus movie.
When you were first developing the script - did you approach all the different car manufacturers or did you really just focus on Ford? Or did you present this to a wide group of auto manufacturers saying we have this show, we’re looking for this type of car, an updated version of KITT - what you have as far as the concept car?
David Bartis: There was a whole team of people from NBC and Universal who were involved in this process. And it was opened up because obviously NBC has relationships with lots of advertisers, among them all the car companies.
We did open it up pretty wide and get into it, and go down that path with a couple of different companies.
Ford lucked out. They have been an incredible partner because not only did they have the car that we fell in love with, they’ve also been involved in the marketing of the show. And, they’re very organically integrated into the whole production process.
What was your favorite episode of the original series, or did you have one?
Justin Bruening: My favorite episode? I always like the origin stories, so actually the very first one was my favorite.
Is there anything at all that you tried to avoid so as not to make people think of the old show too much?
David Bartis: Not really. I mean, the old show had a lot of good things going for it. And just like Justin, we went back and watched all the episodes and absorbed it.
Was there any attempt to make this a green car? Is the new KITT a hybrid?
David Bartis: The new KITT is incredibly efficient and yes, it is a hybrid in some new ways. So you’ll see it incorporate solar energy and technology that obviously we could create because it’s a TV show.
Justin, what did you talk to David Hasselhoff about? What did you ask him?
Justin Bruening: When we first filmed together - it was actually the first day of filming, so I had a lot of questions. I mean, I was pretty nervous about continuing this franchise. It’s pretty big shoes to fill.
I asked him a lot about - obviously I asked him a lot about what kind of fun he had on the original show and things like that - some of the outtakes and stuff.
If the series is picked up will you have William Daniels do some sort of an audio appearance?
David Bartis: Yeah. We’ve actually talked about that. I mean, we love Bill Daniels’ voice. And again, it’s like seeing Hasselhoff in the show. It’d be really fun to find a way to put him in there somehow.
Were most of the effects done with the car practical or did you guys do a lot of special effects work in post?
David Bartis: We did both. I mean, we did a tremendous amount of practical stunts, partly for the reason I was mentioning earlier. We found a way to control a full size car on location and put the actors in it.
Incidentally, we also built a remote control version of the car which the actors also performed in. But, when things like the morphing and the nanotechnology, and the car’s ability to shield itself and all that kind of stuff - there is probably 400 plus, you know, frames of effects which is right up there again with any kind of studio big budget movie.
It’s a good balance. You get the energy and excitement of like feeling the reality of the stunts. But the coolness and technology of some of the new, higher end special effects that we can do.
Do you remember your first car?
Justin Bruening: Oh yeah. It was a really badly beat up Buick Riviera, a '76.
David Bartis: Classy.
Justin Bruening: Yeah. If you pulled the top, it would have come off. It was so rusted and I’m going say a piece of crap. .
If this does get picked up as a series, would it be more episodic or would there be this deep, underlying mythology that you learn more and more about what the Knight Foundation or the background of all these folks as the series goes on?
David Bartis: Our plan is to have a balance. We will probably be a little more close ended than something like Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I’ve been watching. I think they’re doing a great job.
But to me that’s more serialized than what we’re going for, we will have, missions of the week that Mike is involved with and the whole team that we’ve put together.
Was there any particular scene that kind of created a challenge for you that you had to overcome? And also, was there a particular scene that came off differently than you expected, but it turned out even better?
David Bartis: Justin, you got to answer this one.
Justin Bruening: Oh yeah. Which one should I answer?
David Bartis: I think they may be the same scene, right?
Justin Bruening: Well there’s - yeah, there’s the one - well the one that I know turned out differently - there was a scene that we did in the audition process. I did it about four billion times because I helped to read with the - test the girls.
And every time we did it in the audition process it was a comedic scene, and it was very funny. And when we got to filming, it took a serious tone and actually turned out surprisingly, it felt right with that serious tone - which was very interesting.
David Bartis: I - Justin, I was actually referring to your knee.
Justin Bruening: Oh that scene? Yeah.
David Bartis: Yeah, that one.
Justin Bruening: Oh, I blocked that out. Oh that, yes. There was another challenging scene that turned out surprisingly weird. In the middle of a fight scene, I dislocated my knee. So that was a shock - for me anyway.
We took a three-week break and they were gracious enough to give me three weeks to heal. And I came back and finished a couple of the - that scene and another couple fight scenes.
But anything, a lot that was left too was inside the car. So, that’s easy to disguise.
David, was there any particular part of the filming that you had difficulty with or went exceedingly well?
David Bartis: Well, the car stuff exceeded all our expectations. It was something that not a lot of people have tried yet in film or television. So we were really excited to - about how the chase scenes and the car stunts came out.
I loved the scene that Justin is talking about with - he and Deanna, who plays the Sarah character - it was just great to see something evolve from something almost pure comedy to pure emotion, and a real character moment for both of them.
The tough thing I brought up was Justin blowing his knee out was tough because we did have to hold production for a few weeks and then come back into it - and work around his injury, which fortunately he’s been getting over really quickly.
But this was a big production. It’s going to be over 80 minutes screen time and we shot in 27 days, tons of stunts, tons of, location work. And a lot of very technical effect work. This was a big challenge overall.
If the original Michael Knight is back, is KITT - is the original KITT dead? Do we deal at all with his feelings about whatever happened to the original KITT? And would that play into this as to what could conceivably happen to this KITT?
David Bartis: We do reference the original KITT and you actually see glimpses here and there of the original KITT if you look really carefully.
The thought we had was that some of the technology from the original KITT is in the new KITT. But that would be a great series opportunity to explore that.
We just didn’t have time to get into it. But in our minds, we believe that the original KITT’s sort of motherboard is somewhere buried in the new KITT, and enhanced.
Is this KITT is sort of a quasi-reincarnation of the previous KITT?
David Bartis: Yeah, that could be a way of thinking about it.
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