The Duke Story: Building the Legend (1 of 2)

screen test Tom Wopat John Schneider take one I don't like this not a smidgen what we're doing is looking around so I heard about these auditions for Dukes my agent said well you know you're not you're we thought you're gonna be able to go in but you're not going to be able to go in because they're looking for people from Georgia who are between 24 and 30 years old and I'm that time I'm from New York and I was 18 years old so I said well let's lie let's act I came to New York in 1977 from Wisconsin I got an agent at the at the end of the year I was here actually a short time and was fairly lucky and did some work off-broadway and and I was always auditioning you know as things came along and in October of 78 I I went in for an audition of Dukes of Hazzard I walked in to CBS there were 30 people sitting around I stood up and I delivered my lines and it was complete silence after I finished my scene okay that's it I lost the thing they don't like they don't get me they don't like me I don't have blonde hair I'm not like that curvaceous Dolly Parton I am out of here and that all of a sudden this one man stands up who I later realized was mad and realized found out that he was the president of the network and he started clapping gladly then I got the word that I was going to come out to California and screen-test and supposed to come in on a Thursday screen test on Friday and then I'd know late Friday afternoon and be back at home on Saturday but it took five and a half weeks was five and a half weeks of going to the network and rehearsing with guy Waldron his great great guy to creator of Dukes trying to get the right grouping together and what an amazing experience and I went in to read for Dukes and actually read for John's part originally for Bo but they asked me I got a call later in the afternoon after I'd done the reading on Wednesday saying and you you want to fly to to LA and read for this and you know I'm the kid I didn't know any better I'm sure why not and so I flew out there on Wednesday night we I met with John Thursday and we worked on the stuff a little bit and we did the screen test on Friday we got the part I wanted to get the feel of this southern southern guy so I borrowed the pickup truck I went out and I got it six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and I had a great old worn-out Budman t-shirt told him I was from Snellville which I had gotten wrong it's Snell Hill I don't even know that but neither of the day and I told him I was 24 from Snellville Georgia and wondered what they were looking for and read the thing that okay but there there was apparently something they saw in that kind of strange redneck guy that didn't even leave his beer in the truck that they were very interested in and come to find out many years later it it was told to me that when when film and lker saw that he said that's that's the guy I got the part I got the crazy part I got the Daisy Duke part they called me so if that is it they want you and they sent me to Georgia immediately ain't that purty I hang in there like that we had wonderful directors and it was interesting most of our directors were the old-timers the guys who had worked all the funny shows and worked all the heavy action shows and they loved coming in and doing a Dukes because it was kind of like going back for them in the early days when they when they were doing the high action stuff they were getting to do in miniature what they were had made a career doing we were allowed to to take chances to to do new things on television to shoot the stunts and the action as if it were a feature film we had two camera crews going at all time we then realized that we were going to have to have a production system like they'd never had before and so we had we were the first television show they have a full-time second unit that is to say they were doing stunts five days a week the first thing that happened was God smiled on us and gave us Paul Baxley who was one of the great stunt gaffers and the baxley family had been in the stunt business for a very long time when we wrote this out Warner Brothers was wise enough to see and ask the network so we're gonna have to have more budget here because we've got a lot of stunts we put major stunts three major stunts in one hour that never been done our production crew had their own way of doing things by and large it was it was confrontational but not not in a vicious way it was just that was that was the dynamic of how he did things as they wanted to do things a certain way and the actors would try and and get as much reality or as much integrity into the show as we could and so that was kind of how it worked I never saw among our actors one quarrel in seven years if they had differences they settled them among themselves you had differences with the studio fight with the director fight with that writers of course those are the people you fight with our actors respected each other so much we never once saw that well when you put all that together I don't mean all the sweetness and light I mean it was a brutal schedule with difficult shooting but at the end of the day everybody's smiling having a drink having a cigar and rewrapping we go the next day and that's the kind of attitude you have to have for that show to work and that's what we had if we hadn't had that our heroes behind the scene we wouldn't have had dukes of hazzard more than two years you couldn't have survived it they not only survived they thrived on it they made us better dawn's early light what so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming if I could say that I had defining moments of when we were a smash it was when we started getting fan mail about about the second or third week and that all of the fan mail was saying the exact opposite of what the critics had said I knew that something really special was about to happen and it was great but can I say oh I knew that it was going to be a hit and it was going to last forever and we're gonna be friends for life no I was 18 what did I know when's lunch we weren't that far into it and we were trying to get something for Daisy to wear and Kathy box said I'm going to fix these shorts the way I want to and so she cut out the pair of shorts and she made those first daisy dukes and somebody said Kathy said cut the things off and she's gonna I said okay I was standing on the set and Kathy walked by and I was talking with somebody else she comes by she's got these shorts on she's got the high heels on she's wearing pantyhose and she looked like a million bucks and she walked by and I looked at her and I said Shirley we've got a hit I guess and I remember his reaction was I think we do and that's all the farther we'd gone and that but those moments told us and the male told us that yes we were hitting them our scripts were saying exactly what the people wanted to hear yeah that should hold him I'm sorry we had to do this Daisy so two episodes and I'm I'm having a great time I'm filming everything's great I'm getting along with the Cavs I meet Tom Wopat who is a doll and I'm really an incredible artist singing every day playing guitar every day Jon's playing everybody's everybody's having a ball we're just having so much fun and then all of a sudden in troops 20 different blonde haired girls and the word was why in the heck did this girl get cast she is not going to be a popular she is not Farrah Fawcett she is not sure lad she is not Dolly Parton she is not a blonde she's not get rid of her I had asked I Walter and I said how did all that happen camp the network like me and you like me but there now they're making me have like one line in the show and what happened they said well you know they don't believe in you the way I do I think there were second thoughts at the network all the time for the first year there were seven second thoughts about the show about what are we doing and then all of a sudden Cathy and Tom and John are appearing on every publication and and the letters are coming in and nothing will shut up a network executive like audience response that are in love with your character and so I didn't hear anything after that don't you to run away play it much DG soon we met that valise oh the year we left well that was kind of precipitated by a bunch of different events we felt we were not getting treated nicely and also we thought it was a time artistically where we could make some demands and as a result we ended up handing the show to a couple of other guys for 16 shows I knew that when they left we were going to be in trouble we're going to have a big say Dukes was not a show in which you could lose any one of Bo Luke or Daisy you just can't do that you'll be cutting the heart out of the show and when you repair it you better repair it with something good and my feeling was when we won and nobody asks what do you think other that when you're going to replace these guys don't replace them with look-alikes go some other way get two more guys get two other cousins whatever you can but if you're going to try to imitate them you can't imitate these two guys they're in the public's heart and mind by this time if you're a Dukes fan that's it that's the family who do you replace members of your family with and so that was I felt what's not going to work in the episode where we came back we had one scene with all four of us and then boom they were gone it was sweet well take care of that I'll take any sense yeah we're gonna be well are they hunger geez ageneral ewwww it's kind of like changing of the guard in Buckingham Palace there you go alright take care of yourself staff trouble thanks you hold down the fort all right keep between the ditches alright wait a minute Vance the doors open kind of crackly no yeah go be straight all righty okay mouths gravy chase you up Bart will you stop by and say hey alright you got it what appear the two guys who came in they tried very hard and they really but that was a no-win for them it just wasn't going to happen I kind of felt for the other guys just in the sense that they made him watch they made him watch episodes of us to try and capture our camaraderie and that kind of thing it's just like yeah yeah II what a way to go about things and so I was very happy when the boys came back when the boys came back the ratings were up in a week I mean it was just that simple and in the final result in the final analysis it should have been handled differently we were young we got some advice that wasn't exactly accurate and it probably should never have come to that point

Channel: Dukesof Hazzard

Views: 191,484

Rating: 4.8860102 out of 5

Keywords: The Dukes of Hazzard, Gy Waldron, John Schneider, Tom Wopat, Catherine Bach, Special Features, Bonus Material, Clip, Show, The General Lee, Interview, Documentary, Behind The Scenes, Bo Duke, Luke Duke, Daisy Duke, Story, Footage

Id: RAlBq4Wa42M

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2013