"QUANTUM LEAP" THANK-YOU SCREENING, 2/25/91, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS: Transcribed by Kathy Dunn Corrections and additions by Sally Smith # audience laughs % audience applauds Intro to episode screening -- Don Bellisario (sitting on the edge of the stage because the mike isn't long enough to let him stand): I'm not sitting here to be cruel, it's just that I can't get the microphone up any higher. Or I could do it all like this (bent over). Well, hi; welcome! I want to thank you because of all of you, all of our fans, you're the ones who got "Quantum Leap" moved from the death slot Friday night at eight back to where it belongs, Wednesday at 10. (MUCH CHEERING!!) I think you've all seen some of the promos on NBC, showing Warren Littlefield in disguise. President Little; I thought that was cute. I thought that was nice of Warren to go along with it; he didn't have to do it. Q: Who are you? # DB: (smiles) Oh, I'm sorry, yeah -- I'm Don Bellisario. We're going to talk to you after this for a little bit, so I'll keep this real brief right now. We're gonna show you the first show that'll be on March 6, "8 1/2 Months". This is written by Deborah Pratt, who is appropriate to write a show called "8 1/2 Months"; she's now a month and a half to two months along. (MUCH MORE CHEERING!!!) She's due the same time the new season is. "8 1/2 Months" is a great show. What you're gonna see is a print which is not a finished print. Here and there, there'll be some color adjustments and things that are off a little bit, and the soundtrack might be off. It's a very watchable show, and a watchable print, but it's not technically correct, but you have to bear with us. Usually we don't get a show ready to go until the day before it airs, and sometimes it goes out "wet", what we call wet, right out of the soup and we make it to the air. We were kinda delaying its starting because Scott wanted to see the opening of this; he had not seen it yet. I don't know; is Scott here yet, or is he still working? (In the balcony, the "Quantum Quarterly" staff yells "He's being interviewed!") DB: People are pointing up there; I don't see him... QQ Staff: (louder) HE'S IN THE LOBBY BEING INTERVIEWED! DB: He's in the lobby being INTERVIEWED? No, no, no; we're not gonna hold the show up for an interview, we're gonna hold the show up for work. I thought he was _working_!...Okay, somebody's gonna check, and as soon as we get him in here we'll start this, and then afterwards Scott and Dean and Deborah and myself will be up here to answer your questions, and hopefully, we'll be able to do it standing up here someplace. Enjoy! After the screening -- DB: Hope you enjoyed that. (MONDO CHEERING!!!!) Okay, let me start with introducing the co-exec producer who wrote it, Deborah Pratt. % Deborah Pratt: (climbs up on stage) I won't be able to do that in a little while. # DB: ...and then let's bring up the man who was never there in reality, Dean Stockwell %....and finally the man--or was it a woman--Scott Bakula (he bounces up onto the stage)...I don't know if that leap meant he's the youngest of everybody up here or not. Come over and sit down here, guys. DP: Hello, you Leapers! # DB: Leapers! Q: (Garbled intro)...When they're in the waiting room and they come back, do they know what they've been through? What is the premise? DB: We're addressing the premise here. Do they know who they've been? Q: Yes. When Sam comes in, he doesn't know who he is. When they come back, do they know what they've been through? DB: No, they don't know what they've been through. They think that they have been captured by aliens. # This is the source of all the stories you've heard about encounters of the... DP: First kind. DB: First kind. Tell us who you're addressing your questions to. Q: (to Dean) What are you looking at when you're talking to Sam? Are you looking at Sam, or do you see the person he leaps into? Dean Stockwell: No, I see the person he leaps into...but I know it's him. Q: (to Dean) Who designed your clothes, Al? % DS: His name is Jean-Pierre Dorleac, is our costume designer, and he does a great job. % DB: Is Jean-Pierre here? No. He's not here tonight. Q: This is for Scott. Will there be further episodes where he'll be showing off his vocal talents? % Scott Bakula: No, they're not letting me sing any more. (Audience says, "Awww....) DP: That's not true, I wanna bring him back as a Supreme. # % SB: Actually, there's a big show coming up called "Glitter Rock," where I leap into, I'm the lead singer in a very much KISS-like band in the 70's, and there are a couple of original songs in that. And there's also a show called "Piano Man" where I actually was able to write a song for the show and do that, too. % Q: Mr. Bakula, were you really eating Jello with onions? SB: I was eating Jello with....what's it called?....Jicama, thank you! Ten points for the jicama, yeah! # It's a hiccup, but it's like a... DS: Gag me with a spoon. Q: Will any of the first season shows be rebroadcast? DB: Well, hopefully because we're moving back to Wednesday night, we'll get renewed # for another season. And then following that, I'm sure you'll see the show in syndication, and you'll get to see all those episodes. You may see it in syndication, anyway. SB: Or, if you talk to somebody here. I know several people in this room that have ALL the episodes on tape, # so you might be able to, like, work a little exchange thing or something. Q: Scott, up to about five or six episodes into the second season, at the beginning of the show you did a segue from the previous episode to the current one. Why did that disappear, and will it come back? DB: As a show goes along, you try to streamline it and to improve it, and initially we were trying to set up all the premises so that everyone would understand what they were. We did what we call a "saga cell"; we still do that to some extent, but it was much more extensive in the beginning, where you came in and we explained the whole concept. And now we've abbreviated that and just decided that the show would work a little better if we just came into the top of the episode and we didn't have to show what happened the week before. Instead we compressed the time and we did it a little quicker. It was really a matter of saving some time up front. Q: One of the magazines said Al was going to meet God... DS: What? SB: (snidely) So he walks up to a mirror... # DS: (nods) You look familiar! DB: Which publication said that? Was it Christina, Kitty, [editors of "Quantum Quarterly" and "The Imaging Chamber"]? Which one of you did that? AUDIENCE MEMBERS, especially QQ and TIC staff: It was TV Guide! DB: (laughing) TV Guide?! Well, shoot, you don't believe anything they say in TV Guide! SB: It's gotta be true. Q: (indistinct, but gives Dean a cigar) DS: Thank you very much. It's an exploding one. # DB: If this one explodes... Q: (a compliment to all of them) % SB: You people are absolutely fantastic. Thank YOU! DB, DP, DS: agree and say thank you. Q: How did you go about the process of choosing Scott and Dean for their roles, and also for Scott and Dean, how do you feel about how your roles have progressed through the years? DB: The process of choosing was casting, and when Scott came in, and (to Scott) I think you only had sides that first day, didn't you? You didn't have a whole script, he came in and read the sides. (Realizing he's lost the audience) I'm sorry. Sides are just scenes; you don't give a whole script out, you just give out one or two scenes, and you have actors come in and read one or two scenes, so they really don't know the whole story of what's going on. It's kinda like a secret project in the works, y'know. # And Scott came in and read with a number of other fine actors over a period of about a week or so that I was looking at, and the minute Scott read for that scene I knew he was the guy that should be playing Sam. I waited at least until he walked out of the room before I said that. # And Dean....when I heard that Dean might be interested in doing it, y'know, I was just ready to kiss his cigar! But they can tell you their second process. DS: Well, I liked the role and concept and I liked working with Scott right away in the pilot. And what's happened since then is it's continued enjoyment of the role for me. It's getting more and more comfortable, like a really comfortable old friend, this Al. SB: He's the greatest. % These things are kinda a whole evolving thing. Don has an idea, and then you put a body into that idea, and then the body has some ideas, and if you're in a good situation--which you're not always--but if you're in a good situation, you combine, and both of you kind of learn from each other and grow. And together with Don, Deborah, and all of our other writers, and I see Chris Ruppenthal and Paul Brown back there % and I don't know who else is here tonight... DB: Tommy should be back there. SB: Is Tommy back there? DB: Tommy Thompson. SB: Jeff Gourson, in post-production... then everybody kinda just jumps in and adds. Is Beverly here? DB: Beverly Bridges, the newest writer to join our staff. SB: And...oh, she's not a writer, she has a question! # DB: Before we go on, I want to give you one example of how you grow. Deborah can tell you when she wrote this script, Scott took a very risky chance in what he decided to perform in this film that you just saw. Because if you notice, I'm not just talking about being a woman, he chose to really identify with the 16-year-old girl, and to get very emotionally involved. That's probably not a choice that initially I ever had in mind, we'll have to ask Deborah if she had that in mind for him to do it that strongly. (she shakes her head "no") That was a choice that Scott made. I think it was an excellent choice, and the character expands because of that, and I think that another episode that we do we'll keep in mind the choice that Scott made. So you see it really is a collaborative effort of making the show go. Q: (indistinct) It seems like I still see KIM when I'm watching Al on the screen. Did that movie have any bearing on your choice of him as a character, and whether Al is still playing KIM? # DB: You can ask him about that; I actually was choosing Errol Flynn. # DS: You know, that's interesting. I never thought of that before, but now that you mention it, there are elements of that character in Kim, he was a little bit lascivious, he was a very young letch, he smoked a cigar (laughs). I guess maybe there's a little bit of Kim in there. That's interesting. Q: Favorite episodes for everyone? DP: That's a hard question, in the sense that each one means something. I mean, I would have to say that this one became my favorite one until I wrote the one that we're shooting now, which is now my favorite one. I mean, whatever one that I write I fall in love with because it's part of me, and I put part of myself and my background and my family and all those things that I was raised to be in it. And I don't think you can separate that. And today... Hmm. I loved "The Color of Truth", % and I really liked this one, maybe because I'm pregnant. DB: It's a little like asking which of your children is your favorite child, it really is. You love different children for different reasons; they're all different, and I know about that--this is gonna be number seven (laughs). She's trying to make me a rock star. But each child is different, and each show is different, so you really don't have a favorite. I know I don't have a favorite; I can name you a lot of shows that I liked for various reasons. Right now, I thought this tonight, this is my favorite as I was watching it, but another night it would be something else. Scott? SB: Well, I have basically more of the same. There are elements of every show that become very special to me. But I'll be specific and name about four or five, maybe -- this year. I loved "The Leap Home", % I loved playing opposite the devil in the Halloween show %, I loved this episode, I loved "La Mancha", % "Jimmy", "Seymour", it just goes on and on... "Volare" # And what a great thing to be able to say that, that there are just so many special episodes. It's a real credit to the writers on the show, I think. DS: I gotta second that. I don't have a favorite either, except the pilot, because that was the first... SB: The "MIA" show was a great show, too. % Q: Just to elaborate, which was the most challenging for you? This one looked VERY challenging. SB: For me? (sighs) That also takes on a whole...there are all different element to that question. Some shows are challenging because physically they're very difficult, some are emotionally very difficult. This was kind of a combination show. Physically, I mean, I was in transition for like sixteen hours. # That little last scene from me coming in the doorway at the hospital at the end, I mean we started at 8 in the morning and wrapped at, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night. That's a long day to -- uh, push. So that was a tough one. So it's hard....the show is wonderfully difficult, in many different ways, and challenging. Q: I have a gift I'd like to give Mr. Bakula. Is that possible? SB: Sure. It's a box? Now wait a minute.... # DB: Will you accept it WAY over there, please? # DS: Can we have a bucket of water? Q: (Hyperventilation vs. breathing in tonight's episode?) DP: This was in 1955, so they did not know it. So all they saw was somebody hyperventilating, and in the research I did it was prior to Lamaze. Q: Any plans to leap Sam into animals? SB: The rock and roll guy was as close to an animal as... # I looked a little bit like Ron Perlman. In clown whiteface. DB: We have thought about leaping Scott into an animal. He'd have to be naked, of course, # % and Standards and Practices wouldn't like that, so we'll have to deal with that. SB: I could be a poodle with a little suit on! (Scott comments--politely--about sound feedback) Q: This might be a little convoluted, but as Leapers we're used to that. Tonight, in this episode, you go into this physical aura thing we've never heard before. And I'm a little confused as to this. "Aura" sounds optical, but yet people can feel a pregnant body there.... (Scott smirks at Don as if to say, "OK, you explain it!" #) DB: In the very beginning--this _all_ makes sense. I'll tell you how it all works. When I pitched this idea to Brandon Tartikoff and he told me to explain it to him in 20 seconds so his mother could understand it, # (grins) I decided not to get into the physical aura aspect of it. Q: (indistinct) DB: I haven't answered it yet, but that's OK. Q: In first season, when Scott first did a woman, I thought this is a really great idea, a guy actually having to be in a woman's body and deal with it, and then having to be in a blind man's body, and so forth. And you went a little bit different than what I thought, but that's OK, because you're the executive producer. # But what I was wondering was wouldn't it be more challenging to Sam as a person if he instead of just having the difficulty of being perceived as a woman, which women know the problems, but actually having to deal with the physical limitations of being a woman. And it's nice that he has to deal with other people's professions.... DB: The women that I talk to tell me they don't HAVE any physical limitations. % No, I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. You know, a lot of what we do on the show is that people are perceived....If he had leaped into Jimmy and truly been a person who had a handicap or was retarded, then I don't know what we'd've been accomplishing with that. Sam might have learned something out of it, but he learns something leaping in and being himself and being _perceived_ as being a retarded person. And that means that people see you as something, they treat you like it, and they don't give you a chance to be who you could be. And that's part of what we're talking about, part of what we're trying to change. So the idea is not that he really is that person. That never was the concept, the concept in my head was that when he leaped in, people saw the aura of the person he leaped into. It's a little bit like if I came up here at the beginning of this thing as I did, and I somehow hypnotized you all and instead of Scott Bakula being up here, because he was down working on the show, I had Michael Zinberg--who's a producer--come up and sit down here, and you all saw him as Scott Bakula. That's what happens on the show. It's only when you look in a mirror do you see, do we see, does Scott see, what everybody sees around him. I think that holds true. And I think that's also interesting, because he can leap in as a very old man that everyone can perceive cannot do anything and he can be quite physical and shock people when that happens. Or he can leap in as a man his age--he's not very old, but he can be trying to perform as a boxer who's 20 years old. Tough to do. And he is then handicapped in that situation, by his limits. Q: What'll you (Scott and Dean) do during hiatus? DS: I don't know. We have three more shows to shoot now, then we're off for a couple months, and I'm trying to get a feature. I hope to get one or two things. Other than that, it's 9 months of "Quantum Leap". SB: There are a couple of things that may or may not happen. Oddly, I'm oddly kind of overwhelmed right now with the sense of starting over after three years generating an audience again for the show, which starts in two weeks. I'm a little overwhelmed by that, so the things are maybe down the line right now are not really in great focus. _This_ is the focus, and thanks to you all, I think we have a really good shot at it. % Q: Does Sam have recollections of his previous encounters when you come into a new guy? DB: Why don't we ask Scott that? SB: Yeah, I think we don't deal with this very often any more because so many of the viewers know the rules now that we don't go back into the Swiss cheese thing. But we mention it periodically, and I make the mistakes still. I think there's a little Swiss cheesing that happens all the time. I think I remember certain things; I don't think we've ever done this really, except in one show where I deal with this in the middle of the show in the very beginning, the Italian episode, the hit man episode. But we've never like leapt from one show and brought him into another and had him dealing with that last memory exactly. I think the other thing that would be a problem if we carried over is that down the line from now if shows are played in a different order, it would really kind of screw them up. It makes each show kind of a little total, a whole little human being, little show. DB: What's Scott's making reference to is that down the line in reruns, be it on the network or in syndication, you could chop off the leap of one show and put the leap of another one on it, and run 'em in a different order, and have him leap in a different orders. SB: If I came in and was talking about "did I have the baby?", you know, that would be hard...I think I remember almost everything, though. I think if I leap back into this same year and work on an oil rig, or into that young kid's body, I would remember having been there. Hopefully, next year, we'll do a story like that. Q: (Seven-year-old gives Dean a kiss, audience says "Aww...") DB: That's the only kiss we allow tonight. Q: These three questions are for Scott. We know your wife, Krista, is an actress. Has she shown any desire to do an episode? Number two, have you thought about doing "Love Letters" on hiatus, and three, when's that album coming out? # % SB: Krista may do something on the show at some point, but she really is happily hiatusing from the business, and doesn't really miss it. "Love Letters", I've been approached a couple of times to do, but it hasn't ever really worked out, and it may or may not happen some time. And Deborah can give you all the information on the "Quantum Leap" album (audience goes "Ooooo!" %) 'Cause _I'm_ dying to hear about it, too! # DP: We're working very hard to take all the music from the show, all the songs that Scott's done, and put them on an album. We're in negotiations -- in _talks_, I won't even say negotiations -- with MCA right now to put all the songs, "Volare", "Man From La Mancha", (audience asks for Al's lullaby)....We're working on it. Q: (a long and complicated question for Don, about the fact that the hero is named Samuel Beckett, like the existential playwright, and is there a story behind how he chose Sam's name?) DB: (deadpan) No. # There isn't. Q: Do you accept unsolicited story ideas? DB: We can't do that. I'm sorry about that, we really can't, and the reason is very simple: that we get sued a lot. It's difficult, and I know there are a lot of people that are young and want to do it. The only way you can ever submit something like that is you have to sign a form which literally signs all your rights away, which says that if we ever use anything from yours, you can't sue us for it or claim for it. It's a terrible form, but it's the only way we can protect ourselves because we're working on stories all the time. I would say that writers who come in that are professional writers in the business, that have been sent in by agents to pitch us stories, I'd say 80% of the stories that they pitch us we've already considered in one form or What happens when you have writers on the outside coming up with story ideas, is that when they then see an idea that they've pitched -- it may have been in the works a year ago or six months ago -- they think, "Oh, you ripped me off, and I'm gonna sue you." I'm not saying you would do that, but I've been through enough lawsuits that we can't do it. But if you wanna contact my office and then accept the form which Harriet Margulies will send you and fill that form out, and sign your life away to Universal Studios, then you can do it. By the way, before I forget, I do wanna thank Harriet, who put this all together. (Lots of %. Harriet is forced to stand up and say thank you). Q: What now for renewal? DB: As far as the renewal, we'll have a pretty good idea after--I'd say, we'll start running the show here in March....sometime in April we'll have a good idea, but we may not know until May, until late May for sure. But when we see the numbers that we get and the ratings, we should have a pretty good idea. I mean, I think if the show comes back, with our loyal fans, and we can attract some fans back, that we'll have no trouble getting renewed. It's very difficult, I think, to have been where we were on Friday night for a whole season and to come back Wednesday night and to expect us to just start, y'know, kicking butt. But I think we can do it with your help. And so, boy, we ask all of you to do everything you can. % Q: This is a question for Scott....After "Quantum Leap" is over in about 5 or 10 years, is there a definitive role that you've never played that you'd like to play? SB: I've been really lucky in the last few years in the theatre to create new things. And that's really where I feel the (indistinct) There's some wonderful roles that I'd like to do. I'd like to do "LaMancha" again, I did it when I was 21. I'm really into the creative process from day one. So I don't know; I would like to do "Sweeney Todd" some time, that's one of my favorite shows. Q: Why haven't the "Quantum Leap" novels been released here? DB: I didn't know that there were three novels released. Are they novels that are released through Universal? They've got _my_ name on them? Well, that's another one I don't know about! DS: Ask your accountant! # DB: I don't get paid for that one. Two more questions? Q: (Man/Woman award congrats to Scott %) Are you ever gonna do any episodes in the future where Al is? SB: I hope so. If we go on long enough, and Universal will consent to pay the money to do futuristic stuff, I _think_ we can talk this guy into doing it. DB: I'd like to do it (to Deborah, quietly). The last episode, the leap out? I can give you a little hint, if you all keep it under control for a second. Q: Scott, you said "What Price Gloria?" was a total departure for you. What about "Hello, Fellas"? SB: (laughs) Well, yeah. "Hello, Fellas" was three guys doing real drag, and this was in the real body. DB: We're thinking of, at the end of the last episode, when Scott leaps out, that there's a thunderstorm, and Dean decides that he's getting out of there. And Dean goes to walk through a wall and bounces off of it. (Audience goes "Ooohhh...) And _Scott_ walks through the wall. % SB: YEAH! DB: The only problem being that Dean has the control in his hand, so Scott can't leap, the imaging chamber. Somehow they have switched identities. We haven't worked that out. So we're thinking of doing an episode like that. Q: Was the laughing in tonight's episode scripted, or did Scott break up? DS: That was his. DB: That was his. Q: I liked that. SB: (indicates Dean) He's a funny guy. # Q: Are you planning a finishing episode? DB: Oh, we haven't even thought about that; it's like planning your own death...(turning to the publicity guy)...I'm not picking the last person; you pick the last person, let them kill YOU! (some fans bring up a birthday cake for Dean and everyone sings Happy Birthday) DB: (asks people where they traveled from to get to the screening, then tells the people from out of state to come up for autographs first) Thank you all for all your help! % SB: You're the greatest!