My magnum opus on Magnum, P.I.
05/10/2016
Donald P. Bellisario
After such a lengthy analysis of the show, it seemed only fitting to speak to the man who actually created it. Thankfully, after charming his agent with my British accent and some persistent persuasion, Mr Bellisario agreed to speak with me from his Beverly Hills home.
During the opening credits, both Donald P. Bellisario and Glen A. Larson are credited for creating Magnum, PI, I asked Mr Bellisario to explain a little more about the working relationship between the two of them.
“There was no relationship in working with Glen,” he told me in a matter-of-fact way. He paused, collected his thoughts and began to explain. “I was a newbie in California and in the business. I’d worked for Glen on Battlestar Galactica for a year, but I left and began developing ideas and pilots, so I was writing a number of shows…one of them turned out to be Quantum Leap later and one of them eventually became Magnum.”
Bellisario started working with Stephen J. Cannell on Black Sheep Squadron and The Gypsy Warriors, the latter of which happened to star Tom Selleck.
“Stephen had written a pilot for Gypsy Warriors and the studio said they wanted to see another episode script, so he came to me on a Friday afternoon, and said ‘can you get me a script by Monday morning?’ I stayed in the office the whole weekend, wrote a script, turned it in, and then the following Thursday Steve came in and said ‘they want to see another one, and can you have it by Monday?’ I said ‘no, I can’t, give me a week at least’.”
A little later, Larson called Bellisario, gave him a script he had written called Magnum and asked if he was interested in going to Hawaii to direct it.
“I said ‘sure,’ so I took the script, I went home and read it, and it was, to be honest, really bad. It was. It was really bad.”
Selleck read Larson’s script for Magnum and famously said ‘I’ll pound roofing nails before I do this shit’.” The studio asked Selleck if there was anyone else at Universal that he’d be prepared to work with (as it was producing the Gypsy Warriors pilot) and he said that he really liked Bellisario’s scripts for the two new episodes that Cannell had recently asked for.
Bellisario and Selleck met with Charlie Engel, EVP for programming at NBC Universal to talk about Larson’s script for Magnum. Selleck shared his thoughts and Bellisario agreed to rework the project.
“I walked into Glen’s office and I said ‘Glen, it’s 50/50, you and I, on creating it. You’re out of it. I’m the executive producer from here on out and I’m doing the show.’ He said, ‘deal’…he was no fool and shook my hand.”
This is why you see “created by Donald P. Bellisario and Glen A. Larson” in the opening credits. In the film and TV industry, particularly within writing, there are different ways in which credits are displayed; if the word and is used it means that the two names didn’t work together, however if an ampersand is used, then the two names did work on it together at the same time, so it’s like a shared, equal writing credit. If the word and is used, then typically, one person worked on it and then, after their involvement had ended, it was given to someone else to develop further. And so because some elements of the final show came from Larson’s original pitch, but he handed it over to Bellisario, it’s credited like this.
Not a great deal is known about Larson’s original pitch. However, Bellisario put together a first draft, which he called HH Flynn. The original setting was Bel Air; Flynn was an ex-Vietnam vet and private investigator, who provided security for a large estate. He lived in the guest house and drove a Ferrari. TC and Rick were his Vietnam buddies. TC flew helicopters to the oil rigs off the coast of California. Rick owned a bar in San Pedro. The character of Higgins, as we know him, did not exist at this point.
The setting changed to Hawaii, the named changed to Magnum – as per Larson’s original pitch – plus a few more tweaks here and there and history was made.
“I started from scratch and basically wrote HH Flynn out of Magnum and set it in Hawaii. This always gives everybody a kick. I had never been to Hawaii. I got a 1955 Fodor’s travel book. I put all the locations together and wrote everything from that travel book,” he laughs.
“When I went to Hawaii for the first time to scout the shoot I was stunned. I’m like, ‘where did all these big buildings come from?’ In 1955 there was only the Royal Hawaiian and one other hotel there and that was it. I was shocked.
“I wanted to make Hawaii look like it did before World War II, so I told all the directors, ‘I don’t want to see telephone poles or wires. I don’t want to see any condominiums. I want to see nothing but beautiful scenery, two-lane roads, no super highways,’ and in the second episode I was looking at dailies and here’s Tom and some character walking on a beach and I see this condominium in the background. I call over there and I said, ‘what the hell is the condominium doing?’ ‘Well, it made a great shot,’ came the reply. I said, ‘Yo, guess what? That great shot’s going to be re-shot without a condominium.’ And they had to re-shoot it without the condominium. It gave Hawaii a very luxurious, exotic look, at least the first few years when I was really active in the show.”
This gradually changed through the series as more of Honolulu was shown and the inclusion of a more modern Hawaii was unavoidable.
“When I called Glen, I said, ‘Here, I’m want to show you the pilot I shot in Hawaii,’ and he was sitting next to me. We were watching the pilot. He said, ‘Where’s, where’s …’ I said, ‘Glen, just watch the show,’ because there was nothing that he had put in the show except the idea that there was a place called Robin’s Nest where Tom lived in the guesthouse and was a security person there. In Glenn’s script, Tom had a killer dog that no one could get near, and Tom also had in Glen’s script, he had hang gliders with machine guns on the wings.”
A popular theory amongst fans is that the character of Jonathan Higgins is based on the real life Lt Col John Masters since there are many similarities in the lives of both men. However, this isn’t the case.
“I was working on the script one night and watching a movie on TV called, Guns at Batasi,” Bellisario says. “It was a black and white movie starring Richard Attenborough. It was about a British sergeant-major in Africa when the colonies were nationalized. He tries to defend his captain when an ambitious African officer initiates a coup d’etat. They’re surrounded in the barracks and he has to surrender to save the lives of his men.
“They tell him they want him out, out of the army, so here he is, a gruff, fiercely patriotic sergeant-major with 35 years in the army and they tell him he’s finished. He walks in to the serviceman’s bar there and he orders a drink. A picture of the queen behind the bar. He’s so furious he takes the drink and the throws it at the picture and shatters the glass, the picture falls. He immediately is mortified at what he’s done. He runs behind the bar and he cleans it all off. He hangs the picture back up, walks around, puts his swagger stick under his arm and walks out. I like to say he walked right into being Higgins.”
“Those stories Higgins regaled with were all my stories that I made up,” he adds.
Some very deliberate decisions were been made in creating Magnum’s back story. I asked what was the inspiration was to make his Viet Nam War history so specific.
“I don’t remember what it was. It was a compilation of things. It was buddies of mine that I knew that had served in Viet Nam. I was a marine for four years and never served in Viet Nam, but I certainly had a lot of friends that did. Some of it was a compilation of that put together.”
Finally, as we near the end of season seven Magnum comes up with an interesting theory that Higgins is in fact Robin Masters, something that Higgins finally admits too in the final episode, but then later retracts, saying he was lying. Is Higgins actually the successful Mills & Boon-style pulp novelist? As I ask Mr Bellisario, he laughs, but I remind him that the evidence is compelling. When Higgins finally, reluctantly admits that he is Robin Masters, it feels like he is actually telling the truth. His expression and the emotion he portrays all add up to a very convincing performance. When Magnum asks him why…he simply says, “Tradition.”
“He could be Robin Masters, it’s certainly possible,” Bellisario says. “I think he enjoys the anonymity, he enjoys that no one actually knows for sure.” As much as I want to believe that he is, this is clearly an idea that was floated about later in the series. In Italian Ice (S2, E15) Katrina says that she remembers her father, Robin and Higgins playing chess together. “It’s definitely not something that wasn’t written in from the start,” Bellisario confirms. And what’s nice is that the show didn’t contradict, or re-write itself as Magnum’s conspiracy theory developed. There’s some interesting discussion on this subject on the Magnum Mania forum.
To 10 episodes of Magnum, PI – in chronological order
Never Again… Never Again (S1, E6)
Try To Remember (S2, E14)
Did You See the Sun Rise? (S3, E1, parts 1 & 2)
Home From the Sea (S4, E1)
Operation: Silent Night (S4, E10)
Compulsion (S5, E13)
Deja Vu (S6, E1, parts 1 & 2)
Going Home (S6, E6)
Way of the Stalking Horse (S6, E16)
Unfinished Business (S8, E8)
