i did want to ask you a personal
question i've talked to you several
times before
we've always had a wonderful time at
least i have you seem annoyed most the
time yeah
um you have had a wonderful time i've
had a wonderful time talking to you
yeah i've been really enjoyed talking to
you you always seem yeah
take it or leave it um you have been
married
32 years and uh just an incredible
marriage especially in this business of
show well
it's collective i've been married five
times
i still look at it as a success if you
look at it that way mickey rooney was
married for 160 years
[Laughter]
how did you and your wife meet we met
and we uh we were guest starred my wife
robin dearden was an actor and she's
retired now but
um we met uh doing a show called airwolf
oh my god do you remember this yes i
remember airwolf very very bad show
but with a great thumping theme song
and you got excited about the show and
then slowly as the show rolled out it's
like
you started losing interest and so which
means it only ran for like seven seasons
yeah
it did incredibly well and my wife was
the victim of the week
and i was the bad guy of the week and i
held her
literally held her captive by gunpoint
and
what a weird way to meet because i i met
my wife
uh on a remote 20 years ago shooting a
remote
which i think again that was how i used
to do remotes the only way i could get
anyone to talk to me was i would wave a
gun around and make people
no i didn't do but i'm saying yours is
so much stranger
that you met your wife your first
introduction to her was you
holding her hostage with a fake gun
well it it's also very sexy i think
though it's like
she thought i was very dangerous
did you guys have that chemistry right
away we did and you know
why i think we've been married for so
long is because
at that time that's 35 years ago now
35 years ago i had a girlfriend she had
a boyfriend
so we didn't have these the the need to
to make a move we were able to play and
flirt and yet
to not have anything go any further than
that so we were able to really be
ourselves and
and say god she's really pretty and
funny and
yeah i really like i had that same thing
with my wife when we met
i was very asexual and so there was no
threat that i would you know what i mean
and then i just eventually
sort of sort of evolved in this other
direction into like
it's like a battery now you're double a
or triple a section
you know i remember it's so funny that
you met on airwolf because i remember
that theme
so well the opening show i do and
basically i hate to admit this but it's
how i start
most of my mornings as i play the
airwolf theme
i think we should take a look right now
ladies and gentlemen the opening to
[Music]
pretty airwolf
what a different time in television it
is
when you know they spent a fortune on
just the theme song and the
visuals this was seven minutes of
the show i know you know it's incredible
watching this now
you realize it goes on for another six
and a half minutes i know
first of all let's make let's be clear
to our viewers that is for anyone
younger people cannot believe how long
show openings used to be
and what happened is they've now
completely gone away
there's there's a quick yeah
you know and uh and and then you're
right into it
that is a small fraction of the opening
of that show
you haven't even gotten to and it's
unbelievable chips the opening to chips
i clocked it once at 45 minutes
the the actual story is only six and a
half minutes
after that and then they wrap it up
what's like the hawaii 5-0 was
also another big driving emotionally you
know
exciting hawaii experience yes wow
no it tells you how much television has
changed that
there used to just be so there were
three networks there was a limited
number of
amount of product you would watch a long
opening even if it wasn't great
because what else you gonna do it's the
70s or the early 80s what do you got to
do pal
and i heard the concept of having the
big
sound the big music intro was
because in commercial television
broadcast people would leave the tv on
go for
go to the bathroom and go in the kitchen
and they would hear that music start to
play
and it was like a siren call they'd come
back in oh the show's starting
and that would draw their attention back
to it that's when we were
locked into a time and a day we had to
watch our show
yeah now it's you don't imagine no but i
mean it's
it is so different now i try to explain
this to my children and i sound like
my dad talking about the great
depression when i was growing up and i
was like what do you
who cares and he'd say no i'm telling
you it listened to a radio and it had a
curved top
who cares now i'm telling them you had
to line up and
you had to watch that show when it came
on or you'd miss out buddy boy
they don't yeah i don't know why i talk
that way