Stephen J. Cannell lost his battle with cancer on Thursday night. The writer and creator of some of the best loved television series of my youth, Cannell will always be immortalized by his logo sequence at the end of each episode he produced. Below, I’ve posted a marvelous YouTube mashup of the sequence as it evolved over the years. Although I never met Mr. Cannell, he seemed to me to be a tough thinking man, a writer with guts.
I reached out to director Michael Lange (GREEK and DROP DEAD DIVA) who worked with Cannell on the very cool show RIPTIDE back in the 1980s. Lange directed some 9 episodes of that show created by Cannell.
“He was a great writer and storyteller; a creative, inclusive and supportive producer and a wonderful guy.” Lange told me in an email. “He trusted me to direct my first episode of television and also wrote the script for that episode which made my life much easier. A little more pressure maybe, but at least I had a great script to direct. He’ll be missed.”
A Stephen J. Cannell script meant something. He won an Emmy early in his career for iconic THE ROCKFORD FILES, and later on received a Writer’s Guild of America award for one of my favorite shows TENSPEED AND BROWN SHOE. That show, which I’ve not seen in some 20 years, starred Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum. It was a classic buddy theme from Cannell pairing a con-man (Vereen) with an accountant (Goldblum). The odd couple formed a detective agency.
Cannell’s GREATEST AMERICAN HERO was a must see when I was eleven or twelve. Films like KICK ASS owe a bit to Cannell for breaking in the comic superhero subgenre featuring a reluctant self-aware hero. And a Cannell created show was never boring as he assembled talented casts that seemed as opposite as the characters they played. With HERO, for example, who would have put Robert Culp together with William Katt?
Recently, one of Cannell most enduring creations, THE A-TEAM, was remade as an explosive (and good) Hollywood feature. Although THE A-TEAM underperformed at the box office, the critical success of the movie started on the concept level. And Cannell had a creative hand in the concept—the plan came together.
Please give me your thoughts about Stephen J. Cannell and the television legacy he leaves behind. For me, he gave me the shows of my youth. Images, stories, and characters that left an impression even more than 20 years later.
