“Hey, people loved it as a movie. What if we change the cast and put it on TV once a week? What could go wrong?” It’s remarkable how often this happens and how often it fails. Of course, there are successes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a great series that came from a mediocre movie. M*A*S*H was a great series that came from a great, but very different, movie. (There are more, but I’m not going to list them. So if you’re thinking, “But what about 12 Monkeys?,” I’m already aware.) What makes these series so bizarre is that they often ignore the events of the movie, instead just taking characters and setting and creating its own new universe. It’s all very unusual and … unnatural. In this edition, let’s look at the television adaptation of Gung Ho, at least the little we can of it.
In 1986, Ron Howard released his fifth full-length directorial effort, about a struggling Pennsylvania auto plant that is purchased by a Japanese company. If you haven’t seen Gung Ho, you can probably imagine, especially since this was the 1980s, that hijinks based on cultural differences ensued.
If nothing else, Gung Ho did deliver one legitimate laugh out loud moment. Faced with an impossible deadline, the auto plant cut some corners on the design of its cars. After an emotional speech about how proud he is of the cars that were just built, Michael Keaton’s Hunt Stevenson dramatically decides to leave in a new car that was just built. Within seconds of putting the car into drive, it completely collapses.
Gung Ho would go on to be the top movie the weekend it was released, besting the third weekend of Pretty in Pink. Gung Ho would then go on to be the 29th biggest movie in 1986, earning slightly less money than Tom Hanks’ The Money Pit and slightly more money than Tom Hanks’ Nothing in Common. Along the way, for some reason, someone decided, “We should make this a television series.”
Unfortunately, the nine full episodes of Gung Ho are difficult to find, so today we have to make do with just the opening theme song.
What made Gung Ho the television series unique is that many cast members reprised their roles from the film. No, Michael Keaton wasn’t going to stoop to television, so here a young Scott Bakula plays the role of Hunt Stevenson. (I can only assume there was last minute recasting, because an L.A. Times article claims that Ned Eisenberg, maybe best known today for his role on Law & Order: SVU, would be playing Hunt.) But, Gedde Watanabe, Clint Howard, and a host of others did reprise their roles.
(I do wonder, after a tense day on set, if Watanabe ever yelled at Bakula, “You’re no Keaton!,” before storming off the set. I’d pay good money to see that.)
From the opening credits, I get the sense there will be changes, changes in our lives. At least, the opening theme song (with the probably mildly offensive guitar riffs) tells us that. I tried to Shazam this song and (not surprisingly) it found no match. I Googled the lyrics to no avail. Without knowing what this song is and not having any access to any of the episodes, I will never know what was happening in this scene:
(Good grief, now I really want to know who is singing this theme song.)
From the scant episode descriptions, it does sound like the series mostly focused on Bakula’s Hunt Stevenson getting himself into hot water with the executives in pretty much every episode.
Here’s a description: “Hunt uses a new company credit card to entertain a date, an action that lands him back on the assembly line.”
Here’s another: “Hunt (Scott Bakula) proclaims himself a one-woman man, but Kaz and Umeki have evidence that his girlfriend isn’t similarly inclined.”
Anyway, the moral of all of this is, as always, this existed. And now you know.
Mike Ryan lives in New York City and has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
