JOE:

I didn't call sooner. I was just out runnin' around...I was shootin' for ten, and I made ten thirty.

That's okay. You've got your life and I have mine. I didn't have anything pressing to do today. You got to me anyway.

So How are you?

I'm doing OK

How's things in New York?

Pretty good. Warm weather. It's supposed to be nice out here, so far. Spring is here, hopefully it stays, although I have allergies, and they tell me it's going to be the worst year. So, I'm not ready for it.

Yeah, I do too, but (clears throat) I just deal with it.

You gotta deal with it, exactly.

Yeah, every day.

Um, when's the last time I talked to you? I talked to you maybe two, three years ago, or actually - no, you had just been engaged.

Yeah, it wasn't quite that long ago.

You had a son since then..

Since the last time I spoke with you?

Yes

Engaged, married, lost a job, got a son, got a job...(laughs)

Well, I want to say congratulations on the birth of your son.

Thank you very much.

How old is he now?

He's, uh, ten months and...about 12 days.

Wow

And he's walking, running around.   He's just a really beatiful person.  He's very, very  happy and every day is a new experience.

You got a little taste of it with the young girls on the show, playing your daughter Katie.

Uh hmm. But I mean just a taste, you know. You don't even scratch the surface.

It doesn't compare.

No. There's (chuckles) a difference between pretending they're yours and actually having them.   I like having them much more than just pretending their mine,  but that's us - now, since having Jack, I just have a completely deeper appreciation of having children, or other people's children. You can look at other people's children differently. You know, before you're like "Oh, cute!" Now you understand them more, you know. You're a mother?

No, I'm not, but I did raise my nephew.

Oh, as a guy you just have a better understanding. Before I was just a bachelor, imagining having kids. I'd been around my sister's children a lot and had some experience but , no, this first-hand stuff, twenty-four hours a day...

And it's a new thing every day.

Yep.

Every day.

Well we're gettin' better and better at it.

Well ....this time around, as time goes on. You gonna have a year old party for him?

Yeah, actually we're going to have a birthday party for him up in Vancouver, Canada. That's where we're gonna be on June third, that's his birthday.   We're flying his, um, both sets of grandparents up there for it. We're going up there...end of May, actually.

Get out of Hollywood huh?.

Well, I have a new series staring in July up there.

Oh, do you?  For which network?

It's a syndicated show, and it's tentatively called "Cliffhangers." That's their working title. It's about an academy, up in Boulder, Colorado. It's present day, and it's about an academy...that deals with kids at risk, and most of the children will be from wealthy families, although not all of them have to be. There's other ways to get into these kind of schools, 'cause they're expensive. Actually, "20-20" just did a little exposé on one of them the other  tonight. It was the wrong version of  the one we're trying to portray, but these are academies, almost like boot camps, where kids are sent to straighten out their lives. And actually I did some research about a month and a half ago. I went to Northern Idaho with some of the other writers and producers of the show, and just did research and hung out at  these schools for two days, and went around with the kids. Went to their therapy sessions and all that. Just really interesting. And the backdrop is the mountains, you know - extreme sports and things like...They incorporate that stuff into some of these other schools, but our school is gonna be unique, where it deals with kids who also love the outdoors and like to go kayaking, and skiing, and snowboarding. So we're going to have a lot of beautiful scenery. I'll be outside, enjoying doing what I do.

Yes, because it's nice up there at that time, too.

Oh, yeah, it's beautiful! And then once we get the rainy, wintery season, (chuckles) wintery time, we're gonna utilize that too. Shooting indoors when it rains. But we were just doing "Dr Quinn," the MOW (Movie of the week), and we couldn't have had goofier weather. It was like 30's, 40 degrees out. One scene, they're shooting with Jane, it started hailing. We were at a different ranch. A place that's a little further north and into the mountains, 'cause we were supposed to go on the road from Colorado into Mexico.  And it's a long trip on horseback.  Plus  we'shooting all these different scenes.   Luckily, in the morning, we were supposed to be in Colorado for one morning scene ...and it was beautiful. We had snow-capped mountains, right behind us, not even any higher than like 1500, 1700 feet. There was snow, and it was great. We never had snow in any shot of "Dr. Quinn" before. You know, it just never, miraculously, never snows - never really rains that hard in Colorado Springs, and the horses don't go to the bathroom. That's the reality. (He laughs.)

Except in the Pilot.

In the Pilot?

It was a Christmas show, and you came to give the kids some gifts. Early, early. Well, that was a fake snow. Wasn't the real thing.

 Yeah, that was snowflakes made with potatoes.

That's what it looked like.

That's what it was.

It wasn't melting at all.

And there was soap, this biodegradable soap suds stuff, which they just flooded the streets . There was that one shot we had to do one time for "Dr Quinn." Just did the whole street, and outside the cabin, did all that. It  was great!    But it was potatoes and soap!   Then I had them stick ice down my back so I'd feel cold. (chuckles). It was hot. But...anyway...yeah we froze on this "Dr Quinn." We had beautiful weather, we had rain, like days and days of rain  when we had to work outside. There was no other choice. We couldn't  go in, and we just froze our butts off. It hailed that one shot, then it started to snow. We moved further down the hill, or down the mountain, to the flat area, and it started to snow down there. But, yeah, we had a good time, and it's a big, big movie of the week for "Dr Quinn."

It sounds like it is. And I'm glad that it's coming back, because it would give us sort of a closure. I was a big, big "Dr Quinn" fan, and I know that a lot of fans protested the show going off the air. So I guess this has got a little closure to it, where we would enjoy seeing more as time goes on. Do you think they have plans for doing that?

Well, I know that both Jane and I hope to do more. We've discussed it at length with her husband James, who's the director of the show. We just need to get good numbers. That's the bottom line. CBS let us go because we weren't appealing to their demographics, which is... It's a business, so, you know, fine with that. Actually, I was very happy with it. I think at the time I had Jack - you know, that's my son - coming into my life two weeks later. I was preoccupied. I couldn't...I couldn't...It was a blessing for me.  It couldn't have been any better. 'Cause I...my wife ended up having an emergency C-section, so when we came home from the hospital  five days later, I stayed with her, and I took care of her, and the baby, and that was just to be home, twenty-four hours a day - it was great! Then we all went on a road trip for five weeks. The baby was three weeks old, and we had a great time. Just gave her (Kirsten) a chance to recoup and not be stuck in the house, 'cause she hates, you know, sitting at home.   So we were able to go out, it wasn't too strenuous, and the baby was perfect. People thought we were crazy for going out at that time - being three weeks old. There wasn't a better time to travel. Made it back to Chicago for a family reunion, which was a big thing. I wasn't going to fly with a baby, you know, too many people, sneezing and coughing and everything. And so we just took our time, and made our own schedule. Had a great time. Anyway, "Dr Quinn," getting back to that -- if we have a chance to do another one, we'd love to, and the way we've left this story is that we ...we're being very optimistic. We haven't put a real closure to the series in this episode, or this movie of the week, because we don't want it to be. We want it to go at least a couple more, so we can kind of play out the story, tell what we think. In a movie of the week form, it's a lot better for us. Least it is for me personally.

Right. I was going to ask you, did you feel a difference?

Oh, I felt a real big difference. First of all, the (hesitates)... the petty B.S. that surrounds a weekly television series didn't exist, because we were doing a movie of the week. And we had five million dollars to work with, which is a lot more money than we'd ever have on a regular episode of "Dr Quinn," and so, given the extra money and a little bit longer time, although we never have enough money or time, we were able to have a bigger show -- more adventure. Flesh out more of the story line. There wasn't the 'A' story line and the 'B' story line. The 'A' story line is Dr. Mike fixes somebody with a broken something-or-other and the 'B' story line is "Brian gets a hobby."   We didn't have that.  (He chuckles.) We had real stories and were able to develop with other characters, and there's never been a better show for my character, Sully than this one. I was just pushed to the back, a peripheral character anymore, which was, I think, a mistake that they did, not because it was my character, but because my character and other male characters in the show would have rounded it out better -- made it a fuller show. But I think Beth Sullivan, during the series, didn't see it that way. I think ultimately that was our demise, because we weren't appealing to young men...young men and young women. We had young, young women. We had mothers and older women. We didn't have that sought after demographic of the young men.

And if you look at Saturday nights now, all their shows appeal to young men.

Yep. And I think there wouldn't have been a "Magnificent Seven" had "Dr Quinn" evolved having an equal amount of testosterone versus estrogen. So anyway, things work out the way they work out, I guess. You know, it was the best situation for me, coming back and doing this movie of the week. It was just a real, really nice experience.

How long did it take to do this?

It took us 19 days.

19 days, yeah, it looked like it was a very quick, quick thing... cause when I read it, I read the "Star" and I saw a little thing, like a "sneak peak." I wouldn't have known that anything was going on! Let me get a jump in on that!

It all came together actually very quickly. The story took a little while to sort of develop and write, and then CBS just went right ahead and greenlit the thing, and got Jane on board with her husband to do it. Then they went around and slowly made the other deals. I didn't sign... I started on a Monday, and like the Tuesday before, I signed the deal. So I wasn't even in position for a week. I had to run in -- luckily I had my old buckskins and jacket and tomahawk and stuff all in a trunk.

But you cut your hair, didn't you?

Yeah.

Yeah, 'cause you were on "Jag."

Yeah, I cut my hair.

Did they give you extensions?

Extensions, schmentions! My hair was too short! They had to make a full length wig. Four thousand dollar, nice wig, made with (he does an accent) "virgin German girl hair." (He laughs.) It was one of those things where, thank God I don't have to wear a wig all the time! I'm done.  It just drove me nuts.  Two hours of makeup in the morning.

Oh my goodness!

I learned how to meditate on this show.

I bet you did! I bet those buckskins came in handy for those 30 degree temperatures.

You know what? The funny thing is that, when you're out in the heat with those things on? You boil! In the cold, they don't keep you warm. You freeze! (He laughs.) They're thin, and for some reason...I mean, they really can hold the heat in when you're standing outside in the heat. They don't breathe. But in the cold, man, they were just...I was wearing long underwear with 'em and I was still freezing! You know, once you get a chill, when it's raining on you in the cold, you just can't lose it. So at the end of the day, you know, like 17 hour days,  you're just exhausted. Just tired from chattering. (He chatters.) When they say action, then you stop! For however long, or they'll cut ya like...(he makes a sound.)

I read here that Katie's now four years old. Are they using the same little girl or twins that they had? Or triplets, right!

They had triplets before. They had 'em in, but the triplets themselves were at the stage where they're not quite...

Attentive.

They'd gone from babies to now they're not quite old enough to understand what's going on. And they can't really do dialogue or anything. So we got a girl that's actually six. She looks really young. And she really looks like she could be our baby. She looks like a very good cross between Jane and I, and she's a real scene stealer. She's a real cutie. Her name is Kaylie, which was hard to keep straight,  "Katie, Kaylie, Katie, Kaylie.." I didn't know if I was saying the right name during scenes. It looks the same when I open my mouth, so I could have always looped it. But, yeah, she was really cute. It was her first job. It's hard to put yourself in a six-year-old's perspective on what's going on. I kept trying to do it, though, and trying to think of how I understood things to be when I was a kid. I understood them as REAL, you know, a movie was like really going on. So I was trying to explain things to her, and why we'd have to do some things over again. You know, I think most of the time, she understood more than I did. (laughs) It was really funny, the day she said to the script supervisor, "Tell me, I think I dropped a line." I said, "You did what, you dropped a LINE?"

Because I read here that she's mangled in an accident. Will we be seeing that?

Um, yeah, you won't be seeing the mangled part.

Actual happening...

No, that's a little bit off camera. It's referred to later on in the script.

How soon into the story does that happen? How are they going to open up? Are they gonna pick up from something, or what's the last that we saw on Dr Quinn or years have passed?

We just pick up like time has been going on, and we're in the middle of a year later from what you saw in the finale. We ended up at a dance, I think it was the last time we were dancing at our daughter's wedding, and we thought that there might be a bun in the oven, too, with Jane? Well, there was no bun in the oven, and our daughter is now in England with her husband, taking care of the royal family, and our youngest kid on the show -- our son, Shawn Toovey, who was Brian -- he's now five nine! (He laughs incredulously.) He's wearing Chad Allen's old clothes! Which is really scary, because I used to pick him up like I do with the little girl on the show. When we started, he was REALLY tiny!   Although he was seven or eight, he was really tiny. Well, he hit 15 or 16 year old, and pfffft!

He just shot right up.

Yep. He's now going (Joe does this in a very deep voice) "Uh, Pa?" Gimme back that old voice (he does falsetto), "Hey ma? Think ma would mind me callin' you ma, too?"

JOE:

(Does it again, in falsetto.) "Think ma would mind me callin' you ma, too?"

Chad and Jessica back?

Chad's not back.

Well he's ??? or whatever. And Jessica's not coming back, either?

No, she's sailing on the ship. That's because... money constraints, and also because this is pilot season. For somebody like Chad Allen and Jessica, they are what everyone is looking for, that age category. People like Jane and I, we're like dinosaurs! Forget about them! So, I was lucky that I have this new series. We sold 22 episodes already, so I didn't have to go through a pilot season.

That's the good thing about syndicated series. They do pick up quite a large number of episodes.

And it's a collaboration between Paramount International Studios and Lion's Gate Studios up in Canada, so they're kinda splittin' the bill. So that's why they were able to go for 22 episodes.

And it's more up to date stuff. You're not going back in time.

No, no, it's modern. Like I said, it's based on schools that exist today in this country and all over the world about kids who are at risk. They're drug users. They're just troubled kids for whatever reasons, and parents are at their wits end. It's the last resort kind of thing, where they send them to.

And you're back wearing the short hair again?

I'm wearing the short hair, not quite as short as the "Jag" haircut, but a little bit longer, and a different color.

Did you feel different when you cut your hair for "Jag"? I know you just shed that all, after you've had it for so long.

Actually, I had cut it right after, right around June or so, because when my son was born, I already had short hair. I didn't want to have that long mop on my head and deal with the baby. So then when "Jag" came up, which was in October, I believe, I went in and cut my hair really short, like almost a military cut, because I was thinking this character that I played on the show was trying to get his wife back. I don't know if you saw the episode?

Yes, I did.

And he was just a real scumbag. (chuckling) A nightmare husband or boyfriend. So he came back. You know what he'd do? He would cut his hair short because he would try to get that military look.   He feels obviously his wife is now in the military, and would be attracted to those kind of men. I had this whole story going on in my head, how he'd almost be like a soap opera character in the beginning, reminiscing and talking about ...  and then by the second episode just be...something went wrong. Uh oh! And so that's what I was trying to do, just be...something.. So like from the moment you saw me, you knew something wasn't quite right. That's what I was trying to portray. I just watched it in reruns, cause I really didn't see it the first time. I saw bits and pieces of it, but I saw it in reruns and I liked it a lot more. (He laughs.)

I said, "Oh, he's not Sully anymore! He's a meanie.

A bad guy.

I was thinking of that movie that you had done with Nicolette Sheridan.

Oh, "Devil's Bed," or "Shadows of Desire." It had two names. On ABC, in reruns, it's "Devil's Bed." If it's on CBS, it's "Shadows of Desire." (He repeats the name in a sexy, low voice.) See that guy was...that guy was a spoiled brat. That's how I played him. He just always got what he wanted. I played Sonny Snow - that was my character's name. I LOVED that movie, actually. That was like a little independent feature. It had that kind of feel to it, and Piper Laurie was great, having her as my Mom, and Adrian Pasdar is a good actor. Richard Roundtree, who I've worked with, I think, four times now.

You said you had, yeah.

I keep working with him. He did a "Dr Quinn" then, too. And he did that movie of the week in North Carolina with me, and did something else...Shadows of Desire, and...oh, I know. A long, long time ago I was on a show that he was on, called "Generations," which was a soap. So that's four times that I've worked with Richard Roundtree.

And are you going to have him on this one, or wait for the writers and see what they do?

Yeah, I don't think this would be his cup of tea, because it's not near any really nice golf courses. That's what he said to me, "Always just make sure, Joe, that whenever I work with you, I'm near a nice golf course." (He laughs.) He likes to go out and golf all day long when he's not working.

In this new Dr Quinn, now, will there be other townspeople back?

Oh, yeah, there's Frank Collison, who plays Horace, is in it, Knobeloch is in it, Henry - Robert E. - is in it, Jonelle Allen - Grace - is in it. Barbara Babcock, who played Dorothy, Orson Bean, who was Loren. All the townsfolk, the people that were always seen in the background, the background artists as we call 'em? They're there.

Is Cloud Dancing coming back?

Larry Sellers - Cloud Dancing's there, yeah. He's one of the people who come and help us look for our daughter. He's actually a spiritual "tip" (Joe laughs) so to speak. He receives one and that's how we're able to follow this trail and start looking for our daughter.

Are you guys still in that same homestead, or are you in a new house?

Same homestead. We just used exterior shots that they already had, and then that doesn't tie us into the homestead itself. So you have that morning shot of the barn and everything. They tore that down. They went out there and tore that down, can you believe that? It was beautiful! A real house. It was built like a real house. The only thing it didn't have was an upstairs. Anyway, they tore that down, and the barn, and there's nothing there anymore. But we have the outside shots, and you would go inside the homestead. That was a stage. They had just duplicated it for use before.

How long a period of time is the story going to take? I mean I know you guys are up in Colorado and go down to Mexico.

It's takes place over, all together, about a three month expanse.

Do we see you guys basically on the road more than?

We're in town for the first...beginning of the show, like the first hour or so, then the last hour is travelling. In between commercial breaks, we go hundreds of miles at time. (He makes a zooming sound.)

Did you have to go an reacquaint yourself with the shooting -- well, you've never shot a gun.

Nope, I didn't shoot any gun..

You've always had bows and tomahawks...

And I actually have some tomahawk moments on this.

Oh, you do?

Which is something they didn't give me for years on the old Dr Quinn. Yeah, Sully kills a man. (They both laugh.) That's another guy.

It's an enemy, though.

Oh, yeah. It's always -- Sully never kills anybody unless it's a kill or be killed situation. And those dirty ambushers try to attack us that night.

Any special guest stars gonna be in it?

Let's see, who's...Steven Meadows plays a bad guy. He's Leeza Gibbons husband. You've seen him in a lot of things and would recognize his face. There's this Latin actor, who I guess is very famous in the Spanish speaking community, Latin America, whose name I don't remember 'cause I didn't have any scenes with him. But I know all the women were in love with him on the set!

Oh, were they?

Yeah. It was like Rico Suave.  I just had one scene, and it wasn't really a scene with me. I'm just sitting there on a horse, and he tells me what a beautiful wife I have and what a lucky man I am. And he flashed me a smile, and it's like "Oh, my God!" Bright white. But that was funny. He was definitely like a Pepsodent commercial. And I don't know his name, like I said, I didn't really work with him at all, but for like two minutes. But I know that he was..he's a famous guy, because we also had the Spanish press that came out and covered the show. So I can't tell you what his name is.

Is it just you and Jane and Brian that are going down to Mexico, or did you include everybody?

No, it's most of the men from town. Jake, Henry -- Jake and Robert E., and Cloud Dancing, and Horace. Hank was supposed to be on the road with us, but he couldn't make it - like Shockley. Shoulda been, but.. didn't happen.

Now when you all got back together again to do this movie, did it feel like you just took a little vacation? You were able to fall back into...

It felt like a long weekend. That's all it was like. I watched a couple of the episodes on PAX TV, just because I'd stopped talking like Sully. You know, I'd kind of fallen back into my...I speak a little faster than Sully normally does, and I have more of a Chicago accent than Sully does! (He chuckles.) It was hard getting out of the "Sully Speak" as I used to call it, which was like really lazy English, and getting back into speaking so I sounded somewhat articulate in meetings and things that I had to go to, and then having to go back to the Sully Speak, I needed to-- it took a little time, because I had to remember, he doesn't sound quite like I do. I speak a little lower... So, anyway, it took me a couple days of just listening to it, and watching him to get the feel again. Then we started the show, so I showed up at the set, threw on the clothes, Jane and I looked at each, it was like -- Pffff, we'd never even stopped! (They both laugh.) We just look a little older, that's all. I had the same horse, and so did she. Thank God, 'cause I hadn't ridden in a year! (Laughs.) So I just got on Single Guy and he did all the work for me. I do almost all, about 90% of the riding and do stunts in the show.

Did you have a lot of stunts to do?

There's a lot of action in the show, yeah. There's a LOT of action. It's a very strong Sully show, and spared no expense with locations, and soldiers, and horses. So it's a good old Western. And the heart of the story is about family. You know, it's not about just shooting people, and things blowing up, and all that kind of stuff. It's really a true Dr Quinn in the tradition of the first and second year of Dr Quinn, I would say. TV shows tend to sometimes lose sight of what they are, after they've been on television for a few years. It's really hard to keep a show true to what it was when it first began. Sometimes they start to look, especially with Westerns, start to look a little too polished. You know if you look at the Pilot as opposed to the last show of the last season that we did, maybe you would go, "Wait a minute!" you know? (laughs) "Everything's just too NICE now." This is back to, we're dirty, we're grubby, we're on the road, there's lots of horses, there's indians, there's Federales, there's the story of what's going on between  Dr Quinn and Sully, because the loss of a child a lot of times puts a stress on a couple that we don't even imagine comes into play.

And that's the second daughter that you would have lost.

Yeah, that's what Sully's going through, and there's a lot of blame that's put on my character because it was a decision, something that I made, that the repercussion was the abduction of Katie. Something that I didn't foresee. I took it as another personal threat to Sully. That's the way my character took it. People say threatening things to him all the time. It's a hard knock life! He doesn't think anything of it. He goes on and they do wrong by taking the child, abducting her.

How soon do they discover that she was kidnapped and not...

Like right off, I think in the first 15 or 20 minutes. That's something that then propels us into the story. Soon as everything seems like it's going all right in Colorado Springs... that's what starts our adventure. First we have to deal with finding the daughter, believing we find her, and the tension between Dr.  Mike and Sully. Going from there to getting back in to look at the child together, and that there's renewed hope, that she's still alive. Then healing some of the wounds, and apologizing to each other for the way we treated one another. It's a really good story. Joseph Anderson, who's one of the original producers and writers on the show, wrote this solo epic. I'm really grateful for him writing such a good part for Sully. It's been a long time. (He laughs.) I felt my character was a little anaemic, and he gave me this feast.

So we're left with a happy ending.

A happy ending, yeah, hopefully to be continued ...

JOE:

...Or, sailing to Hawaii. Or...there's the Industrial Revolution. This is the beginning of it all, this period of time, the late 1800's. So it's just there's so much going on. It's more than just cowboys and Indians, although the west was wild for quite a long time. There's just so much going on that there are lots of choices. You can develop more, and not have to worry about pacing yourself out for 22 or 28 episodes. We don't have to worry about how we can't use that story because we have to use it further, you know? We can really tell a good story and use all these different homages, put 'em together. So if we can do a couple of these a year, it would be great. If we could only do one more, it'd be great. Then we can know, if this one does really well, then we'd know we'd have at least one or two left. And maybe we could get CBS to commit to a certain order, so that way we as artists and fans of the show would know ahead of time that we're finishing it up, and be able to do it that way, as opposed to just finishing what we thought was the end of a normal year, and just getting...it was very anticlimactic, and not very pleasing for us and Dr Quinn fans. Jane had a big wrap party at her house this last weekend, invited everybody from all the years who worked on Dr Quinn. So at least we got to have a wrap party, 'cause we didn't last time, either.

Right. Are you going to go out and do a lot of publicity for this? I guess you two are gonna go out and really push this.

Oh, we've already done a lot on the set, like CBS This Morning, CNN, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, and Gala Vision, which I think is Spanish speaking, and French, German, and I guess...I think I'm gonna go to New York and do Kathie Lee and Regis and you know, like 20 satellite interviews for television, and radio, and some local things. And Jane I know is going to New York, too, to do some shows. So yes! We'll be pushing it.

I'll keep my fingers crossed. I will be watching it.

We'll try our best to get it going. And I think, just judging by the fan support that we had in the past, and them being responsible for the fact that the show came back for a movie of the week, there's no other reason. It's not out of, uh -- CBS didn't get sentimental on us or anything. (He laughs.) CBS is still the big network machine. They don't care about whether or not we wanted to come back and do another one. But the fans demanded it, and so they got it! Hopefully they'll all come out and watch the show, and we'll be back again.

I know fans were in on that, I know that they were.

Yeah. (chuckles) It could have been part of the deal. They got so pissed off they just decided, we're gonna do one just to shut 'em up. It was funny, I know they just did the whole thing before we got canned, and it was funny, and it was also touching. We appreciated it.

Were you one who checked into the Internet -- what was going on with the whole fan thing...

I don't have a computer.

Oh, you don't?

No. But I was told. I had other friends who worked on the show, it was just like, oh my God. And then I have people that I know at CBS who were saying our e-mail just clogged up, and our phones are ringing off the hook, and... (he laughs) It was GREAT!! Les Moonves and Mel Karmazan were, like, pulling their hair out. I wonder if they had pagers there, and were being paged.

Yeah. (laughs) They'd have to leave town, but they would have found them anyway.

I rambled, I know...

No, you didn't, but it's been great. It's really been great.

Hope you got something good to use.

I did. And then, what, I have another future project to talk to you about.

JOE:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

The new series.

Soon as we have a title for "Cliffhangers," official, I'll let you know. I'm really excited to do it, and one of the producers is the guy who created, produced, directed and wrote "Life Goes On." Remember that series?

Yes.

And the other producer -- that's Michael Braveman -- and the other producer is Douglas Schwartz from -- he produced "Baywatch," produces "Baywatch." So we have an eclectic mix. We have Michael, who's the intellectual, the guy that has a track record of producing shows with real story line stuff, and then we have Douglas Schwartz, who knows how to sell a show and knows what makes people happy all over the world, and also is really, really looking forward to doing this show, because he's the one that found the project and he has kids himself in this program that our show deals with. So he had a personal interest in it. And then, hey, I'm co-executive producer of it too, so I've had some experience in television, and I hope to bring that to the show. If it goes a second year or third year or whatever, I'll then be able to direct some, too. I want the same "heart" that "Dr Quinn" had in what we do, not necessarily trying to push something down your throat, as far as a moral or whatever, but give you something that when you shut off the TV you can sit and discuss or think about, or, you know...and that's why I found myself, after I went to the school and saw these kids, that no matter how big and bad they were, how much money they came or didn't come from, or whatever their crimes were or drugs were or whatever, no matter how tough they looked on the outside, they were still children who just wanted love and direction. They weren't thirty-something and bitter or whatever from life, they were still young enough, that, really, if they just had some love...that's what they were crying out for. And I tried to make mental notes all the time, you know? For the future and for how to deal with my son, to make sure that I'm the best parent I can possibly be.

Right. Who's gonna be your co-stars?

We're still looking for that. We're going to start casting, um -- what ... is this, April? May!  Yep, so with a July 20th start date. They're already sold all over the world. We're first in the paradon (?) which we're selling the show for, and then charging with a head of steam, unless CBS or somebody comes to the table with money up front. We're trying to get a head of steam rolling worldwide before we come to the U.S. And trying to put together a 22-package deal, so we can try to get on a major network, or wherever we can go, "This is what we have to offer." "These are the demographics we appeal to."

That's  the TV business, boy, politics and everything tie 'em down.

Oh yeah? But you know it's just like the presidency. You see more going on in his...what's going on with Clinton, and that kind of stuff, it's like, wait! That's the same thing that WE do, on TV.   It's a spin on the demographics we pull. So, anyway...

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

INTERVIEWER:

My pleasure.

Take care, Wendy. Bye bye.