TV series was the 'school of cool' for millions of fans in the '70s

By David Germain
The Associated Press

	ABC ARCHIVES The original Starsky and Hutch, David Soul, left, and Paul Michael Glaser. "There was some kind of inherent coolness in the way they work that I don't think we quite have," says Owen Wilson who plays Hutch in a new movie.
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This is the story of how the bumbling comic duo of Stiller and Wilson came to stand in for the hip and able grandpappies of buddy cops in "Starsky & Hutch," the big-screen version of the 1970s TV series.

Real-life pals Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have teamed up on half a dozen movies, "Meet the Parents," "Zoolander" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" among them. "Starsky & Hutch" trots out the on-screen personalities each actor has cultivated: Stiller the tightly wound fanatic, Wilson the laid-back bad boy.

When the TV show premiered in 1975, curly-haired brunet Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and blond Hutch (David Soul) already were amigos, a team whose strengths and weaknesses nicely complemented each other.

Set in the '70s, the movie version goes back to the beginning to show how Starsky and Hutch first partnered up.

"We just kind of did it almost as if this was the original pilot of 'Starsky & Hutch,' and then they ended up firing us and hiring Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul," Stiller said in an interview alongside Wilson. "Two cooler guys. That was sort of the idea behind the tone of it."

The series had comic undertones but essentially was a straight-ahead police show. The movie aims for laughs, putting Starsky and Hutch through action-comedy paces as they are reluctantly hitched by their captain and set out to pursue a drug dealer (Vince Vaughn).

Snoop Dogg plays the flashy underworld snitch Huggy Bear. And of course, the movie co-stars the coolest-of-cool cop cars: Starsky's red Gran Torino with the white stripe. The car becomes the centerpiece of some key sight gags, and Starsky and Hutch come across more like Curly and Moe as they blunder through some less-than-stellar police work.

"Some of the comedy maybe in our movie came from the fact that in those guys (Glaser and Soul's Starsky and Hutch), there was some kind of inherent coolness in the way they work that I don't think we quite have," Wilson said. "Ben and I try, but in trying to kind of match that, maybe we fall a little short, and that's where some of the humor comes from."

Stiller and Wilson are among millions of men who got early lessons in the school of cool from watching "Starsky & Hutch."

"I can't walk the streets of London without some guy in his mid-to-late 30s coming up to me and saying, 'You're the man,' " said Soul, who lives in England.
 
"They were multidimensional characters, and also, this was the advent of the buddy show. The two friends who did things together in all aspects of their lives, not just work," Glaser said.

The movie includes several nods to the original actors, including Wilson crooning "Don't Give Up On Us," Soul's 1970s pop hit. Glaser and Soul turn up briefly in their Starsky and Hutch personas, hesitantly passing the baton to Stiller and Wilson.

Soul and Glaser have kind words for Stiller and Wilson, though they speak with frank bemusement about the liberties the movie takes with their original characters.

"The movie was being made the way they wanted to make it. I just felt, OK, good luck to them," Glaser said. "It's a compliment to us they wanted us there in whatever capacity to give a wink to our own audience and say, 'We're still here, folks.' "

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