Transcript
High Point Enterprise, Sat. Mar. 17 1976
Irwin Allen-Flamboyant Producer Doesn't Think Small
Irwin Allen is a flamboyant showman, always available to the press, always agreeable about publicity for his projects; always fready to toot his own horn and always charming.
The man who produced two extraordinarily successful film projects, "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure," has another TV project, "The Time Travelers." Of course, it's a pilot. It's slwo second cousin to an earlier Irwin Allen series, "Time Tunnel," a fact he readily admits.
"It's the third best thing I've ever done," he
says, "after only 'The Towering Inferno' and 'The Poseidon Adventure'. We
burn the city of
Allen's formula whether for TV or feature films is to introduce the characters and premise and then, within 15 minutes, get to the heart of the action.
Allen had 282 dress exgtras on call for "Time Travelers" and he burned the "Hello Dolly" street for the big fire scene. "It took us five nights to film that scene," he says proudly.
A man who doesn't know how to think small, Allen says the idea of the series would be for the heroes always to go back in time because of a need stemming from today. They would always go back to a time and place where a major disaster is about to take place. So it's double-barreled escitement and suspense.
A recent listing by Variety of the top 15 motion picture money-makers had Allen as the only man on the list with two pictures to his credit (Inferno and Posedion).
Additionally, he has recently negotiated a $100 million deal with Warner Brothers to turn out 10 films. The first, in preproductrion and budgeted at $17 million is "The Day the World Ended" and it contains a volcanic eruption followed by earthquakes and tidal waves.
Why, with that kind of a deal, is Allen stil interested in TV?
"It offers something for my circulation that motion pictures don't offer. It's all those marvelous insane pressures. In TV, every three and a half minutes there is a violent, building-falling-down crisis. They exist in motion pictures too, but at a much slower pace. I also find that things I learn in TV can be applied to motion pictures and things I learn in mortion pictures can be applied to TV.