VANCOUVER SUN, MAY 3, 2004
LYNNE McNAMARA
As a kid, Robert C. Cooper experienced a trauma that may well have influenced his career path. When he was an impressionable seven-year-old in Toronto, Cooper’s dad took him to see Jaws, the screechingly scary shark flick that’s kept so many of us out of the water since 1975.
“I don’t know what possessed him,” laughs Cooper, now 36, who still vividly recalls his terror as we chat on the phone from his office at The Bridge Studios, where he now executive produces and writes for MGM’s sci-fi show Stargate SG-1 and its spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis, which he co-created with fellow executive producer Brad Wright.
“It scared the living hell out of me. For two years I didn’t sleep, I had nightmares — I don’t know why they didn’t take me to a therapist,” he says, obviously still smarting a little.
But the incident may have been a learning experience for the kid, albeit a nasty one.
“Despite the fact that it literally scared the crap out of me, I saw the power of that medium. I wanted to control that power that had possessed me. I didn’t want to scare other kids the way I had been scared, but there was a power there, there was a way to get inside people’s heads, and that was very intoxicating.”
He started out writing serial comics for his sisters to read as bedtime stories, and after graduating from York University’s film school in 1990 and being accepted into the prestigious Osgoode Hall law school, much to his mother’s chagrin he decided to postpone further education and take a shot at screenwriting.
She must have been just thrilled when his first few scripts — Blown Away (starring “the two Coreys,” Feldman and Haim), The Dark and the Club — were produced and went straight to video.
“What impressed people, initially, was that I wasn’t just a guy with one script,” laughs Cooper, who’s penned more than 15 features, including The Impossible Elephant, a family film produced in 2001, and Copy Cat, now in development hell.
As many of us understand only too well, there’s nothing less glamorous than being a writer.
“Certainly in features, you get really mistreated,” admits Cooper. “One of the reasons I decided to commit myself more to television is that in TV the writer really becomes the boss. The pinnacle for the writer in television is executive producer and you eventually work your way up to the point where you’re kind of in charge of how that piece of writing gets realized. The immediacy of television is so great. Writing something one week and seeing it produced the next week and seeing it on the air a month later, that’s quite satisfying,” he admits.
“It’s just so great compared to writing a feature and seeing it optioned for years and floating around to different companies and talked about as being attached to this person or that person and, ultimately, never getting made.”
Cooper has been with Stargate SG-1, now shooting its eighth season, since before the pilot was shot back in 1996.
“I flew myself out to Vancouver and they said, ‘So, what brings you to Vancouver?’ and I said, ‘This interview.'”
They hired him on strength of the outline he wrote for the show’s first episode. He began climbing the ladder from executive story editor immediately, even being promoted mid-season a couple of times. By fifth season, he was executive producer (with Wright).
This year, says Cooper, he and Wright are supervising more than $70 million US in production with the two shows, now shooting simultaneously on three large stages at The Bridge and three in a nearby warehouse.
“And that goes to local Canadian crews, actors, post-production houses and visual effects vendors. There’s a lot of feeling in the Canadian business that we’re (Stargate) the big bad American show, but really we’re a Canadian show. We have an American star (Richard Dean Anderson) but the fact of the matter is that everybody — all the writers, the executive producers, the entire cast, the entire crew, except Richard — are Canadian.” (Ditto for the Atlantis spinoff– with the exception of Joe Flanigan, who has the lead role of Major John Sheppard on the show, which premieres July 16 on Sci Fi channel.)
Stargate, which is also seen and lauded in Germany, Japan, Australia, England and France, premieres its eighth season on the network July 9.
“It’s a phenomenon around the world,” says Cooper of the cable show, “and it’s just starting to catch up in the States, but more and more we’re getting mainstream recognition. (After the cover shot on TV Guide last year, ratings spiked.)
But, ironically, the economics of producing the show are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, due partly to the rising Canadian dollar and actor’s rising fees.
“It’s salaries, it’s all about salaries,” says Cooper. “By the time you get to season eight, you kind of get top heavy, even with the crew, too. So when you start fresh, you start fresh, with everyone. That’s why we created Atlantis. To a certain extent, it has been designed to take over.”
They’re hoping that the core Stargate audience will be able to transfer the passion to Atlantis. To that end, Anderson’s character, Col. Jack O’Neill, appears in the Atlantis pilot and is “wall to wall” in a couple of episodes.
“We’re going to thin it out with him in the middle of the season, and get back to him toward the end,” says Cooper. In spite of it all, Anderson, who’s made it clear he wants to work less and less these days, is doing so, but, says Cooper, “I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but he seems to be having a great time.”
And, as for season nine, who knows?
“Most shows start to peter out towards the end — it’s more of a question, ‘When do we cut this thing off before it becomes embarrassing.'”
SG-1’s move from Showtime to Sci Fi a few seasons ago made the show available to 80 million homes or more and its ratings only get stronger each year, with re-run ratings now as high as first-runs.
“We grew not just in season six but in season seven,” adds Cooper, incredulously. “Our ratings have really kind of anchored their whole network.”
So where will Cooper be this time next year?
“We won’t know until mid-October whether Atlantis is picked up for season two,” he concedes. “We’re very positive and hopeful. The cast is really jelling and there’s a great chemistry there, we feel very good about it, but jeez, you never know.”
“‘We’ll see,’ is what is keep telling my wife (Hillary) and everyone in my family,” which includes daughters Megan, 4, and Emma, 2. “We love Vancouver, we’re very torn. It has really become our home and it’s a beautiful city with all the best elements of Canada, really, but certainly, the one thing that still draws us back east is family.”
Obviously he holds no grudge against his dad about that shark thing. “He certainly lost as much sleep as I did, so he paid,” says Cooper with a laugh.