IvanTheTerrible wrote:I like this Don Bellisario interview where talks about how he wrote MAGNUM based on a 1950s Hawaii travelogue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BahdCx8KmFs and then was surprised when he got to Hawaii how overdeveloped it was. Hotels, condos, busy highways, etc. He said he wanted his show to feel like pre-WWII Hawaii, he wanted a pristine Hawaii. He wanted it to have a Tahiti look. He wanted to see palm trees, empty beaches, the ocean, small sugar cane roads. No hotels or condos or busy highways with traffic lights and light poles.
Of course we did see hotels and condos many times on the show (especially when shot in and around Honolulu) but on the whole I did notice that they mostly tried to stay away from Honolulu and shoot more around Waimanalo and on the windward side of the island. Sometimes North Shore too.
Excellent points! I had similar thoughts after watching that video clip. I believe that the feel of "old Hawaii" Bellisario successfully created is a much bigger part of the show's appeal than most people realize, even though it wasn't at all realistic in the 80's. As I think about it more, I recall many forum posts over the years that mentioned how much Hawaii has changed since the show was filmed, when in reality Hawaii hasn't been so for much, much longer than that. We're seemingly nostalgic for a 1980's Hawaii that never was.
That's very true. HAWAII FIVE-O, probably my all-time favorite show, predated MPI by more than a decade (12 years in fact) and you could tell it was already pretty urbanized and developed even then. In fact you saw more of the urban development on FIVE-O than on MPI because FIVE-O producer Leonard Freeman didn't set out to present a pristine "old Hawaii" the way Bellisario set out to do with MPI. Freeman's main goal was to juxtapose the gritty crime element usually found on the mainland against the background of the Pacific tropical paradise of Hawaii. While we did have beautiful vistas on FIVE-O and many out-of-the-way places on the island (nicely restored on the DVDs to boot) they never shied away from filming in and around Honolulu and especially the seedier places in Chinatown. And of course the Iolani Palace (the team's headquarters) was smack-dab in downtown Honolulu, with the State Capitol Building (governor's office) right behind it. So FIVE-O definitely showed more of the urban setting than MPI did. Different shows. The FIVE-O team were round-the-clock cops on the job whose personal lives we didn't delve into, so we mostly saw them in their office setting or hitting the streets to crack the case. With MPI it was all about their personal lives and we saw where they lived and hung out and let loose and what they did in their free time. So of course what does one do in their free time in Hawaii if not surf ski or swim or jog on the beach or just lounge around the estate under a palm tree? Hitting downtown Honolulu is probably not high on the list. I know personally I like to get away from civilization when I'm on O'ahu and the windward side is my favorite side!
Hitting downtown Honolulu is probably not high on the list. I know personally I like to get away from civilization when I'm on O'ahu and the windward side is my favorite side!