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Storytime with James Caan
''Most people would talk to Jimmy Caan about The Godfather and Brando,'' Thompson says, ''but one of my favorite movies was El Dorado, which he was in with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. He would tell this great story about how the director [Howard Hawks] would be standing a block and a half away and say, 'What I want you to do is go down there and do this,' and then The Duke would grab a hold of Jimmy and go, 'Now listen here, kid. When you get down there, this is what I want you to do,' and tell him something completely different. So Jimmy'd do what The Duke said, and the director would go, 'Cut! Cut! Cut! What the hell are you doin', kid?' And he'd be like, 'Well, uh....' And then the director would be like, 'This is what I want you to do.' So he'd head back up the street and The Duke would pull him aside: 'All right, listen here, kid.' He kept changing it on him, just screwing with him.''
Landing Tom Selleck
When it came time to replace James Caan this season, Thompson could only think of one man — Tom Selleck — but he never thought Selleck would do it. ''It's one icon replacing another icon in the fifth season of a show. There was no part written. Just a guy, me, going, 'Let's do this. You want to come and play.' That's gotta be a scary thing,'' he says. ''I guess we floated it [to his people], because one day my assistant says, 'Tom Selleck is on the phone for you.' I'm like, 'What?' He says, 'Hello, Gary. This is Tom Selleck.' 'Um, Hi.' 'I'd love to come in and sit down and chat with you about this part.' 'Okay...when?' 'How about this afternoon?' So Tom came in and we sat down for about two and a half hours that first day — and then for two or three hours the next five or six days. I was going a different route with the new owner and scrapped that completely.''
The surreal life
Yes, Duhamel met his fiancée, Fergie, when the Black Eyed Peas stopped by the Montecito for a 2004 episode. (Thompson says it was like watching two teens — they were so nervous.) But surprisingly, it's not his favorite guest-star tale. That would be the impromptu, hour-long concert Little Richard gave in the first season. ''We broke for lunch, and he just sort of wandered over to the piano and started playing. The entire cast and crew turned around. No one went to lunch. People were dancing and singing along. We're like, Little Richard is giving us a concert during lunch?'' Also mind-blowing, Thompson notes, were the moments he realized that he had TV's Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) directing Sonny Corleone (Caan) and Rocky Balboa (guest star Sylvester Stallone), and Revenge of the Nerds' Poindexter (Timothy Busfield) directing Sonny Corleone and Easy Rider's Billy the Kid (guest star Dennis Hopper).
The fans' continued support
''They're really the reason we're still on the air,'' Thompson says. ''Because God knows, we don't get any promos.''
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