SWU history professor Dr. Michael P. Keaton taught American Cultural History this spring semester, but he was doing more than studying and teaching “the events, trends, and fads that influenced American popular culture from 1900 to the present.” He was participating in that culture by publishing his movie script, Hogan’s Heroes: The Final Mission. Keaton regretted that the original series gave fans, in his words, “no closure…no final adventure…no seeing the end of the war…no finding out what happened to the characters.”

In the following conversation, Dr. Keaton discusses the screenplay he’s written to give fellow Hogan’s Heroes devotees the closure he wanted himself, the show’s legacy, how he enlisted his family to help him complete the project, and why his script portrays the show’s apparent antagonists in a surprising way.

Jonathan Sircy: For the uninitiated, what was Hogan’s Heroes, and why do people still care about it?

Dr. Keaton: Hogan’s Heroes was a 30-minute situation comedy that ran from 1965 To 1971. Set in a German Luftwaffe prisoner-of-war camp, the show followed the adventures of a group of Allied POWs as they outwitted their German captors. Operating as a saboteur unit, the prisoners could exit the camp at will and often did so to accomplish various missions. It was a goofy comedy that bordered on the slapstick.

JS: You obviously care about the show. Compare your affection for the show with other TV programs you like. Where does the show rank in your personal pantheon?

Dr. Keaton: As a young kid in the 1970s, afternoon TV was filled with reruns of various shows from the 1950s and 1960s. I watched shows like I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch, The Andy Griffith Show, and, of course, Gilligan’s Island. Hogan’s Heroes did not air in the afternoons (or at least I do not remember it), but when I was around ten years old, a local station began airing it at 10pm every weeknight. My Dad and I would watch it together, and my snack was something that I still eat to this day: a cup of Rice Chex (with no milk – I eat it like popcorn). So, Hogan’s Heroes hold a special place in my heart because it was a show we both enjoyed. Like most adults, Dad and Mom never liked the other “goofy” comedies. I also suppose that the World War II setting held some attraction for me – as that period ended up being one of my favorite historical periods as an adult. If you just randomly asked me about my favorite shows as a kid, Hogan’s Heroes would be in the top ten, but shows from the 1980s would populate most of that list – The A-Team, Magnum, P.I., Remington Steele, Chips, Hunter, etc.

My Dad and I would watch it together, and my snack was something that I still eat to this day: a cup of Rice Chex (with no milk – I eat it like popcorn). So, Hogan’s Heroes hold a special place in my heart because it was a show we both enjoyed.

Dr. Michael P. Keaton

JS: How long has this project been in the works? This script says it’s the seventh draft. What changed between the first and seventh drafts? What was the hardest thing about writing the script?

When my oldest daughter turned 12, one of the satellite channels was showing a marathon of all the Hogan’s Heroes episodes. I recorded them all, and over the course of two or three months, we watched every episode. This was around 2014, and after the last episode, I realized that there was no finale. The show apparently filmed multiple episodes and had them ready to go, and since there was no overarching story (except for World War II in general), it did not matter what order they aired the episodes. When the show was cancelled, they simply aired the last few episodes that were ready, so the final episode is a normal one; it could have appeared at any point in the season. So, in 2014 I began thinking about an ending for the series. I often think about certain things on my commute to and from work, and for several weeks, I plotted the movie in my head. I ended up with a rough mental outline of the main pivot points and an overall plot. And then I did nothing with it for seven years.

My younger daughter turned 12 during the pandemic, and Hogan’s Heroes was available on one of the streaming channels. So, over the course of two or three months, we watched the entire series together, finishing in December of 2020. My wife also bought me Robert Clary’s autobiography for Christmas (Clary played Louis LeBeau on the show, and in real life, he was a French Jew who spent time in Nazi concentration camps). Once again, the show’s lack of a finale came to mind, and I remembered my rough outline from years before.

At the beginning of 2021, two weeks into the spring semester, my youngest daughter caught Covid (she was fine). This was before the widespread availability of the vaccines, and according to my university’s guidelines, I had to teach from home for the extent of her infectious period plus an additional ten days. I had all my material ready to transfer to online due to the previous year, so it was not a burden – but it was boring. My wife and I tested every three days for the next 12 days — until she tested positive (she was fine, and I never caught it). But that meant I had to keep teaching from home for the rest of my wife’s infectious period plus ten days. I was out for a total of one month, from January 25^th to February 25^th. Once my wife tested positive, and I knew I was looking at another 17 days at home, I realized I needed a project. So I decided to write a movie script for a Hogan’s Heroes finale. I wrote a very rough draft on paper (no formatting, basic action descriptions, and rough dialogue). Then, using the free version of the Trelby screenplay software, I wrote a version 2 in about ten days. I would not look at it for a day, then revise, then take a day off, then revise, etc. I finished version 5 before my quarantine was up, but returning to the rhythm of in-person school took up the next couple of weeks. I then asked/forced my family to do a “table read,” and I made a couple of substantial revisions to two scenes – resulting in version 6. I then promptly forgot about it for close to a year.

During the Easter break of 2022, I was expecting some feedback on a project for school, and my plan was to work on that project during the weekend. There was a mix-up during the week, and I did not receive the feedback, so I had nothing to do that Saturday. Something reminded me of the screenplay, so I did another proofing and found several typos – resulting in version 7. I then decided to make a free web page and publish the screenplay. Since I do not own the characters, it is technically a work of fan fiction. Rather than have it sit in a box in my basement, I thought there might be a few other Hogan’s Heroes fans who might want closure.

There was nothing particularly “hard” about writing the screenplay. A friend and I tried our hand at screenplay writing for a few years after college, and although Disney looked at one of our screenplays, they eventually passed. I strayed away from the screenplay scene, but my friend, Grant Skellenger, eventually wrote and directed a movie (More Than Diamonds).[1] I was familiar with screenplay formatting and the general “rules” of the game, and I had the rough plot and major points of the story, so one challenging part was making sure the continuity lined up throughout the film – the time of day, the overall period of time, making sure certain things were mentioned early so they could be brought out later – those types of things can hide everywhere, and they are difficult to root out. The biggest problem was what to do with Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz.

JS: You’ve written a final mission to give the show’s characters some closure. We got an “I see nothing!” from Schultz and references to cooking from Le Beau. What are some other calling cards from the show you felt compelled to include? You also include things I don’t remember appearing in the original show: overt references to the Holocaust and an appearance by Hitler. How did you decide what to alter about the original?

Dr. Keaton: When I first wrote the script, it had been only three weeks since I finished watching the entire series, so many of the reoccurring jokes were fresh in my mind. The obvious ones are easy to spot, but I also looked up some trivia and incorporated things like names and places from random episodes into the script.

For the finale, I needed to take them outside of their normal operating parameters. Therefore, the tone is different. I could not write it just like the show; it needed to be a little more realistic while still keeping the lighter fare of the original. And I’m still not sure if I succeeded. For years I joked that Hogan’s Heroes was the only situation comedy in history where the cast regularly killed people. Of course, for the show, the violence was all off-camera, and the method was normally explosives. But in the screenplay, we see what is now standard movie violence on-camera (nothing too gory, of course, or it would destroy the tone). But we need to see them actually fight the war. The appearance of Hitler (or Carter pretending to be Hitler) is a callback from one of the episodes, and the Holocaust appears because it is part of that period. I tried to stay as close to the original tone as possible while knowing that it would obviously be different. Achieving a balance of humor and reality was my goal; fans who read it will be the judge of whether or not I succeeded.

JS: You portray Klink and Schultz generously. Why? 

Dr. Keaton: Klink and Schultz were the main problems. General Burkhalter, Major Hochstetter, and the new German characters were not an issue because they were all-in Nazis. They knew the truth of what was happening, and thus they were the bad guys. But Klink and Schultz presented a problem. How do their stories resolve within the context of the Nazis and their atrocities? Schultz was the easier of the two problems since he was obviously not a believer in the Nazi cause and actually assisted Hogan and his men (through inaction more than through action – although he did actively help on occasion). So Schultz represented those Germans who were caught up in the Nazi’s plans and didn’t have a way out once their hold on power was complete. They went along with events, not opposing them out of fear but not necessarily supporting them either.

Klink and Schultz were the main problems.

Dr. Michael P. Keaton

Naturally, Schultz comes to a point where he must make a decision of “who’s side am I on?”. Of course, there are German underground agents who appear in the script, and they represent the Germans who actively resisted the Nazis. Klink was the real problem. In the show, he is more of a social climber than a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi; he doesn’t want to fight; he’s an aristocrat without aristocratic money; he’s more interested in frauleins than the war; and on more than one occasion, he works against the German government in order to further one of his own schemes. He seems to know, or at the very least suspect, what is really going on. But he willfully ignores it and attempts to use the system to further his own goals. What do I do with him? In the end, it is difficult to believe that Klink, for all his faults, is actually Nazi-level evil. So in the script, he is confronted with the reality of the Nazi atrocities and is then forced to make a decision. Saying any more would be a spoiler.

JS: What’s a moment in the script you’re particularly proud of, and why?

Dr. Keaton: I enjoy the moment near the beginning when Hogan first puts on his iconic cap. And I enjoy the mid-credits scene (so be sure and stay through the credits).

JS: Rumor has it you had your family do a table read of the script. What jokes got the biggest laughs, and, in general, what did you learn from hearing your dialogue read out loud?

Dr. Keaton: At the family “table read,” I read almost all the minor characters since I needed to hear the dialogue of the main characters. I split up the other characters with my wife and oldest daughter taking most of the main characters and my youngest daughter taking one major character plus the mid-level characters. I did make some adjustments to the dialogue after hearing it out loud, but the two biggest changes came from their critique of a couple of scenes that involve Klink’s story arc. My wife is not well-versed in Hogans Heroes, but both girls are, so they caught a number of the main jokes as well as a few of the inside/trivia jokes.

I ultimately wrote the screenplay because I needed closure…I needed to know how it ended. So truthfully, I wrote it for myself.

Dr. Michael P. Keaton

JS: You’re a historian. What’s the historical value of a show like Hogan’s Heroes? 

Dr. Keaton: As a historian, I’m not sure the show holds any major cultural significance. It was one of many sitcoms of the era that reflected the same general tone. Its setup was incredibly unique – unique to the point that one wonders who was brave enough to suggest the show in the first place, as well as how the show was greenlighted. That must have been an interesting conversation. In the larger scheme of things, I believe the show may have kept some details of World War II alive. We often hear of the Nazi concentration camps, but the prisoner-of-war camps, while not as brutal, were still home to a large number of Allied prisoners. It also made fun of the Nazis, and it can be argued that amidst the evil perpetrated by the Nazis, the ability to make them look silly was a necessary part of the process of moving on – and it is interesting to note that the show debuted a full 20 years after the end of the war. It was actually rebroadcast in Germany beginning in the 1990s (50 years after the end of the war) as A Cage Full of Heroes, where it became popular with the younger generation of Germans. In the end, the show will most likely become a footnote in the story of television, but it made a lot of people laugh for many years. Unless, of course, the people who own Hogan’s Heroes make a good decision and purchase the story rights from me and make this into a movie, in which case Hogan’s Heroes could become the next big action movie series.

[The show] also made fun of the Nazis, and it can be argued that amidst the evil perpetrated by the Nazis, the ability to make them look silly was a necessary part of the process of moving on

Dr. Michael P. Keaton

JS: What other creative ventures do you have in the works?

Dr. Keaton: There is nothing on the radar. My science fiction novel, All Hail the Emperor, is now 22 years old, and I’ve had the basic plotline for the sequel in my head for the last 20 years. But writing a novel is several levels of difficulty above writing a screenplay. There never seemed to be time, and if I start it, I will feel compelled to finish it. So that may need to wait until retirement.

As for Hogan’s Heroes, I ultimately wrote the screenplay because I needed closure…I needed to know how it ended. So truthfully, I wrote it for myself.

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[1] In More Than Diamonds, there is a character named “Uncle Mike” – who was named after me. In the screenplay, the trainyard where Hogan and his men attack the Germans is “Skellenger Trainyard,” and one of the other non-major prisoners is named “Grant.”