Smallville (9/22) The WB Wednesdays at 8PM

There is no cooler feeling than picking up your phone and hearing "Hi, it’s John Schneider." Man, he’s Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard! But of course, Mr. Schneider has no desire to rest on the laurels of his famous southern good ol’ boy. Now, he is playing a very well known Midwestern man, Jonathan Kent, the father to Clark Kent on the hit WB show, Smallville.

UGO: What was the last thing you shot for Smallville?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Last thing we shot was me having a father-son chat with young Clark about how, since he is now a senior in high school, he’s probably going to be making a lot more of his own decisions, but if he wants to be seen as an adult in this family, then he is going to have to start acting like one. It’s with regard to him running off and doing something without discussing it. I love the way they write Jonathan [Kent] because he says that adults in his family discuss things before they run off and do them, which I think is a very important point. We then wind up throwing a football. For a superhero show, it’s an amazingly well grounded parent-child piece.

UGO: A lot of people over the years have called Superman a Christ figure. So your character has the responsibility of raising the person that is going to do the most good in the world.

JOHN: Exactly; it’s really a position of honor for me. Since we know how Clark Kent is going to turn out, the onus is on the parents to raise him to be that. The assumption is that he must have had some pretty good parents. So, rather than have mom and dad be the idiots in the house as they are on many TV shows, we are quite the opposite. I think that’s actually helpful to the people who watch the show in raising their own kids, because they watch how important Clark’s parents’ input is into his life.

UGO: Is it difficult to put responsibility into Jonathan Kent so the audience can see it?

JOHN: I have four kids, so it’s not very difficult. There is an authority that was dealt to me by the people I work with. Not that my parents didn’t have authority, but when I first got into television with The Dukes of Hazzard, I had Jimmy Best [Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane], Denver Pyle [Uncle Jesse Duke] and many older gentlemen who would never pussyfoot around an issue. So, I was kind of raised on that, and that’s what I think I bring to Jonathan Kent pretty naturally.

UGO: Could Jonathan Kent be Bo Duke all grown up?

JOHN: I don’t think so. I think that Bo Duke would have never lost his impetuous jump-first-and-think-later nature. I think Jonathan Kent is more like Luke Duke grown up. I don’t think Bo lived that long.

UGO: Not with all those jumps.

JOHN: Right. Bo probably got into a fight somewhere with the wrong person and taken out in an alley somewhere but loved every stinking minute of it.

UGO: How is working with Smallville creators Alfred [Gough] and Miles [Millar]?

JOHN: It’s so great. If I didn’t appreciate them enough by reading the Smallville scripts, then I sure did when I saw Spider-Man 2. I thought that movie had everything in it. I didn’t see it with them, but I emailed Al on my Blackberry as I was watching it. I respect their work very much.

UGO: Were you ever a comic book fan?

JOHN: I was a baseball card fan, but I had my comic books back in the ’60s. I was a big Captain America fan, and a fan of the Superman TV show. Jimmy Olsen and the bunch were a stopping point on my three-channel dial.

UGO: When I was younger, I was a big fan of the movie The Farm you did with Wil Wheaton.

JOHN: Wow, you are the first person to ever mention that movie to me!

UGO: It scared the hell out of me.

JOHN: That was David Keith’s first directorial venture, and I thought he did a good job.

UGO: That line you’re screaming at the end, "Don’t drink the water!" freaked me out.

JOHN: The water, the water! Then, I threw the television out the window. H.P. Lovecraft wrote the original story for that one. I like David, and he still owes me one for that.

UGO: I read that you want to produce a screenplay you wrote called What’s Your Hurry?

JOHN: Yes, What’s Your Hurry? would be for Drew Carey. It’s not something I couldn’t do, but I don’t think people could see me in it. It’s very much an Albert Brooks type of film. My main goal these days, though, is to get another TV series on the air through my production company to build a certain credibility factor for when Smallville goes away, which I feel could be three or four years away.

UGO: How did you and Drew Carey hook up?

JOHN: Well, we’re both on the WB Network, but he probably doesn’t know about it. It’s the perfect thing for him, though. I’ll pitch it with him in mind, and there is no reason for them to say no to the notion of him and me working together.

UGO: I read that you just drove a General Lee car for charity.

JOHN: I drive my General Lee for charity all the time. It’s a great live auction item, to be able to hop in the General Lee and go get a cup of coffee over a twisty mountain road with John Schneider. It brings in anywhere from $1500 to $5000 a ride. It’s so much fun. What I wouldn’t pay to go for a ride in a black Trans Am with Burt Reynolds.

UGO: Or a green Mustang ride with Steve McQueen. What did you think of the Starsky & Hutch movie?

JOHN: I thought it was good, but I didn’t quite understand why they decided to make it a comedy. I don’t think it was Starsky & Hutch. I laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. I think it was a good movie, but I don’t think it did any service to the source material, even though they had David [Soul] and Paul [Michael Glaser] in there. That was far better than what they did with that tiny little cameo they gave Lou Ferrigno in the Hulk movie. That was an insult.

UGO: Does that give you trepidation about what they will do with The Dukes of Hazzard movie?

JOHN: It’s been three years since I started answering questions about the pending Dukes of Hazzard movie. I just read the latest draft of it; it’s good, and it’s very reminiscent of the show. That says to me that the people involved with it are fans of the show and want to do the show they remember, and not do some new fart gag movie for 2005.

UGO: What do you think of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke?

JOHN: She’s funny, but it’s not about funny. I think that Daisy still needs to be found. If I were doing the movie, I would do a global search for Daisy Duke and treat that character like Scarlett O’Hara. There was no one more beautiful than Catherine Bach, and she didn’t seem to realize it, which made her even more beautiful.

UGO: Is Tom Welling going to play Superman in the upcoming theatrical movie?

JOHN: [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t think he would have time. That would be a mistake for Tom because it’s too close to what he’s doing. He’s already incredibly known as Clark Kent, but he’s not known as Superman. I think it would be a disservice to him because it would further embed him into an existing icon, and it would end Smallville. It would show you the end from where we are now, and if it didn’t jibe, it would be a disaster. I don’t think Jim Caviezel should do it, either. I think he is hands-down the finest young actor we have, and I’ve thought that when I saw Frequency. For me, Jim can make any character real, and he shouldn’t do a comic book character.

UGO: What superpower would you want to have?

JOHN: I would like to be able to fly.