Starsky & Hutch (film) Starsky & Hutch (film) Starsky & Hutch is a 2004 American crime-action buddy cop comedy film directed by Todd Phillips. The film stars Ben Stiller as David Starsky and Owen Wilson as Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson and is a film adaptation of the original television series of the same name from the 1970s. Two streetwise undercover cops in the fictional city of Bay City, California in the 1970s, bust drug criminals with the help of underworld boss, Huggy Bear. The film functions as a sort of prequel to the TV series, as it portrays when Starsky was first partnered with Hutchinson.
Starsky & Hutch William Blinn first used the name Huggy Bear on-screen for a character, also a confidential informant, in an episode penned by Blinn for the TV series "The Rookies", during the 1973 second season, "Prayers Unanswered Prayers Unheard", there played by actor Johnny Brown. In contrast to police characters on U.S. TV in prior years, Starsky and Hutch were open with physical gestures of friendly/brotherly affection toward one another, often declaring that they trusted only each other (in an "us against the world"–type sense). While likely "normal" by the social standards of 1990s-and-later America, such body language conflicted with 1970s norms