Highlander
Transcripts:
DVD Extras

COUNTERFEIT
Interviews

(from 2004 "Counterfeit" movie DVD)


Bill Panzer:

We always tried to figure out a way to bring Tessa back. How could we bring Tessa back, 'cause she was so popular. It seemed like an eternity that she had been gone, when it was really only, you know, four months or something like that, but we decided, while she was fresh, we should bring her back. And it's amusing that Adrian's wife, Meilani, played Tessa before her makeover.

[These lines are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Counterfeit, Part 1" interview.]


Alexandra Vandernoot:

I don't know, I think I was quite close to Tessa in the way she-- She was very well-written. I mean, her character was very nice. She was understanding, generous, supportive. And so that was very easy to play. And I wish I was like that. I'm not sure I'm totally like that. But it was very nice to play a character with nice feelings and nice emotions. And so I think there was a big part which was common with Tessa and myself.

[Lines in GREEN are from the 2003 U.S./Canada Season 2 DVD set Adrian/Stan/Alexandra interviews.]


Bill Panzer:

And you know, sometimes the production runs so smoothly, that there's -- you know, there's really nothing really to elaborate on. The flashback looked terrific, and my only contribution was that originally, when Adrian is shooting the rifle out of the present, which is our transition into the past, instead of -- he was originally shooting a boar, and they shot a boar. Now, a French boar is smaller than an American boar. The boar was about this big. [holds his hands less than shoulder-width apart] So I said, "No, no. Let's make it a bear. Let's get a shot of a bear. It's more -- it's the kind of thing that's really a fitting opponent for our hero." But now, what this then spiraled down to, was people who -- every time somebody said 'boar', we had to revoice them saying 'bear'. So if you ever wonder what contribution the Executive Producer makes, that was it.

[These lines are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Counterfeit, Part 1" interview.]


Alexandra Vandernoot:

Well, I think the relationship between Tessa and MacLeod was very deep because very soon he told her about himself. He trusted her. And I think trust is a very good definition of their relationship. She trusted him entirely and he trusted her. And so that was very powerful and very unique in their relationship.

[These lines are from the 2003 U.S./Canada Season 2 DVD set Adrian/Stan/Alexandra interviews.]


Bill Panzer:

There were a couple of interesting things that happened behind the camera. One was when Meilani, playing Lisa, spoke in her own voice, that was fine. And had the plastic surgery which turned her into Tessa, and that was fine. But the question came up about the voice. Was it going to be confusing for people if we used Tessa's voice, since Tessa was playing Tessa, or would we accept the fact that it came from the surgery? And how we handled that became a debate of surprising proportions. At the end, we decided to let Meilani use her own voice for when she's playing Meilani and have Tessa use her voice. It's amazing, though, what we will accept and what we believe is possible with plastic surgery. Something else was that originally in the script, Horton sent Lisa to kill Adrian on the barge. The writing staff, myself, we all thought that was kind of symbolic, and... When Adrian got the draft of the script, he said, "No, I don't think that's powerful enough. I think we should have her try to kill MacLeod at Tessa's grave." And he was right. It made for a much more dramatic scene.

[These lines are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Counterfeit, Part 2" interview.]


Dennis Berry (Director):

I like to work in Highlander because it's like a living of dreams. It's like a surreal mad world. It corresponds exactly to some form of madness in me that I can't express anywhere else. It's exactly what I was saying before. It's-- This world is so small. We're shrinking. It's like you go down the Amazon and somebody says Coca-Cola to you and Highlander's a way out. It's a mad surreal dream that corresponds to everything I would like to live in my own life.

Highlander, I think, brought a lot of us into darker parts of our lives, and in finding ways to explore them and realizing how much I love dark gothic horror, murder, death, angst, all those things that I love so much. It's the dark demons inside us, the dark night inside us. By filming them, I discovered how much I liked them, but also probably exorcised part of that madness in me. Though, of course, now that we're not directing Highlander anymore, I'm a little bit in danger of having my demons come out in different ways, doing more suburban, quieter, nicer, politically correct series. So help, Mr. Bill Panzer. Create Young Highlander series soon so we can go back into our demons and fight them in a fictive world instead of a real one.

One of the favorite aspects of shooting the Highlander was, of course, shooting the flashbacks, which allowed us to travel from the Middle Ages to the forties and all kinds of crazy periods, Mexican Revolutions. We absolutely adored it. The positions were always thought out a little bit like commercial pack shots. That was the most difficult part. We had to really go out of our way and plan it, and we knew it would always take us two hours of a very tight schedule and it was always a very tense moment but very enjoyable.

Basically, I would say that Adrian Paul, who is-- he's the fight director in a way. I mean, he very quickly found his own space. He has a great choreographic sense, not to say that Bob Anderson, the first year, was not wonderful, but everybody picked up on Adrian's talent to have great ideas for fighting. And what happened was, I would find a scenery, I'd have a concept -- for example, the fight takes place in a huge ballroom. He has to jump over this statue, this window breaks, he cuts his throat that way. And then Adrian would come up with his own creative ideas, and between the two of us -- he'd disappear, rehearse a fight that I would not know exactly what it would have become because he had no time to rehearse the fight. And I would show up on set and discover this fight and then think of how to shoot it, which was in a way very exciting because you didn't never know. And the tendency is, Adrian, of course, being very passionate, was to have a big fight, too big for the time we had to shoot it in and too big for the means we had to do it in. So Adrian, Adrian and me, I think we're very complimentary as human beings in creative personalities because he has a great choreographical sense, like a dancer, he will remember steps. If you say, let's have something that goes from this spot to that spot that grows and builds, he will find a way to justify in his movements. He also is very, very logical and I am totally a little bit of a mad visionary and I don't always know exactly how to achieve what I want, but I think it should be in this direction. And together we work something out. No, it's true, we worked very, very well together and I, very often when I go and work on other sets, I miss Adrian. Adrian translates very well things I want. Often I explain what I want and people don't understand it as well as he does, he immediately picks up on it. And we were great allies and I think we were, you know, we became friends, too.

Ken Gord, we got along very well. We didn't start off the best possible way because I was not used to the Canadian ways of working and I don't know if he was used to the European ways of working. And I walked into the Costume Department and thought I was in total control of everything and canceled costumes he had just ordered, so he was a little bit upset at me. But once we started to talk to each other, we developed a very interesting relationship. And we got along great, and also he was very supportive. And Ken's the kind of guy who knows when you're in trouble. In other terms, he'd walk in and says, "Dennis, I know you're in love with this, but you're very, very late. Don't forget you have to do the Quickening in three hours." And he would say it at the right moment at the right time to get me back on track. I would say that between Ken and Adrian, I was kept wonderfully on track.

I feel that if you know in advance what you're going to do, what often happens is by the time you show up, you have the impression you already did it and you're bored with it. And the other thing I believe is that, and everybody's different, of course, because I respect very much people who have to plan everything out of time. Some of the greatest directors in the world have done that, you know, such as Hitchcock and Brian de Palma today and the storyboards of {??} are wonderful. And I do use storyboards sometimes for action pieces or a choreographed battle because it helps, when we have time. What happens really is, I don't know what I'm going to do until I see what the actors give me. I love to give actors creative space. When they invent things and they come up with things -- and God knows Adrian does, but the other actors too, Elizabeth also and all of them, they have things in their heads and we find them on the set on the spot. And then you can film them. If you plan ahead of time, they become a prisoner of what you've planned. On the other hand, you know, when you plan a Quickening or you plan how a fire is going to burn up behind an actor, you have to know a little bit ahead of time what you're going to do. So I'm organic, but at the same time I can be very organized and I have done some, you know, really very beautifully designed Quickenings because they were very well planned. But I love to be as free as possible as creative as possible on the spot. The other thing I believe is that we're doing these like little B movies, we're not doing in like TV films. There's not a given code where we have to cut here, cut back there, go over the shoulder. It's less codified and conventional as your normal TV series. It's more of a little creative piece done with style by each director, each time he shows up. So that what happens is you have to try every day to find the best way possible to translate a little ribbon of dream I would call it. I come in the morning and what I try to do is a very beautiful shot, very well designed, a little bit like a shot you would do in a feature. And then I see that I have less time, so I catch up a little bit and I try to end my sequence with a beautiful shot. So between those two design shots, I improvise basically.

I mean, I believe Highlander the films and the film are totally surreal and I used to walk around when we do films before I even knew there was going to be a series of Highlander, saying to people, you know, it's really too bad where we're just, you know, Highlander people travel through time, they have sword fights in parking lots and then suddenly in the 12th century. I find it a little bit too bad that we're just stuck here with a realistic cop and a little investigation in the real world. I love traveling through time and I love that the reality of Highlander is like a dream structure which I think is a real reality. I think that it allows you to show what goes on inside the head as well as the external aspect of the world. And what I think is wonderful about Highlander is we try to do, at least I try to do, but I believe everybody else did, create a little bit a world of our own in today's world also, which is why I always say it's a little bubble suspended from daily life reality, a little world that is also a bit of a dream world. And I do think that it's extraordinary the way we found costumes, wigs, sets like samurai, you take a set, we built a set with four walls, suddenly we're in Japan, we have tea rituals and then you have these incredible makeup and you have these incredible hairdos and you're in a totally different world. And it also is what I would say, the fun of directing, it's the fun, it's the tradition of what makes you dream of doing great films. And Highlander offers you that, it offers you a chance of getting in touch with that. And it offers you also an opportunity to play with it so that you learn and grow with it.

What I would like to say about Highlander is that I think it should go on. In other terms, I miss it, I keep wanting to shoot more, it became part of my life, it became a way to escape what I call the bog-down reality of day-to-day pedestrian-boring bureaucratical life. And what I want is more dreams, more madness, more Highlander, more Quickenings. And in that sense, my last words are I would like us to do one huge big collective Quickening that would be the ultimate Quickening of all times. I think we all miss Highlander now that we're not doing it. And maybe we'll come back in a new form. I think it should. I think people out there want it too.

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