Highlander
Transcripts:
DVD Extras

UNHOLY ALLIANCE
Interviews

(from 2004 "Unholy Alliance" movie DVD)


David Abramowitz:

I thought that Roland Gift, from the Fine Young Cannibals always brought something to the camera with his presence. "Unholy Alliance" brought back to us the character of Xavier St. Cloud, with one hand, which is interesting because it posed a number of questions for us as to whether a hand regenerates. And we had decided that it didn't, even for Immortals -- that they could heal, but they couldn't regenerate and grow appendages. So, you know, when you do a show like this, what you do is you make up a lot of it as you go along. The fans used to ask, you know, "Do you know all the rules from the beginning?" and it's just like in life -- you don't know any of the rules. You make them up as you go along, and you try your best to be consistent and -- so that no one turns around and says, "Wait a minute, um, you're cheating," because that's one thing we didn't want to do. We didn't want to ever cheat. Um, I also thought the actress who played Delaney-- The girl was quite good. She was funny and sexy and had a character of her own that popped on the screen.

"Unholy Alliance" created tension between Joe Dawson and Mac, which was a very good thing, so that Joe just wasn't a side-kick, wasn't a helper. That he had his own agenda, his own view of the world, and it really solidified, in some ways, what the perspective of the Watchers were.

[Lines in FUCHSIA are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Unholy Alliance, Part 1" interview.]


Bill Panzer:

Every once in a while, you realize that France is a little different from America. We're doing the shoot-out in this scene, and somehow crowd control got out of control, and there's our guys running around shooting, you know, shooting caps and making a lot of noise, and falling down dead, and there are, like, civilians wandering through the shot. We weren't asked back.

[Lines in SIENNA are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Unholy Alliance, Part 2" interview.]


David Abramowitz:

Xavier St. Cloud was such a bad guy that MacLeod would gladly follow him to Hell to kill him, especially after he knew that he was tied in to Horton, who was responsible for the death of Darius, his really good friend and mentor. "Unholy Alliance" -- it had huge production values. We actually used a helicopter and we had great battles. But it also posed a couple of questions that bent canon. One was there was a scene where Horton attacks MacLeod and they used weapons and guns and then Xavier would come in and chop off MacLeod's head and end it once and for all. It was interesting because this was the first time that the fighting wasn't just one-on-one. And we needed a justification so that our fans wouldn't go out and scream, "You're breaking the rules!" And we decided, Horton wasn't an Immortal. It wasn't two-on-one. So that Xavier St. Cloud was just using what was there for the benefit of his own battle. The rules bent a little bit, but it got us a great dramatic moment. And truthfully, the writers sat around the room for hours talking about 'could we do this, could we not do this', and finally we decided to go for it.

[Lines in FUCHSIA are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Unholy Alliance, Part 1" interview.]

[Lines in SIENNA are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Unholy Alliance, Part 2" interview.]


David Abramowitz:

And as this was a French and Canadian co-production, we had to bring in a couple of French characters, and we brought in wine-loving, fun-loving Maurice, which we took a lot of heat from, from the French, mostly because they weren't so crazy about having a wine-loving, fun-loving character, and I guess they thought their -- the character that we'd brought in would have a lot more philosophical and intellectual questions to ask, rather than things like, um, 'I wonder what we're doing for dinner tonight.'

Maurice was a bit of a slob, somewhat of a user, funny. And I thought it was performed quite well.

[Lines in SIENNA are from the 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set "Unholy Alliance, Part 2" interview.]


Bill Panzer:

Shooting in Paris, being as difficult as it is, when you throw in some bad weather and some bad luck, it can get a little hairy. During these rains that were flooding the river, we're trying to shoot a scene -- we can't shoot it because it's raining, and you're not allowed to go where we need to go, so we just sort of move a couple of streets away and start to shoot. We don't have the right permit, the police come, the production manager goes to jail. So the pluses of Paris are fabulous, but every once in a while... they're French.

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


Peter Ellis (Director):

I'm Peter Ellis. I've always wanted to direct. I mean, I'm one of those lucky people who, I think at the age of fifteen, I really knew that that was what I wanted to do. And so at school, I was lucky enough to be in a place that enjoyed having their students be creative. And so I was able to get into a certain amount of student theater at quite an early age. So that was both acting and directing. I decided that, because I couldn't get into university, I decided to go straight into the business. And I went in on the production side. I was a gopher. I was a tea boy. I was a runner. I did all of the sort of basics. And I was given a break, at about the age of twenty-six, to start directing in England, and took that and was trained as a drama director. And in England, that basically is a nine-month training for you to get your union ticket, and then you're thrown out into the open. And here I am.

I really truly believe in playing. I mean, I think that's a great word. I'm paid to do a job that I love, and so, therefore, getting up in the morning and coming into work is of no problem to me at all. I'm known to some extent as an action maven, but I happen to have had a classic training in England. And so, I enjoy pulling upon that to direct actors.

Improvisation, I love. I mean, I've always liked improvisation. I've never been a musician myself, but I've always enjoyed music that's improvised. I grew up loving jazz. And it's an important part of filmmaking, I think. I mean, I think all of the filmmakers who I admire are very good at improvisation. And some of those moments that you get are very special and you cannot predict them. I mean, you just cannot predict them, and I think it would be terrible if you did. So, it's very much a part of the filmmaking process, I think. You really do have to keep it loose, because if you restrict people-- and it's true, I think, in any direction, that restricting people or restricting actors for me is not a good idea. When I'm blocking a scene, I come in with an idea and a plan, but I will let the actors move freely within the framework of the scene and the framework of the area that we have, so that they feel comfortable. And then you can adjust that to whatever you want, because your actors are feeling comfortable, and therefore you can, if you have any sense of angles and so on, you can nudge them so that they actually end up being where you want them to be. I plan everything. I mean, I'm a firm believer in planning everything that I do. And then I also plan to throw that plan out, and that's the joy, is being able to say, hey, this is a better idea. Let's go with this idea, or let's go with that idea, you know. Or, no, that's a terrible idea. So, I think it's-- I think you, if you can stay loose-- but the thing is, I have to have a plan at the beginning. I may never use that plan, but I have to have it, because going into a day, if I've got a plan, then I'm okay.

I don't think you should be pigeonholed as being an action director. Unfortunately, to some extent, this town can pigeonhole you as being an action director. I think even the greats like Stephen Spielberg have actually suffered from that. But the thing is, one is a director. And so it's an overall craft. I mean, as you understand, it's something that I have an immense love for.

The actor has to find his way himself. I'll be there to help him in terms of, you know, suggesting perhaps emotions or the mood or the history that's gone before the scene or the history that's coming after the scene. But in terms of the process of the performance within the scene, I cannot tell an actor how to perform it. It's not my job to do that. It's the actor's job. And if he doesn't perform it, then that's his, you know, his loss. As far as helping the process of getting that emotional moment that he needs to get from a scene, I'm totally, I love-- that's part of the process that I love doing, and the discussion that goes on briefly before we shoot something like that is very important. The other thing that's also important is what not to say-- is the stuff that you don't say and the stuff that you actually just adjust as the process of shooting the scene is happening. And that's a joy as well, because at first, when I started directing, I wanted to tell-- I wanted to give notes on everything. And, you know, it's not such a good thing. It's really a good thing to lay back and to let the actor go through the process that he's learned as an actor, to portray whatever he's portraying.

Bill and I, I think hit it off, because he employed me a few times. And the thing that happened was that I realized that Bill was going to give me the kind of freedom that I like as a director, and he does. He affords his directors the ability to be able to do, and he said to me, "I want you to do anything you want to do." Now, I mean, in television in this country, that's unusual. It really is. And when somebody says that, and if you've got an imagination, you go with it, and you make the most of it. And that's why my experience, you know, with the six or seven episodes of Highlander that I directed, was so special, was because I could remember this note that Bill had given me at that drink that we had in the Argyle. And boy, I went with it, you know, and he let me go with it. He gave me all the toys to play with, to be able to do that. From helicopters to cranes to, you know, whatever I wanted, as long as it was within reason and within the ability of the telling of the story. It's been a very joyful experience. It really has. One of those moments that one savers, I think, in one's career. It really is something that, um-- and I walk on sets now, and people say to me, "Hey, you had something to do with Highlander, didn't you?" And I said, "Yes, I did," and I'm really proud of that. Really proud of that. So, I've been afforded the ability and the opportunity to, I think, be involved with some really unusual filmmaking.

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