Highlander
Transcripts:
DVD Extras
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Highlander |
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(from 2003 U.S./Canada DVD set)
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David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): "Samurai" was one of my favorite episodes of all time -- if not, certainly in my top three or four. There's one great line in the script that I really loved, when -- it came after Duncan told Hideo that he was an Immortal, and that he couldn't be killed. Hideo was under penalty of death for helping a gaijin, a foreigner. And Duncan said, "Listen, I'm Immortal. You know, I'll just fake my death. You'll be fine. Everything will be fine." And Hideo said--
Clip from "The Samurai":
And I thought that had a profound effect on the character of Duncan MacLeod. I think it raised the value of honor and taught him truly the difference between pride and honor. Adrian Paul ("The Highlander"): I think, like anybody, we all live our lives through our experiences, and MacLeod is the man he is today, or then, through the experiences he had in the past. And I think, you know, that particular episode, "The Samurai", was important, because it showed who he was and who -- where he came from and where he -- what taught him along the way. That was one of those moments, those deciding moments in his life. He was also a guy that came from the highlands of Scotland, and they had a relatively sheltered existence as to seeing whatever else there was in the world, and this is an entirely different culture.
Clip from "The Samurai":
To him, the way these guys were is almost -- THEY'RE barbarians. So, it's, um-- DM - [makes a face, still chewing] It's delicious. His way of being was very rough and ready and basic, if you like. So that's how I looked at him, from that point of view. And to see the difference in the cultures, to see -- to show that he was taught something and that's why he became -- at the end of the show, you saw how he sort of developed from being "Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod" to this man of honor. David Abramowitz: Adrian had a number of great episodes. And I think he was helped by the material in this one, because look what he had to play, you know. He played a fish out of water. He played all of the things that a young hero, coming of age -- even though he wasn't so young anymore -- coming of age gets to play, so he had material to play in this one. And to his credit, he played it very, very well. As I said before, this was a great episode for me. It was also great because it was surprising as to how Duncan got his sword, his katana, because this came -- it wasn't from defeating someone. It was from helping someone commit seppuku or ritual suicide. And this was the gift that he got. It was a different way for a hero to receive something of such great stature in the series.
Clip from "The Samurai":
Robert Ito was the hero of the episode. So you give an actor, a really skilled actor, something great to get his chops into. And Adrian played up to him, which was, I think, part of Adrian's great strength, was that when he was up against a great actor, he got better. I thought the flashback part of the episode was perhaps one of the best flashbacks we did. But the -- I was a little disappointed in the present-day part of the episode because we gave it short shrift, though I thought the acting was really quite good. Clip from "The Samurai":
I thought that Denny Berry -- he and I have a very volatile relationship, but, uh -- to say the least -- but not on this one. I think he really delivered in spades. I think everyone did. All in all, one of my favorites, and a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful way to start year three. F. Braun McAsh (Sword Master): When I was first hired on Highlander, I was on a show contract, so you know, with -- obviously you have to be able to slot into a family that already exists, and if Adrian couldn't work with you for any reason at all, obviously you wouldn't be able to hang around. In "Samurai", I wanted to have Adrian at some kind of... oh, I wouldn't say 'disability', but obvious that he could die within the next second. So I had been experimenting with a move that I had seen in my study of the Japanese sword, and it's the ability to catch the blade in between the palms. Now, obviously, you're not actually seizing the blade because that would pretty much put paid to your hands. What you're doing is you are clamping the inside heel of the hand against the spine of the blade, which is above the cutting edge. And I tried it a couple of times, just holding the sword and having a friend of mine increase pressure towards me to see, A) Can you actually hold it? And then I had my friend, slowly building up speed, actually thrusting the sword at me and me trying to actually catch the sword. And when I'd convinced myself that it was physically possible to do this, I then put it into the choreography, where MacLeod gets his sword blade caught in between two rocks, knows he can't get it out in time, and simply catches his opponent's blade and then goes into a hand technique on his opponent's arms that allows him to strip the sword away from him, reverse it, and then run him through. So it was kind of a nifty way of ending the fight, rather than the ways that had been used in previous episodes. Stephen Geaghan (Production Designer): We chose Britannia Beach because it was a very remote area for the "Samurai" episode, and for all the exteriors. It's an extremely exposed beach, very rocky. It has old pine trees on it, stunted, and it gave that look, that aura, of these Japanese bonsai trees that have a certain stature. Also, there was a large vista, there was a lot of water, there were distant islands with vibrant green. The terrain was rugged, but there was enough of it for us to do our course work, hide our crew. That's why we chose Britannia Beach for that episode, is it gave the look of Japan without ever having to go there. Then we supplemented that with bits and pieces of walls, of the coastal house that our lead character lived in, and we only brought a very small portion of wall -- I think it was maybe thirty feet or so -- and a gate, and that was our entrance into the samurai environment of that world. Anytime you run into a situation like that in episodic television, where you have -- the choices always come down to the budget, the requirements, the minimum requirements of the shot to enable the director to get what he needs, and portability of these elements, and this was an extremely remote environment that we were in. That wall and the entry to the estate were the only pieces we really needed to say where we were. We researched extensively Japanese country homes and went out and actually found a tremendous amount of library material on it. I bought several books. You've got to realize that in each of these shows, we had only seven days of developement, so these -- the research, the construction, painting, dressing happened in an extremely condensed period of time. And with Hideo's interior, we had to make -- combine all these elements into a fairly small stage space and still give enough room for the shooting crew and the environment itself. There was one compromise that we made that was questionable, and it's something that we discussed on the day when we started shooting it, is that the kitchen, or the kitchen area, technically would be in another area of the house, and the samurai master would never come in contact with that area, but out of necessity for that show, we had to get it into the, uh, into our main set. And there was a little bit of discussion with our lead actor in regard to that. He said, "Well, we would never be here." I said, "Yes, I know that, but I have no more room to build another set for this scene." "Hmph, well, all right. I just want to acknowledge it." And he didn't, but it was still there in the background.
Clip from "The Samurai":
The ofuro, yeah. We had to build that from scratch because you don't -- you can't find ofuro here; you can't find the tub. So we built that entirely, out of cedar, and we had to... [watching clip of DM arguing with Japanese girls] Ah, this brings back so many memories. We had to get Adrian in there, and the water had to be just the right temperature, it had to be very clean, and it was -- I just remember that. You bring back memories that I had sort of forgotten. And yeah, we had to build that as well. And the color scheming was very tight on that, where I didn't want to, again, make that room too rustic, nor too clean, because Japanese carpentry is very, very slick, and we had to pull out all the stops with our carpenters to make sure that the entire environment -- the ofuro and the living areas and the tatami rooms were done just so. So there was a fair amount of research and a fair -- a tremendous amount of discussion that did go on about the development of that environment. David Abramowitz: In this particular episode, Adrian did a remarkable job, and I think he played it with pathos and with humor and with emotion, and this goes to the core of who the character is and the best of what the actor could deliver for us. He delivered in this episode. |
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Clip from "Line of Fire":
Stan Kirsch ("Richie Ryan"): I wanted to take on the responsibility of the child. Adrian was trying to convince me that this wasn't my child.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
While I argued with him about the fact that I believed it was, at the end of the day I said it doesn't even matter if it is my child, I want to take on this responsibility. [laughs] I had no clue what I was getting into.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
In "Line of Fire", it was interesting because Richie was, uh, had not long been an Immortal, and he had to come to terms with suddenly believing that he had fathered a child. Now, as Joe Dawson knew, Immortals can't have children.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
Richie wanted very much to believe that the child was his, that he'd fathered it before he became an Immortal, before he died the first time, so Joe's task in this was to convince him that in all the years of the Watcher Chronicles, in all the records, there was no instance of an Immortal having a child, that it could not happen. Richie was desperate to believe the child was his and really didn't want to believe it.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
We achieved, I think, exactly what we wanted in the scene. Stan Kirsch -- Richie Ryan -- did a great job of, I think, showing how vulnerable he was, how much he needed to have a child, how much he wanted to. He wanted to become a responsible adult, a father, and to take care of this child.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
I mean, more than anything, I saw it as a real naive move on the character's part. So I understood the desire in Richie and what the Powers That Be wanted to do with Richie, for him to -- in an attempt to try to mature, to want to take on these responsibilities, but I also knew how futile it was and how inane the possibility of really doing this was, so I saw it as sort of another, like, uh, stammering with MacLeod, you know, "Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on," only to find out in the end that, A) What I think is real is not necessarily real, and it wouldn't be good for me anyway. Stephen Geaghan (Production Designer): Joe's Bar. We wanted to do something that was subterranean. We knew that. Again, and this is fitting into Bill Panzer's original idea, is that the world of the Highlander should be corners and darkness, where you go around a corner and it reveals something that is totally unexpected. So you walk out of the light of the world into this dark environment, and it's, again, a massive environment, really. It's quite narrow, very high, with several different tiers. Actually wanted it to look as if it were in the bowels of the city, and that people could emerge from any area of this environment, and they did. They would come in from unknown areas and just appear. There are fixed booths in the back, but the tables were always moveable, because we never knew when there was going to be a fight in there, and there were a lot of fights in there. We allowed for the stairs for interesting areas of approach and camera angles down. The up-down thing in Highlander was used a lot. But that was the idea behind it, that it was underneath and part of the city, like the denizens that occupied it.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
David Tynan: I think the casting of Randall 'Tex' Cobb as the Immortal Kern -- MacLeod's, uh, the villain against MacLeod -- was a brilliant piece of casting. When I was writing the show, I had actually thought of Randall 'Tex' Cobb, who I had seen in "Raising Arizona" playing the biker from Hell, and I think that was always in the back of my mind. So when casting came through and I realized Randall 'Tex' Cobb was actually going to play Kern, I was in seventh heaven. I thought, 'This is perfect.' I hadn't asked for it, nobody'd mentioned Randall 'Tex' Cobb, but there he was on screen, and he made a great, kind of crude, you know, nasty villain.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
Uh, and we knew that he was a world-champion kickboxer of some kind, so obviously he was a very dangerous character. He actually proved to be the sweetest man you could imagine meeting, put on his glasses, did his reading, and was a very nice guy. I think on the first day of shooting I got a call from set as I was doing rewrites on some of the scenes, little minor polishes that were asked for by the actors, by our cast -- that Randall 'Tex' Cobb had been hit by a beer truck and taken away in an ambulance.
Yeah, I was there for that. We were shooting the day in New Westminster and it was, uh -- the bar that we were actually shooting in was just off a major truck route, and Randall walks out, and he's walking around -- he had done his bit with the bike and the whole thing. I turn around, and there's this *thump*. And we're all looking, and he gets up out of the road... [groans, mimics Randall getting up] Like that. And the guy hops out of the truck and the crew rushes over. And this was our lead, you know, our principal actor was hit by a truck. Well, he claims he wasn't hurt, but they still took him to the hospital. He just -- we said, "What happened? What happened?" "Oh, I lost my balance and fell out into the road." And he had dented the truck. When they took him to the hospital, the teamster -- unfortunately he looked like a derelict, and they just let him sit there for hours before -- and he didn't say anything, 'cause he was, um, well, I guess just sort of in another place. And finally it was like, where is he? And the teamster came back and says, "Well, I just dropped him off." And everybody went nuts over that. So there was a whole coterie of people that went to find out where Randall was and how he was doing, because it just -- it fell through the cracks. Because he didn't complain about anything. And he didn't. He came back, "Oh, I'm a little sore." He was there the next day. We shot around him for the rest of the day, but he was right back at it, in front of the camera the following day. He was an amazing guy. And very durable.
We were doing the sequence where he comes after me in a different apartment. I end up jumping out the window. We did it in a sound stage and then cut to the outside where it was, you know, much more of a drop, and it was all break-away glass and whatnot in there. And I think I was hurling a chair at him, and I would always aim a little bit off him, just as I would with any other actor. That's sort of the deal, not to throw the chair at the other actor in the scene. And he comes in one take, "Hey, kid, I'm Randall 'Tex' Cobb," you know, "Just throw the f*beep*ing chair at me. What, do you think you're going to hurt me with the goddamn chair?" So I thought, 'okay, sure, whatever,' you know, and I heaved the chair at him. And he went to block the chair with his sword hand and this heavy wooden chair hit him in the wrist and he went through the rest of the take, and then I am going through the window -- and the only reason I add that is 'cause I ended up with some cuts on my arm from the window -- and he ended up having this massive black-and-blue the size of a softball on his hand from the chair. They had to take him to the emergency room, and about -- we wrapped right after the scene, and then an hour and a half later, he and I are riding up the elevator in the hotel, and he's got this huge, you know, bandaged up thing and he's holding his hand like this [holds his hand vertically], and I had these little cuts, like these tiny little bandages on my hand. And one of the concierges in the hotel, this woman, was riding up with us, and she made a comment, you know, like, uh, 'boys fighting?' But of course, I looked like nothing had happened to me. So I think he ate those words. Stephen Geaghan: We had to research what a mobile Sioux village would look like. That, of course, is fairly easy to do. One of the problems that we have with this area is the fact that it's literally in a river delta, a small river delta. And we had to place the village in such a way that it wouldn't get washed away. And once we had our research done, we set up the village, and it was decided that we needed the horses to run through, so we had to change the position of all of our tents. And we had to make sure that this proper tribe of the Sioux was appropriately decked out, in terms of the designs that would be on the teepees, the implements that they would be using, the clothing, even right down to the ponies that they would be riding. And one of the things that the script required was MacLeod and the boy come up in a canoe... and this was not part of that particular culture. And we had run out of time, so what we did in that particular show, was I think we took an aluminum canoe and we had to weld on additional bits and pieces and then apply birchbark to the exterior of it, because we don't have that great light technology, and we had no time left, so what we ended up with was a canoe that weighed maybe two hundred, two hundred and fifty pounds, with all the additional stuff that was on it. But it still worked out quite well, and I don't think -- only the people that really are into that culture would know that the canoe was out of place.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
David Tynan: One of the interesting things we did in that show was that MacLeod fought for the first time with a spear. We'd never had him do that. But because, in the flashback of the episode, he had been living with the Lakota Sioux family and living as an Indian in North America, he had learned to use a spear.
Clip from "Line of Fire":
Randall 'Tex' Cobb, as Kern, had killed MacLeod's family, his Indian family, his adopted son Kahani, and when MacLeod finally had the penultimate fight with Kern on the rooftop, he used the Sioux spear and beheaded him with that. So that was a first for us. |
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Clip from "The Revolutionary":
Adrian Paul (Actor): I don't think he's given any other choice, because the guy goes past the bounds, that he's going to actually hurt other people. I think Mac was always one that -- a lot of time it was grey for him, and the more problems he had, the more definitive he became about the solution. It didn't mean he didn't ask the questions, but to him it's a matter of life and death. Most things were life and death to him. And if this guy's going to be causing life and death to others, then at least Mac had the opportunity to try and stop him from doing it, one way or another.
Clip from "The Revolutionary":
Politics is more noble than business. I mean, if you hang a show about somebody who is ruthless, ambitious -- that's an interesting character, but he's somehow more noble if he is fighting for a cause that he believes is right and just, rather than just trying to make money. Adrian Paul: This was a great look for MacLeod, you know, this long hair, mustache, and stuff. It was kind of a cool look. It was a -- I don't really have a favorite. I mean, I liked him when he went back to the highlands of Scotland. I love doing, you know, the period flashbacks in the 1930's and 20's and 40's. There were so many really cool things to dress up as, like going to a fancy dress party every week, you know, and that was fun, because you became that character. It was just so rich with stuff, for you not to like -- for you to like, rather than not to like. Stephen Geaghan (Production Designer): Some interesting things that happened in the development of that -- of the Balkans. There was an awful lot of available reference on it, but what we needed was a massive amount of devastation, so what we did was we chose an industrial site that was being torn down, selectively, and then added our own pock marks and bullet holes and mortar hits all down the street. We had wrecked cars that we brought in and bits of a cable car that we had used from another show. We dressed an entire street, and -- I don't think all of it was shot. We did do a huge, long 'L' that allowed for the movement of the troops up the street, and with another car passing through. The only Eastern European car that we could find was a couple of Ladas, and we got those in, and we took the paint off them and had them sort of rolling through. The environment worked reasonably well, although, you know, again, there's the factor of how much time you have to dress and undress a location for one establishing shot. And we did as much as we could there. Then we moved the scene of him rousing his troops to an interior, and that's when the police, the secret police guy's brought in and executed. And that was an existing location that we used. And that was the beginning of the Balkans pieces.
Clip from "The Revolutionary":
Bill Panzer: Clearly, there was a loss in MacLeod's life when Tessa died. And, while not wanting to replace Tessa really, because nobody really could replace Tessa, we thought that the process of somebody -- not an Immortal -- meeting MacLeod, finding him fascinating, and then gradually finding out about his life, and making a choice about his life once she found out about it, would be an interesting journey to take the audience on.
Clip from "The Revolutionary":
I think we became aware of the fact that the chemistry on camera was not as good as the chemistry was off camera, and while we thought it -- we thought it was going to work and had no indications in early rehearsals and early meetings that it was not going to work, but we gradually found that, for whatever reason, the actor and the actress were not clicking together.
Clip from "The Revolutionary":
I don't know whether everybody has a picture in their mind of what person that they're going to fall in love with on screen is like. And even though people might pretend that they don't, I think perhaps sometimes they do. And in fairness, Tessa was a very tough act to follow. Adrian Paul: Ah, "The Revolutionary". The Quickening and the beheading were, I think, were some of the most powerful beheading and Quickenings we ever did. The reason I did the head cut that way was because we'd done -- we'd seen all the slicing down and the upwards. We'd tried different ways of beheadings. And this one, I thought, it's a very visual, strong action, to actually pull a sword, which is a very justifiable way of using a cut. But the interesting thing is, you actually -- when you're looking at it, I didn't realize how powerful it was, because you actually felt that blade go through his neck.
Clip from "The Revolutionary":
And the Quickening, my goodness. That was... [laughs] That was something else. I was standing on this cargo crate, which inside was filled with explosives, and behind me, about -- probably about thirty feet -- were explosives. And when that thing went off, uh, the entire container shook, and I could feel, like this heat behind me, and actually, somebody thought -- because I disappeared. Dennis Berry, I believe, shot it, and he had the cameras way, way back and on a long lens. And at some point the flames engulfed me. You couldn't see me at all. They thought I'd actually gotten burnt. But there was a certain distance between the flames and that and it was -- the image was always powerful and we've used that image over and over again, and it was fun to see. It was like, "Whoa, that's cool!" But I was relatively safe. |
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Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
Elizabeth Gracen ("Amanda"): The great part of that sequence, which is the best part of that show for me, is that you get to see Amanda as the pro, trying to teach this novice 'big guy' how to effectively stealth into this museum and steal the piece.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
And Adrian actually dropped me... on my belly. That was not fun. I was really mad at him after that, I recall. Yeah. That was fun. But I never trusted him again. [laughs]
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
We got to access our chemistry and improv-ing, just their relationship, I mean. And I remember seeing some of the rough cuts of the scenes, and we're arguing through the whole sequence.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
And we're arguing in between the scenes as well, which was our thing, just to constantly sort of banter and bicker with each other, and it plays into the scene, which when it's all done in a loud whisper, it's pretty funny.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
I've done so many laser beams in shows. I've played a lot of thieves and bad girls, and I've had to deal with a lot of laser beams. Like, the blowing the smoke, we've done in Highlander, where you can see the beam illuminate. But you're having to sort of step over everything and roll under them, I think is what we did. We came up with that on an improv, I think. Lot of fun.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
The very first episode we did, "Lady and the Tiger", we just -- I don't know, there were a couple of scenes -- granted, David Abramowitz and his staff wrote great scripts, and I sort of got it. I got who she was supposed to be, and I got their relationship, and, um, we just connected on a certain level. And I don't know what scene it was in "Lady and the Tiger", but we just sort of figured it out, and luckily enough, they asked me back for the next season and then, you know, more episodes and more episodes, and we really got to develop that relationship, to where we could do and say almost anything to each other on camera and, I mean, you have a lot of bedroom scenes and a lot of intimate sort of situations on camera and you get very comfortable, because then you've broken all the barriers, and you can just go with it.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
I guess the writers took advantage of the fact they knew Adrian and I could -- we, in fact, we would get many scenes that were written the night before, so we'd maybe get a three-page heavy dialogue scene that we had to shoot at magic hour, and we'd read it, and for a lot of situations, that would be really difficult and be hard to do, but we would have limited rehearsal, and we would just shoot it with a steady cam and, you know, it would be really great. And I felt like an actor, you know. We both did, I think. And those might be very serious, intimate moments, and I think our friendship off camera, you know -- I consider him a friend and very quickly we established that relationship. And there's sort of a trust factor, that you can just go -- you can go places you might not be able to go with someone you don't like, or you don't, you know, feel that comfortable with.
Clip from "The Cross of St. Antoine":
F. Braun McAsh ("Sword Master"): "The Cross of St. Antoine" was one of my very early episodes, so a lot of what I was doing in the fight was predicated on the necessities of getting them off the upper elevations of the building, onto the train cars, which meant a stunt, so John Wardlow, who was the stunt coordinator at that time, had arranged for two of the stunt doubles to leap. That was a major portion of the day, was getting the stunt shot in. And then, of course, we're fighting along the top of the cars, leaping from car to car, and again, when I saw the location, I thought, 'Well, this is sort of an old movie thing, you know -- fighting across the top of a train, with the possible exception that this one ain't moving.' So we were doing a lot of shots that sort of replicated shots from older movies, like you'll notice twice in that fight scene, we're actually doing the shadows of the fighters on the wall, you know, and things like this -- very Errol Flynn-ish sort of moves. I started doing some double spin moves, again trying to get a little more flamboyant, because I knew that once we moved INTO the bloody cars, we were pretty much crooked. There's no room in there at all. It's habitual with any kind of a location, is how much room do you have to swing a sword -- may look good on the camera lens when you're just holding the lens to your eye, but you get a couple of guys in there with three feet of metal on the end of their reach and the room becomes very, very small. So the swordwork inside was pretty limited. Again, once we got outside, we were doing the kill with a reverse grip. A different move for every episode, introduced something new that the audience had never seen before, so... It was an interesting fight, and again, Brion James worked very hard. I remember one rehearsal where he literally went three hours without a break, until I was almost going, "Okay, Brion. That's enough. That's enough." "No, again." "No, that's enough for ME." So he sweated it out on that one, but, yeah. Interesting. Elizabeth Gracen: Doing a reoccurring character like that over such a long time, my agents -- you know, I never made like a fortune doing the show -- but my agents were always like, "Well, what if we're trying to get you this--?" I said, "You call Highlander and you let them know that I'm doing this new series. If they want to use me, we need to figure it out before I sign this contract." And they were going, "But it's just, you know, you're doing like four episodes a year. What a big deal?" I said, "Because I love doing Highlander. I love doing the show." I'm fortunate to have that opportunity to play such a great character, to get to do accents, swordfighting, costumes. I mean, it was an actor's dream, and I think unless you ARE an actor, you don't quite understand that. And Amanda -- such a fantastic character, intelligent character to play, and then getting to play against Adrian and Jim and Stan and Peter and all the guys on the show... Just, I felt really, really fortunate and never wanted to -- I never wanted it to end. I mean, I'm sure Adrian, after a certain point, after six years, wanted it to end, but, you know, I was sort of spoiled, getting to come in and, you know, pop off three or four episodes, and go to Paris to do that. It was fantastic. |
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Clip from "Rite of Passage":
Gillian Horvath (Executive Script Coordinator): Yeah, Michelle in "Rite of Passage" doesn't get along well with her parents. And then after she's dead, she realizes what she's lost. You never know what you have until it's gone. Which I think is a nice -- I think it's in there more as a metaphor for every Immortal that we've ever met, to cause us to think about how this happened to Duncan and Amanda and every Immortal when they died for the first time and had to leave their life behind and couldn't say goodbye to people, and it's the other side of grief.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): "Rite of Passage" was the first episode written by Karen Harris. Karen has a long history of being a great soap opera and of being a woman, and we thought it would be a good idea to give her an episode that would fit her talents, about a young woman coming of age, and coming of age as an Immortal, and the lessons to be learned about being an Immortal.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
Karen was pretty quick, and she's a real pro, you know? I mean, this isn't a show that 'if you're smart and you get it', um, the issues of Immortality are really pretty clear. And if you can do some logical projections, it's not hard to look at it and say, "What would it be like if *I* were...", you know? Not everyone is going to be humbled by Immortality.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
Some people are going to be Immortal and say, "Great! Let's party! Let's have a good time. I want to get laid. I want to drink as much as I can, I want to party as much as I can, and the hell with it all, because this is life and this is great. I'm invulnerable." Other people are going to want to go to a monastery and study the meaning of life.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
I thought what was really poignant in this show was there were a couple scenes where the young girl who died and then came back, but her parents couldn't know, um, watched her parents grieve for her. And I think at that moment, you knew some of the pain of Immortality, which is not only watching all the people you love grow old and die, but watching the people grieve for your death and not being able to say anything to them. Not being able to have that kind of closure.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
The idea of not being able to say, "Hey, I'm still here," is one of great pathos, you know? It's one that gives you a window into the hole that Immortality leaves in you.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
Adrian Paul (Actor): Well, Axel, played by Rob Stewart, was around for many years prior to this, and he knew his intentions with this young innocent, and MacLeod always wanted to protect the innocents because I think he realized, you know, there was somebody there when he became Immortal and was taught the rules of the Game, so at least they were given a fighting chance to survive. So that, coupled with Axel being around, you know, he wanted to make sure that this woman at least had a fighting chance to survive. Gillian Horvath: We got kind of a funny reality check from Production in that we'd written into the script the idea that Michelle looks out the window of the loft and sees Axel down in the alley. And we got this call from Ken Gord pointing out that the window of the loft does not look out onto ANYTHING because the loft is built on a soundstage, and if you open the window, you see the back of another set. So they actually had to take the window out on a scaffolding into the street to get that shot. Adrian Paul: Rob Stewart had a great -- it was a fun swordfight to play with Robert. It was fast and it was -- he was good at doing it. And the Quickening after was in the water, was interesting. To get it done was a little tricky, but that was an interesting one, to have water and fire at the same time. We both went into the water and I was the only one that came out. Hahahaha. As there can be only one, you know.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
Adrian Paul: I think she was the one that guided her to understanding what Immortality was all about. I don't know if it was necessarily a great choice of MacLeod's to give her to Amanda, because God knows whatever else she was going to teach her in the meantime. She was probably the most suitable one that he could get his hands on without having to take on another pupil himself.
Clip from "Rite of Passage":
What being an Immortal does is just intensify the experience of being human, in such an enormous way that everything becomes grander, everything becomes bigger, everything becomes longer, and the questions become harder. Because you have more than a lifetime to answer them. And, you know -- and as I get older, I realize the dumber I get. You know, when I was younger, I used to be much smarter. Now that I'm getting older, I realize how stupid I am. And I think it must be like that for Immortals, which is -- 'cause they would sit around and say, "God, I've been around for five hundred years, and I still don't know shit." |
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Clip from "Courage":
Charles Wilkinson (Director): "Courage", I think you could describe in one way -- as an anti-drug episode. It was certainly made during the 'just say no' kind of era. And if you think back to many of the anti-drug episodes of various series' that you saw in that time, they sucked. And the reason they sucked is because they were moralizing and they were preaching, and you had these characters who -- you saw the net effect of drugs on them all the time.
Clip from "Courage":
You saw how horrible it is to take drugs, how stupid it is, how you'd have to be an idiot to take drugs, et cetera, et cetera. And our kids will watch that and they'll go, "Well, that's bullshit. I mean, when I take drugs, I feel great," I'm thinking some of them will say. They'll say, "Where's the good part?" That's what I think the brilliance -- and I wouldn't hesitate at all to call it brilliance -- in this script is, they allowed Cullen to show what the attraction is to taking drugs. That you take drugs because you get this momentary rush, and you'd have to be an idiot to say that that rush doesn't exist. It does. What this episode is, is about the consequences of that rush. And that's why -- I was really proud of that aspect of it, is it didn't shy away from depicting Cullen as this incredibly positive character. I mean, I watch him when he's at his best in this episode, where he's really indulging and flying high, and he's having this great sort of Eighties life, and I look at him and I go, "Wow, that looks like a lot of fun." When he's in the opium house, you just look at him and he's -- he's just flying. He's in some place that we don't get to go.
Clip from "Courage":
And when he hands the pipe to Duncan, and the smoke, the wisps of smoke are coming out of the mouthpiece of the pipe, and you can see Duncan looking at that pipe and thinking, "If only... I would just so much--" You can feel every pore of his body wanting, being attracted to just taking a hit of opium. Must feel pretty good. But Duncan has the sense, and our writers had the sense, to show both sides of the coin. That there are horrendous consequences. And that's what the movie is about. It's about the consequences of surrendering to that momentary gratification and what the long-term effects of that must be. So I thought it was a very effective anti-drug message.
Clip from "Courage":
Don Paonessa (Post Production Consultant): In the show "Courage", we had to do a visual effect when Cullen commits suicide by hitting a bus head-on, and I had to try to create something with a limited budget for our visual effects. What we did was I -- we were trying to create something that created this impact and a visual that would sort of connect with this moment of death. And what ended up happening was, because of our limited budget, we really couldn't do anything that was really very spectacular. And what we were trying to achieve was something special, and what we ended up doing was something that I think a lot of people considered to be cheesy. But we were stuck with it, and we really couldn't do much more, and we had to live with it. And it looks like, as you've seen in the show, it looks like some kind of funny rainbow effect. But, uh, it didn't work and I'm, you know, here to say now, I'm sorry we did it.
Clip from "Courage":
Bill Panzer (Executive Producer): "Courage" is a very good name for this show, and for this kind of feeling. I mean, we, as people who live sixty, seventy, eighty years, have moments in our lives when we are courageous. Guys who fought in World War II, guys who fought in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq. People are courageous. But they only have to be courageous for a while. And as an Immortal, you're sort of forced to be courageous forever.
Clip from "Courage":
One of our favorite themes is always 'How is Immortality like real life, only more so?' and to find a guy who just can't cope, just like, you know, the guy Patton slapped in World War II for having battle fatigue after a few months -- this guy's having battle fatigue after a few hundred years, and he's gradually, at an Immortal pace, starting to fall apart, and doing the same things that the human part of him does. He drinks, he uses drugs, he runs away, he acts like a coward, and eventually he has to be put down like a dog.
Clips from "Courage":
Flashback - San Francisco, 1854 - dock
Flashback - Switzerland, 1810 - mountain road
Inside empty warehouse, night
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Clip from "The Lamb":
Don Paonessa (Post Production Consultant): In "The Lamb", during the Quickening of ten-year-old Kenny, I was trying to figure out a way in which I could make him look like he was eight hundred years old, because that's who lived inside this ten-year-old's body. What I decided to do was to take and shoot our stunt coordinator, John Wardlow's, eyes, and I matted those into Kenny's face. What we achieved was this effect that made him look like he was eight hundred years old in this young boy's body, and I thought it was quite successful. And I was happy we did that, because it made that Quickening much more believable in terms of the eight-hundred-year-old.
Clip from "The Lamb":
David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): First I'd like to say, it's a very sad thing with Myles Ferguson; he died in a car crash. But he did a great job as Kenny. He could play both innocent and evil, and it wasn't an easy role to play. And I think the important thing about the character of Kenny was, people do what they have to, to survive. And we didn't want to place a value judgment.
Clip from "The Lamb":
Kenny was evil because he would kill good guys and bad guys, but if you're four feet six inches tall and you have to fight a world of six-feet-five-inch, two-hundred-and-forty-pound guys, you're not going to survive very long, so you have to survive with your brain.
Clip from "The Lamb":
Stan Kirsch ("Richie Ryan"): Ah, Jim added a tremendous amount to the show. In fact, in some ways I felt like Jim and I kind of book-ended Adrian in a way. The show had, I guess because of Adrian and Peter, it had a little bit of this European flare, and I felt like Jim and I brought this, like, really all-American, you know, thing to the series.
Clip from "The Lamb":
I think that that chemistry translated to the screen, and we had a lot of interesting stuff that was written for the two of us. And I enjoyed those scenes quite a bit.
Clip from "The Lamb":
I felt like he dealt with Adrian, and Joe Dawson dealt with MacLeod, in a similar way to the way in which my character did, it's just that he was a little bit older. Like, he was almost the older brother and I was the younger brother. And I was thrilled that Jim became a regular character and was around. And he's a hilarious guy and had a great time.
Clip from "The Lamb":
Ken Gord (Producer): We thought Myles Ferguson -- Dennis and I -- Dennis directed "The Lamb" -- we both loved that kid as soon as we saw him, and we knew he was perfect. He could be angelic; he could be the most evil kid in the world when he turned on those eyes. He'd been overlooked by other casting directors in the city for a while, as they considered him just, you know, not experienced enough, not professional enough.
Clip from "The Lamb":
That kid was fantastic, and that kid came to set and he was more professional than, you know, a thirty-year-old. He was a kid that just knew what he wanted, just wanted to be an actor. And it's too bad he didn't live to, you know, grow old to be an actor.
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Clip from "Obsession":
Bill Panzer (Executive Producer): Trying to tell a story about obsession and to get it emotionally right, as opposed to just intellectually right, I think requires everybody involved -- especially the director in whose hands the play finally lies -- everybody involved needs to have experienced obsession.
Clip from "Obsession":
He needs to understand this pull, this urge, this demon that you have in you that you can't control.
Clip from "Obsession":
I think it did explore the psychology of a stalker, I think from a somewhat uncomfortable point of view, in that it was from the point of view of the stalker.
Clip from "Obsession":
He was our -- not our hero, but he was our guest star, whose story we heard, and so it was somewhat of a frightening look into his psyche and the reasons that he became obsessed with this woman.
Clip from "Obsession":
From his point of view, his behavior made sense, even though we as observers could tell that he was very scary.
I don't think it's completely unrealistic. Those men, those obsessive men, are out there, and how much scarier is it that he's going to be out there forever?
Clip from "Obsession":
It's such a hard decision on Jill's part, the girlfriend, to actually go to someone and beg them to kill the boyfriend. But she's right -- restraining orders don't work.
Clip from "Obsession":
Gillian Horvath: In "Obsession", the character of David was actually modeled on a real craftsman named Sam Maloof, who is a woodworker whose rocking chairs are so prized, the waiting list is longer than Sam Maloof's life is likely to be.
Clip from "Obsession":
I had read an article about him and I loved the idea of this craftsman, someone who, in the case of an Immortal, could have centuries to hone his skills. It wasn't as large a part of the script as it was in my original conception, but you can still see it there, that he is still a woodworker who, in theory at least, people prize his work. A real Sam Maloof rocking chair has a beauty to it that the prop we were able to get for the episode does not emulate, but...
Clip from "Obsession":
Gillian Horvath: I'm not sure this is one of our more successful flashbacks. I'm not sure I really buy Duncan's behavior in the flashback. It was designed to be a parallel to David's behavior in the present.
Clip from "Obsession":
I think the fact that there's two extra minutes of square dancing... and maybe that's part of the problem as well. You know, the editorial people would know better than I, but there didn't seem to be much to cut away. You know, there's a lot of extra fluff in there that in better episodes, things are tightened, things are better paced.
Clip from "Obsession":
I think Duncan had been too well established at that point, and it's hard to believe he really was that far off his rocker in that flashback.
Part of the difficulty may have been that the whole emotional story was really between two guest stars.
Clip from "Obsession":
Our guys were there to intervene, but until the very end, when Duncan and David are fighting, they're not really emotionally involved or attached.
We always think every script is perfect, and then when the dailies come back and the final edit of the show comes back, if it doesn't live up to how good we thought it was going to be, it's always a question of, was there something off in the guest casting, did the director not get where we were trying to go with it, or maybe it wasn't as good a script as we thought. That happens sometimes.
Clip from "Obsession":
Would it have been better? Was the problem in the script? Was the problem in the casting? You know, who knows. Was the problem in the concept? Certainly, heaven forbid, not. |
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Clip from "Shadows":
David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): One of the difficulties in doing 'Highlander' is we found that episodes that -- without Immortals didn't work as well, because it's like Superman taking on some guy who's robbing a bank. It doesn't work. The hero is judged up against the ferocity of the villain. So we wanted to create some sort of story where it wasn't just the guy is the best swordsman in the western world, or the guy is the best swordsman in China, or the guy is the best swordsman in Hoboken. We wanted to do a story where someone else could use something else for an edge. And so we figured on layering the story in a way that played on Duncan's profound sense of his own personal guilt. Guilt that he'd survived and other people have died, guilt for the mistakes that he's made over all of these years. So we created a bad guy who had a great sense of psychology and Freud and all of these things... and a little bit of Jung... and who could deal with symbols and deal with long-forgotten memories and bring them out.
Clip from "Shadows":
So the idea was to do a story where MacLeod was facing an Immortal that he believed to be an illusion and a dream. And then create an Immortal that Duncan could go to as a shrink, who would say, "The best way to defeat the Immortal who is in your dreams is to deny his existence." It's kind of like, um, the best trick the devil had, was to convince everyone that he doesn't exist.
Clip from "Shadows":
So we took that premise and thought, 'Okay. Here you have an Immortal who knows he can't defeat MacLeod in a fair fight. But the rules of the Game says he has to approach MacLeod and beat him one-on-one with a sword. So we needed to create something that Duncan would deny the Immortal's, this Immortal's existence. So we slowly tried to drive Duncan crazy, and then send him to a shrink that said to him, "Only if -- the only way you can defeat these bad dreams is by denying the existence of the illusion."
Clip from "Shadows":
So Duncan sees the illusion, finally, and believes that it's an illusion, but it turns out to be real. And it's only through chance that he realizes that this is real and defends and saves his life.
Clip from "Shadows":
It plays on his own sense of guilt -- guilt for all the characters who died, and he lived. Guilt because he couldn't save his clan, because he is Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod and he is the clan leader. And yet he couldn't save his clan, um, so he carries all of that with him. We just wanted to create a different kind of villain, you know, to make it more interesting. It gets old week after week after week after week, having the 'best gun in town' come to town, so I thought this would be interesting. Also, it gave us an opportunity for different visuals, a different look on the show, and play a little darker.
Clip from "Shadows":
David Tynan (Exec. Script Consultant / Writer): Anne Lindsey was an interesting character on the show. Her relationship with MacLeod was developing, and, you know, she was peripherally involved in his life. Essentially, I think, you know, as writers we always wanted to have a strong love interest for MacLeod. Tessa was dead at this point. MacLeod had been having adventures. But Anne Lindsey was kind of a counterweight to him -- she saved lives; she was a doctor, so she really had a different role in life, and she did not know about MacLeod's immortality.
Clip from "Shadows":
At the same time, there were some on-screen sparks between the two, but I think the audience really wanted -- and I think we understood that -- really wanted this relationship to either go somewhere or not. And I think we felt it was too early to, you know, to bring Anne into the fold or to let her know about MacLeod being immortal. At this point, she didn't realize that he was an Immortal at all. I think in writing an on-screen romance between your lead character and someone else, or your lead characters, you can always write great scenes, but when the actors get in the room, I think that spark, that spark of attraction is either there or it isn't, and there's not much you can do about it. And probably in a sense, as good as the actors are, not a lot the actors can do about it. That is, it's a very real thing, a very natural thing. And I think by then some of us sensed that there wasn't a real on-screen attraction between these two characters, between MacLeod and Dr. Anne Lindsey. I think some of the fans were very disappointed that Anne eventually left the show, that that character eventually went off, but I think in some ways MacLeod would be tied down when he had a relationship, a strong love interest, as he had with Tessa, and I think we were very leery of tying him down that way.
Clip from "Shadows":
I think in some ways it structured that show, that particular episode, "Shadows". Anne Lindsey couldn't really learn MacLeod's secret or that would have drawn her further into his world, so we had to make a decision, I think, as to whether or not she was going to learn who and what MacLeod really was or stay on the outside. So throughout the episode, you feel that tension of these two characters.
Clip from "Shadows":
You feel the frustration that MacLeod feels, as well, because if he brings Anne into his world, he's afraid she'll be in danger. He really doesn't want Anne to learn about what's going on, and he keeps her at a distance. He keeps her at arm's length throughout the piece, and I think you can feel that throughout the episode. And in the end, he makes the decision not to tell her what's happening with him.
Clip from "Shadows":
Clip from "Shadows":
F. Braun McAsh (Sword Master): Now, "Shadows" was interesting because, first of all, I'm the only "Immortal" to have ever killed MacLeod, albeit in a dream sequence. The whole idea of "Shadows" being a nightmare image rather than a real opponent was kind of interesting to play with, because I got to double the role of the Shadow. "Shadows" was the only episode that we had five swordfights in one episode, and on a seven-day shooting schedule, that's quite a bit. We actually shot a fight on day one, and on day two, and so on and so forth. The Shadow costume, because it's replicating the image of this statue, was a black gown that went almost all the way to the ground, because it had to cover you right down to your ankle-bones. It had long, hanging sleeves, what are called tippets. And then it had a hood that went over and in front of the face, under which I wore a fencing mask that was blacked out, so there's no peripheral vision whatsoever. It's sort of like a horse with blinders. You can't see anything at all. I had to have the sleeves sewn shut because the swinging moves of the sword would actually have the sleeves swinging around the cross-hilt of the sword and catching it and arresting it halfway through a move and whatnot. So I'm fighting the costume. I can't even bend my knees, because as soon as I do, the next step will step on the inside of the hem and I'll walk up the inside of my own costume. So I did four of the fight scenes involving the Shadow, and as luck would have it, I was also a bit ill, so all of the fights that were done in the dojo, which were the longest, most complex fights, I was running a fever of 102. normally, wearing all of this nonsense under the lights of the studio and whatnot, so between takes I would just pass out on this gym mat that they had laid down for me. One of the things about the episode which was also interesting was because for the longest time, you don't know whether it IS a real person or a nightmare image, and I went with the idea of -- nightmare images repeat themselves, so I thought, 'How are we going to get five swordfights' -- and a kata, a beautiful, beautiful sword kata' -- if you'll notice, ends at the exact spot it started out from, as katas are supposed to do. Adrian did it beautifully -- 'How are we going to get five swordfights into one episode?' I mean, I -- as an actor, I take as long to learn fights as any other actor, even thought I've choreographed them. So the idea of nightmare images repeating themselves, I thought, 'well, perfectly legitimate -- we'll use the same phrase again and again and again in each fight scene' and see if anybody picks up on the fact that it's just like a video image looping. The other thing was because it's unrealistic, the cadence to the fight is not the way a normal human would fight, which is totally nonsyncopated -- bam, bu-bam, bu-bu-bu bu-bam, bu-bam -- like this, almost like a musical bar. It's just wham, wham, wham, like this, and what I was trying to reproduce was the feeling of an accelerated human heartbeat, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, as you would if you were in the throes of a nightmare. So, in a way, it was a very interesting thing to do, being 'reality, nonreality, which is which' sort of thing until the last scene where Mac realizes because of the ring on the glove, that it is actually Garrick this time, and of course, at the very end, he's also under the influence of sleeping drugs, so in the last fight scene, MacLeod is a little bit whacked out. Then, at the very end, we thought, 'well, let's have some fun with this,' so we did the shot of the taking of the head from the PoV of the head. And we had this special camera rig hooked up with two handles, so the operator grasped it sort of like this [crosses his arms in front of his chest], looking at MacLeod as he delivered the decapitating blow, and then the camera operator did 'whoomp whoomp whoomp' [rotates / uncrosses arms], so you sort of had the PoV of the head coming off the body, flipping over once and landing sideways on the rug, which was a little bit grotesque in an interesting sort of way, but we thought, 'What the heck. Play with it.' David Tynan: In "Shadows", we had shot the episode, or a large part of the episode's flashback, out at Fantasy Gardens in Vancouver, which stood in for London in the 1600s. And in that particular flashback, MacLeod's friend, played by Garwin Sanford, another Immortal, is going to be burned at the stake, because they think he's a witch. We had dozens of extras. They were in great character; they did a fabulous job. We had these peasants jumping up and down and screaming 'Burn him, burn him, burn him!' When it came time for a break and for lunch, our extras went over to the lunch wagon and found that Jackie Chan, who was shooting "Rumble in the Bronx" in another part of Fantasy Gardens, another part of this location, had had -- his extras had gone for lunch and had taken OUR extras' food. So our extras weren't in any mood to fool around, and they're about ready to burn Jackie Chan's crew, I think, at the stake at that point.
Clip from "Shadows":
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Clip from "Blackmail":
Anthony DeLongis (Actor): It was, uh -- we had lured a young gentleman, you know, who happened to have some money in his pocket, out into the country where we proceeded to murder him, and MacLeod's friend happened to stumble by, because we'd set the body on fire. We really weren't nice, but -- And we chose that as a propitious opportunity to put some papers that would be incriminating on his body so he would be accused of our crime and we could get away scot free. And then, of course, you know, Duncan, to save his friend, he confesses to the crime that he didn't do either, and I get to be there to witness the hanging. Until he accosts us later in the forest near the maze, where we fight for the first time. Bill Panzer (Executive Producer): We tried to avoid, although it proved to be impossible, having sort of the Immortal of the Week.
We were going for the "Strangers on a Train" effect, where this guy gets MacLeod into a position where he's done him a favor against MacLeod's will and now he's trying to get MacLeod to do HIM a favor. And I think the episode lost focus because we did need to have an evil Immortal.
The "Strangers on a Train", if you will, concept that, 'okay, you know, you kill this person and I'll kill that person and nobody'll ever know because nobody knows that we have a connection to these people' is a fascinating idea that has run its course in films and television and novels for quite a long time.
Clip from "Blackmail":
And to me, that was the most interesting part, was that MacLeod got forced into a situation, at least initially, that -- over which he had very little, if no control.
Clip from "Blackmail":
Actually, I enjoy this episode a lot. It's not one of our outstanding memorable episodes that everybody puts on their 'best of' list, but I think that it has a charm of being one Highlander's straightforward episodes, in which MacLeod gets trapped into a situation that -- I like it when he's in a somewhat humorous situation, and so he's reacting with exasperation. I think that's a thing he does charmingly -- but then in the end, there's real evil to fight, and he puts it down.
One of the more interesting things for me was always when Immortals were forced to interact with mortals, and they did not choose to do so.
Clip from "Blackmail":
The story with the lawyer was meant to be a new approach, and it's really the story with Kurlow which winds up sort of taking over, because it occupies the flashback. It's the more boring of the two stories, and yet it somehow becomes the center of the episode. Anthony DeLongis: It was a lot of fun. It was kind of interesting. This was one of the few times in my career where I haven't had to read for a role. I was cast out of Toronto; I was up in Toronto at the time. And my abilities and my experience and resume got me the role, so I flew just almost directly from Toronto to Vancouver. I think I read the script on the plane. And we went straight to wardrobe.
Clip from "Blackmail":
We'd gone through a period where the bad guys were not Immortals and there was no swordfight and no Quickening, and that didn't work for the show. So we had to serve two masters. Our main antagonist of the week was meant to be Robert Waverly, but we needed to have Kurlow in the story so that we could end with a swordfight, and this one's a great one.
One of the things that when I'm choreographing a fight I'm very aware of is that I'm making choices about the character, because the moves and what a character does do and what he doesn't do, which is sometimes more important, have to be reflective of not only the scene, you know, what the character is doing in his own mind in the fight and whatnot. So I'm basically providing the subtext in the moves of the choreography that the actor would normally do himself for his lines. So every time I choreograph a fight for another actor, especially if I'm not able to work with that other actor prior to rehearsing or if I don't know the other actor at all, which in the case of 'Highlander' was ninety percent of the time, I'm very aware that I am making artistic decisions for that actor that would not necessarily be his or hers.
Clip from "Blackmail":
We showed up on the set, and as always there wasn't really enough time to do what we had hoped to be able to do. Braun had sketched out, you know, he had some stuff down on paper, but by that point we had gotten to know each other. He was welcoming my input, both because of my experience and ability, and because I was playing the character.
One of the aspects of that fight was, because I was working, for the first time, with Tony DeLongis, I was now working with a guest star who had a tremendous amount of sword experience himself. As a matter of fact, Tony is, of course, a fight choreographer in his own right, and a really good one, too.
When we were filming "Blackmail", we got the call from Vancouver in the writers' office saying, "This guy's a great swordfighter. Can we change the ending of the episode so that he doesn't die? So the character can come back, be something of a recurring villain, we can have some more great swordfights?"
With Tony, I had this wonderful experience of being able to work directly with him to evolve the swordfights because I could trust him and he could trust me. So I would put the sword up and say, "How would you respond to this?" He would respond, and then say, "Well, what's open on me? How would you respond to that?" And he would respond, and we would basically just play with each other and evolved the fight between the two of us, just like we did in "Duende". So that is a rare privilege, to be able to do that.
As Braun likes to put it, he hates when he has to play both parts all the time. This way we used his sort of scenario or his template, and then we evolved things that I could bring my knowledge to it and Adrian would have his input as well.
Tony will bring moves to a fight scene that I might not have considered or that in the odd case I don't even know myself, because as a fight choreographer I am very aware of how much I DON'T know still. It also ensured that the fight was more character-based. And of course, Adrian will change the occasional move himself, not just because I move differently than him, but because who knows the character of MacLeod better? "Blackmail" -- it was the first time I was able to work with an actor who was so expert with the sword that we were able to collaborate with the choreography, rather than just my doing the fight and saying, "Here are the moves. Can you do them? And how much do we have to tweak them so that you can?"
In this particular instance, we decided the fight would start in the living room and then move through the glass house and then -- and climax out at the pool. What he did inform me of, though, when we were first starting was the special effects guys have already rigged this television and this bookcase, so this furniture must die. And so part of our choreography, not only -- you're always trying to reveal character and drive the story forward, otherwise it's just kind of a lot of gymnastics and fancy moves -- we also had to kill this furniture, because it had been paid for and rigged.
This was a fight that took two days to film because of its length and complexity, but I think artistically it was a much more satisfying experience, both for myself as a choreographer, and I think for the overall visual of the fight, because so many other elements were brought to it that would not, under normal circumstances, have been available to us. Gillian Horvath: The truth was, the character of Kurlow was not interesting enough to us to leave him alive and bring him back. He was a pretty stock evil Immortal. So David Abramowitz answered Adrian Paul. He said, "Let's bring him back with a different mustache, a different look, a different accent, and have the same actor play a different character. And we put his name on a list that we had in the kitchen, of actors that we were planning to have on the show. It had Michael Praed on it, it had David Gegenhuber from 'Earth 2', it had, uh, it had Adam Ant on it, who we actually tried to get on the show more than once. We also had a list in the kitchen that we called the 'hot list', which was a list of lines that we never wanted to hear on the show again. We never wanted to put them in a script again. We had "I don't think so." We had "It's what we do." We had "It's who we are." And we tried to avoid letting Duncan say those things because they had become the cliches of the show.
Clip from "Blackmail":
Gillian Horvath: What happens if they're almost discovered... We have sort of as a standard response: most mortals who discover immortality, a Watcher comes along and recruits them to the Watcher cause, which I sort of suspect is what happened with Waverly's wife when the episode was over, was that Joe came along and said, "I got a job for you, now that you know the truth." |
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Clip from "Vendetta":
Adrian Paul (Actor): "Vendetta" was one of those shows that allowed him to actually be a little lighter in certain aspects.
Clip from "Vendetta":
It wasn't my favorite show, "Vendetta", but it was fun to see a slightly lighter side to Mac.
Clip from "Vendetta":
There were certain things that worked. I mean, I loved the dancing aspect in it.
Clip from "Vendetta":
That was fun to do. I mean, I think there were some good characters in it. It just somehow missed the mark. I'm not sure why, but it wasn't my favorite. I just don't think it had the heart that some of the other episodes had, even though they were light. I mean, if you look at some of the Roger Daltrey ones, they had some very strong relationships, and this one was a little disjointed.
Clip from "Vendetta":
David Tynan (Executive Script Consultant / Writer): Anne Lindsey couldn't really learn MacLeod's secret or that would have drawn her further into his world, so we had to make a decision, I think, as to whether or not she was going to learn who and what MacLeod really was or stay on the outside.
Clip from "Vendetta":
And you feel that tension of these two characters, of Anne trying to figure out what's going on with MacLeod and why he's acting so mysteriously, and MacLeod trying to hide the fact that he's Immortal.
Clip from "Vendetta":
Bill Panzer (Executive Producer): This is "Vendetta". This was a script that could have gone in a couple of directions. It could have gone as a -- as it did go, as kind of a comedy.
Clip from "Vendetta":
Or it probably could have been played, with pretty much the same dialogue and situations, as kind of a Thirties melodrama.
Clip from "Vendetta":
It was a period piece. It was very stylized, which wasn't kind of what we'd played before, but it was an interesting idea.
Thirties melodrama probably plays best in the Thirties. And I think that George Mendeluk's idea to kind of broaden it out a little bit, take advantage of the comedic nature of the actor, was probably a good call on his part.
Clip from "Vendetta":
Yeah, it did feel a little cartoony. I think it was possibly, um, directed that way. "Vendetta" was a -- was supposed to be a little darker than it was, and it came off a little slapstick. |
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