Highlander
Transcripts:
DVD Extras
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Highlander |
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(from 2004 U.S./Canada DVD set)
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Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): I think "Comes a Horseman" was the quintessential Highlander episode. It had great locations, it had great sex, it had incredible villains, it had wonderful drama, it had surprises, it had everything you'd want in any kind of episode. As a matter of fact, if you took "Comes a Horseman" and "Revelations" and put them together and spent thirty million dollars on them or twenty million dollars, I think you would have had an incredible feature film. That's how large the story was.
To be honest with you, I've never really understood why TV can't be shot like a movie. I understand there are budgetary differences, of course there are, and time constraints, but there were on Highlander and yet it was shot like a movie. I mean the ninety-ninth and hundredth episodes were fantastic.
How did this come about? You know, it's funny. I don't remember who had the idea, but that always happens, you know, when you're doing stories. You're in a room with a bunch of people and the best story rooms work where no one's keeping count and no one's keeping score, where there's just this free flow of ideas and you throw out the sh*beep*t ones and you keep the good ones and you build upon everybody and everybody gets excited. And we knew we had something special here. So we thought, what if the four horsemen of the apocalypse were real? And they were based upon four Immortals who were evil, who cut a swath throughout Arabia and that entire world. And it seemed like such a great idea. And we know that Methos is five thousand years old. It seemed only natural that he wasn't good for all those five thousand years, because the Methos we know now is not a saint. So we decided, okay, what if he was evil for part of time? And I thought Peter Wingfield, who played Methos, was the perfect actor to do this, because he had the strength to play the villain and he also had the strength to play the guy who says 'sh*beep*t happens so you just go through it, and all I want to do is survive, leave me alone.' And there was one scene which Dave Tynan wrote with MacLeod standing up against a car, not believing that Methos was a killer and a murderer and evil in his past. He doesn't want to admit it. He doesn't want to believe it. And Methos turning on him and saying 'yes, and you know why?'
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
It added such incredible depth to the entire series.
It was just the most fantastic idea and a reflection on the strength of the character that the show had created over a couple of seasons to be able to say that about a character and for it not to seem completely ridiculous and impossible. For it to be possible for people to look at the character of Methos and think, 'oh my goodness, it's possible. There is nothing that's happened before that would clash with this at all.' That was-- I mean, that's exciting. And the script was terrific. There are so many great scenes, great moments in that episode.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
Valentine Pelka: What I think about Kronos... If I was defined by the roles I've played, I'd be a really twisted individual. So thank God, hopefully I'm not that. I think some of my friends thought, 'oh' -- because I'd played a baddie once or twice before -- and they said, 'Oh, you're doing another baddie." I didn't quite see him like that. He didn't have a choice, really. He was put on Earth to behave like that. That was his function. And one of the most liberating -- I've said this before -- one of the most liberating things about playing that character, in comparison with, saying, playing Hamlet-- Playing Hamlet's fantastic, but he's a man with scruples. And I've often played people with scruples. To play somebody without scruples is also quite an interesting thing to do. There are no constraints to what you can do. There was a liberation about playing Kronos, which I really, really enjoyed, coupled with the fact that the four of us got on like a house on fire.
And his response to the whole thing, you know, Kronos finds him and-- finds Methos--
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
Well, this might sound strange, but -- I mean, you know, as I stick a knife inside him -- but it's like saying, "Surprise, I'm back." Because I know I haven't killed him, I've just hurt him a bit. And I suppose in apocalyptic terms, it's the equivalent of a punch in the stomach slightly, a playful punch in the stomach. But... the only thing he needs is Methos, funnily enough.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
Peter Wingfield: Playing Methos was like going to drama school for me, because the challenges were different every time I visited him. There were practical challenges. The sword fight stuff. I'd done a lot of that before. But then, you know, there were things where he's one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. You've got to get on a horse. I knew that if that had been an open audition for this character, I wouldn't have got the job because I couldn't ride. But there were practical things like that that I just had to get on and do. But then there were emotional challenges. The areas that that character had to go to were-- there was a huge range. And he kept having to go to these vulnerable places, in one sense or another, the falling in love, the loss of somebody incredibly important to you.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
The anger, the rage, the violence of the character in the "Horseman". I mean, the stretches that were demanded of me were huge. And it was just a matter of 'you can do this and fake it' or 'you can do it to the best of your ability'. And that's how you learn. It's how you grow as an actor. How do I get to that place? I know that those feelings are in me somewhere. And I usually-- I don't live in those feelings. But I know they're there. How do I get to them? How do I access them? The first meeting where Cassandra sees Methos, and Methos sees her, and just that "Okay, I'm in big trouble here."
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
I was never sure how in control Methos was, from the moment that he sees Cassandra, from the moment that Kronos appears back in his life, takes him off to the power station and just rekindles all this stuff, talks about what it was like. And there is a part of Methos that loved it. And he knows it. Kronos knows it.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
Roger Bellon (Composer): The show "Comes a Horseman" was particularly interesting from many aspects. One, as just a fan of Highlander -- because even though I'm working on it, I'm also a fan of the concept of the show -- the script and the idea was great because you're dealing with the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which is a very operatic and dark and deep subject. And also it was shot wonderfully because it was four horsemen in the desert. It was very big and filmic and David Lynch almost in some aspects. And the music was fun to do because it had to be really dark and poignant. And I consider myself a pretty dark person. And so that type of writing comes very natural to me. Not only was it dark and poignant, but it had to sound interesting. It just wasn't sort of a typical dark score. And I remember having to find some interesting hook for myself. And it was, in the present time, a very interesting sort of piano, dark piano, low arpeggio that would match the rhythm of the horsemen, but at the same time be very interesting and maybe a very unique way of approaching the emotion of what this is, because the music is really trying to give the viewer the emotion of this dark, almost hell-like aspect of the movie.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman":
The other interesting part of this particular episode was the flashback part, because it was all supposed to be sounding very old, like, I think, 1000 BC or older. What kind of music do you write for that, because there was nothing at the time, so how do you convey the emotion of that time dramatically? What do you use? So what I ended up doing was referring myself back to old American Indian chants and wooden pipes and percussive sounds that I could find. I didn't actually have musicians play these. I actually found these on particular CDs that musicians have available that one can use. And they were recordings of old ancient Indian tribal hymns that were very unique sounding and that most people wouldn't have a reference in their mental auditive lexicon so that they would go, "Oh, yeah, that's just Hopi Indian chants." So I think that that particular episode got to be very unique from a visual directorial standpoint and from a sonic standpoint. I found it to be wonderfully dark and I think it succeeded in conveying what four horsemen of the apocalypse should sound like. |
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David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): We shot it in Bordeaux, these two episodes. We're shooting during the 100th episode of "Highlander." We had great parties. It was incredibly memorable, drank tons of wine, and the episodes worked. They looked great, they felt great.
Playing {him or any parts}, there was an element of fun to it as well. You have to be free enough to allow yourself to have fun with it. And that fun can be quite serious fun. Playing Kronos was... just fun. It's difficult to describe, I got such a kick out of it.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8" deleted scene:
Adrian Paul: Is it Kronos? It's Kronos.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8" deleted scene:
Adrian Paul: Yes. Yes, it was Kronos.
[laughs] There was a flashback shot between Methos and Kronos in Greek days.
Oh, we shot that, but you never actually saw it.
That was quite the most embarrassing thing I have ever committed to film. Valentine Pelka and I, in really bad wigs.
Very skimpy Greek, short, short, tuxedo towel things.
My legs, I think.
Clip from "Comes a Horseman" deleted scene:
English legs are not meant for skirts.
I hope against hope that that film was destroyed, but I fear that it still lives somewhere.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8" deleted scene:
Story-wise, it was kind of-- There was some stuff about... he trapped Kronos. He put him in a pit.
Well, he did, because, you know, I didn't let him read books.
And buried him and hoped that he would never again resurface.
He was probably stamping his foot and saying he wanted a life apart.
In very clear, Freudian terms, he took the bad part out of himself and buried it away, but he couldn't kill it. It was still there. And when Kronos comes back, it's like that stuff has come back and it's still alive and it's still in him. Valentine Pelka: Nothing really frustrated him. The only thing that really frustrated him was Methos balking at the idea of what he was suggesting. And suddenly, in the second episode, you really get a sense of some sort of vulnerability there. Whereas, really, if the other two had said something, he probably would have had no compunction in chopping their heads off. But Methos is just... Methos completes him. That's why he comes back. Methos completes him, I'm sure that's what it is.
I think in "Revelation 6.8", he was making it up as he went along. The whole two-parter reminded me of Hamlet and the way people constantly argue about whether he's crazy or whether he's pretending to be crazy.
The dilemma was, you know, he's going after a friend, but deep down does he believe that his friend is lying to him and his friend is doing it and, I think, is doing bad.
I never felt that Methos was in control enough that he was pretending to be crazy. I think he was-- Moment by moment, he is doing what he can to survive.
Something in me was telling me that Methos was doing this for a reason. His own sick reason, whatever it was. But Methos was... There's some point of good in him that was never going to allow the whole mess to occur.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
I felt all the way through it that there was absolutely the chance that Methos would decide, "Okay, it's all over. MacLeod's got to go."
I was trying to find that in each of the scenes where, you know, what was it that was the good part of Methos? Was he really good or was he just going back to the bad side? But part of me always still believed that there was a glimmer of hope to glean from that particular Immortal.
If Kronos had won out, he would have done the same as he'd always done. He'd have gone with him, he'd have gone with Kronos, he would have survived as best he could. And then it would get edgy, because I never got the feeling that there was... that there was a love or a respect of Kronos.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
Kronos was always on his guard, had been for a long time... with Methos. There's... there's lovely kind of plan and counter-plan subterfuge going on through the whole episode.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
There's just that... there's an edginess about every part of their relationship. And if MacLeod had fallen, then that would have... I think that would have carried on. The big question was how much Methos and Kronos needed each other. And again, at the end of the episode, MacLeod says to Methos...
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
And there's that edge in it the whole way through. But did he have any plan, any control throughout the whole story? No, I don't think so.
It's fun. And playing with Peter was fun. He's a real giggler anyway. And working with all the guys; I'm seeing Adrian later on today, hopefully... We're still in touch. David Abramowitz: Adrian did a great job directing "Revelation". Because the bottom line is how the episode turned out.
"Revelations 6-point-8" was kind of a tough show in a sense, because directing and acting in it was a real challenge. Because this was a huge show.
He worked the actors harder.
Adrian took us for a working lunch on the Sunday, I remember. And we worked from, I think it was nine o'clock in the morning until about seven in the evening, on getting the relationships right, the pecking order. You know, what our likes were, what our dislikes were. Just filling in the-- making a rounded relationship and a rounded set of characters. And his attention to detail was great. And therefore it meant that when we were on set, we-- A) We saved a lot of time. We weren't asking, "Well, what do you think my motivation is?" But also, I think we were very clear about our relationships with each other. And I think that shows.
But the bottom line is, as I said, he directed the hell out of the episode. The fight sequences were wonderful. As much as Adrian and I used to fight -- and we used to go at it pretty good -- you know, he certainly delivered here.
Shooting that type of show, you're working fairly fast. In comparison to say, I don't know, say a movie, for example. And the more you know about the characters, the more you know about your relationships between each other and the more you're in tune with what the director wants, then the quicker you can work. And because Adrian was playing Highlander and also was directing, and we'd spent that Sunday -- that Sunday was crucial. We'd ironed out the sort of problems which, if they turned up on set, we could have been discussing for half an hour. So things skipped along quite quickly. And the other benefit was that when we had this hugely involved swordfight at the end, the final fight, if we needed to cut, Adrian could call the cut from inside the scene, give me a brief note on what to do, where to stand, from the point at which we were going to pick up the fight again. He'd tell me what move we were going to start from. Now that can take ages. When you fight somebody as good as Adrian, he's up to speed. He's doing it every single day of the working week. So his muscle memory is good. His responses are really finely tuned. If you're coming in as a guest player, you have to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and that's not easy. He's more tuned up than you are, and he's built it up over a period of time. So he made allowances, which was great, and he pulls blows, which is a relief. It doesn't always happen, believe it or not. If it's not a case of remembering sixty moves, if you know them, you've got them, they're part of your muscle memory, as I say, they're in your memory bank, then you can let yourself go and get the intention right, and you can pretend to really want to kill them, but you're out of distance, and therefore safe. Once you've got that, and you know the other guy's safe, and he knows you're safe, then you can go hell for leather with complete and utter freedom, and that freedom's a rare thing to find in sword fighting. So that was great.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
Valentine Pelka: Obviously, there's a limit to what you can show, but the intention behind the blow can sell that, and as I say, it is a beheading. It is what it is.
Clip from "Revelation 6:8":
Adrian Paul: We'd never really played with the fact of two Quickenings. Do their spirits join in that midpoint? There was a real symbolic idea of the two Quickenings of these two men who had two totally different ideologies of life, still believed in a truth, although Methos's truth about life was very discolored from MacLeod's point of view.
Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes the magic doesn't. This time, the magic worked in spades. |
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Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
Stan Kirsch ("Richie Ryan"): The story is really kind of told through the mind of Richie and his sort of, you know, not understanding what the hell is happening around him in the circumstances. He's picked up by these people and whatnot. He doesn't understand the gravity of what he's stepped into.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
It was really my story and, of course, when you're on a show like that and in any kind of a role other than the main guy, I mean, it really is a story that revolves pretty much around one guy and his relationships with these other people.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
When it's sort of your storyline, I think it's more exciting. You know, you have more to do and you're more active and so it's fun on that level to begin with. But the vibes during "Richard Redstone", I thought were great.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
Adrian Paul (Actor): "Ransom" to me was a little spoof. I enjoyed the flashback, you know. It was kind of fun to have the flashback.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
We didn't really have any money to shoot that show because I'd spent a hundred thousand dollars over on "Revelation 6-point-8", so by the time we got onto this show, me and the entire crew at that particular point were exhausted. That said, it was the story, maybe had been a little bit disjointed perhaps.
It was the only show that we did, that we shot in three separate cities. We started it in Bordeaux [clip of DM in LeMartin wine cellar], and then we did a few days in a city called Bergerac in between Bordeaux and Paris [clip of exterior of Chateau LeMartin], and then we went up to Paris to complete the episode [clip of DM exiting general store]. So on some level at the time, it felt like this little episode was almost a feature film, because we were literally moving the crew to three different cities just to do the one episode. So it was exciting on that level, it felt like we were doing something bigger, and of course all the locations were exactly as you see them on film, there was no sound stages, nothing was a set, the casino was real...
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
...the chateau was real, everything was real, so there was no suspension of disbelief.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
It was exciting to sort of be in this castle in the middle of France, in this town, Bergerac, and play like that's where we were. It was really that element of sort of being like grown-up kids running around and playing this game of pretend. It was a lot of fun and--
Everything was very compact, and I think sometimes when you actually have to do a show like that, you have to really work on the acting and not try and move it around. I had fun playing the older MacLeod, you know,
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
You know really it was one of those things that I felt empty because I'd come from such an intense two weeks prep and shoot of the previous show. Stan Kirsch: Because it was a comedy, of course, there was a sense of-- a little bit more sense of freedom that we had, and I think that Gérard Hameline, the director, understood that. There was-- being that he's French and it was written, I think, with an extremely American sensibility, I think that Gérard relied on me to understand a lot of the nuances of the humor, which was nice. So he didn't really come to me with like "Oh, this is how this is going to be funnier." Adrian and I were sort of able to run with that a bit more.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
Most of the scenes I didn't even have with him. I was able to sort of carry that myself. He was more focused again on the overall-- not just the overall picture, but with me personally... keeping it real. When you're doing a comedy like that, there's-- you can play things many different ways and you can tend to push a little bit and push for the humor, and I think the last thing you want to be doing when you're doing a comedy is have anybody look at it and realize that you think you're doing a comedy. It's all of a sudden not so funny anymore. So he was focused on playing the scenes as if they were very serious and I was looking for the humor and how to play it seriously and still find the humor out of the situation.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
We got to play around quite a bit. He took a lot of ideas from me. I think when we were in the dungeon, the slapping-- when the girl slapped me in the face, that was-- She wasn't really, that girl was very sweet, very rough with her English and very nervous all the way through, and she allowed Gérard and I to kind of take care of her, and she came a long way. We had a very good time and she was very free and open with the physicality of the role and the kissing and whatnot. She had no problem with any of that. And we got to the dungeon and she had to really have some balls and some fire. She wasn't quite getting there and I went and told Gérard I said, you know, "Pull her aside and tell her, 'Listen, you know, if this guy pisses you off in the take, you know, just let him have it. You know, I mean, you know, he at this point in the story, you don't like him so much. You feel like you've been duped by him.'" So I pulled him aside, told him, "Listen, tell her, 'Hit him, slap him, do whatever, you know, you're pissed off at him now.'" So we got into the next few takes and I just deliberately kept on trying to kiss her as she's yelling at me and eventually she just hauled off and smacked me in the face.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
We got what we were looking for there, so Gérard was much more into sort of the play with me, and she later realized that I was in on it the whole time, but I didn't know what was going to happen or when it was going to happen. So it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun to play that sort of a thing.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
Of course, the bit with the being drugged, you know, that's always fun to sort of do something like that, to not have to be so cool in front of the camera, to be a little bit more of an idiot is, I think, a good time.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
This stuff with the casino was great. The Ferrari, the James Bond aspect to it.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
I got to do a lot in one particular episode.
I know he enjoyed being, you know, Robin, you know, to Batman, because he couldn't be double-oh-seven, you know, it just doesn't work, um, but he was definitely double-oh-three, you know, and he enjoyed doing that.
I liked the fact that I wasn't wearing brown leather the entire time either, had a nice tux, and the costume designers in Paris were very, uh-- What I liked about them was, I guess they've got a very-- they've got a nice sense of style over there, and she was very on, uh, you know, she's... Everything had to be tailored properly and look proper. And there was a sense in Vancouver a little bit of like, ah, you're just a, eh, you're just a street kid, you know, I mean, you don't know how to dress, you don't have to do this, do that. So she was a little bit more into high styling the character, and that's what we were going for at the time. So I think all the elements really gelled. It was a lot of fun. I had a really good time with that show.
Clip from "The Ransom of Richard Redstone":
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Clip from "Duende":
Adrian Paul (Actor): Well, Duende is a state of being very much like Zen. So for MacLeod, Duende is another aspect of Zenism, and so he was very used to that. And I think I understood that very well because, you know, I've done martial arts for so many years that Zen to me is being one. Whether you're playing golf or shooting a gun or fighting, you are in the moment. You're not exterior or thinking or anything. You're in that moment. That moment is clarity.
Clip from "Duende":
"Duende" was a tough episode because there was so much going on in it. I mean, I learned Flamenco dance, which I actually trained for like months before when we were in Vancouver. And we actually shot this episode in Paris. And the story was, you know, about love lost and continuing the search for this man who had abused and killed one of the loves of my life, who also happened to be my teacher. But that wasn't the only problem. The problem was that I was in virtually every frame of this show, and I had to learn an Espada y Daga sword fight, which is not easy to do.
Clip from "Duende":
This was really the first time anyone had ever attempted to put the Spanish style of sword fighting on screen. So I was very excited by that opportunity. And I brought in some pictures and, you know, pitched David on it. And he went, "Well, that's really interesting, but we've never really built a story based on a fighting style. But if you can come up with a backstory, then we'll see what we can do." Well, I went off and I came up with five story ideas. And when I brought them in, David went, "Well, you know, that's nice, but we've already done that," and, "Well, that's pretty similar to something else," 'cause he'd done almost a hundred stories by then. But we finally hit on one, which had to do with, MacLeod is defeated in a duel. And a woman that he loves sacrifices her happiness for him, literally gives him the gift of life. And of course, you know, he'll have none of it. And she says, "No, you have to respect my honor and my decision. I am as capable of honor and sacrifice you are. And if you love me, you have to respect that."
Clip from "Duende":
The show, I thought, was really interesting. I mean, it showed a whole different side of swordwork, it had a much more Latin flavor to it, something we hadn't really gone to yet in the series. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the challenge of this. And actually, it was funny because where we shot it, was we shot the flamenco dance in a club called the Casbah in Paris. And we also shot the sweatshop scene in a little corner of this restaurant club. And it was bizarre because like, you know that every night everyone's sitting there having drinks, but actually you're turning it into like a sweatshop. So-- Or a sauna house, if you like. So it was kind of bizarre doing that scene there, but the decor suited it perfectly.
What I like to do any time, you know, I play a character, is obviously you want to find a ring of truth to it. And, you know, you always have a job to do. You have a story to tell. And you have your character's story to tell. And I always feel like if I can add an element of style on top of that -- because that's where it belongs, it's a final condiment; it's not the main course -- that's great. And this gave me the chance to do both of those things.
Clip from "Duende":
Here's a show where sword fighting is a huge character element in the show. And this is something that-- You know, you guys have done five seasons now. Here's something that you've never done, and that really no one has ever done. This has never really been seen on film before. It's a Spanish mysterious circle. They kind of suggest it a bit with The Mask of Zorro, but that came afterwards.
We actually shot the finale scene between us, we had to shoot it on this surface that became very slippery, because it started to rain. And I remember Anthony De Longis went down hard at the beginning. And if we'd had a sword and one of us slipped, I mean, anything could have happened, could have stabbed, or an eye get poked out, but lucky that didn't happen. MacLeod obviously knew that this man knew what he was doing. And it was a tough choice to face him, because, you know, he was dangerous. He wasn't-- and MacLeod not only decided to face him in this arena, but faced him on his terms.
Clip from "Duende":
So it was again another obstacle for MacLeod to overcome. And it was interesting to play because there was so much going on and I think the visual effect at the end was stunning.
Clip from "Duende":
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Clips from "The Stone of Scone":
Adrian Paul (Actor): This is the only show I think in all the seasons that we worked that was entirely in flashback. And it was based on a real incident from the 1950s story in the United Kingdom papers of somebody trying to steal the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
I was going in there to steal one thing and he was going in there to blow up Westminster Abbey, I think it was.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
We actually came up with ad libs in this whole thing all the time and I'm pretty sure some of that stuff in there was an ad lib, you know. It's true, it started from the beginning, and when you've worked with somebody before, you kind of like get their beats and their timing.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
Richard Martin (Director): "The Stone of Scone" was a wacky Highlander, you know one of those episodes that come along every once in a while where everyone wants to have a bunch of fun and get away from some of that darkness.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
The wackiest probably, the wackiest episode I did with Highlander. Well, I was so excited to meet Roger Daltrey when I heard he was going to be in it. I was just, "Oh this is going to be so cool!"
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
It was a bit of a free-for-all on set, and we had some bad background actors in terms of especially one cow that would refuse to-- sitting in the background which I, unfortunately, ordered up, who refused to stay quiet, especially on Adrian's lines. I guess he was trying to upstage him.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
But I didn't help matters much, because, you know, trying to go for a zany kind of free-for-all feel, I tried to keep it really loose. But it was still professional enough that people weren't off in the forest while we were trying to shoot on the greens.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
Adrian Paul: When you're playing with Roger... I mean, it was so much fun to play with him. It was kind of-- and then I had to deal with Amanda too. So MacLeod was kind of at a loss, because it was in between these two, and then in the past he was always getting drawn into certain instances that left him at a loss. Like the cheating that Fitzcairn did in the past in the golf game--
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
--that then set him up for the whole golf game in the 1950s.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
And the funny thing was we were on the golf course that time and I'd played golf for a while and he hadn't played at all and Elizabeth hadn't played. We all hit a ball to the, like, par three, and I mishit it, and he hit it -- had hardly ever hit it -- and it landed on the green. He was like, "See I've got-- See? No problem." So we were just-- we were doing that in between takes, you know, just playing around. I think when you do that, and it just-- then you just switch to going to the camera, at the time he's already there.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
And then they said "Well, can you play golf?" and of course I'd never really played golf, so I spent-- I don't know how many lessons I took, learning how to really swing it, because she's conning Fitzcairn.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
So I had to really learn how to swing the club and I was just very excited, and getting there first day, some huge pasture in France that's supposed to be the golf course, and it's freezing and there's Roger Daltrey and Adrian and we're all dressed up and I had a great wig in that, great clothing, and then we were off and I don't think we ever quit laughing. Ever quit laughing on that episode.
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And I had the great caddy who was Scottish with the big nose and, oh, it was good. "I think my ball has gone over there" in a very, very-- very much like that.
Clips from "The Stone of Scone":
Richard Martin: Roger was great, except he arrived the first day after singing his guts out at a concert the night before and he could barely talk. So that took a little bit of an adjustment to his voice to get him up to speed. But he actually has a really uncanny little comic timing, which worked well.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
I really thought a lot about the road movies and about the British series, the Carry On films, which I watched as a kid. And I thought, you know, to try to bring that kind of quality.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
We have a giant pole that we're going to loop through the rings of the stone. So Roger is holding the pole. And of course he's a small guy and this pole is huge, and once you're in-- We were in one of Napoleon's castles for that whole sequence.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
I thought that one of the best scenes was they're hauling the stone out of Westminster Abbey, and they're really struggling with it. Of course it's all just made of Styrofoam and everything, but the look of the three of them, you know, struggling with this object was just funny and Roger was particularly good in that.
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Well, he's such a professional and really-- not that he tries too hard because he doesn't, but he just, you know, is very focused and very serious about acting, and I think he truly enjoys that and in the end he's just a real professional.
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Elizabeth Gracen: The director, I asked him when when we began, I said, "I'd kind of like to do this stylized if you'd let me, because I think Amanda might want to do that just because it's-- everyone's sort of doing that."
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
And he said, "Okay, go with it," and so we tried it and I was able to incorporate it in there, and once again they found perfect costumes, and the actors I played against-- that sequence I do with them when I'm trying to fence what I think are going to be diamonds or whatever, and he was very good.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
Once again, I felt very lucky that the writers were saying "All right, well, let's give them something even funnier, even more outrageous to do," and you know, I guess I felt safe in that environment to sort of let that part of myself work, let it out.
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We were having such a good time. It was such an easy show to shoot because we were having a great time doing it. It was no real hard thinking in that show, it was just people relating to each other, and that's where I think, you know, we found a lot of the nuances that I think and I hope came across in the episode.
Clip from "The Stone of Scone":
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Peter Wingfield ("Methos"): "Forgive Us Our Trespasses." The episode where the big question was answered: Methos, boxers or briefs? Why does he incessantly keep trying to save MacLeod? It was a constant worry to me, playing him. Why does he not just let it go?
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
It's MacLeod's battle. MacLeod is having problems with the fact that he is guilt-ridden, having killed Sean Burns. This guy has come back from the past who wanted to kill MacLeod before, but Sean Burns had persuaded him, "No, MacLeod is a good guy." And he's now intent on revenge. Amanda and Methos kind of think that MacLeod may let him kill him, because he feels so bad about what he's done. And Methos goes in and is going to interfere in a fight and kill this guy in order to protect MacLeod.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
Why does he do it? I think Methos, he's a gregarious kind of guy. I mean, in spite of his propensity to hide, to keep away from the game, to survive over five millennia by disappearing. He likes people. He likes the company of people, and he likes MacLeod. He likes Amanda. He likes the group that has kind of gelled together, and it's easy and it's fun. You get the same thing with Joe. You really get a sense that Methos likes Joe, and he will go to bat for him. He'll take care of him whenever he can. And I think if there's no threat to Methos, then he's pretty happy to look after his friends.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
When it really comes down to the wire, if he had to choose "them or me", well, I think we know what he'd choose.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
Gillian Horvath (Associate Creative Consultant): "Forgive Us Our Trespasses." This is a real favorite episode of mine. At this point, Amanda had done a lot of comedy episodes, and I actually remember seeing Elizabeth at some event and talking to her about her various episodes she had coming up, and realizing that she was a little disappointed that she was doing comedy after comedy. She's so good at it, but it wasn't just such a chance for her to stretch. And being able to tell her about this episode, which was on the development schedule and say, "Now we've got one where you're really driving an interesting dramatic story." And really, she did an amazing job in this.
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She's definitely the type to look after the people who are in her, in her flock, in her circle. She-- Duncan cares about everyone in the world and wants to help everyone in the world, and Amanda doesn't have, I think, that instinct, but she does care about the people she cares about, and when they're threatened, she does rush in to try to help. We saw her do it in the Kalas episodes where she risked her life for Duncan, and we see it here where she tries to get through to Keane. In a way, she's playing Duncan's role from some of the other episodes, where she tries to talk through the situation and make sure that two of her friends won't have to kill each other. She has some really nice scenes in this episode.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
My only disappointment probably in this episode is the casting of Steven Keane. We had wanted Michael Preed, who had played Robin Hood in the BBC Robin Hood series, and is a good-looking, romantic-lead type. He's a guy who could carry his own action television series just like Adrian does, and I think it would have-- Even better than the episode is now, I think it would have emphasized the idea that Steven Keane could be the hero. That in this story, Duncan can be portrayed as the villain. It's actually a continuation of themes that we've been playing with for years. That the idea of, back in "Blind Faith", Duncan comes across a man he believes is evil, but who these days is doing good and who other people believe is a good man. And he has to make a judgment call there.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
In this case, he's the one being judged. We know him as a good man, but from everything Keane knows about him, he is the villain. He has killed people and his history that Keane knows is violent and brutal. So I love the idea that you can look at this and say, if this was Steven Keane's series, Duncan would be the antagonist this week. And I think it would have been an even stronger story if we'd had a guy playing Steven Keane who was a guy who could carry his own action series, so you'd really have this moment where you wondered "who's the hero this week?"
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
Gillian Horvath: That scene in the atelier where Amanda says to Methos, "If he thinks he deserves to lose, he'll lose," is a great moment, because it's another one of those moments where just because one of our heroes says something doesn't make it true. Amanda really believes that. She genuinely believes that Duncan's problem is that if he doesn't believe in the justice of his cause, if he thinks he really should lose, then he will lose. And I think she underestimates a little his desire to survive, that she's worried that he'll basically throw the fight because he thinks that he-- that his guilt will make him throw the fight. And it's an interesting analysis of Duncan's character, but just because Amanda thinks it doesn't mean that that's everything that's going on.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
Peter Wingfield: So this is season five, and there is a lot of talk that there will not be a season six, the Highlander in its form will not go on, but there is just the possibility in the air that there might be a spin-off of some description. And Lizzie Gracen and I are playing this scene where Amanda is saying to Methos, "You know this terrible thing might happen. If MacLeod goes out and fights this guy, he might die."
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" unused scene:
And she started giggling, and I started giggling, and everyone thought it was funny, and so we cut, and we started rolling again. And I still thought it was really funny.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" unused scene:
And she still thought it was really funny, and it gradually got less and less funny for the rest of the crew.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" unused scene:
For some reason, Peter and I got on -- the English call it corpsing, where you just, you get on this laughing jag -- because we were having this serious moment about, you know, he's this, he's a boy scout, and MacLeod is going to do this, he's going to do that. But you know, I say something like, "But if he goes, he'll die." I couldn't, I'm doing it again. I couldn't keep a straight face. And just in joking and rehearsal, he said, "Well, then we get our own show." And I say, "Yeah." And so from then on, it took almost-- It was really unprofessional, but we couldn't quit laughing. Every take on both of us, when the camera turned around, it was just a matter of trying to keep the straight face, and when one would start to laugh, they would turn [turns her head to the side], but it was-- Paulo was ready to kill us, but it was very funny.
As they cut and rolled again, and cut and rolled again, and we never, ever managed to shoot that scene properly, because we just-- there's something about corpsing that it starts off being funny for everyone, and then it stops being funny for everyone else. And because they're getting angry, it's kind of even funnier for you. And you're just getting to this hysterical zone where you can't look at each other, because the words don't have to be said anymore, just looking at each other will make you laugh. And my coverage had already been shot, but they had to shoot Lizzie, and they wanted to have just a little sense of my shoulder in the shot. And in the end, they had to give it up because it kept doing that, as she tried to say her lines. And she wasn't looking at me when she said that line, if you see in the final, the final cut.
Clip from "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" unused scene:
She'd completely lost the ability to look me in the eye.
That must be what it's like when you work on a sitcom and, you know, like a Will and Grace or something like that, and everything they do is funny. They must totally break up all the time. Or with Robin Williams, or working, you know, with Jim Carrey, it must be-- trying to keep a straight face through that is impossible. |
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James Thorpe (Writer): The idea for "Modern Prometheus" came, like all good ideas do, out of, you know, sheer desperation. I think it was the third episode I wrote on the fifth season. And there was no idea for that episode yet. And I remember meeting with David in the offices and him saying, "You know, we'd like to give you another script this year, but we don't have it. We need an idea." So I went home and, you know, a couple days. I rooted around, tried to come up with something, couldn't come up with anything. And at the last minute I thought, you know, screw it, I'll just watch TV. So I turned on the tube. And what was there was the original Frankenstein movie, when the mad scientist is bringing life to the monster with electricity. And what flashed in my mind immediately was the Quickening. I went in and pitched this idea that Mary Shelley actually had witnessed a Quickening, and from that came the idea for her to write the Frankenstein novel.
I wanted it to be the idea of the resurrection of a body, the electricity going towards the body. I had already set up stuff of the hand on the ground, how the electricity went into the hand and how the hand moved. It went to the other hand. And that eventually made the whole body levitate off the ground, which allowed Mary Shelley to go, "Oh my god, that's the thing -- Frankenstein."
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
The characters in the script were, you know, Keats and Shelley and Byron.
The one thing I wanted to kind of show here was that-- was the reality of Byron, of Lord Byron. And what would it have been like if he had been an Immortal?
If you read about the life of Byron, Byron was a pretty on-the-edge kind of guy, especially for his day. You know, he'd do guys, he'd do girls, he'd do sheep, and then he'd write poetry.
And I found a lot of his poetry really meant something to this particular episode and I actually implemented it in the show itself.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
I remember David reading the period dialogue and saying, "You know, this is so accurate, I don't understand it." So we had to-- we actually walked the line, where we took the period dialogue and backed it off a little more towards what would be readily acceptable today.
I was trying to come up with stuff that made this story compelling. And then when we went to the past, I was trying to create a fairy tale, something that was this Byronesque poetry. So a lot of the shots I was actually incorporating in the past were these long languid, one shots and then popping in at the end to a close up that was the real moment of the close up. See, what I felt that the past was, was a play, and I shot it like a play.
Adrian did a great job directing because he really got the material. He's an artist himself. So he really brought, I think, a spectacular visual look to the episode. It was a little bit gothic, a little bit rock-and-roll, which was, you know, the perfect balance.
The post-production put in this washed-out look which gave it this rock-and-roll-video feel. Because I saw him as a rock-and-roll star, which he was in the present. I saw him that as in the past too. He was trying to find the meaning of existence, what excited him in life, and he was destroying everything around him that had some sort of quality to it and he'd almost burnt out. So his look, his way of being in the present was much whiter, much shallower, skinnier. In the past, he was still trying to find out about life. He was debauched, as Byron was, but he hadn't gotten to that stage yet, and I think he really stood out in the present because he was that way, where we used warm colors in the present and he was so stark against it. Roger Bellon (Music Composer): So the challenge was how does one tie the past and the present together. So I chose basically two movements of one Beethoven piano sonata, which was the C# minor which is the "Moonlight Sonata" that everybody knows. On top of the "Moonlight Sonata" was a rock-and-roll guitar playing the melody and a whole rhythm section that was treating it more like a rhythm-and-blues piece.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
To me it was important, the chariot race, because it gave us sense of the era.
While in the past, there were some moving and chasing moments.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
And so in order to score this, in keeping that idea -- not the rock-and-roll aspect of it but the classical Beethoven aspect of it -- I chose the third movement of that particular sonata, which is a really fast movement and is very dramatic and is very emotional.
The carriage race to me was, oh, so much fun. It was the old-time car chase, and it's funny because we actually nearly ran out of time on that because we were there late one day, but what was really nice was that we were able to find some stuff that was backlit and made it very romantic and {??} doing that, they stayed in the carriage and you could see that they were the ones in the actual carriage itself. So I'm very happy about that.
It was also a lot of fun for me because I got to try and play the third movement, which made me practice the piano a little bit since it's a bit challenging. Peter Wingfield ("Methos"): There was some nice, decadent, quite risque filming in that episode.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
He pushed the envelope at that point. He was probably pushing it to the degree, I thought, of trying to feel life.
It was a lot about taste and texture and experiencing things deeply and being kind of crazy about stuff, and the clothing, the fabric and the drugs, the opium, it had a really nice sense of all that world.
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Taking her into the bedroom was this sexual thing, this whole thing between, you know, Methos and Byron himself.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
Methos is there, and there is a part of him that is taking care of her. There is a part of him that is almost paternal, that is the doctor making sure she's okay. But then when Byron comes in, there is a weirdness going on there.
And how far would they go? How far would you take somebody that is weak, and Byron would take it to the edge, whereas Methos doesn't, which is interesting because it showed that Methos had a conscience.
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And in this scene in the past, you just get that sense that Methos is hanging on by a thread, because the idea of a threesome is really appealing to him. And I kind of like that. But in the end, he pulls away from it. You feel that his care of Mary Shelley overcomes his lust for the experiencing of the moment. There came a point where it just didn't sit right.
Peter Wingfield is, I would say, the easiest actor to write for. Because he understands the material, he understands his character. And you can take his character to deeper places and give him levels of expression that not all actors are capable of finding. And Peter did a great job. He found a beautiful patina of pathos with the character that really worked for the episode.
I got the sense of the relationship between Methos and Byron that is carried into the future in the rock world, when Methos is still-- he's attached to Byron. He defends him. He has a love of him.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
What can you justify art being worth? Is it worth-- is great art worth, you know, taking human life over the centuries?
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
When I wrote the sort of debauched rock star Byron of the present, I sort of extrapolated, you know, someone who'd had these experiences two hundred years ago, what would he be doing now? And of course, he'd be going even further and taking it to the edge with every performance and living on the edge of life and death, because really, that's the only thrill left for the guy at this point.
The other thing I wanted to get was the debauchery of Byron and to try and find that debauchery in the room with the kid. So, you know, the girls, the drugs. And the girls were funny because they went for it. I mean, they were just like all over. She started to dance. I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, just really go for it. No, don't just dance. I want you to be like, all over the place. I want you to fall over. I want you to," you know, and she did.
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To Jonathan, I said, "You know, what I feel he is, is he's lost. He's a man that's lost and he's trying to grab on to anything he sees with life, with talent, because talent is something that he had and talent is something he still has to a degree, but he's lost the joy of his talent."
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
I wanted to take it from the view that MacLeod is doing this because he has no choice, because he's going to kill other people and Methos has to understand that. And when Byron finally sees MacLeod, he's like, "Okay, this is it. I might get some joy out of life now because I'm going to fight this guy." It was the end of poetry, the end of Byron's life. So I actually took real pieces of Byron's poetry and made Jonathan recite it while he was fighting me.
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And the poetry he read was about a bullfight, and that's the why I saw the fight, was a bullfight. So again, I took the ideas of what the fight was, comparative to another type of fight.
Clip from "The Modern Prometheus":
And what I really liked about the Quickening was it was like a video. The Quickening was like a video. And that was, again, very different than what we'd done before, and the very last shot I wanted to make very simple, very-- just pull away, pull away, tell the story and just go away and fade away and what else is there to say?
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Clip from "Archangel":
Adrian Paul: Yes! The teacher kills his student. "Archangel", what can I tell you? David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant): Yeah, "Archangel". Here we were, it's the end of the fifth season. It's what happens when you do things for so many years. You start looking for other directions. And I thought of bringing in Ahriman, who basically is the devil.
Clip from "Archangel":
Because how can you one-up that? David Tynan (Exec. Script Consultant/Writer): One of the problems that the writers encountered on Highlander was that we were always trying to up the stakes for MacLeod. We couldn't go out every week and just fight yet another bad Immortal from the past. That would have gotten pretty old for the audience. Jim Byrnes ("Joe Dawson"): Well, "Archangel" was... we really felt was gonna be the last episode we were ever gonna shoot. That was the end of season five. And at that point, any talk of season six was way up in the air. We had evolved, our relationships had evolved, both the characters in the show and all of us as actors, I mean, his friends off screen. We all revealed little quirks in our personalities, maybe. Not that you hide, but there was a comfort zone that I think we had all established as actors. And we were able to really get into the tone of the characters in very subtle ways, I think. I hope, anyway.
Clip from "Archangel":
At that time, there was a great sort of a feeling, on my part anyway, of a certain nostalgia. And trying to capture that moment when we would be together in some of the scenes, because it's that elusive moment that may never happen again. And there's a certain beauty in that.
And also, I came up with the idea of killing Richie. And it was my fault, I did it. And after thinking about it for all these years, I'd do it again. Because I think he played out his usefulness on the series.
Ah, the death of Richie in "Archangel". I think that was one of the hardest decisions we had to make. I won't comment on the reasons behind reaching that decision, whether there were casting decisions that were being made in the background. I'll leave that for Bill Panzer or somebody who was closer to that.
There's only a finite amount of money that you can pay actors. And every year, actors become more expensive. So you're talking about the bang for your buck.
If that's what they felt the best thing to do was, I certainly wasn't going to fight to stick around more. I had done, I don't know, seventy-some-odd episodes and I felt like all good things must come to an end.
Because Richie was in a way an extension of my growing up -- we grew up together. That's why I wound up fighting for him when the end of season five came and he was on the chopping block. I really tried to keep him around because I felt like that was the end for me too.
I didn't want to fight the fate.
This is not "Batman and Robin". This was "the Highlander". It wasn't "the Highlander and Richie". So what do you do with Richie? He's not a love interest... unless you take the show in that direction, which that would have been [makes 'mind-blowing' motion with his hands]. We even thought about that once upon a time -- if you read the fanzines, which I didn't. Adrian Paul (Actor): He was a great character and I think he was a great part of Highlander and I was sad to see him go. But it was a necessary part of the show to actually have that happen.
We really weren't sure how the audience would react to that. Here we were, killing off a beloved member of the cast. Would they behead us, would they lynch us, would they stop watching the show?
A lot of fans actually formed a club saying that "we don't believe Richie is dead". Well, live with it, he's dead.
Obviously, the Richie fans were heartbroken, but really dramatically and emotionally, I thought it was a brilliant touch.
The fun thing about it was playing the evil Richie at the time. I mean, that was a lot of fun.
Clip from "Archangel":
Sort of going through that abandoned department store and being the other guy. And having Adrian sort of a little scared and not knowing what was going on, that was fun.
I think MacLeod in "Archangel" was really disjointed and didn't know what was happening to him and where things were coming from. And it was hard for me, because I knew Stan was going off the show. And I remember doing that scene, I remember the place we did it in and it was just really bizarre.
The smell of death becomes a bit spooky and a little bit... it was a bit scary.
It just felt, "ugh," just can't explain it, but it just didn't feel right.
I thought the fight was pretty good. At some point, Adrian was sort of on his last leg of the entire season of the twenty-two.
Although I did get right upset with Stan that day, because he hit me on the head with the sword.
So as we got to the end where he actually did, within the context of storyline, kill me, he was pretty pissed off.
He actually cracked me on the head and I was like, "Oh, you--" [growls]
So I don't think that was tough for him at that point to-- there was no real acting involved. He was annoyed, having been whacked in the head. And I think he got whacked a lot that season and stitches here, stitches there. So he was sort of over getting hit in the head by swords.
It was a very delicate, tough moment. You never, you never know when you're doing television series at a point when you're killing a fictive character, what part of the real person who is an actor, you're killing also.
Looking back, it was definitely the right move to do it. And I'm glad it went down the way it went down. I mean, who wants to get kicked out? You want to be the one to leave the party on your own terms. And while they asked me to do it, I left graciously before I was one of the stragglers at the party, basically. The fans really came, went to bat for me. I know all this stuff popped up on the internet. And in a weird way, I got many more requests almost instantly to do conventions and to make appearances. And I realized that there's something about dying in this manner that now all of a sudden everybody wants to see you more. It was very bizarre.
But the truth is, we didn't really want to kill Richie. We regretted him leaving us. It was sad to have him die. At the same time, it was a very exciting, dramatic moment because of all the affection and all the attachment we had to him, having gone through so many episodes with him.
Turning on Highlander to see the beginning of the sixth season. And I'm looking at Adrian and Jim Byrnes standing over my grave. They just don't stop talking about me. I think, "God, I should have died in season three." They never spent so much time talking about this character until now. And then, of course, I was very touched and honored and felt like I got a little vindication when they came back and said, "We really want you to come back and do the last couple of episodes, do this two-parter." I think I did go out on top, and in the end, it definitely worked out for me as a character and as an actor.
The idea of killing a main character on this series was a good idea, because the idea with Highlander is you never knew what was going to happen around the next bend. You never knew if somebody was going to get killed off and that was the great thing about it. And I actually had said to David Abramowitz earlier that year, we should kill one of our main characters off this year. Because we've done five seasons and we've got to do something that's really [gasps] of a jolt. If we don't come back again in the sixth season, then we would have come out with something that is really stunning at the end. I didn't say it was going to be Stan, but when it was him, I thought it's probably a smart idea because MacLeod was so invested in Richie.
In these episodes, "Archangel", "Avatar", we just wanted to play on MacLeod's guilt.
Killing Richie, and Richie's death, was a real change for MacLeod. It was the same as the "Samurai" moment. It was the same as the "Homeland" moment. It's the same as those moments. It was a big moment for MacLeod.
You play with what you have to play with. What you have to play with is the character, because MacLeod hasn't changed after all of these years. He's so rigid in some ways, in who he thinks he's supposed to be. A lot of people who view themselves as heroes -- which he did, and he had to view himself as a hero -- look in the mirror and say, "This is who I am, this is who I have to be," and that's who they stay.
I had said to them, "I'd like to see something happen to MacLeod that changes his way of being." And it did. It allowed me to go into the sixth season in much more of a pacifist point of view about life.
MacLeod didn't grow in that manner, because he was always the clan chieftain. It was always his job to be the hero. It wasn't his job to grow and develop into the fullest human being that he could possibly be. It was his job, was to save the ass of the innocent if he could, and so he didn't become whatever else he might have become.
This was, to him, I think, a moment of realization that no matter what he did, the game was always there, and it would always be there. So what did he do in his life was to live it in a way that would have a meaning and have some sort of reflection on the people around him to a positive, because he might not be around for much longer, because he might lose at some point -- not that I would ever lose -- but he might lose at some particular point, and so it was important for me to show that there was another metamorphosis of Duncan MacLeod. David Abramowitz: [over noise of helicopter flying overhead] I hate helicopters. It'll go away in just a second. Stay with me here. Stay with me. [no more helicopter] Now, here's what we wanted to do.
After MacLeod kills Richie, he goes off by himself for thirty years, forty years, and the world is totally different. The world is a dark world. Ahriman and the devil has actually taken over, and it is a pitiless, dark, almost post-apocalyptic place. And after all of these years, Methos and Joe finally find MacLeod and ask him to come back, because he's the only one who can save the world. And as he fights Ahriman and all his incantations, he finds his own redemption for killing Richie. Unfortunately, when we came back, they said there wasn't the money to do that, and that the marketplace wouldn't buy a series that was so dark. And they were right, but I didn't know it at the time. You know what happens when you're a writer sometimes? You think this would be a great idea, and it would be a great idea, because it would be fun for you to do, and fun for the actors to act. You don't ask yourself, "Well, would the people in Peoria like to watch this?" And sometimes that's why executives are around to tell you, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Just remember what you're doing here, selling Cheerios." Gillian Horvath: The end of season five would have been different in a couple of ways if Richie had lived through the episode. It wouldn't just have been the exact same scenes only with him a foot taller. It would have been Duncan and Richie side-by-side, ready to face whatever came, and that has a more triumphal feel to it. We could only have filmed that ending of season five if it was going to be a return to kicking the butt of guys whose butts needed kicking, and backing off from the deeper philosophy and the realization that the world really isn't that simple, and that it's hard to win all the fights.
Stan was like my little younger brother, and he's still my little younger brother. So I still boss him around, yeah. Actually, it was funny, because when my brother met him the first time, he says-- Stan looked at him and said, "Now I know how you feel." Well, I said, "Well, what can I do? I was the older brother in my family, so I'm going to have to boss somebody around." |
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