Transcribed from audiotape as best as I could — there are still gaps, but I hope
you can still enjoy what's there. Please send any corrections or clarifications
to me at AdamMethos@aol.com
or leave a note in the Guestbook.
[Square brackets] indicate either (1) my paraphrase of parts of the tape that weren't
clear, (2) proper names where I'm not sure of the spelling, or (3) explanatory
notes or commentary to make the text more readable.
[laughter] indicates laughter from the audience.
[?] indicates I don't have a clue what was said.
Ellipses indicate quotes dropped because they either weren't clear
on the tape or they were repetitious/redundant and don't add any new
info.
All audience questions are paraphrased for brevity's sake (some people
took a while to get to the point) and because many of them weren't clear
on my tape.
Now here are the bad boys of Highlander...
Pelka: I just remembered a little story which I thought I might
like to share with you. It's sort of related to the trials and tribulations
of being a horseman. Not necessarily one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
but a horseman in a film perhaps.
I think most of you might remember I was talking about horses I have
known and loved. I talked about a horse called Fury, who was the horse
I rode on First Knight, and it's one of the most experienced
— I mean, he's got a CV as long as Laurence Olivier. Fury was a
well established horse and he sort of knows this. He has a certain set
of tricks and one of them which I found, to begin with, rather annoying
and secondly, eventually, rather useful, was — certainly Peter
Diamond who will be speaking later, he almost certainly will have come
across Fury at some point in his work.
Fury has a habit of playing with the bit in his mouth and he tends
to salivate rather a lot. Anybody who rides will know that the least
opportunity a horse has to grab a bite of grass, he will do so. Well,
Fury very often will try and get some grass so the saliva was not going
to be free flowing; it was green. [laughter] Right. Here comes the interesting
part.
Fury had this habit of rejecting the faceplate that was over his nose.
He didn't like it. It was disturbing him, and he kept going like this.
I'm sure he did it purposely. He waited until he was salivating so much,
he collected so much saliva, and then, I'd be minding my own business
sitting there, in my nice blue [?] uniform, and then suddenly he'll
go WHACK! And just about here, or here, I would get this rather large
globe of saliva, green in color. Right.
We were waiting to cross the causeway in Camelot one day. We'd been
waiting there for hours. And we're getting a little bit bored, and so
is Fury. And Sean Burn, an actor from London [?] is behind me, and he's
sort of complaining about his horse. He's complaining about lunch. He's
complaining about his [?]. I thought "Ah." And Fury is showing
signs of — [laughter] And by this time my timing was perfect. I
knew when it was going to happen and I took cover. So I checked behind
me — anybody who meets Sean Burn can ask him and he'll tell you
— and just at the time the head came up, I went like this [ducks]
and Sean Burn got it right [in the face]. He got off his horse and he
walked away for a few moments....
Hudson: What a great story.... In fact, I may look stupid to
you because actors are quite competitive. Notice the way he pushed us
all to the side when he came in. [laughter] One of the great pleasures,
for me anyway, because I only met Marcus yesterday, so I can't really
say much about him — he's a delight. [laughter]
Marcus: [grins] Thank you!
Hudson: One of the great pleasures for me was to bump in to
[looks at Valentine] what's your name? [laughter] Because as Valentine
was very rightly saying, you spend most of your time as an actor waiting
around, so we had a lot of that to do when we met. As I was saying,
actors quite often competitive. I mean we're always very friendly to
each other but — [laughter] It was a great pleasure getting to
sit with Valentine while we were waiting and finding things in common.
Pelka: He didn't know my wife and I didn't know his. [laughter]
Contrary to what people might think, the job of acting is a bizarre
job. If you have to do a job description of somebody who's a lorry driver
— he drives a lorry from A to B. Most people can job describe themselves
fairly easy — easily even.
But the way I like to describe acting, it sounds so ridiculous if you
describe it to anybody normal like you rather than, well, these two.
Yeah, you're real people!
I mean a theater actor, for example, is somebody who goes to a building,
he gets into clothes that don't belong to him, with a lot of other people
who also do the same thing, then they go into a room on a sort of high
bit like this[the stage], and there are five/six/seven — maybe
seven hundred — people in the dark, all waiting and watching them,
and these guys in clothes that don't belong to them, are pretending
to be people that they're not, in clothes that don't belong to them,
and [then] take them away, put them in the wardrobe and go home. It's
a bizarre job description.
So that when you come into a rehearsal room for the first time, meet
actors for the first time, the most important thing is, you try to get
along. And it's usually on a sort of work-a-day, fairly superficial
level. You try to make the work easy. So it's not always very often
that you come across somebody who becomes [a] very good friend. That
doesn't happen very often. It happened on Ivanhoe with me, and
it certainly happened on Highlander as well. But that's not the
rule, that's the exception.
Hudson: Well, we were talking yesterday about the fact that
there's something special about Highlander. I mean, I'm sure
people say this at conventions, but to me that's all part of what we
were saying about how there is a certain sense of solidarity and generosity,
and it's reflected the kinds of people that are employed. I'm not throwing
flowers at myself; I don't mean that. It's just that there's a sort
of homogeneity about the people who work on the show and, as I've really
discovered this weekend, about the people who like it.
Pelka: Homogeneity — there's a word! I don't think
I could spell it. I did pronounce it, but I'm surprised.
Hudson: The first time I went to Vancouver to have a read through,
you know, of the text for each episode one time... so we can discuss
any changes.... And the first day I went in there, Bill Panzer was there.
I said, "I'm not sure we can say this." And Bill said, "What
do you mean?" And I said, "Well, it's not grammatically correct."
And he said, "Grammar?! I haven't heard that word for years!"
That's a true story. But we did change it — I said "easily"
and not "easy."
Pelka: They say that when you meet people that you don't know
very well, the last things you should talk about is politics and religion
and all the other stuff, you know. Those were the first two things we
talked about. And we managed not to have an argument about it, so I
suppose maybe it's a good test. And here we talked for hours, that's
a surprise, isn't it.
Hudson: Only in his case. I just saw yesterday the episodes
that these two guys did originally, you know, the Four Horsemen. I'd
never seen them. And they were great.
Testory: [deep voice] Good try.
Hudson: He's [Marcus] got this huge voice,
have you noticed? You look like a singer or something. [laughter] We
went to a restaurant last night to have a pizza and there was Pavarotti
all over the wall, so that's what made me think of it.
Testory: [starts singing in deep operatic
voice] [laughter and applause]
Pelka: It was all new to Marcus when we
came to Bordeaux. Peter's been in this for years, so have I. Richard
Ridings [Silas] has been in the business quite a few years. Peter Wingfield.
We're all fairly used to the way things work, and the way you work.
Marcus had never done it before, and I think what was extraordinary
— I going to embarrass him now — but it was terrific the way
he adapted so quickly. His fight was not easy. It was tricky at the
best of times. There are two weapons in your hands — Peter Diamond
would probably say the same thing too. It's very, very difficult —
as Adrian experienced, yeah. [laughter] Have you had a good weekend,
this weekend?
Audience: Yeah! [applause]
Pelka: It's been my first one; I really enjoyed it.... I'm surprised
to see quite a few of you here.... Does anybody have any questions?
[ To top ]
Is it true that you challenged Adrian and Peter Wingfield to a soccer
match in Anaheim?
Pelka: Well...
Hudson: Well, I think I'm entitled to answer that question. Well, there
was talk of it, but I think Val was largely responsible.
Pelka: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, it's sort of true. Adrian said he played
football and I said to him, "Well what position do you play"
and I think he said, "Forward." And I said, "Oh, I'm
play on the right." And Wingfield plays — on the left —
we need balance. And so I said to Adrian, "Well, maybe you know,
if we can get down in LA anytime, maybe we could get a soccer match
together." And so we placed a bet. And [looks at Hudson] do you
play?
Hudson: ... Well, I'm taking my boots.
Pelka: Yeah, I think it might be worth it.... Tiring....
Hudson: Thirty-five seconds each way.
What do you look for in a role?
Hudson: Sausage. [laughter]
Pelka: [You're only going to] get a boring answer from me. Um, I don't like
sausage very much. Um, good writing. Good writing.
Testory: Good part. Lots of [?]
Were you disappointed that Kronos' role in later episodes was so small?
Pelka: Actually, to be honest with you, what happened was, there was this big
double-header episode, which was great. And a fantastic character. It
was two really really good episodes. And I accepted the job on that
basis. So I didn't expect any more. But when they asked me to go back,
as I said yesterday, there were flashbacks and if [?] So no, not at
all, I wasn't disappointed at all. That was the job. What was the great
bonus was that he came back.
[something about actors' salaries]
Hudson: That's a serious question.
Pelka: Are we going to give a serious answer?
Hudson: We should think about it.
Pelka: Let me make things quite clear. Speaking clear, clearly as I
can, I like to avoid questions as easily as possible. I mean, let's
face it, every actor wants to find themselves in a situation where they're
earning — like anybody else with a regular job — as much as
possible. And to get as good parts as possible, as high-profile as possible....
Hudson: Seriously, there is an argument that if you look at the budget of a
film and you see the percentage of the budget that's actually taken
by the stars, it's [almost] non-existent.
Pelka: If you take a look at the Full Monty. I read in the paper that
allegedly — obviously, everything I say is allegedly. I read an
article and the chap who played the character who discovers he's gay
in the Full Monty — a terrific role — apparently he
got paid Equity minimum for a week. He got about £13,000 for that film.
And the film had a budget of two or $3 million and it's made well in
excess of $250 [million]. And he should have potentially made a bit
more, or at least, if you don't know that it's going to be a success
in the beginning, at least later on when it is a success, could he not
have been given a bit more money perhaps?
[ To top ]
Q:
Pelka: The first, as it turned out, the way it's shot and the pleasure we got
out of it, the first fight we had in the power station. I didn't know
Adrian very well, I was trying extremely hard to get anywhere near as
good as him. He was very gracious and he really helped.
There was one take in particular I will never forget. We did the whole fight from beginning
to end — the beginning when I started, "Some things always
come back." From that point to the end of the fight when I said,
"I'll be back." I think we did the whole scene for the master
shot. It was terrific. Everything just clicked in place. There were
no slips, no problem.... It was terrific. I really enjoyed that.
Hudson: No, it was excellent. I saw yesterday — very impressive.
Because those swords — I mean, you've seen the swords. They're
very heavy and it's got to look as though it's easier than it is.
Marcus, you said you had trouble riding a horse —
Testory: Who said that? The horses had trouble.
Val said —
Pelka: I denied it though, didn't I? I said he was being modest, didn't
I? Yes?
Audience: Yes!
Did Valentine help you at all with his expertise?
Pelka: It's dog-eat-dog out there. He can help himself. He's a big boy.
Testory: The horse was bigger than I.... [I had trouble] making the horse
understand that it has to stand still until the director says "Action."
And then the fact that the horse should stop in front of the tent, not
far away. Small trouble. But I didn't fall off.
Hudson: But the question was, did Val help you?
Testory: Just before I was asked if I think about becoming a politician.
[smile]
Pelka: I think I said keep your heels down. And try not to fall off.
Hudson: Stop in front of that tent, say your lines, and gallop off.
Q:
Hudson: Well, I wasn't there.
Pelka: Well, yeah, if you've not done it before, you've got problems.
It's tricky. It is tricky, and the horses sometimes do have a mind of
their own. What can you do? But generally, we shot that scene —
all that stuff in the tent — we shot it really quickly.
There's not a rider born. Anybody will tell you there's not a rider born, no matter how
many years, who's not good enough too fall off. Or make mistakes or
anything like that. I told you about the horse yesterday. The horse
made me look stupid, but I allowed him to as well. It wasn't just the
horse's fault. A really brilliant rider would have overridden him.
Peter, what crosses your mind when you get another script where you're
playing Horton?
Hudson: I can't answer that question. I don't think I think.... No, I don't
have any particularly [?] answer to that. I mean, I'm delighted.
[something about conventions]
Hudson: Well, if there are Highlander conventions in 15 years
time we'll all be happy. Won't you?
Audience: Yes!
Pelka: We'll all be a bit older.
Hudson: The Wheelchairs of the Apocalypse.
[ To top ]
