Highlander Rewatched Interview with Ken Gord, Part 1!
Chronicle 10: Ken Gord
Hi, this is Adrian Paul, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hello, this is Beatie Edney. I played Heather in the original Highlander film, and you are watching Highlander Rewatched!
This is Andy Armstrong. I was the 2nd Unit Director directing the action units in New York on the original Highlander, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hi, this is Anthony De Longis, also known as Ottavio Consone from the Duende episode of Highlander, and you are listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Gracen. I played Amanda on Highlander the Series, and the spinoff called Highlander: The Raven, and you are listening to Highlander Rewatched!
Everybody involved with Highlander has stories; and they're great, great stories! This is John Mosby, the author of Fearful Symmetry: The Essential Guide to All Things Highlander, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
This is Ken Gord, producer of the Highlander Series, and you are listening to the podcast Highlander Rewatched.
1:27 Welcome to Highlander Rewatched! The podcast where each and every week we take a look at another facet of the Highlander universe! This week is a very special episode. Welcome to one of our Chronicle episodes, where we talk to the people behind the scenes: the actors, the directors, the producers, the writers... of the Highlander series and movies! We have a very special guest today. I'm one of your hosts, I'm Keith!
This is Kyle!
This is Eamon.
Keith: And today we are joined by Producer of the Highlander series, Ken Gord! Welcome to the show, Ken!
2:02 Kyle: Just so you know, we tend to keep it pretty light. We try to have a good time. *****We've got like, an explicit tag; we actually swear kind of often on our show. So if you care to do that, don't feel like, the need to censor yourself! Uh... hah!
Ken: Well that's good to know. Since I'm a Canadian, you know, we swear quite a lot, so... *laughter*
Kyle: Yeah. This is a perfectly safe space for that! *laughing*
Keith: Right.
Ken: I listen to your show um--
Keith: Oh, cool!
Kyle: Oh, great!
Ken: --a lot. I listen to the shows. It's very, very good. Very well done.
Eamon: Thank you!
Kyle: Thanks! We appreciate that! *laughter*
Keith: Thank you! Yeah! Yeah. *laughter*
2:30 Ken: I myself... I'm in Venice. Venice, Italy, not California.
Kyle then Keith: Oh wow!
Ken: Yeah.
Kyle: Ssso, so... big vacation, or considering a new venue?
Ken: No, I don't do vacations. I mean, I... I only go somewhere if someone pays me, so, uh... *laughter*
Kyle: That's not a bad place to go, if you're getting paid.
2:48 Ken: Yeah. Or, I've gotten a little spoiled since, you know I... I kind of started off on... in the early 1990s uh, going to some uh, strange places to do series like the... The first place I... We did a series that was supposed to be set in the Florida Keys, and we shot it in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was called "Sweating Bullets"; it was like a CBS late-night show at that time. It had some like a... I think it was called "Crime Time After Prime Time" or something.
Keith: Hah!
Kyle: Double-Prime?
Keith: That's good.
3:14 Ken: And then the executive producer told us, at the end of that cycle, "Oh by the way, we're going to be shooting this show in um, Israel next year, in a place called Eilat," which... I didn't even know about. And I thought they were--I thought he was joking, and uh... we ended up shooting it in Israel! So, we were shooting like, you know, palm trees 'n stuff and, and about 50 yards to our right are like, camels, and 50 yards to our left is like the Jordanian Border with like, barbed wire 'n stuff, and they were at war. And we're telling people we're in uh, Florida! So--
Kyle: *snickering* Did you ever find a way to sneak that stuff into the show?
3:48 Ken: No. *laughter* The thing about--the thing about-*laughs*-the thing about TV or, or movies is that: the camera sees only what you want it to see, so... That's what's called cheating. *laughter* We call it cheating.
Kyle: It's like: Alright! Let's get a real close-up here, we can cut out the camel, that'll... *laughs with Eamon*
4:05 Ken: Hahahahahah! So I got--So I sort of became like a go-to guy for going to places, so I... you know, I kind of enjoyed it because I like... I like uh, being a pioneer in places 'n... You know, I did this uh, series in Spain called "Queen of Swords", uh after Highlander and um, we were in the desert where all the Spaghetti Westerns were shot, and that was like, really amazing because uh... You have to bring everything in, you're basically--basically in the middle of nowhere. It's like one of the only deserts in Europe. And the Western, you know, freak shows... I was like a fan on the weekend. I, I got this book and, I drive around to all these locas--locations like, "Oh! That's where Claudia Cardinale came into the house when Henry Fonda came and--*snickers heard*--and you know, that's the place where uh... what's the guy's name from um, Deathwish? Yeah, Charles Bronson was like cutting his uh--(harmonica)
Keith: Oh, Charles Bronson!
Kyle: Charles Bronson, yeah.
Ken: And all that kind of stuff. So I was like a real fan.
Eamon: That's amazing!
Keith: Wow!
Ken: Crazy Western fan.
Keith: I actually--I actually wanted to ask you about uh, Queen of Swords. Like, that--that obviously has a lot of uh, Highlander alum in it. So how did that show... kind of come about after Highlander?
4:58 Ken: Well, um, you know I'm just--I was a hired hand so I do--I'm not the guy that puts those things together, which is like, you know... miserable brutal business, *laughs* but um... I'm like, uh, you know, production which is just... just brutal. I think a... a company called Fire... Fireworks, which had done um, "Mutant X". And they did, uh, Andromeda. Uh, is it called Andromeda? The one in uh, Vancouver, the uh, one with Kevin Sorbo?
Keith: Yeah! I think so, yeah.
Kyle: That's the one.
5:22 Ken: Yeah. So they uh... They--they... I guess they sold the idea of a female Zorro. Uh, they... I think they sold it to um, uh, the syndicated network at the time 'n... and we were off! And, interestingly enough, so um... So, when we're sitting in the Production Office in the desert of Spain, and we're looking at The Mask of Zorro--you know the uh, Antonio Banderas--
Eamon: Antoni--yeah.
5:43 Ken: --movie, right? We're looking at that as reference, right? "Ohh. So oh! That looks pretty good. That looks pretty good." And then um... Not only did we get sued by Sony--
Eamon: Oh!
5:52 Ken: --because of uh, you know, the Zorro uh, connection, which we won because I think, female Zorro was not quite the same as Zorro, but uh... The director I'm working with now on this movie in Venice is a guy called Martin Campbell, and he directed the Mask of Zorro! *laughter*
Eamon: Wow!
Kyle: That's funny.
Ken: Female Zorro...
Keith: So, so the new project you're working on is, is that the uh... the Across the River and into the Trees project?
6:14 Ken: Yes it is! The uh, Across the River yeah, and into the Trees, yeah. It's an Ernest Hemingway, um, novel. His w--his last novel. Which uh...
Keith: Oh wow! Can you tell our listeners about uh, this project?
6:24 Ken: Yeah, sure. It um... takes place in 1946; a U.S. Army colonel... you know, after the war and he... he drives from, uh, Trieste, which is uh... I guess in Northern Italy, to Venice, cuz he wants to go duck hunting. And uh, he has--he has a weekend with um, an Italian countess. And it's like, he has some flashbacks to the war and uh... I won't tell you the end in case you go see it, but um... interestingly enough, it's kind of the opposite theme of Highlander. I was actually thinking about that this morning when I was um, sort of prepping myself for this phone call. It's kind of like, you know, Highlander is a study of immortality, and this Hemingway uh, book is a study of mortality; man's mortality. It's kind of interesting; a full 180. You know, people die... in this, in this boo--*clears throat* You know, in this story. *laughter* As opposed to Highlander. Nobody ever dies in Highlander! *more laughter*
Kyle: Yeah. Not a person, ever.
Eamon: Nope! *laughter continues*
Kyle: Well that's as--a good a transition as any into talking about Highlander! Uh... If I understand correctly you came in, kind of right at the beginning of Season 2. We've heard some... colorful stories about what it was like, kind of in the beginning, on Highlander. What was kind of the state of play when... when you hit the board?
Ken: "Colorful". That's good. Um... *Eamon laughs.
Kyle: Yeah! See, I was the one who said that we are allowed to swear on this show, *giggles in background* and I uh, and I used the word, colorful!
7:39 Ken: That's right, hahah! Yeah, that was a real bad word. So um, well, quite frankly um... My agent was called uh, for directors. Bill Panzer and Marla Ginzberg were in Toronto, where I'm from, and they were... they were asking my agent about directors, and my agent said, "You wanna meet a producer?" And, uh, they said, "Well, we already got one." He was actually a friend of mine. And they said, "Well, you know, but... uh... sure, we'll check 'im out." And uh... I was on a... I was on a plane like two days later to Vancouver. And my friend, who's also a director, said, "Well, you know, it couldn't have happened to a better guy! You gonna give me a couple of shows to direct, at least?" I didn't, actually. *laughter* Yes um...
Kyle: Burn!
8:16 Ken: Burn, yeah. For the first uh... So, for a couple of days I um, I just watched all the first, uh, year. The--the first twenty-two episodes. And... *clears throat* Quite frankly I... I didn't think it was that great. *laughter* Like, I thought it was a boring show. I really didn't. I thought it was a little bit cheesy, and um, some of the uh, you know the clothes were a little bit... sort of out there, and uh, I really hated the set; the antique shop with all the cow-walk and all that shit *guys chuckle* and uh... yeah. I didn't--I didn't really the, ah, you know, just the Immortal of the Week was kind of like one-dimensional. And uh--I liked Adrian! I thought he was like, you know, fantastic. So, when I came in uh, the first thing I did was... I... I tried to simplify it because, I kind of felt that the... greatest weakness of the show was that it was um, user-unfriendly. Like, it wasn't like you know, Starsky and Hutch, or like Love Boat, you know... You could just tune in, *someone snickers* you know, twenty minutes in and, you know you're right in the story, right? It's like, it wasn't too hard--not too hard to pick up, right? You know, easy access! But Highlander, you know, it's a mythology, and there's rules and... you kind of have to know what it's about, otherwise you're kind of sitting there and you're like, "What the fuck is this?" You know--*guys laugh* "Wh-wh-what's going on here?" So I... I thought that was its greatest strength; I also--Uh, greatest weakness, but I also thought it was its greatest strength, because... Hey, this is, like, a show that, you know, unlike you know, Hercules, or Xena--which are... not bad shows, I'm not dissing them--but um, you know, it's a little--it's got a little more uh, mythology, a little more sort of... you know, a thinking element to it. My thought-process was: "Because this show is kind of hard to access, and user-unfriendly, I gotta--I gotta ground it. If you know what I mean by ground it. So, everything sort of had... I had that in mind. So... I, I kind of um, took Adrian out of his purple pants, *Kyle laughs* and put him in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. You know? That's grounding, right?
Kyle: That was a good call, yeah!
Eamon: Yeah!
Keith: Good call!
9:59 Ken: Yeah. And every now and then he would put on some-something crazy and he'd--I'd walk on set and he'd look at me and laugh and--he's a bit of a teaser, right, though? *laughter* Cuz he knew it would just drive me-drive me--drive me crazy, right? He's wearing his like, you know, pink and green, you know, checked pants and uh--*Eamon laughs*
Kyle: You're like, "Alright, we gotta get M.C. Hammer out of here!" *laughter* you're like!
10:17 Ken: Yeah. And uh... and the other thing is like, um... So, we were designing these sets because... the antique shop, uh, I think... You know, uh... Tessa was gonna die, and uh, the idea was to get him, you know, a bachelor pad, and uh, Steve Geaghan the uh, fantastic Production Designer, you know he came into my office with the blueprint for the um, the Dojo. And I remember it was like Snakes & Ladders. He was like, "Oh, yeah! We'll have a stairway here, and we'll have a hallway, and then we'll--" *Kyle laughs* "--you know a little thing down there--" And I was like, *takes a breath* "Steve, get rid of all that shit, and just make it four, square, walls." *laughter*
Kyle: That's good.
10:49 Ken: And he was like, shocked. It's just like, "How can you do this?" *laughs with them* "You're--" you know, "You're killing me!" But, again I thought: You know what? You got to just ground it and simplify it. Because if you can simplify his base; if you can ground it with where--where he lives, and where he... hangs out, and... what he wears, then you can ta--kind of, sort of, you know, get behind the character and sort of follow him into like all the crazy shit that goes on in Highlander, right? So I think--I think that worked pretty well. Well, whether it worked or not it was my idea and I... and I think it worked, so uh... *someone chuckles*
Keith: Oh, it definitely works, yeah! *Kyle & Eamon?: Yeah!
11:18 Ken: Um... let's see uh, yeah and there was a, you know, a tiny bit of a... a learning curve, but... Uh, luckily everybody was very um, onside, it was like a great team and uh, there was no... there was no real, uh, friction uh... David Abramowitz, uh, had been on... I think, I'm not sure how many episodes in... in Year One, so he already sort of an alumni. The first week he was in Vancouver when I was there, and we sat down at a little diner and uh, we said, "We're the guys who are going to be sort of physically making this show." Uh, David from the, you know the Writers' Room, and me in the uh, on---you know, on the ground. And uh, we're just, we're gonna keep our backs to each other. So, we just uh decided at that point to become um, you know, sort of tr--trusty allies, and keep each others' backs, and... if I said I couldn't do something, he knew it wasn't because I was trying to save 10 cents. It was because--really because I couldn't do it. If uh, if I could do something better, like for the-the-the-the example is: The writers would write, you know, um, like a fight location, they would write "warehouse". That was the default. "Warehouse", right? You know... *Eamon laughs*
Kyle: It's always a warehouse, or a construction site. Yeah.
12:21 Ken: Yeah. Because it's an easy location; you know, they're easy to find. Uh, they got all kinds of shit in them and, you know, they're, they're textured. But, you know, I-I-I... I sort of took it upon myself to try to find like all kinds of, you know, interesting places so instead of warehouses, like tho---the... The best example of that is that um, in France, exchange the word warehouse for chateau. *laughter* So, you know, the bad guy's in a chateau, there's gonna be like a fight there. And Adrian and I were scouting Bordeaux, you know for the beginning of that uh, cycle? With um, the F--The Four Horsemen? *Keith: Mmhm.* And um, we were looking around for a chateau, locations guy that we were travelling with said, "There's like a... You know, there's an old sub--WWII um, German submarine base." We're like, WHAT? *laughter* We went to see it: It was like... It's like... That's fucking amazing, right! You remember that location?
Kyle: Yeah! It's incredible!
13:11 Ken: It was like... it was incredible! And you couldn't write that! So, so I'm just, illustrating the point that, you know, being th--They could write something, because they g--uh-un... generic because they knew we would, uh, we would try our hardest to... you know, to, to make it better. And conversely, if they wrote... wrote something crazy like, "and uh, in this scene we're gonna have uh, fifteen dancing elephants," *Eamon laughs* we would say... If we said we... if we said we couldn't do it, maybe we could have like a, a Great Dane... *Kyle laughs* then, they believed us. So there was trust between us.
Keith: Uh... was there ever any tension on the set? Cuz, I mean... At the end of the day I guess you were kind of the final say on a lot of these creative elements. Like, did you ever have to... kind of go toe-to-toe with any directors over some of these creative differences?
13:52 Ken: Yeah. I think the uh... Most-most of our directors were... you know, they're... Directors are basically like... the guest stars on a TV show, like. You know, the producer's... you know kind of, kind of the final word, and the director's like a guest. Cuz you know he comes in, he shoots, and he goes home. We had a few House directors, like Clay Borris and um, you know Paolo Barzman... We--we had, cuz... we had guys we liked and we stuck with them.*thoughtfully* I guess the only real creative thing, and it wasn't really between ME and the director; it was between Abramowitz and the director, was the famous... I think what was the show--Mortal Sins, uh, show, where it turned into an international religious war. Because uh... um... *Kyle is chuckling* the script had um... the French actor who... who's dead now um... played the priest, and he had to... he had a gun. *Keith: Yeah.* And uh, the director--Mario Azzopardi who's... who's a really good friend of mine, The Maltese Falcon... Ah, he's got a bit of a temper, he's a very passionate man, and he says um... "You know, my brother's a priest, and there's NO WAY, EVER, a priest is gonna have a gun! I can't shoot that!" *laughter* And uh, the m--the memo wars, and the phone calls, between Abramowitz and Mario Azzopardi, he--Mario was like, "Well, well what if it's a RABBI and he's... and he's gone for a real..." *Eamon laughs* "...a stick of bacon and uh! And you know--!"
Kyle: *laughing* Oh, God!
15:03 Ken: "You gonna let THAT go?!" And it... it became really kind of intense, and at the end of the day he shot the, you know, the priest with the gun. *laughter* Apart from that--
Kyle: Wh--How did you weigh in on that dispute? Did you uh... or was it just your job to find the gun?
15:14 Ken: Well I was, um... I think I was just trying to keep the peace. *laughter* That's what Canadians do.
Kyle: Yeah, there you go! I was actually really curious, because I--you mentioned Clay Borris, Six-Day-Clay, they always refer to him as--in some of the interviews I've seen about him. What was it like working on... these really compressed shooting schedules? Cuz I heard that, he's the guy they brought in when they really wanted ta... you know, grind something out under a... sh--a compressed timeframe.
15:35 Ken: That's right. I'm impressed, you knew that. Yeah!
Kyle: Hahah. We're doing our--we're doing our homework for you!
15:40 Ken: Yeah. That's pretty good! *Eamon laughs* Yeah, really! Yeah, most of the shows were uh, seven days, which is um, you know, very uh... it was kind of ordinary back then. Now, shows are shot in like, you know, twelve and fourteen days. I mean the, you know, TV's... TV's gone wild, but... You know back then, especially for in an... what was called an industrial action show like, like Highlander, a syndicated show, seven days was kind of like the norm. Well we were doing some shows in six and a half days, and we'd start the other show on the second half of the day, so both shows would be like six and a half days; Clay could do shows in six days! He just was very efficient. Unfortunately, your greatest strength becomes your weakness. Um... He got sort of this reputation as being a guy who shoots to schedule. So, he had a hard time working after, in the coming years, cuz uh... you know. Producers wanted, you know, someone who tells a story and... it's all, it's all kind of bullshit. It's kind of like the--the impression. The guy busted his balls for us 'n, a total--a total soldier. If you said shoot it in six, he'd shoot it in six. He was a good guy.
Kyle: So as... kind of the... the guy on the ground, having to manage a lot of this stuff... What did that end up meaning for you, in your role? Were you... going crazy on these six-day shoots, or was it just more of the same for you?
16:48 Ken: Well, it's kind of more of the same because basically, the show--shows are made in prep. They're made in prep and post, believe it or not. So, prep is where, you know, the schedule is um, created and built and uh, if a, if a six-day show looked like it was, you know, needed to be shot in eight days, then you do what's called fixes. Which means um you know, working with the writing department and uh, taking things down, or taking... two locations and putting them into one, or taking like an exterior night, which is uh... takes much longer cuz you have to light and all that stuff and making it an exterior day. So there's all kinds of like, you know, tricks used to um, to save time. So uh wh-wa--So once it's prepped and everybody's, you know, reason-reasonably assured that now it's DOable, then you know the director just uh, does it. He's like a traffic cop. He, you know, he just makes it-makes it happen, so... There's not really a--not really a... a lot of emergencies on-set. You know, apart from, you know, strange things. Other than that, the directors... and the ADs, the assistant directors, are just, you know, very very good and efficient. They know what they're doing. So th--they just make it happen. Th-there were things--
Kyle: What was the strangest surprise, that--that would have come up like that?
17:49 Ken: Well the biggest surprise was, uh, I mean there was a few, but like... Uh, the one that comes to mind is the uh, Sheena Eason show, we're shooting at this light house, and all of a sudden some... I don't know what it was. Some mmm... I don't know if it was Canadian Navy, or American Navy... Some ordinance washed up on the beach. *Kyle laughs gleefully* So, righ--Yeah! I--I--I don't know, it was like, unexploded you know, mines, or some shit, I don't really remember exactly what it was, but it was something that you didn't want to explode while you were shooting! So um, we had to, you know, call the uh, Canadian army and uh... evacuate and let them do what they did, which... took about a half a day and... So, you know. You lose half a day! That's it. Nothing you can do about it. You just have to just sort of make it work.
Kyle: With the added security of not--with the added security of not blowing up the actors!
Eamon: Yeah!
18:33 Ken: You don't wanna blow up the actors, no. *laughs*
Kyle: Yeah. It's a good day's work!
Ken: Yeah.
Eamon: Or you could blow--blow those up for a Quickening!
Kyle: Yeah. *moment, laughter* Yeah, we've already got this ordinance, let's just uh--
Eamon: Just blow that up!
Kyle: Well I guess Sheena Easton lived. *Ken laughs* She's one of the--she's one of the lucky few!
Eamon: Oh that's right. There was no Quickening in that episode.
Keith: That's right.
Eamon: Never mind! *Kyle laughs*
19:50 Ken: *laughs* Well amazingly um... You know, what happens in an action show is, I mean... Adrian is doing all his own shit, right? I mean, he's--he's doing all his own sword-stuff. He only got hurt like, around two or three times--I say "only", you know. You don't want to see anybody ever get hurt, but Rrr--Rowdy Roddy Piper, who's like the strongest man you've ever seen in your life... he hit Adrian's sword so hard like, broke the hilt and like, really hurt uh, Adrian's finger. You know about that, probably. *inhales* And um, uh...
Kyle: Oh, yeah! Wasn't he like bleeding out during the... during the final shots?
19:20 Ken: Yeah. It was in the um... like the Exhibition Grounds, or the--the whatever it's called, the Fairgrounds. *inhales* And he got hurt two other times. So, you know when that happens, you know it's kind of a bummer for the actor, obviously, because he's hurt... but also... usually it means, like you know, an hour or two um... where you gotta go, you know, check him out at the hospital, and... You know, Tex Cobb got hit by a beer truck. *Kyle laughs* You know, it's like... crossing the street cuz he wasn't wearing his glasses, and you know, that kind of... that kind of stuff happens. You just have to uh, cope with it. We were doing the um, the Quickening with uh, David Robb uh, under the Bastille, where he finally got his. And uh, the Quickening, there's a piece of uh, plastic or something, that hit him JUST below the eye. I mean, I was there, like, holy shit! To his credit, he stayed in character, and he finished the Quickening. And when the director said cut... Man oh man! You wanna talk about cursing! He was livid! *Kyle chuckles* So I...
Eamon: Oh boy.
20:14 Ken: I fired... Cuz that, that's not supposed to happen. So, I fired the special effects guy--
Eamon: Oh! Hah.
20:20 Ken: --and uh, we went back to our, our other guy who was re--also very, very good, and um... You know, you just sort of carry on.
Eamon: I had a question about like uh, you were mentioning the cool locations you--you found in France. Was it easier to find like, cool locations in Vancouver, or France? Or was it kind of six of one, half a dozen of the other?
20:39 Ken: That's an interesting question. I think uh... I think probably uh, Vancouver. Uh, cuz I think Vancouver has a... a little more diversity. It was... it was... It's amazing that you can go to Vancouver and shoot, you know, for India, for you know, Mongolia, for Mexico, for all these places. You know, it's just unbelievable when you think about it. There's always something, you know, a place. It doesn't even have to be that big, it's just... something that gives you the uh, the feeling of the place, or gives you a place to start building, you know like, a village or something so... I don't know. I think Vancouver was a... was probably easier for locations. Don't forget in France you're um, you're not allowed to shoot inside the... the periphery. Like, you know, the circle? Uh, without a permit, obviously, and uh... because they're snobs, um, they don't give permits--*Keith laughs*--except to um, films. And you have to give them the script, like, you know, two weeks in advance, minimum. And we're getting scripts like, seven days before we start shooting, right? And, so, we could never get a permit, so... we had one sort of full-time permit at the uh... where the barge was. And that's also like the stupidest thing in the world! Every year it's like, "You know, we're shooting our standing--standing set--" That's called a Standing Set, right? Yeah? *affirming noise* Like the dojo, the uh... you know, his uh... his loft. That's where you're supposed to go home, and the lights are ready, and you just like, shoot the shit out of it right, because it's... it's easy. Cuz you're not on location like, you know, outside somewhere. And, um, it's well known in the industry, that the hardest thing to shoot is a boat! *laughter* So, our standing set in France was... was a BOAT! *louder laughter* Every time another boat went by, you know, the thing was going up and down, and how do you light the other side, 'n... it was just like... It was a fuckin' nightmare! But, every year we tried to uh, find a better place, and um... you know. It was too expensive, or, you know, this and that. And so, *wearily* every year we're on the barge. *laughter*
Kyle: Can't wait to sell this thing!
Eamon: Yeah!
Keith: I had a question about like, just kind of producing in general. Like, in your early career, you had done some like, low budget movies, like Dream on the Run, or Starship Invasions... *Ken: Yeah.* How does producing like, low budget sci-fi movies compare to... you know, either like, the movies you're working on today, or a... syndicated television show? Is it like, kind of the same shit but just with more money? Or're there really... like, was your job really different working on those early projects than it is, let's say today?
22:52 Ken: I could be hired for any number of things, like... Highlander, I was hired as a creative producer, so I had what's called a Line Producer, uh, with me. Or, Line Producers over the years. On those... on those other movies, uh, I mean th--They were so low budget... we didn't know what the hell we were doing! We were basically you know, "Hey, let's make a movie!" You know?
Keith: Right!
23:10 Ken: Those guys got some money, so... I would say they were kind of, you know, amateur affairs, quite frankly. I guess I just... I started off in the business just like, bluffing? Because I had no idea what I was doing, and uh *someone snort-laughs* there was no like, film schools back then, so you just sort of, you know, did it. And uh, you didn't get paid, and y'know, you worked uh for six months 'n... for a thousand bucks, 'n then you starved for six months 'n, you just really wanted to do it. So, you were just sort of, you know, living your dream. And little by little I kind of got to actually know what the job was, I guess just, you know, just by bluffing enough and, you know, actually having--having to do it. So um... by the time Highlander came along I was... I think I was pretty good at, um, doing it. And Highlander, you know, is the real thing. As opposed to those other movies you mentioned, which were not. *Eamon? snort-laughs* That's, that's the difference.
Kyle: *laughs* But you got to met peop--meet people like Christopher Lee and whatnot, doing some of these movies, right?
24:00 Ken: That's true! Yeah. I think I--I posted a Christopher Lee story, um, when he died, but in case you've never read it, um, I'll tell ya, it's really--It's a quick story. So um, Christopher Lee. So, um, I'm doing a documentary with uh, this guy, uh, Patrick Macnee? I don't know if you remember him from the original Avengers?
Eamon: Oh yeah!
Keith: Oh yeah, yeah!
24:19 Ken: He's the guy with the Bowler hat. *Keith: Yeah!* Yeah. So, his son was a friend of mine. He was directing a documentary and it was Patrick Macnee. And we're shooting uh, at some hotel in India, Jaipur India, and Christopher Lee's at the same hotel, and he's shooting um... It was like a British uh, mini-series, uh... So I went for dinner with uh, Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee! Over dinner I say to Christopher Lee, "You know um, Christopher, I don't know if you remember, but... I was the producer on um, this movie uh, Starship Invasions?" And he kind of looked at me and he gave that like, Dracula-look for about like, five minutes at me. *laughter* And he didn't say anything. It's not his fondest memory! It was never fondest memory!
Kyle: So he loved it, is what you're saying? *amused*
Eamon: HAH haha!
24:59 Ken: Yeah, yeah. He loved it. He had a great time, yeah! *laughter* He had no eh... eh, he didn't have any lines, so it was easy. He spoke telepathically.
Eamon: Ohhh!
Kyle: So wait! Did he--Was it him? He spoke telepathically? Did he like--was it all ADR'd? Or... did he just literally not speak in the movie?
25:11 Ken: Yup! He literally didn'... you know it was ADR'd because there was no... there was no uh, lip movement. It was telepathic communications, so it was all voice-over.
Kyle: Oh, okay!
Eamon: Wow!
25:20 Ken: It was all him--him talking telepathically, um... with uh... by the magic of the voice-over.
Eamon: Movie magic! I think the mo--the show he was shooting was The Far Pavilions.
25:29 Ken: That's it! Yeah, very good! *Kyle chuckles* Very good.
Eamon: Far Pavilions...
Keith: There you go. Eamon's got the trivia.
Eamon: That's right.
Kyle: Yeah! *laughs* Way better than those near pavilions. They're--
Ken: That's right! That's right!
Eamon: Much better than those near Pavilions.
24:39 Ken: Omar Sharif was there, and uh--*Eamon?: Oh!*--Ben Cross, and Amy Irving, yep, that's right!
Keith: When you were producing Highlander, I imagine with the--the tight shooting schedules and just like... Stuff must go wrong, I'm sure, no matter how much you try to prevent it. Something, you know, must happen day-to-day where you're like, "Ohhhhh, shit!" *Ken: Yep.* Uh, j--what's the like, craziest thing that you had to get done... either yourself, or make sure happened, when you were kind of putting the show together like. Was there ever like, just a disaster and you had to like, scramble to wheel and deal or MAKE the show go on the next day?
Continued in next post!
Hi, this is Adrian Paul, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hello, this is Beatie Edney. I played Heather in the original Highlander film, and you are watching Highlander Rewatched!
This is Andy Armstrong. I was the 2nd Unit Director directing the action units in New York on the original Highlander, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hi, this is Anthony De Longis, also known as Ottavio Consone from the Duende episode of Highlander, and you are listening to Highlander Rewatched.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Gracen. I played Amanda on Highlander the Series, and the spinoff called Highlander: The Raven, and you are listening to Highlander Rewatched!
Everybody involved with Highlander has stories; and they're great, great stories! This is John Mosby, the author of Fearful Symmetry: The Essential Guide to All Things Highlander, and you're listening to Highlander Rewatched.
This is Ken Gord, producer of the Highlander Series, and you are listening to the podcast Highlander Rewatched.
1:27 Welcome to Highlander Rewatched! The podcast where each and every week we take a look at another facet of the Highlander universe! This week is a very special episode. Welcome to one of our Chronicle episodes, where we talk to the people behind the scenes: the actors, the directors, the producers, the writers... of the Highlander series and movies! We have a very special guest today. I'm one of your hosts, I'm Keith!
This is Kyle!
This is Eamon.
Keith: And today we are joined by Producer of the Highlander series, Ken Gord! Welcome to the show, Ken!
2:02 Kyle: Just so you know, we tend to keep it pretty light. We try to have a good time. *****We've got like, an explicit tag; we actually swear kind of often on our show. So if you care to do that, don't feel like, the need to censor yourself! Uh... hah!
Ken: Well that's good to know. Since I'm a Canadian, you know, we swear quite a lot, so... *laughter*
Kyle: Yeah. This is a perfectly safe space for that! *laughing*
Keith: Right.
Ken: I listen to your show um--
Keith: Oh, cool!
Kyle: Oh, great!
Ken: --a lot. I listen to the shows. It's very, very good. Very well done.
Eamon: Thank you!
Kyle: Thanks! We appreciate that! *laughter*
Keith: Thank you! Yeah! Yeah. *laughter*
2:30 Ken: I myself... I'm in Venice. Venice, Italy, not California.
Kyle then Keith: Oh wow!
Ken: Yeah.
Kyle: Ssso, so... big vacation, or considering a new venue?
Ken: No, I don't do vacations. I mean, I... I only go somewhere if someone pays me, so, uh... *laughter*
Kyle: That's not a bad place to go, if you're getting paid.
2:48 Ken: Yeah. Or, I've gotten a little spoiled since, you know I... I kind of started off on... in the early 1990s uh, going to some uh, strange places to do series like the... The first place I... We did a series that was supposed to be set in the Florida Keys, and we shot it in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was called "Sweating Bullets"; it was like a CBS late-night show at that time. It had some like a... I think it was called "Crime Time After Prime Time" or something.
Keith: Hah!
Kyle: Double-Prime?
Keith: That's good.
3:14 Ken: And then the executive producer told us, at the end of that cycle, "Oh by the way, we're going to be shooting this show in um, Israel next year, in a place called Eilat," which... I didn't even know about. And I thought they were--I thought he was joking, and uh... we ended up shooting it in Israel! So, we were shooting like, you know, palm trees 'n stuff and, and about 50 yards to our right are like, camels, and 50 yards to our left is like the Jordanian Border with like, barbed wire 'n stuff, and they were at war. And we're telling people we're in uh, Florida! So--
Kyle: *snickering* Did you ever find a way to sneak that stuff into the show?
3:48 Ken: No. *laughter* The thing about--the thing about-*laughs*-the thing about TV or, or movies is that: the camera sees only what you want it to see, so... That's what's called cheating. *laughter* We call it cheating.
Kyle: It's like: Alright! Let's get a real close-up here, we can cut out the camel, that'll... *laughs with Eamon*
4:05 Ken: Hahahahahah! So I got--So I sort of became like a go-to guy for going to places, so I... you know, I kind of enjoyed it because I like... I like uh, being a pioneer in places 'n... You know, I did this uh, series in Spain called "Queen of Swords", uh after Highlander and um, we were in the desert where all the Spaghetti Westerns were shot, and that was like, really amazing because uh... You have to bring everything in, you're basically--basically in the middle of nowhere. It's like one of the only deserts in Europe. And the Western, you know, freak shows... I was like a fan on the weekend. I, I got this book and, I drive around to all these locas--locations like, "Oh! That's where Claudia Cardinale came into the house when Henry Fonda came and--*snickers heard*--and you know, that's the place where uh... what's the guy's name from um, Deathwish? Yeah, Charles Bronson was like cutting his uh--(harmonica)
Keith: Oh, Charles Bronson!
Kyle: Charles Bronson, yeah.
Ken: And all that kind of stuff. So I was like a real fan.
Eamon: That's amazing!
Keith: Wow!
Ken: Crazy Western fan.
Keith: I actually--I actually wanted to ask you about uh, Queen of Swords. Like, that--that obviously has a lot of uh, Highlander alum in it. So how did that show... kind of come about after Highlander?
4:58 Ken: Well, um, you know I'm just--I was a hired hand so I do--I'm not the guy that puts those things together, which is like, you know... miserable brutal business, *laughs* but um... I'm like, uh, you know, production which is just... just brutal. I think a... a company called Fire... Fireworks, which had done um, "Mutant X". And they did, uh, Andromeda. Uh, is it called Andromeda? The one in uh, Vancouver, the uh, one with Kevin Sorbo?
Keith: Yeah! I think so, yeah.
Kyle: That's the one.
5:22 Ken: Yeah. So they uh... They--they... I guess they sold the idea of a female Zorro. Uh, they... I think they sold it to um, uh, the syndicated network at the time 'n... and we were off! And, interestingly enough, so um... So, when we're sitting in the Production Office in the desert of Spain, and we're looking at The Mask of Zorro--you know the uh, Antonio Banderas--
Eamon: Antoni--yeah.
5:43 Ken: --movie, right? We're looking at that as reference, right? "Ohh. So oh! That looks pretty good. That looks pretty good." And then um... Not only did we get sued by Sony--
Eamon: Oh!
5:52 Ken: --because of uh, you know, the Zorro uh, connection, which we won because I think, female Zorro was not quite the same as Zorro, but uh... The director I'm working with now on this movie in Venice is a guy called Martin Campbell, and he directed the Mask of Zorro! *laughter*
Eamon: Wow!
Kyle: That's funny.
Ken: Female Zorro...
Keith: So, so the new project you're working on is, is that the uh... the Across the River and into the Trees project?
6:14 Ken: Yes it is! The uh, Across the River yeah, and into the Trees, yeah. It's an Ernest Hemingway, um, novel. His w--his last novel. Which uh...
Keith: Oh wow! Can you tell our listeners about uh, this project?
6:24 Ken: Yeah, sure. It um... takes place in 1946; a U.S. Army colonel... you know, after the war and he... he drives from, uh, Trieste, which is uh... I guess in Northern Italy, to Venice, cuz he wants to go duck hunting. And uh, he has--he has a weekend with um, an Italian countess. And it's like, he has some flashbacks to the war and uh... I won't tell you the end in case you go see it, but um... interestingly enough, it's kind of the opposite theme of Highlander. I was actually thinking about that this morning when I was um, sort of prepping myself for this phone call. It's kind of like, you know, Highlander is a study of immortality, and this Hemingway uh, book is a study of mortality; man's mortality. It's kind of interesting; a full 180. You know, people die... in this, in this boo--*clears throat* You know, in this story. *laughter* As opposed to Highlander. Nobody ever dies in Highlander! *more laughter*
Kyle: Yeah. Not a person, ever.
Eamon: Nope! *laughter continues*
Kyle: Well that's as--a good a transition as any into talking about Highlander! Uh... If I understand correctly you came in, kind of right at the beginning of Season 2. We've heard some... colorful stories about what it was like, kind of in the beginning, on Highlander. What was kind of the state of play when... when you hit the board?
Ken: "Colorful". That's good. Um... *Eamon laughs.
Kyle: Yeah! See, I was the one who said that we are allowed to swear on this show, *giggles in background* and I uh, and I used the word, colorful!
7:39 Ken: That's right, hahah! Yeah, that was a real bad word. So um, well, quite frankly um... My agent was called uh, for directors. Bill Panzer and Marla Ginzberg were in Toronto, where I'm from, and they were... they were asking my agent about directors, and my agent said, "You wanna meet a producer?" And, uh, they said, "Well, we already got one." He was actually a friend of mine. And they said, "Well, you know, but... uh... sure, we'll check 'im out." And uh... I was on a... I was on a plane like two days later to Vancouver. And my friend, who's also a director, said, "Well, you know, it couldn't have happened to a better guy! You gonna give me a couple of shows to direct, at least?" I didn't, actually. *laughter* Yes um...
Kyle: Burn!
8:16 Ken: Burn, yeah. For the first uh... So, for a couple of days I um, I just watched all the first, uh, year. The--the first twenty-two episodes. And... *clears throat* Quite frankly I... I didn't think it was that great. *laughter* Like, I thought it was a boring show. I really didn't. I thought it was a little bit cheesy, and um, some of the uh, you know the clothes were a little bit... sort of out there, and uh, I really hated the set; the antique shop with all the cow-walk and all that shit *guys chuckle* and uh... yeah. I didn't--I didn't really the, ah, you know, just the Immortal of the Week was kind of like one-dimensional. And uh--I liked Adrian! I thought he was like, you know, fantastic. So, when I came in uh, the first thing I did was... I... I tried to simplify it because, I kind of felt that the... greatest weakness of the show was that it was um, user-unfriendly. Like, it wasn't like you know, Starsky and Hutch, or like Love Boat, you know... You could just tune in, *someone snickers* you know, twenty minutes in and, you know you're right in the story, right? It's like, it wasn't too hard--not too hard to pick up, right? You know, easy access! But Highlander, you know, it's a mythology, and there's rules and... you kind of have to know what it's about, otherwise you're kind of sitting there and you're like, "What the fuck is this?" You know--*guys laugh* "Wh-wh-what's going on here?" So I... I thought that was its greatest strength; I also--Uh, greatest weakness, but I also thought it was its greatest strength, because... Hey, this is, like, a show that, you know, unlike you know, Hercules, or Xena--which are... not bad shows, I'm not dissing them--but um, you know, it's a little--it's got a little more uh, mythology, a little more sort of... you know, a thinking element to it. My thought-process was: "Because this show is kind of hard to access, and user-unfriendly, I gotta--I gotta ground it. If you know what I mean by ground it. So, everything sort of had... I had that in mind. So... I, I kind of um, took Adrian out of his purple pants, *Kyle laughs* and put him in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. You know? That's grounding, right?
Kyle: That was a good call, yeah!
Eamon: Yeah!
Keith: Good call!
9:59 Ken: Yeah. And every now and then he would put on some-something crazy and he'd--I'd walk on set and he'd look at me and laugh and--he's a bit of a teaser, right, though? *laughter* Cuz he knew it would just drive me-drive me--drive me crazy, right? He's wearing his like, you know, pink and green, you know, checked pants and uh--*Eamon laughs*
Kyle: You're like, "Alright, we gotta get M.C. Hammer out of here!" *laughter* you're like!
10:17 Ken: Yeah. And uh... and the other thing is like, um... So, we were designing these sets because... the antique shop, uh, I think... You know, uh... Tessa was gonna die, and uh, the idea was to get him, you know, a bachelor pad, and uh, Steve Geaghan the uh, fantastic Production Designer, you know he came into my office with the blueprint for the um, the Dojo. And I remember it was like Snakes & Ladders. He was like, "Oh, yeah! We'll have a stairway here, and we'll have a hallway, and then we'll--" *Kyle laughs* "--you know a little thing down there--" And I was like, *takes a breath* "Steve, get rid of all that shit, and just make it four, square, walls." *laughter*
Kyle: That's good.
10:49 Ken: And he was like, shocked. It's just like, "How can you do this?" *laughs with them* "You're--" you know, "You're killing me!" But, again I thought: You know what? You got to just ground it and simplify it. Because if you can simplify his base; if you can ground it with where--where he lives, and where he... hangs out, and... what he wears, then you can ta--kind of, sort of, you know, get behind the character and sort of follow him into like all the crazy shit that goes on in Highlander, right? So I think--I think that worked pretty well. Well, whether it worked or not it was my idea and I... and I think it worked, so uh... *someone chuckles*
Keith: Oh, it definitely works, yeah! *Kyle & Eamon?: Yeah!
11:18 Ken: Um... let's see uh, yeah and there was a, you know, a tiny bit of a... a learning curve, but... Uh, luckily everybody was very um, onside, it was like a great team and uh, there was no... there was no real, uh, friction uh... David Abramowitz, uh, had been on... I think, I'm not sure how many episodes in... in Year One, so he already sort of an alumni. The first week he was in Vancouver when I was there, and we sat down at a little diner and uh, we said, "We're the guys who are going to be sort of physically making this show." Uh, David from the, you know the Writers' Room, and me in the uh, on---you know, on the ground. And uh, we're just, we're gonna keep our backs to each other. So, we just uh decided at that point to become um, you know, sort of tr--trusty allies, and keep each others' backs, and... if I said I couldn't do something, he knew it wasn't because I was trying to save 10 cents. It was because--really because I couldn't do it. If uh, if I could do something better, like for the-the-the-the example is: The writers would write, you know, um, like a fight location, they would write "warehouse". That was the default. "Warehouse", right? You know... *Eamon laughs*
Kyle: It's always a warehouse, or a construction site. Yeah.
12:21 Ken: Yeah. Because it's an easy location; you know, they're easy to find. Uh, they got all kinds of shit in them and, you know, they're, they're textured. But, you know, I-I-I... I sort of took it upon myself to try to find like all kinds of, you know, interesting places so instead of warehouses, like tho---the... The best example of that is that um, in France, exchange the word warehouse for chateau. *laughter* So, you know, the bad guy's in a chateau, there's gonna be like a fight there. And Adrian and I were scouting Bordeaux, you know for the beginning of that uh, cycle? With um, the F--The Four Horsemen? *Keith: Mmhm.* And um, we were looking around for a chateau, locations guy that we were travelling with said, "There's like a... You know, there's an old sub--WWII um, German submarine base." We're like, WHAT? *laughter* We went to see it: It was like... It's like... That's fucking amazing, right! You remember that location?
Kyle: Yeah! It's incredible!
13:11 Ken: It was like... it was incredible! And you couldn't write that! So, so I'm just, illustrating the point that, you know, being th--They could write something, because they g--uh-un... generic because they knew we would, uh, we would try our hardest to... you know, to, to make it better. And conversely, if they wrote... wrote something crazy like, "and uh, in this scene we're gonna have uh, fifteen dancing elephants," *Eamon laughs* we would say... If we said we... if we said we couldn't do it, maybe we could have like a, a Great Dane... *Kyle laughs* then, they believed us. So there was trust between us.
Keith: Uh... was there ever any tension on the set? Cuz, I mean... At the end of the day I guess you were kind of the final say on a lot of these creative elements. Like, did you ever have to... kind of go toe-to-toe with any directors over some of these creative differences?
13:52 Ken: Yeah. I think the uh... Most-most of our directors were... you know, they're... Directors are basically like... the guest stars on a TV show, like. You know, the producer's... you know kind of, kind of the final word, and the director's like a guest. Cuz you know he comes in, he shoots, and he goes home. We had a few House directors, like Clay Borris and um, you know Paolo Barzman... We--we had, cuz... we had guys we liked and we stuck with them.*thoughtfully* I guess the only real creative thing, and it wasn't really between ME and the director; it was between Abramowitz and the director, was the famous... I think what was the show--Mortal Sins, uh, show, where it turned into an international religious war. Because uh... um... *Kyle is chuckling* the script had um... the French actor who... who's dead now um... played the priest, and he had to... he had a gun. *Keith: Yeah.* And uh, the director--Mario Azzopardi who's... who's a really good friend of mine, The Maltese Falcon... Ah, he's got a bit of a temper, he's a very passionate man, and he says um... "You know, my brother's a priest, and there's NO WAY, EVER, a priest is gonna have a gun! I can't shoot that!" *laughter* And uh, the m--the memo wars, and the phone calls, between Abramowitz and Mario Azzopardi, he--Mario was like, "Well, well what if it's a RABBI and he's... and he's gone for a real..." *Eamon laughs* "...a stick of bacon and uh! And you know--!"
Kyle: *laughing* Oh, God!
15:03 Ken: "You gonna let THAT go?!" And it... it became really kind of intense, and at the end of the day he shot the, you know, the priest with the gun. *laughter* Apart from that--
Kyle: Wh--How did you weigh in on that dispute? Did you uh... or was it just your job to find the gun?
15:14 Ken: Well I was, um... I think I was just trying to keep the peace. *laughter* That's what Canadians do.
Kyle: Yeah, there you go! I was actually really curious, because I--you mentioned Clay Borris, Six-Day-Clay, they always refer to him as--in some of the interviews I've seen about him. What was it like working on... these really compressed shooting schedules? Cuz I heard that, he's the guy they brought in when they really wanted ta... you know, grind something out under a... sh--a compressed timeframe.
15:35 Ken: That's right. I'm impressed, you knew that. Yeah!
Kyle: Hahah. We're doing our--we're doing our homework for you!
15:40 Ken: Yeah. That's pretty good! *Eamon laughs* Yeah, really! Yeah, most of the shows were uh, seven days, which is um, you know, very uh... it was kind of ordinary back then. Now, shows are shot in like, you know, twelve and fourteen days. I mean the, you know, TV's... TV's gone wild, but... You know back then, especially for in an... what was called an industrial action show like, like Highlander, a syndicated show, seven days was kind of like the norm. Well we were doing some shows in six and a half days, and we'd start the other show on the second half of the day, so both shows would be like six and a half days; Clay could do shows in six days! He just was very efficient. Unfortunately, your greatest strength becomes your weakness. Um... He got sort of this reputation as being a guy who shoots to schedule. So, he had a hard time working after, in the coming years, cuz uh... you know. Producers wanted, you know, someone who tells a story and... it's all, it's all kind of bullshit. It's kind of like the--the impression. The guy busted his balls for us 'n, a total--a total soldier. If you said shoot it in six, he'd shoot it in six. He was a good guy.
Kyle: So as... kind of the... the guy on the ground, having to manage a lot of this stuff... What did that end up meaning for you, in your role? Were you... going crazy on these six-day shoots, or was it just more of the same for you?
16:48 Ken: Well, it's kind of more of the same because basically, the show--shows are made in prep. They're made in prep and post, believe it or not. So, prep is where, you know, the schedule is um, created and built and uh, if a, if a six-day show looked like it was, you know, needed to be shot in eight days, then you do what's called fixes. Which means um you know, working with the writing department and uh, taking things down, or taking... two locations and putting them into one, or taking like an exterior night, which is uh... takes much longer cuz you have to light and all that stuff and making it an exterior day. So there's all kinds of like, you know, tricks used to um, to save time. So uh wh-wa--So once it's prepped and everybody's, you know, reason-reasonably assured that now it's DOable, then you know the director just uh, does it. He's like a traffic cop. He, you know, he just makes it-makes it happen, so... There's not really a--not really a... a lot of emergencies on-set. You know, apart from, you know, strange things. Other than that, the directors... and the ADs, the assistant directors, are just, you know, very very good and efficient. They know what they're doing. So th--they just make it happen. Th-there were things--
Kyle: What was the strangest surprise, that--that would have come up like that?
17:49 Ken: Well the biggest surprise was, uh, I mean there was a few, but like... Uh, the one that comes to mind is the uh, Sheena Eason show, we're shooting at this light house, and all of a sudden some... I don't know what it was. Some mmm... I don't know if it was Canadian Navy, or American Navy... Some ordinance washed up on the beach. *Kyle laughs gleefully* So, righ--Yeah! I--I--I don't know, it was like, unexploded you know, mines, or some shit, I don't really remember exactly what it was, but it was something that you didn't want to explode while you were shooting! So um, we had to, you know, call the uh, Canadian army and uh... evacuate and let them do what they did, which... took about a half a day and... So, you know. You lose half a day! That's it. Nothing you can do about it. You just have to just sort of make it work.
Kyle: With the added security of not--with the added security of not blowing up the actors!
Eamon: Yeah!
18:33 Ken: You don't wanna blow up the actors, no. *laughs*
Kyle: Yeah. It's a good day's work!
Ken: Yeah.
Eamon: Or you could blow--blow those up for a Quickening!
Kyle: Yeah. *moment, laughter* Yeah, we've already got this ordinance, let's just uh--
Eamon: Just blow that up!
Kyle: Well I guess Sheena Easton lived. *Ken laughs* She's one of the--she's one of the lucky few!
Eamon: Oh that's right. There was no Quickening in that episode.
Keith: That's right.
Eamon: Never mind! *Kyle laughs*
19:50 Ken: *laughs* Well amazingly um... You know, what happens in an action show is, I mean... Adrian is doing all his own shit, right? I mean, he's--he's doing all his own sword-stuff. He only got hurt like, around two or three times--I say "only", you know. You don't want to see anybody ever get hurt, but Rrr--Rowdy Roddy Piper, who's like the strongest man you've ever seen in your life... he hit Adrian's sword so hard like, broke the hilt and like, really hurt uh, Adrian's finger. You know about that, probably. *inhales* And um, uh...
Kyle: Oh, yeah! Wasn't he like bleeding out during the... during the final shots?
19:20 Ken: Yeah. It was in the um... like the Exhibition Grounds, or the--the whatever it's called, the Fairgrounds. *inhales* And he got hurt two other times. So, you know when that happens, you know it's kind of a bummer for the actor, obviously, because he's hurt... but also... usually it means, like you know, an hour or two um... where you gotta go, you know, check him out at the hospital, and... You know, Tex Cobb got hit by a beer truck. *Kyle laughs* You know, it's like... crossing the street cuz he wasn't wearing his glasses, and you know, that kind of... that kind of stuff happens. You just have to uh, cope with it. We were doing the um, the Quickening with uh, David Robb uh, under the Bastille, where he finally got his. And uh, the Quickening, there's a piece of uh, plastic or something, that hit him JUST below the eye. I mean, I was there, like, holy shit! To his credit, he stayed in character, and he finished the Quickening. And when the director said cut... Man oh man! You wanna talk about cursing! He was livid! *Kyle chuckles* So I...
Eamon: Oh boy.
20:14 Ken: I fired... Cuz that, that's not supposed to happen. So, I fired the special effects guy--
Eamon: Oh! Hah.
20:20 Ken: --and uh, we went back to our, our other guy who was re--also very, very good, and um... You know, you just sort of carry on.
Eamon: I had a question about like uh, you were mentioning the cool locations you--you found in France. Was it easier to find like, cool locations in Vancouver, or France? Or was it kind of six of one, half a dozen of the other?
20:39 Ken: That's an interesting question. I think uh... I think probably uh, Vancouver. Uh, cuz I think Vancouver has a... a little more diversity. It was... it was... It's amazing that you can go to Vancouver and shoot, you know, for India, for you know, Mongolia, for Mexico, for all these places. You know, it's just unbelievable when you think about it. There's always something, you know, a place. It doesn't even have to be that big, it's just... something that gives you the uh, the feeling of the place, or gives you a place to start building, you know like, a village or something so... I don't know. I think Vancouver was a... was probably easier for locations. Don't forget in France you're um, you're not allowed to shoot inside the... the periphery. Like, you know, the circle? Uh, without a permit, obviously, and uh... because they're snobs, um, they don't give permits--*Keith laughs*--except to um, films. And you have to give them the script, like, you know, two weeks in advance, minimum. And we're getting scripts like, seven days before we start shooting, right? And, so, we could never get a permit, so... we had one sort of full-time permit at the uh... where the barge was. And that's also like the stupidest thing in the world! Every year it's like, "You know, we're shooting our standing--standing set--" That's called a Standing Set, right? Yeah? *affirming noise* Like the dojo, the uh... you know, his uh... his loft. That's where you're supposed to go home, and the lights are ready, and you just like, shoot the shit out of it right, because it's... it's easy. Cuz you're not on location like, you know, outside somewhere. And, um, it's well known in the industry, that the hardest thing to shoot is a boat! *laughter* So, our standing set in France was... was a BOAT! *louder laughter* Every time another boat went by, you know, the thing was going up and down, and how do you light the other side, 'n... it was just like... It was a fuckin' nightmare! But, every year we tried to uh, find a better place, and um... you know. It was too expensive, or, you know, this and that. And so, *wearily* every year we're on the barge. *laughter*
Kyle: Can't wait to sell this thing!
Eamon: Yeah!
Keith: I had a question about like, just kind of producing in general. Like, in your early career, you had done some like, low budget movies, like Dream on the Run, or Starship Invasions... *Ken: Yeah.* How does producing like, low budget sci-fi movies compare to... you know, either like, the movies you're working on today, or a... syndicated television show? Is it like, kind of the same shit but just with more money? Or're there really... like, was your job really different working on those early projects than it is, let's say today?
22:52 Ken: I could be hired for any number of things, like... Highlander, I was hired as a creative producer, so I had what's called a Line Producer, uh, with me. Or, Line Producers over the years. On those... on those other movies, uh, I mean th--They were so low budget... we didn't know what the hell we were doing! We were basically you know, "Hey, let's make a movie!" You know?
Keith: Right!
23:10 Ken: Those guys got some money, so... I would say they were kind of, you know, amateur affairs, quite frankly. I guess I just... I started off in the business just like, bluffing? Because I had no idea what I was doing, and uh *someone snort-laughs* there was no like, film schools back then, so you just sort of, you know, did it. And uh, you didn't get paid, and y'know, you worked uh for six months 'n... for a thousand bucks, 'n then you starved for six months 'n, you just really wanted to do it. So, you were just sort of, you know, living your dream. And little by little I kind of got to actually know what the job was, I guess just, you know, just by bluffing enough and, you know, actually having--having to do it. So um... by the time Highlander came along I was... I think I was pretty good at, um, doing it. And Highlander, you know, is the real thing. As opposed to those other movies you mentioned, which were not. *Eamon? snort-laughs* That's, that's the difference.
Kyle: *laughs* But you got to met peop--meet people like Christopher Lee and whatnot, doing some of these movies, right?
24:00 Ken: That's true! Yeah. I think I--I posted a Christopher Lee story, um, when he died, but in case you've never read it, um, I'll tell ya, it's really--It's a quick story. So um, Christopher Lee. So, um, I'm doing a documentary with uh, this guy, uh, Patrick Macnee? I don't know if you remember him from the original Avengers?
Eamon: Oh yeah!
Keith: Oh yeah, yeah!
24:19 Ken: He's the guy with the Bowler hat. *Keith: Yeah!* Yeah. So, his son was a friend of mine. He was directing a documentary and it was Patrick Macnee. And we're shooting uh, at some hotel in India, Jaipur India, and Christopher Lee's at the same hotel, and he's shooting um... It was like a British uh, mini-series, uh... So I went for dinner with uh, Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee! Over dinner I say to Christopher Lee, "You know um, Christopher, I don't know if you remember, but... I was the producer on um, this movie uh, Starship Invasions?" And he kind of looked at me and he gave that like, Dracula-look for about like, five minutes at me. *laughter* And he didn't say anything. It's not his fondest memory! It was never fondest memory!
Kyle: So he loved it, is what you're saying? *amused*
Eamon: HAH haha!
24:59 Ken: Yeah, yeah. He loved it. He had a great time, yeah! *laughter* He had no eh... eh, he didn't have any lines, so it was easy. He spoke telepathically.
Eamon: Ohhh!
Kyle: So wait! Did he--Was it him? He spoke telepathically? Did he like--was it all ADR'd? Or... did he just literally not speak in the movie?
25:11 Ken: Yup! He literally didn'... you know it was ADR'd because there was no... there was no uh, lip movement. It was telepathic communications, so it was all voice-over.
Kyle: Oh, okay!
Eamon: Wow!
25:20 Ken: It was all him--him talking telepathically, um... with uh... by the magic of the voice-over.
Eamon: Movie magic! I think the mo--the show he was shooting was The Far Pavilions.
25:29 Ken: That's it! Yeah, very good! *Kyle chuckles* Very good.
Eamon: Far Pavilions...
Keith: There you go. Eamon's got the trivia.
Eamon: That's right.
Kyle: Yeah! *laughs* Way better than those near pavilions. They're--
Ken: That's right! That's right!
Eamon: Much better than those near Pavilions.
24:39 Ken: Omar Sharif was there, and uh--*Eamon?: Oh!*--Ben Cross, and Amy Irving, yep, that's right!
Keith: When you were producing Highlander, I imagine with the--the tight shooting schedules and just like... Stuff must go wrong, I'm sure, no matter how much you try to prevent it. Something, you know, must happen day-to-day where you're like, "Ohhhhh, shit!" *Ken: Yep.* Uh, j--what's the like, craziest thing that you had to get done... either yourself, or make sure happened, when you were kind of putting the show together like. Was there ever like, just a disaster and you had to like, scramble to wheel and deal or MAKE the show go on the next day?
Continued in next post!