ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 10, 1992
By Steve Newton
The Seymour Watershed is a long way from the green rolling hills of Scotland, where Connor MacLeod (played by Christopher Lambert) learned the swordfighting tricks of the immortal’s trade from his mentor (Sean Connery) in the movie Highlander.
But, five miles up a North Vancouver mountain road and 100 yards into the forest, a pair of duelling swordsmen are battling it out with the same type of magical blades that throw off trails of sparks when they collide with each other or the nearby trees. The match is not over until the new Highlander, Duncan MacLeod (played by Adrian Paul), dispatches his enemy with a decapitating chop to the neck.
Thirteen one-hour episodes of the new Highlander TV series are being filmed in and around Vancouver at a cost of more than $1 million per show. Another nine will be produced in France by the Paris-based Gaumont Television in association with Magnum Opus Films of Los Angeles. The pilot episode and six of the shows shot in Vancouver are directed by Tom Wright (No Holds Barred), who took time off from a hectic schedule to fill me in on the series’ plot.
“In the pilot the power and the tradition was passed down to Adrian Paul’s character from Lambert’s character,” says Wright. “The idea of this series is what we call ‘the gathering’, which is a certain time in history when all the immortals are after each other. It’s good against evil and if the good guys win, everything will be fine. If the bad guys win it’ll be pestilence, famine, the whole number.”
Wright says that the Highlander TV series is hoping to capture the spirit of the Highlander films–or the 1986 original, anyway. The much-maligned Highlander 2: The Quickening is not generally seen as a cinematic work to be emulated.
“The first one I particularly enjoyed,” hedges Wright, “and we’re trying very much to keep that idea intact, look-wise, tracking-wise. There are particular things that the immortals do that don’t change. You create the same sort of look, and you try to do some shots now and then that we call ‘Highlander shots’.”
In light of the series’ prime-time positioning, one may wonder how Wright plans to deal with the decapitations that must be carried out by the immortals to keep themselves truckin’ on through the centuries.
“Heads aren’t going to roll,” he says. “We will not actually show any heads being ‘lifted’. But you will definitely get the idea of what happened. And once the head leaves, a series of effects takes place that we call ‘the Quickening’, where [the victorious immortals] gain the energy and knowledge from the one they behead. It creates havoc for a few moments, and you have all this electric stuff flying around and windows breaking.”
Guest stars for the series include Vincent Sciavelli (who was so effective as the subway ghost that teaches Patrick Swayze the facts of death in Ghost), 21 Jump Street‘s Peter DeLuise and Dustin Nguyen, and rocker Joan Jett, who starred opposite Michael J. Fox in Light of Day.
While we chat with director Wright in his office at Burnaby’s massive Bridge Studios, Jett drops by, looking street tough in thick black eye-liner and black everything else. With a Keep Abortion Legal button pinned to her leather jacket, the raven-haired rocker discusses how she’ll look during her upcoming swordfighting sequence.
“I want something wild,” instructs Wright, suggesting spiked-up hair and a studded dog-collar. Jett chews her gum and nods casually in agreement.
While Wright heads off to watch Jett rehearse with swordmaster Bob Anderson, calling her “a natural immortal”, I stroll down the hall of the Highlander office to meet producer Barry Rosen, who, along with partner Gary Goodman, made a successfuly foray into the thriller genre with the highly rated 1990 TV movie The Stranger Within, directed by Tom Holland (Child’s Play). Rosen, a huge fan of fantasy films, says he’s excited about the cinematic possibilities that come with the Highlander theme.
“We have two great elements of the show every week,” he says. “One is flashbacks, which give you this extraordinary ability to flash back from a guy who lived in the past and just hasn’t died! In our first show we go back to an Indian massacre, very much like Wounded Knee; in our second show we go back to the Scottish Highlands, then in the third week we’re in 15th-century China.
“It’s a fantastic challenge because each week we get to do something from this guy’s past to show where all this knowledge came from. You’re in 1993 and you’re looking at a guy who’s been with Da Vinci, who’d learned the samurai sword and kung fu from the [first people] who taught it. I mean it’s a great character.”
While the Highlander legend promises some good material to work with, Rosen admits that bringing the story of the invincible MacLeod clan to the small screen hasn’t been without its difficulties.
“The major obstacle so far would be teaching a crew–which has never really been taxed like this before–to do period work week in and week out. [Vancouver] is a great film community, but [the crews] don’t have the history of Hollywood yet, they haven’t been around. So it’s teaching them not to get scared, not be fearful that next week we’re doing Jeremiah Johnson and for the week after we’re going back to 17th-century France. So it’s just a matter of self-confidence. We know they can do it, they just have to believe they can do it.”
One person whose self-confidence is not a concern is star Paul, upon whose muscular shoulders much of the series’ success will surely rest. The British-born actor says he isn’t worried about following in the footsteps of that other long-haired hunk, Christopher Lambert.
“He’s Connor MacLeod, I’m Duncan MacLeod,” emphasizes Paul. “I am the Highlander. Some people will say, ‘Well, I’m not sure he’s good enough’ or ‘He’s better than him.’ Everybody’s going to have their own opinion, but I think you’ll see, especially in the first show, the bond there is between the two men. And I think that’s going to be a definite asset in people’s transition from the film to this [TV series].”
Paul’s previous TV credits include War of the Worlds and The Colbys. Like most everyone else involved in Highlander: the Series, it seems he is a big fan of the original film. And he’s confident that all Highlander fans will embrace the small-screen version of the action-packed original.
“One of the producers said something about that. He said, ‘Everybody loved Highlander, Highlander 2 they were upset with, but if we do a good Highlander 3, or a series, they’ll forgive us for it.’ I agree with him.”
To read more of my set visits to fantasy, sci-fi, suspense, and horror films being made in Vancouver since 1988 go here.