Martin Wood walks into the room clutching a
large jar of chocolate spread. His boisterous and entertaining panel with Peter
DeLuise at the Level 3 convention has been a major hit, especially their inside
stories about the filming of Stargate SG1 and Stargate
Atlantis. As well as being producers, directors and writers on the
shows, they both appear in cameo roles in their episodes, Martin as a Major,
Peter as an Airman.
Photos
© and courtesy of Begonia, All Rights Reserved
Lunch is due and the jar of chocolate spread
– a gift from a fan -- looks inviting. But before heading off for their break,
they nibble on mints and chat to Carole Gordon about life, the universe – and
underwear.
Martin and Peter have both recently become
fathers and proudly state that their children are their finest achievements.
But workwise, Martin is particularly proud of his 2001 movie, The
Impossible Elephant (titled The Incredible Elephant in
the UK), written by Robert Cooper.
"It was being able to put a lot of the
things that I learned from 30 episodes of Stargate into a movie and have a
little more control over where it went," he says. "I really enjoyed
doing Impossible Elephant, so I think on that scale, that would
be one of my finest accomplishments. The Atlantis pilot for me
was a big deal too. Piloting a series was very cool."
SG1 and now Atlantis are known for their
exceptional special effects. But Robert Cooper and Brad Wright ensure that the
effects don't swamp the characters, Peter says.
"Even though they are really really
cool, they [Robert and Brad] always come back to the idea that ultimately the
audience cares about the characters and so they are quite frugal, even though
it doesn't seem like it."
Perhaps the cost of these effects demands
frugality? Peter agrees that this is one reason.
"The other one," he says, "is
so that it doesn't become 'The Spaceship Blowing Up All The Time Show', because
you have always got to come back to the characters and see how they feel about
what's going on. You can kill thousands of faceless extras and you can blow up
hundreds of spaceships in fiery balls, but unless you cut to the reaction shot
of the face of somebody who actually gives a damn, the audience won't
either."
Martin and Peter argue that the killing of
the Jaffa and others is different from the deaths of main characters.
"We are not killing people,"
Martin says.
Peter agrees. "They're not people,
they're aliens."
The suggestion that whether alien or not,
they all have mothers to grieve for them, elicits a wry smile from Peter.
"That's a good qualification.
But," he jokes, "so did the Alien in the Aliens movies have a
mother."
He becomes
serious. "Because I am American, I am distinctly aware of the fact that my
tolerance for violence is much higher than my Canadian writing counterparts. I
did an episode called 'The Fifth Man' in which I accidentally had Richard Dean
Anderson step over a dead body to get to the Stargate and I heard about that to
no end. I didn't think it was that big a deal."
Peter wasn't sure what people were concerned
about until he reviewed the tape. In the end, they had to alter what was shown
in the scene. That, he says, was when he realized that his tolerance for
violence was much higher. At least it was, until he was filming the episode
“The Sentinel.”
"I was lining up a shot where somebody
was pointing a machinegun at a Jaffa for the umpteenth time on the show. He
pulled the trigger; muzzle blast; the squibs went off; the guy rolled down the
hill. And I really actually felt something different because I was seeing
something that looked like a cause and effect. There was somebody whose life
was ending. I would not have given it a second thought had it not been for the
fact that the tragedy of 9/11 had just occurred and I realized how precious
life was. Suddenly my entire perspective had changed."
From that moment, Peter would see things
differently.
"My tolerance for violence is much less
because of that," he says. "And now that I have a son it is even
lower."
Martin has also experienced a similar change
of perspective.
"I was very very affected by Schindler's
List because I spent some time doing a documentary in Auschwitz. I did
a lot of research for that. Watching people be killed in that situation almost
drove me from the theatre, I couldn't watch it."
He had been particularly affected by the
words of an Auschwitz survivor.
"The whole thing with Auschwitz for me
hinged on one comment I heard when I was there. It almost drove me mad when I
came back. I heard something from a survivor who said, 'Then the animals did
this to us and then the animals did this to us.' I don't know why that phrase
kept repeating in my head but I realized one night about a couple of weeks
after I got back to Canada that they weren't
animals that did it, they were human beings. And there were thirty thousand SS
guards that lived in Auschwitz. When you think that thirty thousand people
watched this happen or knew that this was happening, right on the same block
that they lived on, you think 'That's insanity.' At that point in my life
that's when my perspective about humans and shooting and killing changed."
But, he says, this does not affect how he
sees shooting Jaffa, because the situations are so different.
"We do a cartoon series. Stargate
is not real – there isn't a basis for reality in it and so I can divorce myself
from that. No matter how ridiculous it is that you've got all these Jaffa
dying, you shoot up all these guys and even in the background you've got SG
members getting killed, it's not the same thing as watching someone die in Schindler’s
List or watching someone die on a street corner."
The demarcation line in Stargate
comes with the main cast of characters, the human characters, and this, Martin
says, was one of the reasons why Janet was killed.
"These," he says, "are the
people we care about. You have to have a vested interest in the people, in
Carter, O'Neill, Daniel, Teal'c, Hammond, Fraiser, Corin [Jonas]. We have a
vested interest in those people who have faces for us and that we know. We
would be sad if Major Wood died, we would be sad if Sergeant Siler died, but we
wouldn't be devastated."
He feels that the audience needs to be
devastated for the sake of the drama.
"When you want to evoke emotion you have
to devastate or you have to overjoy. It's not enough to say, 'Here's your
birthday present; it's socks.' It's a little bit different, but it's not that
great. You need to go over the top with it."
The aliens, he says, are the cartoon part of
the show, and the human beings create the relationships that we can believe in.
"A cartoon can't have those
relationships," he says. "You never see Homer and Marge Simpson
having that kind of conversation. What I am saying is that, even though we are
shooting a cartoon and it's exaggerated, there is a human element to it. Would
I ever commit that kind of violence to our people? Absolutely not. I couldn't
do that. But I can do it to the cartoon characters."
Although there is a team of writers working
on both shows, Peter says that people submit unsolicited scripts and story
ideas all the time.
"We can't even acknowledge that we've
received them because in acknowledging you've received them, you might give the
person grounds for suing you for copying an idea."
The studios can't accept any unsolicited
material, Peter confirms.
"It just kills me to see giant stacks
of paper that are being submitted with most likely legitimate story ideas that
I cannot even look at let alone acknowledge," he says. "These people
are spending weeks and weeks if not months on these ideas and I think, 'Don't
they know that they're not supposed to submit unsolicited material?' That makes
me quite sad."
Photos
© and courtesy of Ann Wortham, All
Rights Reserved
From the beginning, Stargate SG1
has been filmed at Bridge Studios in Vancouver and has now been joined on the
same lot by Stargate Atlantis. But there are current difficulties
in the television industry which, Martin says, have a number of causes.
"I think every film industry is
struggling right now mostly because of reality television. The Canadian
industry is struggling because of reality television, but you take that out of
the equation, it's also struggling because of the strength of the Canadian
dollar. The Canadian dollar is very strong right now, compared to the American
dollar. The Americans are letting their dollar freefall and because of that
there's not the incentive for the Americans to come North anymore."
As the interview comes to an end, the mood
lightens with some revealing, if perhaps not entirely truthful, information.
"I'll tell you about Peter,"
Martin says conspiratorially. "Peter is actually a woman."
In retaliation Peter confides, "Martin
wears shorts every single day -- and he does not wear underwear. And he's been circumcised
twice."
At which point, Major Wood and Airman
DeLuise leave for lunch, Martin once again carrying their well-earned jar of
Nutella.
|
|
With
many thanks to Martin Wood and Peter DeLuise for their time, and to Emma Wall
of Level 3 Conventions for arranging the interview. |
|
Carole Gordon © November 2004
Martin Wood:
Martin is a director, producer and writer who has worked on movies,
documentaries, and TV shows including Jeremiah, The Invisible
Man and Earth: Final Conflict as well as Stargate
SG1 and Stargate Atlantis.
Further information at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0939869/
Peter
DeLuise: Peter is the son of actor Dom DeLuise, brother of Michael and David
DeLuise, and is married to Anne Marie Loder, who have all appeared in Stargate
SG1. As an actor, Peter was well-known for his role in 21 Jump
Street, but has since developed an extensive career as a director,
producer and writer.
Further
information at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0217938/
Information about Level 3 Conventions can be
found at: http://www.l3conventions.co.uk/
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