Special Effects Technician Kirk Douglas helped bring Stargate’s incredible practical effects to life from day one. He joins us to share stories from the set and pay tribute to his brother, Wray Douglas.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
There we go. Welcome everyone to Episode 367 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I appreciate you being here for this live episode. Wray Douglas, special effects technician, is joining us for this show. We have everything covered in this episode if we can get through all of it, so we’re gonna have to wait and see. I must first thank Michael Greenberg, without whom this episode would not have been possible. Some people don’t have all of their contact information available on IMDb, and I go from place to place to try and figure out how to reach folks, and eventually you make the connections that you need to make in order to extend invites into different directions, and it’s up to those folks whether or not they wanna come on. But I am very thankful to have special effects technician, Kirk Douglas, to our show. Hello sir, how are you?

Kirk Douglas:
I’m very well, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

David Read:
Thank you for putting up with that ridiculously long preamble in order to get you into the program. I was having some technical difficulties. We have a lot to show off here. There’s a lot of cool– It’s a special effects episode, so there’s a lot to this. Kirk, when did you know that you wanted to set fire to things for a living? At what point here did that go into your mind where it’s like, “You know what? I’m either going to turn into someone who is going–” This may not be you at all, this may not. We’re extremely safe, and no, I would have never thought of going into the backyard and setting things ablaze just to see what would happen. Or was there a part of you in childhood where it was like, “I’m either gonna find a way to make this a living or I’m gonna end up behind bars at some point.” Or am I completely off?

Kirk Douglas:
No, that was my brother.

David Read:
That was Wray?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah. Wray and I, we grew up in Alberta, in rural Alberta. Lots of trees, lots of stuff to do. Riding motorcycles, snowmobiles, camping, hunting, stuff like that. We discovered gasoline at a young age, how cool it could be. I’m gonna go with that. My dad had a glass jug full of mixed gas for two-stroke engines, and my brother and his friend, my friend Brian, I wasn’t home that day, but Wray was probably 13, and Brian was 12, and somewhere Wray had seen a Molotov cocktail and being a 13-year-old know-it-all, he said, “I know how to do that. It’s easy.” And he took this glass jug, big jug of mixed gas, and he took it to a field with Brian, and Brian was like, “Well, what do we do?” And he says, “It’s really cool. Watch this.” And he tore a little piece of his T-shirt off and he stuck it in the cap and then he tied the cap down and he lit the T-shirt and they ran expecting this big explosion. But it didn’t happen because he put the cap on, so it just burned around the top and then it went out. So, then Wray was like, “Well, that’s dumb.” So, he got another chunk of T-shirt, went over and put it in, but he undid the cap and left it half open and lit it again and they ran and they hid and they were like, “It’s gonna explode. It’s gonna be huge.” And nothing happened. It just burned around the top. And Brian was like, “Well this is stupid.” So, he walked over and he kicked it and of course it lit the whole field on fire. And these are two kids. There’s no fire extinguisher. There’s no hose by. It’s just a big field now that’s blazing on fire and so they were freaking out trying to put the fire out with their jackets and fanning the flames. So, they ran, and by the time they got to the main road, there were police cars and the fire department, and they grabbed them and said, “What are you kids doing?” My brother being the quick thinker he was, he said, “There were a bunch of teenagers over there smoking and doing all kinds of bad stuff and we saw them and ran.”

David Read:
Of course there were.

Kirk Douglas:
He was a quick thinker, and so he said, “OK, well you guys stay right here, don’t move. We gotta go check this out.” And as soon as he turned his back, they were gone. So, we learned how to light the fires, but we didn’t know how to put them out. But we had all kinds of fun with– We would take lead pellets, and we had BB guns, pellet guns, and we would put needles through them and then shoot them at a 50-gallon barrel, and they would spark. And we were like, “Wow, that’s a really cool effect.” We kept doing that, shooting them at my dad’s fire barrel. And then he’d come out one day and he’d see these dents in the barrel, going, “What the hell are you kids doing?” It’s like, “I don’t know. Wasn’t us.”

David Read:
I don’t know how you didn’t give your folks coronaries. ‘Cause there’s– I can only imagine how worried they would be once you guys got into this mindset where, “Let’s do more, please.” I went through a take-everything-apart-in-my-room phase. Every toy that I had, everything else, if it had a Phillips head or a flat-head on it, it was coming off. And it sounds like that’s something similar that you guys went through.

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah, I was like that. I liked to take stuff apart. Wray liked to melt it. Wray liked to light things on fire.

David Read:
So, he was the pyro?

Kirk Douglas:
I was really into — I was the guy that wanted to take it apart and see how it worked. And as a kid, I could take it apart, but I didn’t know how to put it back together. And then you learn. You learn as you grow and you figure things out. And our aunt and uncle, John and Betty Thomas, who were legends in the effects industry in Vancouver. John had a shop in Vancouver, and at 15, Wray went to visit ’cause he was invited. “Why don’t you come stay for a week,” and Wray was super excited. So, I think Wray was 15, no, 14 at the time. Yeah, he would’ve been 14. And then he went over there and got to hang out in the shop, got to see how they did stuff and how they made things happen, how things sparked. And he– John put a bullet hit on him, and he got to experience, “Wow, that’s really cool. Wow. How did that– How did you do that?” So, Wray came back from Vancouver. I remember he was flying. He was like, “I know what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life. This is it. I have made up my mind. I’m gonna do this. It’s gonna happen.”

David Read:
Just like his dad.

Kirk Douglas:
I wanted to be a musician. He wanted to be an effects guy. So, I was like, “Cool, you do that. I’ll do my thing.”

David Read:
And you got to do both.

Kirk Douglas:
I got to do both. I got lucky enough to be able to do both.

David Read:
How close were you to Wray? Were you guys really tight always? Were there some years of if and eh, or was it– How was that?

Kirk Douglas:
Here’s the thing, David. Brothers. We were 11 months apart. So, we were, I think they call it Irish twins.

David Read:
Irish twins. I’m an only child, so I can’t relate. Just up front.

Kirk Douglas:
We were very close in age, so we were always in each other’s orbit throughout my whole life. And I was the person that he would experiment on.

David Read:
Oh, my God.

Kirk Douglas:
“Hey, I’ve got this window I want you to jump through and land on a bunch of boxes and mattresses. I’ll film you.” And I’d go, “OK.”

David Read:
What could go wrong?

Kirk Douglas:
“I trust you. You’re smarter than me. OK.” And then, of course, I’d take out the light fixture on my way down. But we were always doing crazy stuff. And my poor parents. I was happy that they didn’t know what we were doing at the time, but as we got older, we would be sitting around the dining room table and Wray would bring up something. “Oh, remember that time that the windshield of the car got dented in and we said it was a kid throwing a baseball at it?” My mom would say, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well, that was Kirk. I was driving, and he jumped out. I was trying to maneuver out of the way, and Kirk jumped up in the air and his head hit the window.” And my mom would be like, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, you kids…” We were 30 when we told them that, though. I was, I think, 16 at the time.

David Read:
The things that come out with age. Did you guys ever get hurt?

Kirk Douglas:
Growing up?

David Read:
Doing this stuff. Experimenting.

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah. But we were pretty resilient, and the privilege of being young and rubbery, I guess. I don’t know. Some of the stuff now, I shudder at. Oh, my God. I have kids. I have a 13-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter, and my son was playing soccer today. I took him to a soccer game and he had an amazing wipeout. And my first reaction was to jump up and run across the field and go, “Are you OK?” But I didn’t ’cause I was, “I gotta not be that guy.” But as a parent, you worry about your kids, and you think back to when you were a kid and you go, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, the things that we did.”

David Read:
What did I put these people through?

Kirk Douglas:
Things that we survived and didn’t even consider at the time as being dangerous. We just did it ’cause it was, “Well, that was cool. Let’s do it again.” And the fun thing about when Wray and I worked together doing special effects, there were moments. Wray was a big kid. Kids loved him because he was a big kid, and he could relate to kids, and kids could relate to him. Our trailer was the favorite trailer for every kid that came to set. Richard Dean Anderson– Not Richard. Michael Greenburg’s son.

David Read:
DJ.

Kirk Douglas:
DJ. He would head straight for our trailer.

David Read:
He’d make a beeline.

Kirk Douglas:
He would come to the office and he’d go, “Bye, I’m going to the effects trailer.”

Kirk Douglas:
Michael, I don’t think ever worried because he was, “I know exactly where he is. He’s with the effects boys and they’re–”

David Read:
They’re blowing stuff up.

Kirk Douglas:
They’re up to who knows what in the trailer.

David Read:
Safely, though. But they’re blowing stuff up.

Kirk Douglas:
And Chris Judge’s kids would always hang out with us in the trailer too. And Chris would always be like, “They’re fine.”

David Read:
It was Shangri-La, that’s where Christopher Judge–

Kirk Douglas:
We would give them little projects to do and–

David Read:
Right. Exactly. You put them to work. And these are not little kids. Yeah, but some of them perhaps, but not– It’s a great environment to learn and to grow, and everyone is there because they love it. It was a great spot to be. So, I got a couple of pictures of Wray here before we really dig into things. This is the one that you sent me of him here. And I think this is on the Bridge Studios lot?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah, at Bridge Studios.

David Read:
Exactly.

Kirk Douglas:
Yes, it is.

David Read:
He, his profile over at Stargate Wiki has this one with John Lenic.

Kirk Douglas:
John Lenic in the back, yeah.

David Read:
And then we’ve also got– I gotta show that one here. This is– So, this is the oval that was used in “Lost City,” but was originally created for X2. So, what are these boxes?

Kirk Douglas:
OK. So, those boxes are our firing boxes. So, we have a receiver and a transmitter. So, this is the transmitter you’re looking at right now. Wray has the one box as a transmitter. The other box is over in an area that has– That’s another transmitter there, underneath him, the black one. On the other end of it where the hits are is a smaller box, and that’s the receiver. So, we have hits on that. And I think we had flash cotton bags or something like that on the other end, and sparks and things. And so, we could remotely from one area without wires being everywhere, we could fire our hits safely. And there’s a receiver and transmitter, and you can– And then I’m on the paintball gun or the capsule gun with zirconium balls.

David Read:
Is that what that is? Let me pull this up here.

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah. It’s a quick– It has a hopper there that has a thing full of… You can see the balls in there actually when you zoom in. There’s zirconium balls there, and then the CO2 tank and everything. It’s a paintball gun, but we use them exclusively on set for zirconium hits, for dust hits, stuff like that.

David Read:
Wow. So, zirconium, is that the material that when you’re hitting the Jaffa, that’s the thing that makes the metal sparks?

Kirk Douglas:
OK. So, there’s so many different ways we do that. Like, with the Jaffa, when they’re running towards you and they have all these hits coming off of them? Those are what are called Z17s, and they’re a directional hit on wires and stuff. And they would have a wireless box on them, and we would be firing offset at them. And I was in charge of loading up those chest plates for the uniforms. We would put the chests all pre-wired. We’d make the box hot, and then we would make our box hot, and what you’d hear on set is, “Effects is hot,” which means we’re ready to go. All we have to do is hit the button and we’re going. So, then we’d have either rapid fire or you can do single shot, so you can go, “bang, bang, bang, bang,” or you go “barararara” and it goes at whatever speed you decide. So, with the Jaffa, when they’re running and all of a sudden they’re like, “Oh.” And they get all these hits on their chest, that’s what it is. We have preset chest plates made up that we would have a stack of them ready to go. All you had to do was just plug them into the box, put them on the guy, put it on a little belt around him, the receiver. Then you make that hot, and then you go under your box and you’re ready to go. And when they’re ready to roll, they’ll say, “Is effects hot?” And we’ll make it hot and we’ll say, “Effects is hot.” And then we’ll do it. And the stunt guys will self-fire. They’ll have a little button in their hand, and stunt guys are doing their stunt and then they’ll “bararara” whenever–

David Read:
So, they can time it.

Kirk Douglas:
They can time it however they want. But for an actor, we would do it for them.

David Read:
I can’t wait to go through all of these little details here. This, there’s so much that’s happening. I do wanna get into– I do wanna touch on your musical career before we get too deep with this. So, you are a drummer, you are a guitarist as well. Was I right about that?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah.

David Read:
And what am I– I’m missing an instrument.

Kirk Douglas:
Bass.

David Read:
Bass. Thank you. Is this before and after your time on Stargate, or was this exclusively after?

Kirk Douglas:
Before, after, during.

David Read:
All of it.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s been in my life for a long time. I was in a touring band while I was playing in Stargate. During hiatus, summer hiatus, I’d go off on tour across Canada or we would go to England, Ireland, Wales. And play at those–

David Read:
What’s the band’s name?

Kirk Douglas:
Swank. That was the band I was in at the time, was Swank. And they were an Americana country rock band. Look them up. There’s YouTube videos of us. And we did songs that wound up on Supernatural and Smallville. Smallville did an episode where one of our songs was– The video was playing in the background while the actors were singing along to our song. And the actors came to my studio and the lead singer and I recorded them singing our song, and the instrumentation was us playing. They had so much fun. It was a great time.

David Read:
It’s an experience that… I’m a musician as well, vocally, and it’s one of those things that I dropped in college and I’ve never gone back to, and it’s something that I regret to this day. The fact that you’ve really been able to have your–

Kirk Douglas:
Never too late to go back to it.

David Read:
The fact that you’ve been able to largely have your cake and eat it too, is a gift. There’s-

Kirk Douglas:
I had a lot more energy back then. I don’t know how I did it.

David Read:
I don’t either.

Kirk Douglas:
On Stargate we were doing 12 to 14 hour days, and then I would go straight from Stargate to rehearsal, and then rehearse for two or three hours, twice a week, and then shows on weekends. And then, on my hiatus where you’re supposed to be relaxing and resting, I’m touring and playing shows. And then coming back exhausted and tired, and back on set again.

David Read:
But you– We rejuvenate in different ways.

Kirk Douglas:
I don’t regret it for a single second. It’s–

David Read:
Exactly right. You’re not …

Kirk Douglas:
It’s a lot of fun.

David Read:
… doing the same stuff. You’re switching it up with a couple of different skill sets. And don’t get me wrong, you are exhausted one way or the other. But at the same time– you say, it’s not like I’ve wasted this time. I’ve really made the best of it. So, let’s go through and look at some of the stuff that you guys were responsible for creating. I also invite everyone in the chat to submit questions if they have any questions about some of the physical effects that were generated on set during production. Kirk was involved in the first eight seasons of SG-1 and then went over to Atlantis for Seasons Two and Three. How did you get involved– Before we get into the meat and potatoes, how did you really get involved with Stargate? And was this your first show as an effects technician?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah. Actually, I was working in the music industry as a recording engineer and producer and stuff. And things hit a lull and I wasn’t really doing a lot. And I was over at Wray’s place when I was commiserating to him, going, “Oh, man. Ugh, this sucks. There’s nothing really going on.” And he said, “Well, why don’t you come and work with me on set?” And I was like, “I don’t know anything about doing special effects.” He goes, “What do you mean? You’ve hung out at Betty and John’s shop. You know all about it.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.” He goes, “We have day calls that come out that don’t know anything. You know more than they do. Come on out. Have some fun.”

David Read:
And how long had he been doing it at this point, professionally?

Kirk Douglas:
At this time he’d been doing it for probably four or five years. He was– I’ll tell you about Wray.

David Read:
Please.

Kirk Douglas:
And it’s not just that he was my brother, and I’ll make everything all rose-colored, and he was super amazing. But he was incredibly good at his job. He was highly respected in the field. And everybody wanted to be on Stargate. We were the show at the time that was the really fun show to be on as an effects person. Every effects guy I would meet would say, “Oh my God, you work on Stargate? Oh God, I’d love to work on that show.” We were always doing so much stuff. I was talking to Nick Lawson just the other day, and we were talking about it, and remembering all the amazing, incredible stuff that we used to do. And he was saying, “I had the opportunity to do things I never would have gotten to do in any other show.” And it was all because of Wray and Scott. Those guys were the three musketeers, let me say right now.

David Read:
Can you give their full names? The guys that you worked with?

Kirk Douglas:
Scott Stouffer.

David Read:
Stouffer?

Kirk Douglas:
Scott Stouffer, my brother, Wray Douglas, and Nick Lawson. Those guys were– They were the brains behind all of those amazing gags. Wray would go to a meeting. The writers and the directors and the producers would say, “OK, for this scene, we have this idea. What do you think, Wray?” And Wray would go, his little computer mind would go– and he’d go, “Oh, yeah, we can do that. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll do this, and then we can do this, and we can also provide that.” And they’d be like, “Really? You can do that?” And he goes, “No problem.” “I’ll talk to Nick and Scott and we’ll dial it up.” And then he’d leave the meeting going, “Oh God, what have I just agreed to?”

David Read:
You’re gonna make it work. We’re gonna find some way to figure this thing out. Because there was always a way.

Kirk Douglas:
Always a way. The only thing against you is no imagination. And Wray had an amazing imagination, and he was surrounded with people that supported it. And Nick Lawson is a genius. And I’ll shout that from the mountaintops. You could go to him with anything and say, “How would we make the ship look like there’s movement in the background? There’s things in the back that need to move, but I don’t want to be putting mono on it and having guys pulling mono, ’cause that looks cheesy. And what do you think?” He goes, “Why don’t we put it on a giant gimbal and we’ll use hydraulics and make the whole set do this? And then you’re gonna get real, honest to God motion, and you’re gonna have people going like this.”

David Read:
The actors.

Kirk Douglas:
For real. And the actors want that. They want to react to that. They don’t want to have to be like, “Oh, I’m pretending that the ship is moving, so oh, we’ve all got to lean the same way and…” You don’t have to do that when the whole set is moving like this, and everything is moving around. And some of the sets that they came up with, and some of the rigs that we built, one-time rigs. And you could put a 747 on it. And instead you had four actors on it.

David Read:
You’re talking about the gimbal, for instance. I remember that Martin Wood was talking about creating the Achilles for Stargate: Continuum. And the hull, the cargo section of that ship, all iced over. And I think you may be referring to that in that particular instance, ’cause the chains were hanging down from the ceiling. And–

Kirk Douglas:
That was actually after we had done that. We had done that in an earlier Stargate episode. And I’m sorry if I don’t remember the name of the episode. I apologize to everyone that–

David Read:
I think it’s “Space Race.”

Kirk Douglas:
“Space Race,” that’s the one.

David Read:
I think it’s the one with the Warrick and– Because that ship was previously established.

Kirk Douglas:
Deep Reef in Jarlath or something like that.

David Read:
Exactly. Awesome.

Kirk Douglas:
That was the one. And that was Amanda was in the ship with the other actor, and they were …

David Read:
Alex Zahara.

Kirk Douglas:
… literally the whole thing was moving. And you had the whole movement. The ship was doing that. It was a huge, huge set. And Nick Lawson made it work. And another example is one that Corin Nemec was on where the ship was sinking in the water. That was done …

David Read:
This is “Descent.”

Kirk Douglas:
… at the UBC wave pool. And the whole pool is emptied out, and all of the effects guys from the shop built this amazingly huge giant platform gimbal that the construction guys built the set on. And we had moving doors that would open and close that we had to manually do, the effects guys did. And we had giant water that we were pumping in to the set. And then Nick was on the levers and the whole set was just slowly sinking. And then he would make it lean and then it would tip. And meanwhile there’s actors inside this thing, swimming around, and there’s a camera guy in there with an underwater camera. And I think one of the most amazing things that happened was Corin Nemec held his breath for an unbelievable four minutes or something and swam in between doors and stuff like that. And I mean, the camera guy had to put his head up and he was still shooting, but Corin was still swimming under the water. And it was pretty amazing.

David Read:
He felt like he had been preparing for that his whole life because he had held a record from his home neighborhood growing up. And …

Kirk Douglas:
I believe it.

David Read:
… I forget the exact amount of time. Someone can go and check one of the last couple of interviews that we did with him, if they wanna come back in the chat and tell us. Because he remembered the exact– it was over a minute. And it’s like, “Geez.” And they had to cut the take because he is swapping Goa’uld circuits. And …

Kirk Douglas:
Under the water.

David Read:
… one of them, I don’t know if they were glass or, they had to be heavy, but one of them shook, and so they had to force the cut, or the shaking of it forced the cut. And it was, “Oh my gosh. CG it. Do something.” He’s giving a remarkable performance just in endurance and stamina. And then I want to talk about the ring–

Kirk Douglas:
It was amazing.

David Read:
… the ring effect here at some point really soon because I’ve, I have the, I have the, uh, the shots of that. Just the stuff that you guys–

Kirk Douglas:
The rings coming down?

David Read:
Exactly. The stuff that you guys do to sell a shot. And the thing that I think is really interesting about it, because Martin really wanted to duplicate that effect for Continuum with the Achilles. And it’s on the DVD commentary where he’s saying, “You guys went to all the trouble to pull this off.” And I’m interested in your take on this. How do you– I guess you just do the best you can and move on. But in that particular situation, he did not feel that the effect was achieved in camera, what you guys had created for the practical effect of pulling that off. He just didn’t feel like it was truly captured. And I would have to imagine that that would be a little bit frustrating if at least you don’t agree, if your director feels that way or if you’re going, “Yeah, based on the configuration and everything else in practice, it’s not executing as well as we had it set–” I would imagine from time to time that just happens. And when you have this, in this case, a very expensive set has been completed, this is what we’re going with. And we’ve just gotta make do.

Kirk Douglas:
There’s a frustration when you’re doing a TV show. There’s a budget, there’s a budgetary issue. There’s a time issue. There’s a lot of things that come into play. And there’s nothing more frustrating for us as effects people when we’re trying to achieve what the director wants or the writer envisions. And it’s just outside of the budgetary restraints or whatever it is, or the time constraints. Or it’s gonna cost too much money to build that rig, or it’s gonna take too long to set it up, or it’s gonna take too long to shoot it. There’s so many things. The ADs have to schedule time. The ADs have an amazingly complicated job of making sure everybody runs on time, everything happens on time. There’s so much responsibility on the first AD. On Stargate, we had amazing ADs. We had Bill Mizel and Alex Pappas. Oh my God, those guys were rock stars. And how they made sure we made everything work was amazing. And it was very frustrating for them when we couldn’t fulfill what the director wanted. They had to come in and say finally, “OK, we can’t do this gag, we’re gonna have to move on to the next thing.” And there’s nothing more Charlie-Brown-sad-music about that you can imagine. You walk away going, your head down going, “God, that sucks. I can’t believe we couldn’t do it.” Or, “Why didn’t they let us do it the way we wanted to do it?” Or something. And all those things go through your mind, but in the same breath, there are so many victories that you have that over exceeds what they were expecting. You know?

David Read:
It doesn’t reduce the letdowns though. Kirk, I always like to ask this question. Was your enemy more time or money? Time I would think would really go into preplanning and making sure that we’ve got this thing figured out, money in terms of making sure that we’ve got enough of these things to, in case we need to do a few runs at this. I know the props department, they have a saying, “One is none.” I mean, you have to have backups of things. So, what was your biggest enemy? Your biggest challenge?

Kirk Douglas:
There’s so many things, David. On a daily basis, you get your sides and you have your shot list and stuff. And you know that before lunch there’s this gag. And you prepare and you set everything up days in advance. You have the shop guys building whatever rig that they have to build. They bring it to set, they test it, they check it out, they say, “This is how it works. OK, guys. It’s your baby. Go for it.” And then you set it up and you get everything ready to go and, what’s your biggest enemy? It is time. Because you get to set and you try the rig and it doesn’t work. And it’s like, “Oh, crap. We’re gonna be shooting this in an hour. What’s our plan B? What’s our plan C?” And we learned very quickly: have a plan B, have a plan C. This isn’t gonna work, how are we gonna make it work? We have to dismantle this and we have to do it by hand. So, now you’ve gotta be under this rig, Kirk, with sticks going “ih-er-ih-er” instead of pushing a button and making the go– Whatever ridiculous thing happens. There’s a really funny story I’d like to say about my brother.

David Read:
Be my guest. Can’t wait.

Kirk Douglas:
He did a commercial a long time ago with another effects guy whose name will be omitted. These things happen. And it could have been me, it could have been any guy. But Wray was brought on at the last minute. Commercials are always a fun thing to do in between seasons of whatever you’re working on because it’s good money, it pays incredibly well, and it’s fun. There’s not as much stress and strain involved in doing it. But it’s this company that made rain gear and they had a guy strapped to the top of a 4×4 and trying to explain that the rain gear was next to none. So, they were going through all kinds of terrain, and he’s strapped to the top of a 4×4. And they’re in the mountains and they’re going through puddles, they’re going through everything. And so, parts of the shots where he spraying mud on him, and the last final thing of this shot was a bird pooping on him. And this effects guy built this rig with this little pressure pot thing, and it was charged up and he had poop in it, or fake man– whatever poop was.

David Read:
Of course. Whatever substituted for guano.

Kirk Douglas:
And he was really proud of it. Like bird poop. And it was like, “Hey, look. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out.” And he walked around laughing and showing the director. Director’s like, “That’s perfect. I’m so happy. It’s gonna be great.” Meanwhile, Wray’s going, “You’re gonna use that up. You might wanna–”

David Read:
There’s only so many charges.

Kirk Douglas:
“You might want to slow down. Save it for the shot.” And then all of a sudden, they’re ready to shoot and it’s time to do the poop gag. And he goes, “Oh, no. It’s not working.” And Wray already saw this happening. He went over to craft service, got a plastic spoon, some mayonnaise, a little bit of whatever, mixed it all up and he was like, “OK. Yeah, that’s good.” He walks onto set and the director’s going, “Well, what are we gonna do?” And Wray goes, “I’m ready.” He goes, “Oh, you’re ready to go?” He goes, “Yeah. Good to go.” “OK. Ready and action.” And he went… And he went… And he was like, “Good. Cut. Moving on.” And the effects guy was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I screwed it up so horribly.” And Wray’s like, Yeah, well, you learned from it.” And he saved the day with that plastic spoon and–

David Read:
That guy didn’t make that mistake again.

Kirk Douglas:
No.

David Read:
That’s right.

Kirk Douglas:
No. I mean, that’s a one-time mistake you make and you go, “Yeah, I won’t do that again.” And luckily, Wray had been doing it long enough, he was like, “I know where this is going. I’m gonna go get ready,” plan B. You have a plan C, you have a plan D. It’s one of those things you think really fast on your feet because the main thing didn’t work. Now what do you do? That was all I had. I don’t know what else to do. OK, but now you have a first AD standing right here going, “We have to shoot this. What are you gonna do?” “Uh, I don’t know.” No. You can’t say that. You go, “No problem. It’s not working, we got another thing, but we’re on it.” Meanwhile, there’s three guys in the trailer hurriedly putting together something really quick and they’re running to set going, “We’re here. We’re ready to go.” We have these trailers. Our effects trailers are mobile shops. Wray’s trailer was a really great trailer. It had a drill mill, it had welders, it had a cutting torch, it had a band saw. It had everything you could ever need in a pinch. You could fabricate and build whatever you needed on the spot. And all of us could weld, all of us could do pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics. And it all had to be now. You can’t fumble around and go, “I don’t know. I mean, what do you do now?” You have to do it. You have to weld something, weld it now. You need to cut something, cut it now.

David Read:
How much of a team–

Kirk Douglas:
It’s very much a team. Everybody has their strengths, but everybody also is there to help each other. We have experts in welding. We had Red Seal welders, and we had guys that were plumbing, they could do plumbing really good. And you’d learn from them, and that’s part of the job is, “Oh, wow, I’m sitting here with a Red Seal welder watching him, how it’s done. He’s showing me tricks on how to do it better. Well, I’m gonna be a better welder.” Or I’m sitting with the gas fitter and he’s showing me how to do the gas fitting and it’s like, “Well, I’m gonna be better at that.” It always felt like school, an apprenticeship.

David Read:
And you’re making movie magic. What does it take? It’s–

Kirk Douglas:
We’re getting to make believe. It was a great job. We got to play and get paid for it. And that’s why when some people get really worked up about something, the favorite thing that we would always say to them was, “Relax, we’re getting paid to make believe.”

David Read:
That’s it.

Kirk Douglas:
“It’s OK. It’s gonna be all right.” We’re not curing cancer. My–

David Read:
No, this is not surgery.

Kirk Douglas:
My wife’s brother– My wife and I met on set, and my wife worked in the office, and she was making movie money. So, she was making good money. And her brother was working for the cancer agency trying to cure cancer, and he was getting paid a pittance. And my poor wife was like, “I feel guilty getting paid working on Scary Movie 3 or 4 or whatever, and my brother is trying to cure cancer, and he’s getting paid next to nothing compared to what I’m doing.” You have to put things into perspective sometimes.

David Read:
Some things just don’t make sense. My goodness. I have a whole list of sequences that I wanna run through with you. If not to talk about the specific sequence, to talk about the techniques that are being used. And a couple of them are duplicate examples. And I appreciate you going through these with me before we get started. Corin held his breath for one minute and 48 seconds.

Kirk Douglas:
I thought it was longer, but I believe that.

David Read:
Felt longer. I’m sure it did. I–

Kirk Douglas:
I was in a wetsuit sitting around the corner, so I wasn’t watching the whole thing, but I just heard everyone going, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he held his breath that long.”

David Read:
Exactly.

Kirk Douglas:
I was looking around the corner going, “Huh? Oh, OK.”

David Read:
He really– He said so much of it has to do with pre-breathing. I don’t know if he had oxygen or something to take it in more dir– Wow, did it himself.

Kirk Douglas:
I don’t think he did.

David Read:
And he’s not sitting at the bottom of the pool. He’s acting. It’s ridiculous. This first one–

Kirk Douglas:
Actors have a lot of work.

David Read:
Exactly. This first one, I think I have gone from pillar to post with incorrect information, and I’m really hoping that you can help straighten this out for me a little bit, because it’s more of a prop thing, but it was also interacting with a lot of the stuff that you guys had to create. I was under the impression that the– And this is gonna be slow deliberately, folks. It’s, I’ve taken literal frames for what you’re about to see so that we don’t get flagged by certain systems on certain websites that we’re using. I was under the impression that this was always a mechanical prop, and then I can’t remember who told me, but I think they misunderstood me, that when it was opening and closing, it was replaced with a digital effect. Now obviously, the electricity is a digital effect here, but you have to have these things on set where the clamshell is opening and closing, even in the pilot episode, which is represented here. Is that correct? Can you hear me? Oh no, he’s frozen. It’s a great shot of him.

Kirk Douglas:
OK, to set the re– We had from start …

David Read:
Kirk, can you hear me?

Kirk Douglas:
… two, only two staff weapons in existence opened, the clamshells opened.

David Read:
Oh no, I’m missing all of this.

Kirk Douglas:
That was made and designed …

David Read:
I feel terrible.

Kirk Douglas:
… and built by Nick Lawson.

David Read:
Can you hear me?

Kirk Douglas:
Did you miss that?

David Read:
I missed all of it. I got this smiling face of you like this. This is the problem when we do lives. Can you please pretend like no one was listening?

Kirk Douglas:
As long as I’m not–

David Read:
Because no one was.

David Read:
Thank you, sir.

Kirk Douglas:
I will start again.

David Read:
Thank you.

Kirk Douglas:
I will set the record straight about the staff weapon. OK, so there were four special effects firing staff weapons. Two of them opened. Only two staff weapons in existence opened, and they were special effects ones. They were built and designed by Nick Lawson, and then the props guys put all of the stuff on top. We had little hits at the end. We could fire four non-gun hits, and they’re about the size of a pencil about this long, very short, and they had a charge in them, and it’s two little prongs on the back. We would load them up with those hits, and it was all run with a nine-volt battery. And we would make it hot, and then the actor would hold it, open the clamshell, and then fire the non-gun hits. And you could fire four. And those were references for the visual effects people. And when I started on Season Four, it became my job to be in charge of the staff weapons. So, I would load them, I would change the batteries, I would set them up, I would hand them to the actors. They would use them, they would hand them back to me. And they were treated like weapons. You don’t aim them in someone’s face. Everything is about safety. Get shot and then thrown, which happened from time to time. The actors, they get into what they’re doing, and they’d be firing, and then they’re like, “Ah,” and then they’d throw the firing staff weapon and you’d see four effects guys going, “Oh my God, no.”

David Read:
They’re in the character–

Kirk Douglas:
Because they would just go cracking and–

David Read:
It’s real for them in this moment. So, if it’s real, it can take a beating …

Kirk Douglas:
Absolutely.

David Read:
… because it’s a battle weapon, and it’s a prop.

Kirk Douglas:
But even the prop ones, they look the same. And you could throw them. You could hit something with them and all that. I mean, they were meant to be banged around. We had different versions. We had rubber ones, we had hard plastic ones, and ones that were already open, ones that were closed. But we only had two that opened and closed. And they fired four shots. And then we had two that were already open, and they were foam. The end was foam. The rest of it was aluminum pipe. And then it would go down to the base. And then the props guys would build around what we gave them.

David Read:
Wow. So, when Christopher is firing, he has a switch in his hand at the end of the staff? Or is that being triggered separately?

Kirk Douglas:
It’s a trigger. It’s self-contained. So, the trigger is right at the bottom here. Let me see if you can see here. He would click his hand and shoot the trigger. Sometimes it was a button, sometimes it was a switch. I think two of ’em had a button and two of ’em had switches. But those were the triggers. And the guys, I mean, Chris Judge knew that thing inside and out. He knew, “Oh, it’s the one with the button, OK.” Or, “It’s the one with the switch, OK.”

David Read:
Oh, he hated them. He hated the staff.

Kirk Douglas:
Absolutely. Absolutely. They were cumbersome, they were awkward, and they were not comfortable to fire. They’re, you know, have to stick your hand around and make it work and everything. But they were a cool effect. When you put the CGI effect on it, it was very cool.

David Read:
So, he has the charge, so you can do four of these charges?

Kirk Douglas:
Four.

David Read:
Four. And what’s coming out?

Kirk Douglas:
So, they can fire four times. Sparks. And then between the two effects–

David Read:
No smoke effect? Was there a smoke effect?

Kirk Douglas:
There’s a little bit of dust or smoke–

David Read:
A puff. OK.

Kirk Douglas:
A puff, but– It was all a part of the CG effect too. They incorporated that in the CG effect. So, if you watch sometime, if you ever get a chance to watch, and you’ll see the end of the staff weapon, you’ll see the four little hits.

David Read:
There are four holes, yes.

Kirk Douglas:
At the end, there’s four holes. That’s the, those are the non-gun hits. We were in charge of the firing staff and there were only two that opened. And that is the truth, that is the honest to God truth. There were no more than two that opened, and they were effects ones that you could fire.

David Read:
You used the same two throughout the show?

Kirk Douglas:
For the whole 10 years.

David Read:
There was a third one that was made at the end. I don’t– My understanding, it was never used on screen. It was created for something separate.

Kirk Douglas:
I heard about that. I never saw it, but I heard about it.

David Read:
I played with it. It was a beauty. Absolutely amazing. I’ve got… Let me see here. Before I go on, Christopher was recently asked at a convention where I was with him what the most expensive prop was, and we were comparing notes. We’re like, “It had to have been the staffs because of the number of the ones that you guys had to make and how often they would break.” Because if you’re running across terrain, you got a bunch of guys carrying– You don’t want them to bend, you need firmer– So, you need different staffs for different purposes, and you can’t have them all be 15 pounds. They can’t all be real, ’cause the actors will just be exhausted in an 18-hour day.

Kirk Douglas:
They tried many different things. The props guys would be able to tell you better about the props. We were around them all the time, and there were foam-headed ones and foam steel pipe that was in the middle so it was strong. So, it didn’t go wobble, wobble, wobble when they were running. Especially when you’re holding it from the middle. It’s like it looks like comedy, this thing wobbling like this.

David Read:
Exactly.

Kirk Douglas:
You want it to be sturdy and you want it to be straight. But the downside is they’re heavy.

David Read:
That’s it.

Kirk Douglas:
Like you said, the actors hated that, and I don’t blame ’em. ‘Cause you gotta run with these damn things, and sometimes you got explosions going on behind you and you’re carrying this damn thing and you’re like, “Oh, can’t I just throw it instead?”

David Read:
No, unfortunately you can’t. You can, but there’ll be consequences, so. Let me show something else here, and of course it’s gonna be a nightmare for me. Claymores. This is extraordinary to me, because I don’t know how you didn’t hurt people. We didn’t do it too often. There’s a handful of episodes where this occurs. I don’t know how you weren’t hurting people all the time pulling this off. And I’m sure people are gonna get things in their eyes, and so– Strictly injured is not necessarily– they’re not gonna be going to the hospital, but people are gonna be uncomfortable when they’re standing over these things. How do you pull this shot off? This is also from “Children of the Gods,” the second half.

Kirk Douglas:
I remember this day very well actually. It was a very big prep day. The first thing is, this is something that Wray, Nick, Scott, I, every one of us would tell people. Our main job on set was crew safety and everybody’s safety. All of the stuff we did, it’s really great to think, “Oh you guys are like cowboys, and you’re out there blowing stuff up.” But, in reality, a day like that is all about the prep. And there’s different kinds of mortars that we have. We call them mortars because they’re basically steel tubes. There’s different types. We have upside down pyramids, and that gives you a wider explosion. Shotgun mortars, we have different sized ones. So, you can have an eight-inch hole in a pipe, right? It could be two feet long. Then we have pop can mortars. Think of a pop can with a steel tube, pop can size, on a metal plate. And you would put that down, or you’d have it at an angle sometimes. Which is a great thing to have if you have things go off behind them. They’re going like this, and the angle– We’re using lifters, and we’re stacking it full of peat moss. That’s all it is, is peat moss.

David Read:
Just peat moss. That’s cool.

Kirk Douglas:
Vermiculite, peat moss, anything that’s light. We’ll wet the peat moss down so it’s chunkier, and instead of turning into a vapor, we’ll wet it down, soak it in a wheelbarrow, and then load it into these mortars. Like that scene that you showed me there, I remember that day really well, because we rehearsed that so many times to make sure that the guys that are running know where they are. And the way that you shoot it, it looks like they’re almost standing on top of it. They’re not. There’s a very safe area that they’re in. Those things are going up in the air away from them. It looks terrifying, like, “Oh, my God, we’re blowing people up.” But in reality we’re not. It’s all very safe. They have an area that they run through. That looks like they’re getting hurt, but they’re not.

David Read:
So, it’s all perspective based.

Kirk Douglas:
There’s stunt guys that are hitting the ground. All you’ll get is maybe some peat moss raining down on you afterwards, and you just kinda, “I’m done.” You just sorta take it off your shoulder and go, “OK, well, moving on.”

David Read:
Kirk, I am–

Kirk Douglas:
You don’t wanna be standing on top of them obviously.

David Read:
This– I just wanna stop us for a second here. I don’t know if someone is streaming on your end or something, or what’s going on here, but I’m beginning to lose you in some of these spots, and I just want you to be aware of that. If there’s someone else that’s watching a video or something in your household, it’s starting to get bad, because these are some amazing stories, and I just want to make sure that we’re getting them as much as we can. Is there anyone else you can check with to see if your connection is being used?

Kirk Douglas:
I can look. I’m up in my studio, so… They’re down in the house.

David Read:
OK, got it. All right. Understood. I just wanted to make you aware that we’re losing some words every now and then, but I really appreciate all of this stuff, because this is just liquid gold as far as I’m concerned. Let me pull up another one here. This is “Torment of Tantalus,” and this is the kind of thing that’s really scary as far as I am concerned, because in this case, you are taking sets and you are collapsing the interior sets. How do you pull something like this off? Can you hear me?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah.

David Read:
How do you pull a shot like-

Kirk Douglas:
Can you hear me?

David Read:
Yeah, I can now. How do you pull a sequence like this off?

Kirk Douglas:
Those are Styrofoam beams, and again, the debris that’s falling on them are foam rocks, and with dust. And we are actually above them. I was there that day. We were above them on a catwalk, dropping debris on them. And it’s all rigged up, and you hit a little button, and everything collapses exactly where we want it to go. So, it looks like they’re getting crushed, but in reality–

David Read:
Sure, they’re not getting crushed. But you don’t have to …

Kirk Douglas:
They’re not.

David Read:
… you don’t really have to rig anything inside of the set for it to collapse. You wait for the cue and then you execute.

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah, well, those big giant pillars were rigged on a trip. And we just tripped it and then the pillar would fall. One end was attached and the other one is falling and it’s– And then it just falls on top of them. But those are foam pillars falling on them. And it looks like it hurts. It really doesn’t.

David Read:
Absolutely. The trickery here is mind-boggling because you think that it’s going to be something that’s particularly gnarly and heavy and it’s pretty straightforward. We’re just executing this and pulling this off. This one–

Kirk Douglas:
There’s three effect guys above there with poles and like, bread trays dropping debris and dust on them at the same time. And we also cover all the beams with dust so when it hits the ground, all this dust comes off it.

David Read:
This is the movie magic is just mind-boggling. I wanna show off a couple of the photos that you submitted here. For the practical explosions on some of the sets. This was over by the airport and let me pull this here. So, this is– Is it Langley?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah.

David Read:
Now, this is “Tok’ra Part Two.”

Kirk Douglas:
No, I don’t know if we… It might have been Lang–

David Read:
This is the sand dunes.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s, uh, Richmond.

David Read:
So, is this– Are these gas?

Kirk Douglas:
The Richmond sand dunes.

David Read:
What’s blowing up here?

Kirk Douglas:
Those are small gas bombs, actually. And they are directional and we have them … from here.

David Read:
Kirk, can you hear me?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah.

David Read:
I’m sorry, this is–

Kirk Douglas:
You there?

David Read:
Yeah, I’m here. We’re just having really bad connection problems. I don’t want to–

Kirk Douglas:
Is it only when we go to the cutaways, or is it all the time?

David Read:
No, it’s… It’s here and there. I’m not– I’m trying to figure out how we can approach this to maximize this because I have a fair bit of material to go through and we’re already an hour in. What I’m thinking that you and I should do is we should go to a couple of the fan questions, and we should table this. And if it comes down to– I can get you set up so that you can record live on your side and I can record live on mine, and then we can put everything together for a future episode. We can sit down, and I can put everything together in post and so that it’s seamless, so that we’re not missing any of these stories because it’s not fair to put you through all this trouble and to hear two out of three words that you have to say.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s frustrating.

David Read:
Absolutely. Was Stargate the first show that you worked on as a special eff– Was this– This was the job that you started with Wray?

Kirk Douglas:
The first job I did was a TV movie called Doomsday Rock, and William Devane was in it. He actually played the president on Stargate, but it was an awful movie. No offense. It was low-budget. It was a great place for me to learn. I worked with a guy named Paul Noël, he was the coordinator, and Wray set it up that I could learn from him and learned a bunch of stuff from him. Then I went on to Stargate. Stargate was my first real show, and I learned from the best. Things like pyro, your pyro license, that takes years to get ’cause you have to apprentice under qualified guys, and it takes a long time. They don’t just hand you a button and say, “OK, go ahead, blow up a house,” or whatever. No, you need to start learning how to put the fires out before they give you a button. You have to learn how to clean the fire hose and then roll it properly. There’s a right way to roll it and a wrong way to roll it, and you don’t wanna roll it wrong because then you have to do it all over again, and it’s a lot of work. Stargate was my first real show. But in hiatus, I would go and work on other shows doing day calls because it was encouraged by Wray and Nick and Scott that all of us new guys go and work on other shows, work with other coordinators, learn other tricks and other things, and then bring that knowledge back with you to Stargate. It only makes you a better effects person.

David Read:
You’re putting in the hours.

Kirk Douglas:
You’re putting the time in.

David Read:
This is all leading towards that.

Kirk Douglas:
And there’s a lot of time to put in. There’s a lot of knowledge you need to have. You’re learning how to do welding, fabricating, pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, electrical, like wiring up a house. You have to know how all this stuff works, and the only way to learn it is to put your head down and figure it out with people that know what they’re doing. Do it right. Because there isn’t room for half-assing anything in that industry.

David Read:
I can only imagine the insurance policies that the studios and the production companies had in the event that things sooner or later happen. And it’s always about the level of risk. There is always going to be some kind of risk any time you step outside of your front door. But the question is, how safe can we make something where it’s, OK, this is– The likelihood of something going wrong is extreme We’re playing with fire. There’s always a chance that something can go wrong, but it’s extremely small. It’s working out how to get people comfortable around it, and I’m sure there’s a little bit of exposure therapy, especially when you’re dealing with fireballs and things like that, especially if someone has had a traumatic experience when they were younger. But getting people used to a lot of this stuff that you’re doing around them, I would suspect.

Kirk Douglas:
Extras, people who don’t work in the industry full-time, when they come onto set, they’re always shocked that they show up on a day when we’re doing gas bombs and they just sit there going, “Oh my god, this has to be too dangerous. They can’t be doing this.”

David Read:
It’s all controlled. Sorry folks.

Kirk Douglas:
By instructional video on how to build a gas bomb, because my advice to you is don’t do it. It’s dangerous. Oh, did I lose you? Oh no.

David Read:
Oh, I got some of your story, but it’s been going in and out here, so not to experiment on your own, I guess. Oh, and I completely lost him. I’ve got the infinite screens here. All right, guys, give me just a moment. When you do live shows, this is the kind of thing that happens. I literally have a technical difficulties screen here for my montage. When you’re connecting with people for the first time and you’re doing a live show, you don’t know what kind of technical expertise they have or how far they are from their router. It’s so rare now for anyone to be actually hard-lined in like I am where you’ve got a cable going directly from your computer system to your router and it’s just– You work with what you got when you have guests on and pray that they have a good enough connection. But the fact of the matter is that we’ve had such improved general connection quality since we first started this show five years ago. It’s made all the difference in the world, and can you hear me, Kirk?

Kirk Douglas:
Yep. I’m here. Are you there?

David Read:
Yes. So, you were indicating something about fire. I heard something about fire and saying don’t do it unless– That’s all that I heard from that statement.

Kirk Douglas:
If people are hoping that I’m gonna give an instructional video on how to build a gas bomb, I’m not gonna do it. ‘Cause my advice to you is don’t do it. It’s a safety thing. We were professionals, we did it for a living. Everything was about safety. We had fire suppression set up, we had areas that were safe zones to be in, and that was from experience and being with experienced people that know that this is going to be X large. The radiant heat from that is gonna be X amount. It’s a hot day, so that means the radiant heat is even hotter, so then you have to go into the safer area. So, on a hot day when you do a gas bomb, what you would normally have for a safety area has to be multiplied because the radiant heat will make it hurt somebody in the safe zone. So, all these things you learn from doing it, and there’s a giant ball of fire going up in the air and then the wind changes and it’s coming towards you. And it’s hot and it can burn you, it can hurt you, it can do horrible things.

David Read:
That’s wild. You have to plan for everything.

Kirk Douglas:
You have to be safe with it.

David Read:
Is there someone keeping track of the wind at all times? Especially when you’re out there in the elements, are there certain people that are just tasked with monitoring the weather? What kind of contingencies do you have in those regards, especially in a city where it rains all the time?

Kirk Douglas:
It does. The ADs are really good at getting us the information about the weather. So, we know that it’s gonna be, the sun comes up at a certain time, it’s gonna be a rainy day until 2 in the afternoon and then it’s gonna be sunny for X amount of hours. Then when it starts to get dark, it’s gonna cloud over. They let us know. But for us, we are in charge of what is deemed safe. So, when the first AD says, “Where’s the safety zone, Wray?” Wray knows it’s a windy day and it’s a hot day, so we’re gonna make the safety zone larger because of that. These are all things you need to know. If you’re in charge, there’s so much pressure on you and so much anxiety. The night before, you don’t sleep on a big gag. You lie there in bed looking at the ceiling going, “All the things that could possibly go wrong.”

David Read:
You can’t shut off.

Kirk Douglas:
“Did we think of that? Do we have that ready? I gotta make sure I let Scott know this, or does Nick know about this? Does Kirk know about this? Does Bill know? Does Greg know?” It’s all these things, you don’t sleep.

David Read:
You can’t think of anything that might fog your memory the next day.

Kirk Douglas:
No, you need to be sharp. You show up on set and it’s, “OK, let’s go to work. Let’s get it done.” And we don’t want anyone getting hurt, we don’t want anything getting damaged. We don’t want to lose the day, we don’t wanna have our gag not work. It’s a lot on your shoulders. Stargate, we were very lucky, we had an amazing crew of people. Everyone from the locations department all the way to the props, to the wardrobe, to the hair, everybody. It was a top-notch world-class crew. We worked very closely with the wardrobe department because we would get wardrobe that we would have to put bullet hits in. They would give us two or three sets of wardrobe, and then we’d put bullet hits in. Or we’d put staff blasts in and stuff like that. There was a video that you showed of Chris Judge getting hit with a staff weapon.

David Read:
Yes. I’ll save that for next time.

Kirk Douglas:
Exactly. But I can tell you how we do that. It’s a body mortar and it’s basically a little tube that’s about that deep, and a little plate, and it’s on their stomach, and it’s attached with a little belt, and then we wire a hit. And the hit is flash cotton with a little bit of black powder. Flash cotton is nitrocellulose. It burns this fast, but it gives you a giant ball of fire. And it’s incredibly easy to work with, it’s inexpensive, you can buy a bunch of it and store it away. It has to be stored wet to be safe. So, when we get it, it’s in a Ziploc bag and it’s flat and it’s about as big as my hand. We take it out and we build these dryer things, these wooden dryers, and we have a ceramic heater at the base of it and little hangers that we take it and we pull it apart and then we hang it. It just looks like cotton fabric.

David Read:
To dry it at the time?

Kirk Douglas:
To dry. Two days before.

David Read:
Two days before.

Kirk Douglas:
And then we put it into another dry Ziploc bag and put it into a mag and then put it into our large mag. So, it’s safe. Same with zirconium. Zirconium, we used to make our own .48 caliber balls for our paintballs, for our paint guns. But that is an unbelievably huge pain in the ass. So, a company came along, a guy, an effects guy designed a system for making dust balls and zirc balls and stuff like that. Which was great because they were local, we could phone ’em and say, “I need four boxes of zircs,” which are 100 hits per box, “and I need four boxes of dust.” And we would get it same day. Whereas before, we would have to order it from the States and it would take two weeks. Everything was two weeks. You don’t always have the budget to buy 500 zirc balls and hope that you’re gonna use them in two weeks. So, the zirconium is also transported wet. It’s in water. And what we would do is we would take, like a tongue depressor and go in and take it out, and it’s like a paste, and you would put it on tin foil and spread it on the tin foil and let it dry. And then when it was dry, you would take the tin foil and fold it and then pour it into your hit and put a little bit of bird gravel in it, and then you would glue the cap together and there’s your hit. So, this guy came up with a machine that he could make a ton of ’em, and it revolutionized it for us, and it made it so that we could have them readily available.

David Read:
That’s it. You find success in filling a niche where people need something. This guy saw that there was a need for this and said, “Let’s come up with a way to do it.” That’s just remarkable. You’re describing pulling the stuff apart and hanging it two days before. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, this sounds so mind–”

Kirk Douglas:
Tedious.

David Read:
Mind-numbingly tedious for a– What the fan watching this must think is a straightforward effect. On top of that, you have to make it so that the actor isn’t uncomfortable by it ’cause I know the squib hits, those can be unpleasant.

Kirk Douglas:
If you do it wrong.

David Read:
But they’re– But it’s like it–

Kirk Douglas:
If those go properly.

David Read:
It’s the impact. It’s not gonna hurt you or anything, but it’s startling.

Kirk Douglas:
The thing… I talked to a couple of actors about it because I worked on The 100. I did six seasons on The 100. And I was talking to one of the actors, and they had never done a bullet hit. ‘Cause TV, everything’s CG, so they’re like, “Oh, I’ve been hit.” They have to react that way. Whereas the way we made bullet hits, it’s a condom. You use like a condom and you fill it full of blood, and you have a little body mortar, and then you have neoprene and leather on the back of it, and then you build it upside down so that it’s flat on the front and bumpy on the back. So, the bumpy part is against your skin and the flat is on the wardrobe. So, you don’t see this thing that looks like a big goiter on your body going, “Oh, wow, I wonder where the bullet hit is?” But we would build it upside down and flat so that when you put it on the wardrobe, you couldn’t tell there was a body hit there. And then when they would get shot, the actor liked that they could go and put their hand on the condom and have the blood ooze out, and then it’s in their hands, and then they could really react to that. We got to do a couple of bullet hits, real bullet hits. My friend Bill Butler, who was the best boy on The 100, they asked us if we could build these bullet hits. We’re like, “Oh, God, yes, please. Thank you. It’s been so long.” So, we did these bullet hits and put them on the actors, and we had a crowd of crew around us going, “We’ve never seen a squib hit before. We want to see how it’s done.” And we were like, “Oh, my God, I feel so bad for you guys. You’ve never seen a squib hit.” So, we did it, and everyone was blown away. “That was amazing. That was so cool.” We did hundreds of those all the time.

David Read:
You’re inspiring people. I have a question from teresamc. She wanted to know how often were you inspired by other shows that you were watching for creativity? And how often did you get an opportunity to reach out to them and ask how they did it? Or was it like, “Oh, I see what they did, and we can go and do that”?

Kirk Douglas:
We never contacted other people. Unless they were local and we knew them and we said, “Hey, man, how’d you do that?” But we were inspired by– That’s a good question, by the way, Teresa. Thank you. We were inspired by movies we see. For instance, here’s a great example. “Heroes 1 and 2,” that was brought to the table, and what they told Wray was they wanted to see it look like Saving Private Ryan. So, Wray was like, “Oh, great, a Spielberg blockbuster. You want us, a TV show, to make it look like that?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” So, we’re like, “OK, I’ll talk to the guys.” So, we went through it. We watched the movie and we went, “OK, this is what we need to do. We need to have this, so we’re gonna need X amount of debris cannons going. We need X amount of gas bombs going off.” And there you go, that was a very busy day, but that was one take.

David Read:
It is one take.

Kirk Douglas:
We did one take.

David Read:
And did you only film it once?

Kirk Douglas:
We filmed the main part once. It took so long to set up. We rehearsed it so much, and I think it was Andy Mikita that was the director.

David Read:
Yes, that’s correct.

Kirk Douglas:
I can’t remember. I think it was Andy Mikita. And we rehearsed it so much and we had a small army of effects guys. There was Dylan Armitage and I lying in a little area that was like a berm, and the first two gas bombs you see go off, the first one is me, the second one is Dylan, and then, Greg Pyne is blowing debris cannons off, and then the B side of the rocket launcher, which I wired up, and then there was a big gas bomb that went off. And then the big money shot was the spaceship flying over and strafing all these big bombs. That was Wray and Nick shooting off, I think it was 50 gas bombs in succession. And it was timed, like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. That was one take, and it took all day to set up. And there were insert shots that were done, close-ups of O’Neill and stuff like that. But the main thing that you’re seeing there, that was all one shot, and–

David Read:
I think it’s the single most complicated practical shot that the franchise ever created. And I may be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. There was a visual effect shot …

Kirk Douglas:
No, I’d say you’re right.

David Read:
… that was longer. The longest one was made for the Atlantis Season Three episode “First Strike” when the nukes are dropped on Asuras. But this is an extraordinary sequence where you have so many disciplines converging as one just to pull this thing off. You have practical effects, you have actors, you have the camera obviously on, I forget what the trolley that it’s called.

Kirk Douglas:
The dolly. Yeah.

David Read:
The dolly, yes.

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah, dolly for that.

David Read:
‘Cause you don’t have a guy carrying this. And then you have digital effects artists who are like, that’s frame by frame. That’s how you put the bomber in behind the explosions, because you can’t blue screen that. You’re moving through the shot. You’re gonna have relative motion. It’s just an amazing sequence.

Kirk Douglas:
It was a high watermark for us. We had– They actually gave us a standing ovation when they said cut. I heard Andy Mikita get on the radio and go, “Oh, my effing God, you guys, that was amazing. Thank you so much. That was perfect.” And then I think Wray jokingly said, “Do you want us to reset?” And he’s like, “Nope. God, no. That was it. That’s beautiful. Oh, my God.”

David Read:
How many times could you rehearse something? How could you– I guess, you– How many times do you recall rehearsing the positions where the actors were running through from scene to scene? How long did that part of it take? Because you can’t set anything off. You–

Kirk Douglas:
No, no, we–

David Read:
This is all for one go.

Kirk Douglas:
See, what we did with rehearsals was, Andy would say, “Action,” and then we would do a walking rehearsal to begin with. And then all of the effects guys that were on buttons would go, “Bang.” And that was their cue. So, we would yell it as loud as we could, “Bang,” so then the actor would know, “OK. Oh, that’s happening there.” And then they would run, and then, “Bang, oh, there’s another one over there.” And we would sometimes even stand up where we were, and we would put our hand up and go, “Bang.” And then on the radio you’d hear Wray and Nick go, “Boom,” when they did their thing.

David Read:
It sounds stupid, but you’re getting into the rhythm.

Kirk Douglas:
I mean, we had stunt guys that had self-firing chest plates going off. So, we had so much stuff that we had to organize for that shot. That was an amazing shot because a lot of that is a single camera following the action.

David Read:
Correct.

Kirk Douglas:
You watch it, that’s a single shot.

David Read:
One all the way through.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s one guy following everything. Right from the end, guys getting shot, boom, boom, gunfire, guys running through, you know? That was one shot. And then again, we had the cutaways and we had insert shots and stuff like that. So, we had other things to do. We had the cutaway of the guys shooting the grenade launcher. Stuff like that. I mean, that’s all stuff that was done after the big shot, or before the big shot.

David Read:
There’s so much to keep track of here because not only are you detonating the bomber hits from the Al’kesh that are flying over, the bigger ships. But right there in this f- in this front shot here, you have to get your actors timed when they’re in pairs, one shooting and one receiving shots. And it just– I can’t imagine how long this shot took …

Kirk Douglas:
It took a long time to set up.

David Read:
… vertically to do, to envision, and then to edit.

Kirk Douglas:
I guess some of how–

David Read:
Editing was easy because it’s one shot.

Kirk Douglas:
I don’t know how they edited it, but it was a very complicated shot to do. And it was like a dance. Everybody had to do their part in order for it to move to the next part. We were prepared to have to reset some things. Like, the big explosion that Wray and Nick did, that was a oner. It would’ve taken way too long to reset that. But my mortar could be quickly reset. Dylan’s mortar could be quickly reset. The chest plates were very quickly reset. Things like that. Rob Fournier probably went through over 100,000 rounds that day.

David Read:
100,000.

Kirk Douglas:
I don’t know the exact numbers. You’d have to ask Rob. But he talks about that day as being a high watermark for ammo.

David Read:
Was this second unit? Because so much of “Heroes” was shot on second unit. I imagine this was not.

Kirk Douglas:
No, this was main unit.

David Read:
This was main unit?

Kirk Douglas:
That was a main unit thing. The second unit things we did were smaller stuff. There’s other episodes we did where the second unit was the big stuff. And again, I don’t know the name of the episode, but we were in a big field doing a second unit. We were blowing off mortars, gas mortars. And there was a helicopter with the director of photography, Pete Woeste, flying over, and Wray was timing the explosions to be ahead of the helicopter. It was terrifying. But it was so good.

David Read:
That’s “Lost City,” yeah.

Kirk Douglas:
I think it was “Lost City,” yeah. But it was a terrifying thing. But Wray was just so icy cool with it. He had such a focus. And when you’re on the button, you have to be so focused on what you’re doing, ’cause there’s stuff going on around you. There’s explosions, there’s yelling, there’s people doing everything. And you’re watching and you’re going, “Safe zone.” And you’re watching. It’s like a baseball pitcher with the crowd screaming, and he’s trying to focus on the next pitch.

David Read:
He’s in his groove.

Kirk Douglas:
He’s in his groove.

David Read:
He’s a pro.

Kirk Douglas:
We all have to push the button at some time. And we realize very quickly. It’s like, “Holy crap, that’s terrifying.” I think there’s a shot you have that you showed of the glass, where the actor coming through the glass, breaking–

David Read:
Let me pull it up real quick here. Give me just a moment.

David Read:
This is from… Apologies, everyone. “Meridian.” So, one of my favorite episodes from the show is the episode where we lose Daniel. And he has– Michael Shanks has his, his hero moment saving the Kelownan people and ultimately the whole planet. This is candy glass, right?

Kirk Douglas:
No.

David Read:
It is not?

Kirk Douglas:
It is tempered glass. Now, let me tell you how we do that. ‘Cause I’ve done it many times, being on the button and setting up for it. It’s a big sheet of tempered glass. And we have hits on the corners, all the corners. They are called MD1s, and they’re a small little detonator hit. And it knocks things. It doesn’t– It’s not a spark. It’s a hit, like, like detcord, and when you put ’em on the glass, you put them on the glass and then you glue it to the glass. You don’t put the glue on first and then put the hit. It acts like a shock absorber, and it won’t break. You learn that in a hurry. But what you do is you put the hit on the corner, you glue it on, and then once it’s glued on, you put Plastilina on the back and then you tape it and everything’s ready to go. And then the hard part is not breaking the glass, the hard part is timing it to the stunt guy who’s running full speed at the window, and you have to hit the button a millisecond before he hits the window. If you go too late, he bounces off the window or takes the whole window with him and it’s not gonna work.

David Read:
‘Cause this is a side shot in one of those, where you would see if he was too far back and obviously if he was too close, he would just make contact. So.

Kirk Douglas:
He would bounce off of it and that’s an ugly thing to see. You don’t wanna hurt anybody, especially stunt people, or they’re already hurting themselves for a living, right?

David Read:
Exactly.

Kirk Douglas:
So, you wanna make it as safe as possible so you wanna hit that button right when they’re just about there, which is hard to do when they are running full speed. When you’re rehearsing it, you can’t rehearse it at full speed because they can’t run their full speed up to the window. So, you have your eye on the window looking and you’re going, “OK, that’s when I hit. I hit when I see them there. That’s when I hit.” And you do it so fast, your brain barely has a chance to sort of say, “Oh wow, did I hit it or not?” And Wray was unbelievably good at those shots. There were effects guys that he would be on set with that were supposed to push the button and they’d be like, “I don’t think I can do this. I’m too scared of– I’m gonna hit it too soon or too late.” And Wray’d be like, “I’ll do it.” And he sat down and he’d just go, “Pfft.” Perfect.

David Read:
No cold feet in that guy.

Kirk Douglas:
Like, “Dammit, you show off.”

David Read:
What I’m curious most about is Michael. The main one is obviously his double, but when he comes in on the ground here, this tight shot here, it’s him, because he has to, his hands ultimately pull away. I’m assuming you don’t sweep up the glass and release it again. You’ve gotta probably foreground elements and background elements, and you just recreate the shot after you’ve shot it to duplicate what you’ve already created. Is that right?

Kirk Douglas:
What it is, is the area’s cleaned of all glass. There is no glass anywhere. And we use rubber glass, shards of rubber glass, and it looks like broken tempered glass, but it’s rubber. You can roll around on it, you can put it on your face, it doesn’t hurt you at all. It’s just rubber glass, and he is falling down onto rubber glass, and we’re throwing rubber glass on top of him. Again, it’s all about safety. I don’t want him rolling around on real glass.

David Read:
Of course not.

Kirk Douglas:
You don’t wanna be throwing real glass on him. But the poor stunt guy went through real glass, landed on a bunch of pads and then you cut away and you do an insert shot of Michael hitting the ground on rubber glass and rubber glass being thrown on top of him as the effect of him– He was the guy that went through the window. I think that was James Bamford that actually went through the window.

David Read:
James did– Bam Bam did the–

Kirk Douglas:
I do remember, Bam Bam did a lot of stuff on Stargate SG-1. He was an unbelievably amazing stunt guy when he was doing stunts. He was so good at everything. It was terrifying. There’s things where I saw him do backflips off of railings and landing into the water, and it was so close to the edge of the water I was, “Oh my God, he just about hit the wall. Oh my God.” And he’d get out of the water, he’d go, “I’m good to go again. You want me to go again?”

David Read:
He was Bruce Lee.

Kirk Douglas:
And you’d have to go, “Yeah, sure. Do it again.” He’d do it again. And he wouldn’t– They don’t wait, they don’t hesitate, they don’t go, “Uh, uh, OK, now I’ll go?” It’s, “Go,” and they go. They don’t hesitate, they don’t think twice, they go, “I’m committed. Let’s do it.”

David Read:
He’s a special creature. He talked about, there were instances where–and I asked him once, “What do you do when someone freaks out?” You bring a specialist in and it turns out that their resume isn’t exactly what they said it was going to be, and he mimed taking off his shirt, “Well, I guess I’m going in.” You’ve got to get the shot done so long as you are trained and know what it is that you’re doing, These people are extraordinary. So, amazing.

Kirk Douglas:
I tell you, stunt people are a different breed. And we work very closely with stunt people. I think you showed me a shot where “Upgrades,” was it? Where all the guys were flying back and something like that–

David Read:
Oh my God. Yes.

Kirk Douglas:
Those are all on jerk harnesses. They have harnesses on and they’re being yanked by cables. Either they’re being yanked manually by a bunch of guys on a ladder jumping off, or they’re being pulled by a pneumatic ram, and it’s all rigged up with an ab-jet block up on something, and the cable goes around, and then you’re on top of a large ladder with two or three guys and it’s, “Yank.” And they go flying back.

David Read:
So, I’m assuming that they were on the– is the ram what those springboards are called? Is that what a ram is?

Kirk Douglas:
A ram is basically a big piston, with a long pole that pulls in the piston, and then you charge it with air, and then you push a button and it just goes “pff” and it pulls you, it pulls you back, and violently, with no regard about how you’re gonna feel about it. So, depending on how much air we put into the ram, we start low so then they pull it back, and then the director will say, “Oh, we need a little bit more. Are you OK with that, stunt guy?” “Yeah, I’m good with that.” “OK. So, we’re gonna up the pressure a little more.” Second time they try it, it’s like, “How was that?” “That was better.” “Let’s try another one. How was that? Is that better?” “Yep.” And if we’re doing it manually, you get two guys doing it, it’s like, “That wasn’t fast enough. Let’s get another guy over.” And then you’re holding onto this handle and you’re jumping off of a 10-step or 12-step ladder, or eight-step ladder, and you’re yanking them back. So, yeah, there’s all kinds of–

David Read:
So, much that goes into these shots.

Kirk Douglas:
A lot. I mean, there’s a lot of different things we did to make it look like they’re being pulled back by an invisible force, or somebody’s got a force in their hand and they go, “Ha,” and they go flying back. I mean, that’s us yanking them back in a harness.

David Read:
And a lot of it is just hidden digitally. There’s some things that you can’t hide so you …

Kirk Douglas:
They paint out the cable.

David Read:
… they paint them out frame by frame in some cases.

Kirk Douglas:
We used to use something called– God, now I can’t remember the name of it. It basically blackened the cable, and we would blacken the cable so you couldn’t see it. But then digital comes along, you just go “ih-ih-ih-ih-ih” and it’s erased. So, that helped our rigging stuff a lot because all of a sudden, we don’t have to worry about the cable being seen. We can do whatever. Back in the old times, the old-timer guys will tell you stories of you have to take all the cable, and you have to blacken the cable, and you have to make it so that you can’t see the cable. And it must’ve been a friggin’ nightmare. It’s all I can think.

David Read:
The stuff that they can do now– I can only imagine. You must’ve been like, “I wish we had that.” It would’ve really been nice to have some of this stuff during Stargate, the technological advances that come along and everything else. But at the same time, so much of it you were doing yourselves, practically. ChristinaGraziella wanted to know — we talked about the time constraints – “Were there any circumstances where, ‘I’d really love to do this, and Stargate has afforded us, MGM, and we’ve got good money, but we just need a little bit more for this and we just don’t have it?’ Did that ever come up?”

Kirk Douglas:
No. Not for us. I think we worked within the constraints that were given to us. The budget, the time. We were lucky with Stargate. We had lots of guys. We had lots of people on our crew. And they were all specialists in their own things. I was a set guy. I was on set every day, and I saw the discussions of people saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could–” But we’re a TV show. We’re not a feature. But we were doing stuff in our department that was feature-like. Some of the battles. That battle you saw there, that was rivaling some feature stuff that I’d worked on.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kirk Douglas:
We were doing a lot of stuff within the time constraint. And they were happy with us. John Smith would come to Wray all the time and say, “This is great. You’re doing great.”

David Read:
That’s it. There–

Kirk Douglas:
But he also let us know if he was disappointed.

David Read:
Of course.

Kirk Douglas:
He always had a look. I remember he had a look. He would look at you like …

David Read:
Peter DeLuise shared that exact look this morning. That’s the exact–

Kirk Douglas:
Oh, did he? Did he imitate John Smith, or was he–

David Read:
It was the gesture with the face, exactly that. Peter said, “I knew that it wasn’t the best when John wouldn’t shake my hand at the end of the day.” It doesn’t take a lot to communicate–

Kirk Douglas:
‘Cause he would come up to you.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kirk Douglas:
He would come up to you and shake your hand. To every one of the effects guys. I’m nobody, I’m just the set guy, and he’d come up, he’d put his hand on my shoulder and say, “Good job, Kirk. Good job. Well done.” And he’d make you feel like a million bucks ’cause he’s the top dog. And then he’d go to the next guy and he’d go, “Good job, Greg.” He’d shake his hand and put his hand on his shoulder and stuff, and that was a big thing. And then Wray would get the hand on the shoulder and that sort of fatherly, “You did good. Nice job. Well done.”

David Read:
That’s it. And you know that he means it …

Kirk Douglas:
We’ve got our days.

David Read:
… because it’s not a guarantee. This is someone who would never raise his voice, just didn’t do it.

Kirk Douglas:
No, I never heard him yell. I never heard John yell. I’ve seen him disappointed and I’ve seen him pull–

David Read:
Disappointed?

Kirk Douglas:
I’ve seen him pull aside– I don’t know if I should say too much, but I’ve seen him pull aside somebody who was doing something that was wasting time. And time is money.

David Read:
That’s it. This is a business.

Kirk Douglas:
I remember him pulling this person aside on Atlantis and having a talk with him. You couldn’t hear what he was saying, but you knew it was like, “Oh, boy.” And then he put his hand on his shoulder and gestured kind of a… And then he patted him, walked away. And the person just stood there and went, “Oh, boy.” I don’t know what the discussion was, but I know that it was a serious one, and John had that quiet sort of grace about him, but also that authoritarian demeanor that you knew, it’s like, “Oh dad’s here, we’d better behave.”

David Read:
Message was received, I’m sure.

Kirk Douglas:
But then he was also the first guy to have a lot of fun with you. He would take Wray and the guys on, you know, the upper guys in the effects department, he’d take them on golf trips and take them on, they’d have parties and stuff like that, and he treated everybody really well. But he also expected the best from every department. Everybody had to do their part.

David Read:
He led by example too, he was the first in and last out, so that’s how you lead.

Kirk Douglas:
And same with Michael Greenburg. I’ll tell you about Michael Greenburg. Nobody cared more about what was going on in the show than Michael Greenburg. He knew every detail about everything to do with Stargate, and he would question things that would come up, he’d go, “One sec. I don’t think that would happen because in episode blah, blah, blah, this happened, and then this person did that, and they– The writers missed this, they missed this, and we have to fix this now, and we can’t go any further.” He cared that much, he cared that much. But Michael was one of those guys that would walk up to everybody and say, know them by name and say, “Hey, how you doing? It’s good to see you. How’s your day going?” And then he’d go and sit down, and I never heard him yell either. But he was always there in whatever weather, he wouldn’t be in a tent. He’d be out in the rain with us. He’d be out in the muck, we’d be out 16 hours, 14 hours in the driving, pissing rain, in the miserable cold weather in the dark And he’d be right next to us.

David Read:
This is how you lead.

Kirk Douglas:
He didn’t have to, he’s an executive producer, he could be in a cozy tent with the heater with everybody else, but no, he was out there with us and paying attention.

David Read:
It’s marine mentality. It’s …

Kirk Douglas:
And wanting it to be right.

David Read:
… the leaders eat last. Because he knew that you guys were going above and beyond for every single shot, and, that’s, again, that’s how you lead, so–

Kirk Douglas:
That’s how you lead. And Michael was one of those guys. And he’s a musician also, so I mean, again, I’m, I’m nobody. I’m some guy on set and somebody had a guitar on set, and Michael was playing it. So, I was kind of watching and going, “Oh, that’s cool.” And then he kind of looks at me and he goes, “Eh, do you play guitar?” I was like, “Ah, I play a little.” And he hands it to me, I’m like, “Oh, crap.” So, I start playing and he goes, “Oh, you can really play! OK, tell me how you do this, tell me how to do that.” Next thing you know, we were bonding about music, and I’m like, “Oh wow, this is, this is weird.” The executive producer’s talking about …

David Read:
He’s a human being.

Kirk Douglas:
… my love, which is music, and we had– And from that day on, we were… He’d always, “Hey Kirk, how you doing?” I’m like, “I can’t believe he knows my name.”

David Read:
Michael has been the same with me on so many levels. I am so appreciative of everything …

Kirk Douglas:
He’s very relatable.

David Read:
… he has done for this program. Exactly. No, for sure. He’s the real deal. I got a couple more for you, then I’m gonna wind down the show, OK? I know we’ve gone… I’ve had you for almost two hours and I really appreciate the time. lilyshambles5644: “For the shot earlier from “Torment of Tantalus” with the ceilings caving in, in that particular situa– this is just an example. For that sequence, there’s a lot of dust in that scene and when you do have to reset, do you– I guess part of it’s a matter of the time that you have. How much do you have to vacuum up and how much do you have to have standing by to be able to drop again? Because this thing is thousands of years old, this set that you’re in, and you’re destroying it once again. How much of that do you have to have ready in advance, and how much of it do you literally have, “OK, this is a critical piece, this is a critical piece, these things do have to be dropped again.” How does that work?

Kirk Douglas:
Like the big Styrofoam pillars you saw fall. Those are rigged to be able to be reset. We can re-lift them, reset them, and they’re ready to go again for the next set. All of the dust that hits the ground stays on the ground. It’s meant to be old and dusty, so leave the debris, don’t touch it, it’s great. Don’t walk on it, just leave it, look like it’s been there forever. This was all done in a studio. This was stage six, I think, at the Bridge Studios. And it’s so funny because it looks like it’s in a cave or in an old–

David Read:
Old castle, in that case, yeah.

Kirk Douglas:
Old castle or temple or whatever. But you’ve got four effects guys up in the rafters with these bread pans full of dust and cork and vermiculite and light dust stuff, and we’re ready to go. And we’ve got buckets of it up there. I’m talking buckets of it. And we are filthy, we’re sweaty. We’re grumpy, and we’re up there with these poles dropping dust, and we’re resetting all of these pillars full of dust. It’s a filthy job.

David Read:
Living the dream, man. Living the dream.

Kirk Douglas:
I have a good story about dust falling on Christopher Judge.

David Read:
Please.

Kirk Douglas:
Christopher Judge.

David Read:
On Christopher, OK.

Kirk Douglas:
You’ll probably remember this. If Christopher sees this, he’ll remember this day. And he terrified me that day ’cause I was still quite green and new on set, and Greg Pyne and I were up in the rafters, literally in the rafters at Norco Studios, with these bread pans and poles. And we’re up there all day. and Chris Judge is being cheeky like he always is, and he’s having fun and joking around, and he’s right below me. And my butt is falling asleep ’cause I’m sitting on this uncomfortable thing, right? I’m sitting there going, “Oh, crap, I gotta move. I can’t sit anymore, getting cramped.” So, I shuffled a little bit, and I accidentally dropped my amount of dust right on Chris’s head. It just went “pff.” And he–

David Read:
I’m wondering if that was this episode.

Kirk Douglas:
I don’t know, but he stopped, he looked at me, and he was like, “Who did that?” He looked right at me and I’m like, “Oh, God. Oh my God.” I’m like, “I’m sorry?” And he’s just like, “I’m gonna kill you when you come down.” I was like– I stayed up there for as long as I could. Terrified, and Wray finally got on the radio, he goes, “Come on, Kirk, you gotta come down eventually.” I’m like, “No, I don’t wanna be torn from limb to limb.” He goes, “No, no, come down. It’s fine.”

David Read:
He’s a big guy.

Kirk Douglas:
And I come down. He is a big guy. I don’t think you realize how big he is until you meet him. And you’ve met him, and he’s a big guy. And he’s like bulging muscles, and I’m just this little guy, and I walk down, and he sees me, and he looks at me and points, and he goes… “That was great. That was funny.” And I’m just like melting–

David Read:
Talk about another big kid.

Kirk Douglas:
And I was melting, thinking he was gonna kill me. And I’m like,
“I’m so sorry. My butt was falling asleep.” I was trying to explain myself. He goes, “Don’t worry about it. It’s all good.”

David Read:
No, he gets it.

Kirk Douglas:
And the other time I was up there, another episode, and Wray was a practical joker, and he liked to mess with me all the time. ‘Cause I’m his brother. And he has me up doing debris. And I’m up there, and we’re done doing the debris drop, and I said, “I’m coming down.” And he goes, “No, no, stay up there.” I’m like, “Oh, OK. Are we doing more?” And he goes, “No, no, just stay up there. You might be doing more, so just don’t come down yet.” “OK. All right.” I’m up there for a long time.

David Read:
And you’re up there.

Kirk Douglas:
I’m up there by myself. And I’m going, “This is weird. Why am I up here?” We’re not doing any more debris drops, we’re not making chandeliers rock, we’re not doing any weird funky doors opening and closing, and I’m just like, “Well–” And I finally was like, “I have to come down to use the bathroom.” And he goes, “Oh, OK. Come on down.” So, I come down, I go to the washroom, and I go to craft service, and there’s my grade eight school picture taped up with a big afro, and me kind of like this kid in craft service with a thing saying, “Guess who this is?” underneath it. And it’d been there all day. And I was so furious with him. I was so angry. I rip it down, I’m like, “I’m gonna kill you.” He goes, “I’m your boss. Cool it.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he did that.” He laughed so hard. And everybody saw it, and I was all embarrassed. Which is silly. It was actually quite funny. And then Chris came up to me, Chris Judge, and he goes, “You know, that was a pretty impressive afro, but I think I have you beat.” “My school pictures had some pretty great afros but yours is all right. Not bad.” I was like, “Thanks. OK.” And everyone knows–

David Read:
That’s a great compliment.

Kirk Douglas:
Everyone knows I had an afro in grade eight. All right, all right. Now everyone knows. It was– Wray was doing stuff like that. Wray was a practical joker. He went to a novelty store one time and got a fart machine. And it was a receiver and transmitter, and he put it in Peter DeLuise’s pocket of his chair, his director’s chair. And so, Peter’s off doing what Peter does, and he comes back. Peter and Wray were great friends. And they were like two kids, two peas in a pod. And Peter was just as playful and all that. But Peter comes back and he sits down in his chair, and as he’s sitting down, Wray goes, and this big fart sound comes out, and Amanda, the script supervisor, goes, “Peter? Oh my God.” Peter goes, “That wasn’t me.” And he looks around and he’s like, “What the hell was that?” And then all of a sudden Wray pushes the button again, he’s like, “What the– Who’s doing that?” But of course, he knew right away, ’cause he looks over and there’s Wray, purple, laughing. His face is purple, he’s giggling, he’s pushing this button making these fart sounds, and it’s like, “God.” That was just what Wray would do. He was a practical joker. He liked to have fun and make people laugh.

David Read:
You have to. You have to …

Kirk Douglas:
You have to.

David Read:
… have fun because of the amount of time that you’re there. You will go crazy otherwise.

Kirk Douglas:
We spend so much time with these people, everybody. You’ve probably heard this from other people, that Stargate was a real family feel. It really was. It was a very unique, special show. I’ve been on many different shows. I’ve been on movies, I’ve been on tons of TV shows and stuff, but I’ve never ever seen anything like I saw on Stargate. I still have friends that I have closely connected to to this day. Jack Oosterbeek, who was the first-aid craft service person, he’s a dear friend. He lives just close to me. I live on Salt Spring Island, and he lives over in Chemainus, which is like a short little ferry ride away. We keep in contact all the time. I go visit him, he comes visit me. He’s a lovely guy, and I met him on Stargate. And there’s a lot of other people like Nick Lawson. Like I said, I just talked to him the other day. And I still talk to Greg Pyne, and I still talk to a lot of people. It’s a very unique show. We had so much fun.

David Read:
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this story from many dozens of guests. I completely believe it, Kirk.

Kirk Douglas:
It’s a really… it was a really unique show. And as a crew member, I wasn’t a cast member, I wasn’t a director or a writer or a producer or anything, you’re on that set every day with these people and you’re in the most bizarre locations. You’re in the Port Mann Power Station one day, and then you’re in Richmond Sand Dunes another day. You’re up in the GVRD, the Seymour Demonstration Forest another day, and you’re moving in this traveling circus. In fact, it’s called The Circus, all the trailers that sort of the home base. And you get this feeling that it’s a traveling village. Like, you have catering, you have first aid, transportation. They’ll take you from your car to set. They’ll take you from set to your trailer, from the trailer to The Circus, to whatever. I mean, it’s a moving village and everybody has a big part in it. The transportation department was second to none. They were amazing guys. The locations department, my wife worked on the locations department, that’s how we met. I mean, she’d be the first one there in the morning, hours before I showed up, and then she’d be the last one there hours after I’m at home with my feet up watching TV waiting for her to get home. And I mean, it was a thankless job, but it’s just as important as the next person. And you don’t look at them as being lesser than you. That’s a mistake. It’s a huge mistake. The person that’s out there doing what you may think is menial is not. It’s important to making this machine run. Every cog has to work right.

David Read:
And it’s all, especially locations, it’s all logistics and keeping your cool.

Kirk Douglas:
Oh god, yeah.

David Read:
Because things change.

Kirk Douglas:
I mean, my wife is this small little blonde woman, and she has to watch a generator in Gastown which is sketchy area, and she’s by herself watching this trailer. And a teamster walks by and he’s kind of like, “Why are you doing this alone?” So, you know, I mean, it’s like– And then we get a couple other people coming with them, and then they have to lock down a location. They have to deal with the public who are pissed off because, “I can’t walk to the Starbucks to get my coffee because you’ve got this sidewalk shut down. How dare you? Now I’m angry. No, I’m not gonna stop. No, I’m gonna walk right through this shot.”

David Read:
Or “I’m a neighbor wanting some extra money so I’m gonna– I need to mow while you guys are there right now, so…”

Kirk Douglas:
There’s that. I’ve seen that happen where people in the middle of us shooting will stick their head out the window and scream at us and have a hissy fit about it, and we’re like, “We’re just trying to do a job. We’re just trying to get this done and we really do wanna get out of your hair.”

David Read:
“We don’t wanna be here any longer than you want us here. We just wanna get our day.”

Kirk Douglas:
“If you just let us finish what we’re doing, we’ll get out of your hair.” You know?

David Read:
It’s a wild– It is a circus what you guys do, and it’s remarkable that you were involved in it for 10 years, they went for 17 seasons of television over the course of 13, 14 years, and it only did that long because fans were receptive to the quality of work that you guys were putting out, and the passion was authentic and it was real and it was world-class.

Kirk Douglas:
Thank you.

David Read:
Kirk, this has been fantastic.

Kirk Douglas:
Thank you.

David Read:
Truly, I really appreciate you taking the time in sharing so many of these details. I’m always blown away at how much new stuff there is to learn about this whole process. And I really appreciate you coming on and sharing some stories about Wray. That was a treat …

Kirk Douglas:
It’s been very–

David Read:
… because I’ve always regretted not having him.

Kirk Douglas:
You would have loved to have met him. He was a–

David Read:
I would have.

Kirk Douglas:
I think about Wray every day. I miss him so much. It’s really hard when you have somebody in your life all your life, like Wray and I shared a bedroom until I was 17. We were always in each other’s life, and once he was gone, it was hard stepping on set again because everything reminded me of Wray. Even though I was on a different show, on a different crew, everything reminded me of him. There’d be an extinguisher on set with his sticker on it and it would take me to a million different memories. It was very hard to go back to the film industry after Wray passed, and it’s been–

David Read:
Did you take a break?

Kirk Douglas:
I didn’t. I should have. And I wound up retiring from the industry five years ago. After 25 years I said, “I think it’s time for me to spend time with my family.” I have this beautiful home on Salt Spring Island. I love being with my wife and my kids. There’s a point where you stop and you go, “It’s like being in the circus.” And you wanna stop every once in a while, and smell the roses or whatever.

David Read:
You have to assess your life.

Kirk Douglas:
Whatever analogy you want to use. And I’m grateful for the time I did it. I’m beyond grateful that I got to work on a show like Stargate with all these amazing people. But I’m also happy that I’m retired from it and I get to spend time on the next phase of my life with my family and watching my kids grow up. Today, going to my son’s soccer game and watching him play. And he’s such a great kid and my daughter’s such a great kid. Oh my God.

David Read:
Are they proud of the work that you did? Are they old enough to be proud of it yet?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah. It’s funny. They’re only– They are. They’re just starting to go like, “Wow, that’s kind of cool what you did.” When they were younger it was just Dad was gone. And there was times where I’d get home Saturday morning at 6 in the morning and Nova, my wife, would say, “OK. Don’t go into the bedroom. Let Daddy sleep.” And of course, at that time they were just little kids and they’d come into the room anyway and I’d be like, “It’s OK. Don’t come in and cuddle me. I’ll get my three hours sleep and six cups of coffee and I’ll be back at work again.” But I didn’t wanna have it be this thing with don’t tiptoe around Dad because he’s sleeping. I wanna hear about your day. I wanna be there and pick you up from school. I wanna be there and drop you off at school and I wanna hear about your day and stuff. And I wanna be there for Halloween and go trick-or-treating with you. I mean, there’s stories of when I was on Stargate I didn’t have kids, but there’s days where they were hoping they could finish early so they could take their kids out trick-or-treating, but we went late that day. So, they’re making phone calls saying, “Sorry. Tell the kids I tried, but we’re going late.” So, all that stuff, you don’t get that back. Once they’re older and they don’t wanna go trick-or-treating anymore. It’s like, “Hey, I’m home. Now let’s go trick-or-treating.” “Dad, I’m 25.

David Read:
And they may have even understood what it was that you were doing, but you still don’t get that time back. And that’s–

Kirk Douglas:
You don’t.

David Read:
That’s the thing. Even if they understood and even appreciated what you did, to keep them in Nikes and Nintendo games and all the rest. But man, I can totally relate to that, Kirk. My father was an air-evac helicopter pilot for almost 30 years, and in that case, Dad needed X number of hours of sleep and he worked nights.

Kirk Douglas:
My dad was a pilot. My dad was the same way. He would be home two weeks, gone two weeks.

David Read:
That’s it. On four, off four, in our case.

Kirk Douglas:
We broke it. It was two weeks on, two weeks off, and if you missed your time with Dad when he was off, and you missed your time for another two weeks.

David Read:
That’s it. What’d he fly?

Kirk Douglas:
He flew up in the Arctic. He flew everything from– He used to be a bush pilot up in the Arctic. He flew Beavers, he flew Otters, he flew helicopters. He flew everything. He flew forestry stuff. He flew water bombers. And then he was an airline pilot. He flew for Air Canada. He flew everything from DC-3s, he flew a Hawker Siddeley 125. He was a– I mean, you wanna talk about– My dad was so proud of Wray and I when we did special effects. And Wray and I would always say to him, it was like, “What are you talking about? We do make believe. He did the real thing.” “You were flying in the Arctic using a sextant to navigate and flying the distant early warning line. This is before GPS. You were landing on frozen lakes and camping under your wing. Polar bears are circling your plane and you’re lying there with a gun as a…”

David Read:
That’s right. You could die.

Kirk Douglas:
These stories he would– You might die. You might become some polar bear’s meal. And he would laugh and go, “Yeah, but look what you guys are doing. This is so great.” And we learned about adventure and about that kind of stuff from my dad. And my mom was an adventurous woman, and they were very proud of what we did and they thought it was really great that we were doing it together. And they were really proud that we got to work together. Even though, at times, honestly it was hard working with your brother being his boss.

David Read:
Of course. Absolutely. I’m sure there are moments where it’s like, “Is this really the best I can do? Am I doing this because it’s what I love or because I haven’t been brave? I’m working for my brother here.” Those things, that, it’s natural to have that thought probably from time to time.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s one of the reasons I left Stargate is I wanted to move on to other shows and do other things and just coordinate, get my own experience and having people not look at you like, “Well, you’re Wray’s brother.”

David Read:
I’ll bet he fully supported that.

Kirk Douglas:
He did. He was a little upset at first. He was like, “Well, how could you, how could you leave?” But I was like, “I have to.” And he understood it.

David Read:
That’s right. I can understand the first initial reaction would be like, “You’re my family.” But also, you did 10 years. That’s five hamsters’ lifespan. Come on. It’s time to spread your wings a little bit and figure stuff out on your own. And I bet he was proud of you for it. ‘Cause it’s not an easy thing for someone to say, “You know what? It’s time.”

Kirk Douglas:
No. No.

David Read:
That’s a hard thing to come to your brother who has given you a job for 10 years to say, “You know what? It’s time to move on.” I can understand people who would get very jaded if they weren’t able to communicate that.

Kirk Douglas:
And the thing is, is I learned so much from him, but I learned a lot from Nick, I learned a lot from Scott. Those guys were– If you wanna look at people that you look up to, I looked up to those guys because they were so good at their jobs. And they made me want to be really good at my job. And going on to other crews and working with other people, people valued me on what I knew, not who my brother was, or my uncle was.

David Read:
That’s right.

Kirk Douglas:
Or whatever.

David Read:
And he worked on Stargate.

Kirk Douglas:
“He worked on Stargate, so therefore you know all about this stuff. Can you do these bullet hits for us.” I’m like, “In my sleep, yes, let’s go do it.” I’ve done– so many of them I can literally do them with my eyes closed. And they’re like, “Wow. OK, you’re our guy. Go for it.” And then you do it and they’re like, “That was great and it worked.”

David Read:
That’s right.

Kirk Douglas:
“Wow.” “You want to stay on our show?” Yeah, OK.

David Read:
I learned from the best.

Kirk Douglas:
I did. And I have that privilege to have worked with those guys, and done it. And again, I’ve said this before, but there isn’t a day that goes by that Wray doesn’t pop into my head at least 100 times. And it’s less sad and more, “Oh, yeah. There he is.” And the more you think of him, I think it’s good. And the more that I think that people know about Wray and know about the stuff he did, the better. It’s a crying shame that he didn’t get to be my age and still doing it, and still being highly respected in his field, because he had so much more to do. And he had more to say.

David Read:
But he didn’t waste the time he was given.

Kirk Douglas:
No, God, no. I’ll tell you one thing. He lived every second of it.

David Read:
There you go.

Kirk Douglas:
He enjoyed every minute of it. He was a jokester. He had a little boy laugh that was like a little giggle almost, that people would always be like, “Oh, God, he’s so adorable.”

David Read:
That’s right.

Kirk Douglas:
That type of thing. “Oh, there he is. There’s his little giggly grin.” When General Ryan came on set–

David Read:
Tell this story. Please tell this story.

Kirk Douglas:
When we did that episode with General Ryan–

David Read:
“Prodigy.”

Kirk Douglas:
“Prodigy.” And we did that stuff. The day before, he came to the Bridge Studios with his security detail. These are Secret Service guys. These are the real deal. And Wray and I are on the trailer and it was like lunch or something like that, and we were watching a movie or something. All of a sudden, we hear this knock on the side of the trailer and there’s two Secret Service guys in suits walking onto our trailer. And they’re like, “Who’s in charge of special effects here?” And Wray is like, “I am?” And he goes, “OK, so we need to go through your mags and we need to know about all the stuff that you’re gonna be using on set. We need to know about this and that and all the stuff. Can you show us all?” And Wray and I are kind of like, “Oh, OK.” And we’re opening the mags up for them and showing our capsule guns and he’s asking about, “What do you use these for? And specifically.” And we had to explain, dust hits and zirconium hits and this and that. And then they checked all the mags out to see what we used and all this stuff. And after they were happy and they said, “OK, thank you very much for your time.” They’re very polite and they walked off the trailer. Wray and I looked at each other and we were like, “Oh my God, was that ever cool? Actual Secret Service guys on our trailer going through our mags. Isn’t that amazing?” We were just like two little kids again. We were like 10 years old, giggling and laughing and going, “Wow. Wait till we tell mom and dad.”

David Read:
I can only imagine what it was like when you guys got the memo saying, “Just so you know, you’re gonna be getting a knock on the door from the Secret Service. And whatever they ask for, do what you can to accommodate.”

Kirk Douglas:
Nobody told us that they were coming.

David Read:
You didn’t know?

Kirk Douglas:
Nobody told us that. We didn’t know they were coming to our trailer. If we did get a memo, Wray didn’t read it. All of a sudden–

David Read:
Air Force surprise inspection would not surprise me. You’ve got the commander of the Air Force showing up.

Kirk Douglas:
All the other guys weren’t there. They were off doing something else, and Wray and I were the only ones on the trailer. So, after these guys left, we were just giggling like little boys. We just thought it was the coolest thing. We were laughing about it, going–

David Read:
What an honor.

Kirk Douglas:
“Can you imagine these two guys from Sherwood Park, Alberta being visited by the Secret Service and wanting to go through all of our stuff?” We just thought it was hilarious.

David Read:
Can you imagine?

Kirk Douglas:
But it was also so cool. Could you imagine? We never would have imagined that as little boys.

David Read:
Can you imagine if, God forbid, war had broken out at that time and he’s in General Hammond’s office, and he had to get on the phone with, I guess Clinton at this point. He would have had to have– “Can we– George, can I borrow your chair?” “Can everyone else clear out so I can get on the phone real quick?”

Kirk Douglas:
“I’ve gotta find a phone call. Can you guys excuse me for a second?”

David Read:
For a sec, because he has the phone …

Kirk Douglas:
I’ve got something important.

David Read:
… for the president. He has that.

Kirk Douglas:
Don’t think I’m not taking this seriously. I’m very excited about being on the episode, but I have an important phone call.” He was such a lovely man. He was so excited to be there. He just thought the whole thing was amazing, what we were doing, and we’re going, “Yeah, you’re the–”

David Read:
“You’re the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.”

Kirk Douglas:
“You’re the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. We’re just a bunch of yahoos goofing off over here playing make believe. And this is a set, this isn’t the real Oval Office we’re shooting up.” But that photograph actually–

David Read:
But the yahoos are inspiring the next generation.

Kirk Douglas:
That photograph I shared with you of Wray and I on set, that sat on my mom and dad’s mantel for years. When they passed away, I got that photograph back, and I–

David Read:
Are you– you mean to talk about the one from the Oval?

Kirk Douglas:
Yeah, that photograph. It was on my mom and dad’s mantel for years. They just thought that was the most amazing thing. My dad, especially, he’s like, “You’re sitting in the Oval Office shooting it up and my sons are standing together doing it.” And so, he was so proud.

David Read:
And General Jumper is there.

Kirk Douglas:
And the real–

David Read:
The next Air Force Chief of Staff.

Kirk Douglas:
The next chief of staff is there. It’s like, he just thought that was amazing. And again, Wray and I always laughed and said, “Yeah, but compared to what you’ve done, this is kind of a joke.” He’s like, “No, no, this is amazing.”

David Read:
You are inspiring the people who come next and–

Kirk Douglas:
I hope so.

David Read:
… yes, it is. All of you, the people who watch the show– I have met members of the military who have gone in with Stargate being a substantial contribution to what had them considering it in the first place. And I’ve met members–

Kirk Douglas:
Wow, were they disappointed when there was no Stargate?

David Read:
This is our dream phase. You’re going in, day-to-day, and shooting stuff up, and blowing up things, and making smoke, and dropping the foam rocks. You are exploring our dream phase, and don’t underestimate that, and it’s really cool.

Kirk Douglas:
That’s nice to hear. It’s funny ’cause when you’re doing the job, it’s a job.

David Read:
That’s right.

Kirk Douglas:
And you wanna do it right, and you wanna do it safe, and you wanna do everything according to what needs to happen, and then you get the dailies and you bring them to the trailer and you fast-forward it to our gag, and we go, “Oh, that wasn’t cool, and that was great, that looked good.” Or, “Wow, all that work for that? Oh, well.” But it’s a job, and you take it seriously and you wanna do the best you can. Our job just happened to be dangerous, but exciting and fun and tedious sometimes and boring, but …

David Read:
There are long days.

Kirk Douglas:
… at the end of the day. There are, but it was always something different, and that’s– one thing I really enjoyed about that job was you were never doing the same thing every day. You weren’t going into an office and sitting down and working on a computer and then going for your lunch and then coming back and working on a computer and then going home. We were in a weird, crazy location all the time, or we were at the studio, or we were in a set that was a submarine and then, next thing you know, we’re in an actual submarine, a Russian submarine. We’re, you know, making steam sources next to the big diesel engines, and we’re–

David Read:
Imagining that mechanical machines are scurrying around. The stuff that you guys pulled off in that set alone. I’m not gonna keep you. We could go all night, man. I’m stopping this right now. I’m gonna have you back.

Kirk Douglas:
I’m sorry you had technical difficulties. That’s really sad.

David Read:
I’m sorry you had to put up with them. We’re gonna have you back next year. I would love to invite the rest of your team on as well. I think there’s a lot more to explore here. And again, thank you so much for taking so much time tonight to explore so many of these stories with all of us who have tuned in, and we’ve really just got, had over 150 folks watch in the two hours, so it means a lot to have you.

Kirk Douglas:
Oh, wow. Well, it was a pleasure. I really wanna thank you for inviting me on. I was hesitant at first, but I did it. I’m so happy I did it. I really, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

David Read:
We’ll have you back. There’s more to learn, so–

Kirk Douglas:
There’s a lot of stories.

David Read:
I’m gonna wrap up the show on this side but it means the world to have you, so I’ll be in touch.

Kirk Douglas:
Thank you so much.

David Read:
Thank you, sir.

Kirk Douglas:
Great. Contact me anytime, and we’ll do this again for sure.

David Read:
Perfect. Thank you. I start back in late March, so I’ll be in touch with you.

Kirk Douglas:
Great.

David Read:
Thank you, sir.

Kirk Douglas:
Take care.

David Read:
Kirk Douglas, everyone. Special effects technician for Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. Been doing this now for– I’ve been watching since I was 14, and I remember watching “Torment of Tantalus,” and it was the episode where the ceilings were falling. We just showed that earlier, and I remember watching this show, and it’s seven or eight episodes into Season One. It’s in syndication. They’re busy working on Season Two at this point, so this is ’97, ’98. And I remember Rob Cooper’s meaning of life idea where, just before those scenes where the ceiling was falling in, we were discovering a new universal language, a true universal language, as Daniel puts it. And I remember thinking to myself, “This show is going to go on forever if it is as good as it is right now.” And that was the episode that really inspired me to stick with it, and that was– It’s been 26, 27 years, and I’m still learning new stuff about it, and it was because of the caliber of the work that they created, and the stories, in many cases, are more relevant now than they were when they were first airing. It’s because they’re about us. It’s the human experience, and you need actors who are talented to pull it off, and you need people backing them who know what it is that they’re doing to make sure that they look good. We get swept away into the narrative, and we go to bed, and we dream, and we turn out to join the Air Force and do it for real, so… My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. I have a number of great shows that are coming up for you as we wind down the end of Season Five here. I’ve got… Oh, I was like, “Oh, I’ve already got Kirk there.” Yeah. He’s, we just had him. Steven Culp, who played Henry Wallace in Stargate Atlantis. The episode was “Miller’s Crossing.” Steven, I have been a fan since JAG, Enterprise. This is gonna be great, great to have him. Stargate Trivia with Suanne Braun, Hathor herself. The hardest game of trivia that you have seen. We– This one is gonna be intense, and it’s, we’ve been building up to this one. Stargate podcasts from around the web. That is an episode that I’ve been putting together for a little while here, taking snippets of people from the different Stargate podcasts that you can listen to on the different platforms, and some on YouTube as well that you can watch. And then Michael Shanks will be finishing out our season. Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1. He is going to be back for his third visit. My tremendous thanks to my extraordinary team of people who pulled this off today. I had Kevin, I had Lockwatcher, I had Antony. My whole production team, my producers, Antony Rowling, Kevin Weaver, Sommer Roy, Brice Ors. These people make the show happen week in and week out. My moderators, Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, and Jakub. Thank you all so much for pulling this off. Thanks to Matt “EagleSG” Wilson for his amazing opening title sequences, and Frederick Marcoux over at ConceptsWeb who keeps DialTheGate.com up and running. If you enjoyed the episode, give us a like. It does help the show and continues to help us grow our audience, and if you wanna see more episodes like this, click subscribe. That’s all we’ve got for you this weekend. I appreciate y’all who submitted questions for Kirk, and thanks so much for joining us. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I’ll see you on the other side.