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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project, Episode 366. My name is David Read. I appreciate you being here with me for this episode. Peter DeLuise, writer, producer, director, is back with us for one more episode this year. It’s always great to have him. Peter, I had a little birdie come to my shoulder– Actually, before I get to that, do you recognize this here? Can you see that?

Peter DeLuise:
No. I saw a picture of you and me on the side.

David Read:
This here. This past Wednesday was the 70th anniversary–

Peter DeLuise:
Not very, it’s lacking detail.

David Read:
Yes, sorry about that.

Peter DeLuise:
Can you …

David Read:
I can go get it.

Peter DeLuise:
OK.

David Read:
The 70th anniversary of the invention of the flux capacitor.

Peter DeLuise:
Back to the Future, of course.

Peter DeLuise:
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

David Read:
That’s right. 70 years as of Wednesday, so truly a red letter day.

Peter DeLuise:
They didn’t realize that there was gonna be a sequel, so then they were like, “Oh, now we’ve got a flying car, and we’ve got the girlfriend in the car, and we don’t know what to do. We better drop her off.”

David Read:
We better drop her off. A psych-inducing whatever, sleep-inducing alpha rhythm generator. That’s what it was. I recently heard that you were potentially up for the role of Marty or Biff. Is there any truth to that, or is that a rumor?

Peter DeLuise:
I get this periodically. As a young man, I auditioned for many things, including Back to the Future, as did Billy Zane, and Billy Zane actually ended up getting a part, but he also auditioned for the role of Biff, the bully. I guess they didn’t erase the tapes of the old auditions, and they eventually reached out to us for the sell-through units for the home version with whatever the deleted scenes or the added features–

David Read:
OK. Value-added, VAM, value-added material.

Peter DeLuise:
They asked for me to– And then I was like, “Was that a crappy audition, or?” I don’t even remember.

David Read:
“Can I see it first?”

Peter DeLuise:
I said, “Yeah, sure.” Every two or three months, somebody says, “Oh, my God, I didn’t know you auditioned for Back to the Future. Imagine how different your career would’ve been if you had been in that movie.” And I go, “Yeah, that would’ve been great.”

David Read:
Exactly.

David Read:
Shoulda, woulda, coulda. But there’s a whole bunch of actors, including myself, and now that I’m a director and I’m privy to a lot of auditions now, it’s not even the way that you would film a proper audition. They had the guy that I was acting with over here, so it was the side of my face. And I went, “I wonder why they did that?”

David Read:
Odd choice.

Peter DeLuise:
Why wouldn’t he be next to the camera? Why wouldn’t he be just over here where I could look at him and you could see my face? The front of my face? This is how we do it now.

David Read:
I’ve got the DVDs and the Blu-ray. I need to go and check it out. Were you auditioning for Marty or were you auditioning for Biff? Do you recall?

Peter DeLuise:
I was auditioning for Biff.

David Read:
For Biff. You would’ve been a great Biff. That’s cool, man.

Peter DeLuise:
There was a whole bunch of, I mean, Kyra Sedgwick auditioned for the mother, and there was all sorts of wonderful names back then. And that was in the old days where you had to go to your agent and get the lines. And then memorize them and get yourself ready and then drive to the studio and park your car and get the pass. And then you’d go to the office, and you’d wait with all the other actors. And then they’d call your name, and you’d go in, and you’d work your magic.

David Read:
The before times.

Peter DeLuise:
And now it’s the before time. Now you just go up against the wall, and you put your audition on tape, and you send it in. And all the humanity has been taken out of it.

David Read:
Taken right out of it. I’ve come across a couple of actors who really love it, but most are like, “Eh. I never see my peeps anymore.”

Peter DeLuise:
I’m not sure–

David Read:
“The people who look like me that I’m used to seeing at every similar audition that I go to.” That’s the boxes that you fit in oftentimes.

Peter DeLuise:
I used to see the same people all the time. I would see Nick Cassavetes all the time. We had the same agent, and his last name ends in C. And mine ends in D. Whatever list we were on, he was C and I was D, so he’d always be coming out, and I’d always be going in. Hey, Nick, good to see you again.

David Read:
They brought you through alphabetized.

Peter DeLuise:
I guess. That’s the only reason I could come up with. Why was he always leaving before I was coming in.

David Read:
That makes sense, for sure. Jakub actually asked the question about Biff, so he knew it was Biff. Sorry, Jakub, I didn’t read that. Lockwatcher wanted to know, “Peter, when you wrote an episode of Stargate, how far ahead were you typically in writing from production under a typical set of circumstances? And what was the advance time for it?” Are you a month out probably from shooting if you’re writing, or in the development phase, or is it different depending on what part of the year you’re creating it?

Peter DeLuise:
So, you hit it, you got it right on the nose. What would happen is the writers in the writing room would get together, and Brad and Robert would try to figure out what they were gonna achieve over the course of the entirety of the season. “We’re gonna introduce a new bad guy. We’re gonna have this problem about three-quarters the way through, and then we’ll come up with an interesting cliffhanger, or a way to sort of have a really good finale at the end.” Once you’ve introduced the overall overreaching arc of the whole season, then you would begin to write the stories. And over the course of 20 episodes… You’d bank the stories at the beginning, and then slowly but surely, the production would begin to catch up with you till you had to be really turning it out quite fast at the end. Months, a couple of months in advance would be the short answer. And then towards the end it would be not a couple of months. But there would be outlines where they knew– ‘Cause the thing about the Stargate was, it was so enormous that you couldn’t just put it anywhere. You had to really think ahead.

David Read:
My understanding was it was the day before to tear it up and the day after shooting to tear it down. The location Stargate.

Peter DeLuise:
You’re talking about the location Stargate itself.

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
It was quite an undertaking, and it came in pieces. Each part of the circle had to be put together, I guess. There was a smaller-scale one for when we shot it from far away when we weren’t right next to it. That was an interesting idea as well. But even the traveling Gate, if we were inside, had to be contained within an enormous room. So, that meant we had to take over a huge location. There was a Plaza of Nations, if you recall, where we had to put that. So, that was not typical. Most of the planets that we visited were not that advanced, or it wasn’t in the future where–

David Read:
On Earth.

Peter DeLuise:
On Earth. They had to be put in a giant throne room, or some sort of Egyptian-themed place, or a ziggurat. So, you have to have an enormous amount of forethought, because you couldn’t just create a giant cave or a giant, fake masonry around it.

David Read:
They’ve gotta design it.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. That would be weeks in advance, where Brad would have to say, “This is what happens in the story and this is what I think it should be.” And then he would get together with the production designer and he would say, “All these elements have to be achieved and I will give you the story as soon as I get it, but you’re gonna have to start building the set now.”

David Read:
The number of moving pieces is ridiculous. I remember seeing the concept art. The folks like Ken Rabehl. James CD Robbins, when he eventually …

Peter DeLuise:
CD Robbins.

David Read:
… got involved, he had– They had a Photoshop, a block of everyone’s name and they would have colored-in cells of who had approved it. It really wasn’t a list of who needed to approve it. It was just a list of everyone in the production office who was someone who might need to approve something, and there’s all different patterns of these in terms of who needed to approve what for which episode. That’s how you got it done. “OK, this person needs to see it at this point. Let’s go ahead and make sure that they have a look at it.” It’s a wild– And that’s just for conceptual art. That has nothing to do with drawing up blueprints for sets or anything like that. Like Ivana Vasak and Bridget, and all those other folks did.

Peter DeLuise:
And of course, if you created an enormous structure or a framework, they would say, “That cave was good for this episode, but now we need something that looks like an underground lair so we could still use some of the rock face in the underground lair,” and then they would repurpose it for that. And I remember a huge undertaking, or a huge asset, was Blade was shooting in the effects studio across the way, and they had made the top of this building where the finale happens in Blade, where Blade infiltrates the bad guys’ lair and kills everybody, including the big bad boss. And they were gonna have to deconstruct it, wipe it out. And our production, led by John Smith, I think, championed this, or perhaps Brad Smith. I don’t know who exactly from our production went over there and said, “Hey…” It was gonna cost them tens of thousands of dollars to knock it down and drag it out of there.

David Read:
You have to pay to have it decommissioned.

Peter DeLuise:
He said, “Why don’t I buy this off of you for a dollar?” As the story goes, I don’t know if that’s actually true.” And then we’ll take it over and we’ll take over the cost of getting rid of it.” And that became the Atlantis outdoor set with all those wonderful beams and all the wonderful steel, and all the balcony when they were overlooking the ocean all the time. That was that.

David Read:
And the Asgard ship in “New Order.”

Peter DeLuise:
Is that right? Or that must be true too. That balcony ended up being duplicated somewhat near the control room in the other studios, ’cause they needed to be consistent with the design.

David Read:
That would have influenced that design. Overlooked outside of the Gatrium. That makes sense.

Peter DeLuise:
But it all started with the Blade production walking away from their top of their building. And then it was repurposed to be an off-world base called Atlantis.

David Read:
I remember the walkway.

Peter DeLuise:
You remember the room that Ryan Robbins got beat up in, tortured, and had a huge fight?

David Read:
Ryan Robbins getting beat up.

Peter DeLuise:
In the movie Blade–

David Read:
I haven’t seen it. I need to see it for my own edification.

Peter DeLuise:
There are certain spaces; there’s this lovely catwalk where I think there’s a bow and arrow back and forth, and then all these penetrating weapons that you need to kill vampires with. Once they’ve killed them, they would dissolve into ashy, burned up ashy stuff. And I’m like, “Oh, we shot there, and we shot there. We shot there.” We didn’t disguise that very well, did we? We just left it the way it was.

David Read:
There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s advanced-looking. The Ancients could have built it.

Peter DeLuise:
Totally.

David Read:
But it was so high up off of the production floor.

Peter DeLuise:
It was ridiculously high up.

David Read:
It went straight over the top of that sound stage. And I don’t know if I went up there. I think we may have gone up there and it was like, “Man, this is high. This is really…”

Peter DeLuise:
And it wasn’t very film-friendly, which begged the question, why did they do that? Why did they put it all the way up there like that?

David Read:
But you gotta take advantage of what you got, especially if you can get it for, one way or another, I’m sure it was a great price because they don’t have to tear it apart.

Peter DeLuise:
They were essentially– The price they paid for it was the eventual amount of money that they were gonna have to pay to get rid of it. So, that cost–

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
If that cost $50,000 to bulldoze it and drag it out of there and dump it, then that’s what it cost. I’m sure they got some money back for the steel and recycling of the metal parts.

David Read:
You guys get a lot of mileage out of this. I have a question, tangential to that. When you’re–

Peter DeLuise:
Note to self, look up the word tangential.

David Read:
Attached.

Peter DeLuise:
Attached. Tangential, it’s right next to it.

David Read:
When you’re creating these sets, when you’re drafting them, you brought it up briefly and I’m wondering how often it was that one followed the other, or it was the other way around. When you’re designing a set, obviously, the village set and the cave sets that you guys had at the beginning of Season Nine were designed to be a hundred planets. How often would you create something earlier on with the intent of amortizing it over two or three different episodes, versus, “Yeah, this is gonna cost a little bit more. Let’s go ahead and pray that we can work it in a future episode. Oh, hey, it’ll go great here, we can do this.”

Peter DeLuise:
That’s interesting. So, there were episodes where an Egyptian sort of stone architecture, or not stone, but the metallic architecture, the interior of a particular Egyptian building, was then repurposed into the inside of a mothership, because the motherships also were sort of flying buildings, if you will. So, there were times where that would happen. Caves, as I said, became underground lairs, with certain amounts of rock face on them. I wasn’t privy to all these conversations because Brad was quite smart about this kind of stuff, and also, he had worked on Outer Limits, which was an anthology, and they had to be budget-conscious, so he probably already had a really great head for that, where he would say, “This works for this episode,” and then I’m thinking all the writers would come and take a look at it and they’d say, “Can I write to this?” Or in advance would say, “Hey, this episode that you’re writing, you’ve got a spaceship and I’ve got a spaceship.” If we repurpose the things and move it around, I know that they needed all sorts of pods and there was things where they clearly they would go, “If you make that for him, then I could use this for this.” And Brad often would– I was often hearing him say to the production designer, “We’re gonna need this,” in advance. Sometimes in the middle of a giant meeting, he would say, “Oh, that reminds me, I have to talk to you about X.” And X would be this build, an exotic build that they hadn’t discussed before, or one that was going to not only be necessary for a particular episode, but it also, as you pointed out, would kill potentially two birds with one stone. And there were some sets that were beyond. They just took up the entire sound stage. They were just …

David Read:
Where are you gonna store that?

Peter DeLuise:
… magnificent.

Peter DeLuise:
You can’t. So, the first thing was, what can we repurpose? And everybody on the show, I hope everybody on the show, at least the older people who were in charge of the show, had– Well, I’ll speak for myself. I had read up on the original Star Trek, and they used to go dumpster diving. And the Jefferies tube, the Jefferies tube came from a piece, a gigantic sauna tube, that they–

David Read:
Scotty’s crawlway.

Peter DeLuise:
And it was named after Jefferies, the surname of the designer.

David Read:
Matt Jefferies.

Peter DeLuise:
And he went– They would just grab stuff out of the dumpster and say, “What can we make with this? What can we make with this?” And they said, “If you’re gonna throw it away …”

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
“… it’s gonna cost us nothing. We might as well grab it.” The circular thing that McCoy used to use?

David Read:
Yeah, the probe at the end of the tricorder.

Peter DeLuise:
It was his tricorder. It was a separate thing, but apparently they worked in tandem. That thing that he was holding in his hand, that was the original salt shaker for the salt sucker monster. And Roddenberry looked at it and he goes, “What is this?” And they go, “Well, it’s the salt shaker.” And he went, “No, no, no. It doesn’t look like a salt shaker. It doesn’t look like anything that anybody’s ever gonna recognize. Just use a regular salt shaker.” And so, they said, “Well, what do you wanna use this for?” And it ended up being McCoy’s probe for when he would medically deal with you.

David Read:
It’s amazing stuff.

Peter DeLuise:
Any amount of nose hair trimmers. We’re all always good for– That was on our show. We used nose hair trimmers all the time for this stuff.

David Read:
‘Cause they look cool and, yeah. Martouf is adjusting the settings for the Tok’ra memory device.

Peter DeLuise:
The memory device.

David Read:
It’s a nose hair…

Peter DeLuise:
It’s a nose hair trimmer …

David Read:
That’s it.

Peter DeLuise:
… which gives me great joy to know that it activates Jolinar’s memories and it keeps your nose nice and clean.

David Read:
That’s exactly right. Two for one. I’ve got a few episodes that I wanna go over with you here, if I can pull these up and not lose my place like I did. Isn’t that interesting? I just teed it up for myself and I could have driven right into it, but I didn’t. So, let’s pretend that I did that. Nice segue, the nose hair trimmer.

Peter DeLuise:
The nose hair trimmer was part of “Jolinar’s Memories,” and it was the–

David Read:
Ah.

Peter DeLuise:
If you see, Martouf puts the thing behind Carter’s ear.

David Read:
It’s here. That one is here.

Peter DeLuise:
Which one?

David Read:
The memory device goes here.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, you’re not wrong. It happened in two spots.

David Read:
Oh, they did put it behind the ear.

Peter DeLuise:
One, when he goes into– Yes. I read the trivia for this, and somebody accused us of having it wrong and having it on her temple, and I was like, “Uh, I think it was both.” So, what happened was, when they weren’t in a clandestine situation …

David Read:
I see.

Peter DeLuise:
… it went on her temple, and then when they wanted to infiltrate Netu when they were going undercover, it had to go behind her ear. And she would continue downloading Jolinar’s memories.

David Read:
The memories. That’s right. Good for you, man.

Peter DeLuise:
It was a complete accident. It’s all a blank, but then I was, “Oh, we would have had to have hid it,” because you can’t just have it on your head and go, “Hey, what’s that thing on your head? You guys aren’t spies, are you?”

David Read:
Exactly. But don’t check on the backside. You never know what you’re gonna find there. What was that two-parter like? I love Ken Rabehl’s… It’s a pencil sketch and it’s in my kitchen. Or my dining room. I don’t know why I didn’t bring it up, but it’s–

Peter DeLuise:
Of Netu?

David Read:
Of Netu. It’s this big. And on it you’ve got Bynarr and you’ve got Na’onak, and all these elements of this episode were stitched together.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. I remember that picture well. It was great.

David Read:
One beautiful set.

Peter DeLuise:
It took over everything. Early on, I think what happened is that Brad said, “We’re gonna need a gigantic place that simulates hell.” This is where human beings have gotten the idea of what hell is. There needed to be a lot of visual similarities to the classic torture chamber, hot, uncomfortable, underground, multi-level, whips and chains, that kind of thing. And it needed to feel medieval, mostly hot and humid and gross. And the picture that you mentioned was, yes, they took over most of that sound stage. This is before Atlantis was in that same space. But you pointed out it was enormous. And it went up and it went out and there was an underground lair, which enormous amounts of screen time happened in the underground–

David Read:
The pit.

Peter DeLuise:
The pit.

David Read:
“Throw them into the pit.”

Peter DeLuise:
“No, not the pit.” I remember– It’s funny because it’s such a cliché and such a mustache-twirling to throw them in the pit.

David Read:
Bynarr was very mustache-twirling.

Peter DeLuise:
And Richard Dean Anderson went, “Not the pit!” We all started to howl with laughter, ’cause it was so melodramatic.

David Read:
Before you get into under the ground, above, the lava, was that rear screen projected? Is that how you guys got that? Because there was a lava flow in the background?

Peter DeLuise:
Honestly, I don’t remember, but that sounds like something we would have done. And it would have been the precursor to rear screen projecting the active puddle, if that wasn’t in fact, the case. That would have been something we …

David Read:
Yes, Season Four, I think.

Peter DeLuise:
… that maybe Jim Menard came up with as an idea. I wonder who did, in fact– I’m just gonna take a quick look.

David Read:
Visual effects, you guys spent a lot of money.

Peter DeLuise:
OK, Peter Woeste deserves the credit for that one.

David Read:
Peter Woeste.

Peter DeLuise:
He was the one who did the– He was the director of photography on that. So, it could have been Peter Woeste who came up with the– I don’t want him to get forgotten, because he did such a great job on that. If you look at the humidity and the– There were shafts of light and dust, and it was just gross. And he did such a great job with that. I don’t want his name to go unmentioned.

David Read:
Was it miserable? Or did everyone take it sufficiently well?

Peter DeLuise:
There was a lot of sand and dirt. It was dirty and gross. If you shuffled around a lot, you’d go, “Oh, this dust here is–” And all the actors were constantly being sprayed with fake sweat and glycerin. There was that, the warm lights and stuff. And people were wearing leather-clad medieval torture outfits and stuff like that. And it was a little bit raw.

David Read:
So, was hell.

Peter DeLuise:
It was. That’s what we were going for. I think what happened was, the set became a runaway. I think the amount of money that was spent on the set, and also all the beautiful costumes– But then there was a large amount of people, and they all had to have costumes. And then we needed–

David Read:
You have to populate this place.

Peter DeLuise:
I think the cargo ship/scout ship was used. That was already an asset, so that wouldn’t have been extra money. But, as you pointed out, this enormous build that took over most of the sound stage, we ended up doing– And this could have possibly been because it wasn’t a fully realized story yet; it only existed as an outline. And so, Brad might not have accounted for how many pages were going to happen in the pit, because a lot of pages happen in the pit. Versus the really cool other part, the outside the pit part, the not the pit part, which had multi-levels and rock face, and as you pointed out, the lava. I don’t know how you could be close to real active lava for any amount of time without going, “I think I’m gonna be …”

David Read:
A little toasty.

Peter DeLuise:
“… overcome with… I can’t breathe. I’m gonna die now ’cause there’s no breathable oxygen here.”

David Read:
And Bynarr’s room was reall– His quarters were really cool too.

Peter DeLuise:
Wasn’t it amazing?

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
And he had that gross eye thing with the–

David Read:
The pus? Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah.

David Read:
Poor guy.

Peter DeLuise:
When in doubt, add pus. That’s what I always say.

David Read:
That’s it. He’s a real charmer that one. Man. J.R., this was not the first time you’d worked with him as Martouf. Uh, I think your first episode was “Serpent’s Song,” and so he’s back again. What was J.R. like?

Peter DeLuise:
J.R. is incredibly handsome. His eyes are piercing. It’s hard not to swoon when you’re in his presence. And he’s got that lovely speaking voice. It’s like melted butter.

David Read:
He knows what he’s doing.

Peter DeLuise:
And they had created chemistry. There was supposed to be chemistry between his character and Carter. And because he had an obligation to be Tok’ra-like, it was weird. There was a weirdness where you had to find a pleasant balance between “I have feelings for you, but also I’m quite stoic because I’m a Tok’ra.”

David Read:
And also, he’s in diplomat mode, you know? He can’t just, “Oh, I love this human.” And I, I would have thought that Lantash had the hots for her more than Martouf did. That’s just me.

Peter DeLuise:
OK. I don’t doubt it. That was a big thing that we needed to achieve, to make sure that we were servicing the chemistry. And Carmen was also in there, and so he also had the benefit of not being– He was supposed to be not doing very well either. At one point, he thinks, “I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

David Read:
No, he’s been in there for a while. You, you go to these places to die.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, which is a weird– I guess the human suffering of it all was the point, ’cause you could just as easily say, “Bang, you’re dead.”

David Read:
And they resurrect you and you just keep on going. J.R.’s performance, Carmen, Amanda, I mean, everyone in this two-parter has a chance to shine, and I think that’s what was leveraged very well, was everyone in the cast really got, you know, a really strong scene to work with. And every one of them were, were rock solid all the way through.

Peter DeLuise:
Who also was in there was Peter Kent, that big guy who plays Kintac. And his interesting claim to fame is that he, despite the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger has claimed that he does all his own stunts, in fact, Peter Kent was Schwarzenegger’s stunt double on many occasions. He’s got the approximate build and that great jawline. If you recall from the original Terminator, that wonderful gag where they suspend the Harley-Davidson on the wires. Do you remember that? And then he comes off of the bridge and he lands into …

David Read:
OK. Judgment Day.

Peter DeLuise:
… the river?

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
So, that, that’s him on the motorcycle, not–

David Read:
I thought that was a dummy.

Peter DeLuise:
No, there was a real guy on there.

David Read:
He did that. That was Peter Kent?

Peter DeLuise:
It definitely wasn’t Schwarzenegger. And Peter Kent was in fact the double for Schwarzenegger on that.

David Read:
That’s wild. He played a part.

Peter DeLuise:
If you put two and two together.

David Read:
That’s amazing, man. I’m trying to remember if he was the one– There was someone, I remember someone got– In that episode they got stabbed, and they just pulled it out and kept on fighting, and I’m trying to remember if that was him or if that was someone else. That episode was absolutely wild, but it’s one of my favorites. You had David Palffy …

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, David Palffy.

David Read:
… who, just the presence of this guy alone. Sokar had been built– “Serpent’s Song,” again. We have him introduced in this one, and you get to carry it further. And then they kill him, you know? It was one of those– I’m expecting …

Peter DeLuise:
Why did they?

David Read:
… the next Apophis, and that was the reversal.

Peter DeLuise:
Or did they? Yes. Not unlike the Emperor in Star Wars. He was this, “He’s not dead.” “He’s not dead?” “What do you mean he’s not dead?” “How is he not dead?” “Well, he’s just not. That’s how powerful he is.”

David Read:
That’s it.

Peter DeLuise:
A couple of things about Sokar, starting with: Sokar in Egyptian mythology is like right up there with the big boys. The thing about Egyptian names is they don’t have any vowels, and so you have to fill them in.

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
Sokar is, when you break it down and you look at it in hieroglyphics, is really just the sound of S, the K, and the R. And then it’s up to you to sort of fill in what the vowels are. So, it could have been Seker, or some other thing. And a lot of Egyptologists went ahead and decided, “We’re just gonna call him Sokar,” ’cause that’s what– Of course, if you have an Egyptian accent, it sounds very different. We took on what was the accepted pronunciation of what Egyptologists were saying. Because of the filled-in vowels. So, that was the first thing. Then it was, “OK, how weird is this guy gonna look?” Like, “How cool is he gonna look?” And the thing about Goa’uld was they had always occupied interesting bodies, i.e., they were lovely to look at, or they had a good, strong build, ’cause they were essentially just a vessel for the Goa’uld to transport themselves in, right? And so, why would they take a lesser person if they could be super handsome, or super strong, or have a lot of brain matter or something like that? And one of the things that came up was, I think Robert came up with this early on, and then– Was it Anubis who was rotting? Whose skin started to come off of their face?

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
OK. So, Robert explained this to me, and I was like, “Oh, OK, I see.” Is that whatever the Goa’uld inside this particular human was, it was overwhelming the host body, and it was causing it to degenerate, right? And–

David Read:
Sokar’s body, the host’s body.

Peter DeLuise:
And then eventually Anubis. Anubis more than Sokar, but Sokar, if you remember, he had the veins and the weird eyes. I’m gonna talk about the eyes in a second. So, he was very intense looking. It wasn’t just, you wouldn’t mistake him for somebody else if you were walking down the street.

David Read:
And the only Goa’uld with red eyes.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. So, the eyes were a byproduct of me saying, “Well, he should have really intense-looking eyes if we’re gonna go veiny and distressed-looking.” And the eyes, if you look at them really, really closely, are in fact a tip of the hat to Darth Maul. It’s the same kind of colored eyes as Sokar. And that was because no one could agree on what the most evil-looking eyes were. ‘Cause some people might say, “How about all white with a tiny pinprick for a pupil? That’s pretty scary.”

David Read:
That is scary.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s kinda– But no one agreed– There was not a blanket agreement to what was the scariest thing. So, I stopped the meeting in the concept phase and I said, “Hey, George Lucas and his team of people have had years to figure out what the scariest eyeball combination is.” And then I think I pulled up a picture of Darth Maul and I said, “And this is what they came up with. So, why don’t we just, as an Easter egg, come up with the same color scheme, and then later we can talk about Sokar has Darth Maul eyes.”

David Read:
It’s a Sith trait.

Peter DeLuise:
Some people have Bette Davis eyes, Sokar had Darth Maul.

David Read:
That’s right. The Sith, once they– Anakin did the same thing once he went completely– Once they’re consumed by evil you have the sunset kind of eye there. And it’s definitely really a cool nod.

Peter DeLuise:
That happened, I think our episode probably happened before Anakin was made over. But Robert Cooper was an avid fan of the Star Wars series. So, there was a lot of similarities between him and the Emperor, and also, Tatooine?

David Read:
Yeah. The desert planet?

Peter DeLuise:
The cultural stuff. The bounty hunter–

David Read:
Aris Boch.

Peter DeLuise:
Sam Jones, Aris Boch, the bounty hunter. There was bits and bobs of things where he was influenced by things in Star Wars where you’re like, “Hey, maybe we should incorporate this.” And that– that wasn’t by accident. It was such a great foundational thing to go off of.

David Read:
How much direction– I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Peter DeLuise:
The other thing that was interesting about Sokar, after the eyes and the veins and the hood, and of course, the hood, you don’t want the hood to go, “I am so evil. I– Oh, hold on a second. Yep, there we go.” The hood had to have a frame, a wire in it, and it had to be just so, and it couldn’t move. And also, it was, OK, you’re in your throne room. What are you doing? What are you doing here? What, are you just sitting around doing crossword puzzles until your lieutenants and your evil minions come and give you a report?

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
I was actually thinking about this ’cause a lot of times, actors are, they have to figure out what they’re doing, what’s their moment before, as they call it. So, are they, are they coming in from outside? Are they, are they cooking themselves, are they cleaning up their dishes from having just eaten a meal? What, what are they, what is happening the moment before? And I was, “Well, there’s nothing in this throne room. There’s just this candle. There’s just this flame.” And I was, “What if you were just moving your fingers through the flame as your moment before, as something that you could be doing?” ‘Cause your Netflix subscription has expired. I don’t know.

David Read:
Or it’s buffering. Exactly.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s buffering. I don’t think–

David Read:
But I mean, ’cause it’s hell. Flame.

Peter DeLuise:
Netflix wasn’t even a thing back then.

David Read:
It wasn’t.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, yes. But because he was the overseer of Hell and it was flame, it seemed like it was the right thing to do. That’s why we had him playing with the flame as his moment before ’cause I was like, “We can’t figure out what he– What is he doing in the throne room the entire time?” I’m sure they have the same problem in Game of Thrones. What is he doing? What are they doing?

David Read:
It’s not like a bridge of a ship. That’s what I’m curious about because unless you’re in there receiving a guest, you’re probably not there. But on the bridge, literally, what are they doing all day if they’re at warp speed going from place to place over days for sure. How much of that performance was suggestions and direction to Dave, and how much of it was him? When the hood finally comes down, it’s interesting that both Sokar and Anubis have hoods. And I always wondered before Anubis was revealed if there was gonna be some kind of Sokar-like, “Why is it David Palffy again?” He was just that good. When the hood comes down, the chin is that, you are so beneath me that I’m just gonna lean forward here and we’re gonna talk like this, and no one …

Peter DeLuise:
That’s interesting.

David Read:
… be uncomfortable.

Peter DeLuise:
Something comes to mind when you say that. There was the fellow in the original Star Trek who was, remember he got super smart and he had to wear those silver things.

David Read:
Gary Mitchell, because of the eyes.

Peter DeLuise:
And he said that because of the contact lenses that he was forced to wear, he couldn’t see them very well, and he was forced to raise his head up this way.

David Read:
That’s right, and it worked.

Peter DeLuise:
A bit of a Mussolini moment there where he sticks his chin out? And he said it was just a lucky accident ’cause that’s the only way he could see them with those weird contacts, and he put his chin up. And I have that information in my head, and I don’t know if I shared that with David Palffy, but I don’t wanna take away any of his thunder, but David Palffy is an excellent actor anyway, and his voice, his voice is very powerful, and he adopted that Mid-Atlantic thing that he was doing. And he had done tons of voiceover at that point. And Palffy, my God, Palffy is, you wouldn’t know it to look at him in that robe, but he was also, he had just muscles on his muscles.

David Read:
Yes, he did.

Peter DeLuise:
So, he was just so right for the part in so many different ways. His instrument being his body and his voice, and his look and his stillness. If you’re gonna play a powerful character, you wanna be as still as possible and let the people imprint on you. You don’t wanna use a bunch of random movement to give away your power. So, the stillness invariably gets interpreted as power. ‘Cause you don’t have to have the, “Hmm, let me think about that. I’m gonna be evil.” You just–

David Read:
It’s the same note that James Earl Jones gave Christopher Judge. “Don’t move unless you must.”

Peter DeLuise:
Yes.

David Read:
“Make every move a deliberate choice.” And there’s power …

Peter DeLuise:
Excellent advice.

David Read:
… there. There’s intimidation in there. It’s like …

Peter DeLuise:
Totally.

David Read:
… when I move, people will notice that way. And he was just that presence in the background, even if you had to invent Kelno’reem for him. So, “Are you sleeping?” That’s how Chris imitates you.

Peter DeLuise:
Great job.

David Read:
Lo and behold, a few episodes later, “Kelno’reem? What is this?” Jeez, man. Gosh, what a good story. William DeVry?

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, Aldwin.

David Read:
Back with him, Aldwin. Yes. And not daggers this time.

Peter DeLuise:
No. We had an excellent backstory, William DeVry and I. We were both on seaQuest. And we both played G.E.L.F.s. I was the prototype, the original, so I was a little bit slower than the rest of the–

David Read:
“I’m not a freak. I’m a prototype.”

Peter DeLuise:
“I’m the prototype.” And he and I had a discussion. We were, during the shooting of the episode– So, we were G.E.L.F.s, genetically engineered lifeforms, and they, we were products of the Dark Age of Genetics. And so, we–

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
We were also referred to as the bad word or the slight they would– If you were from the DAG, the Dark Age of Genetics, you were a Dagger. And that was the–

David Read:
That’s where that came from.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
The Dark Age of Genetics. And so, that was something mean to say to a G.E.L.F., that he was a Dagger, he was less than. And so, William DeVry and I wore very mottled skin. In fact, I’m just gonna grab this as an example because it’s right here in my office.

David Read:
Oh, is this your– We’ve seen the, you- you have the …

Peter DeLuise:
Yes.

David Read:
… what they use to make sure to airbrush you the same every time.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right.

David Read:
I love this.

Peter DeLuise:
So, I had to do a life cast. This is a little– where we started.

David Read:
It’s so creepy.

Peter DeLuise:
This is the map of my skin tone. Now, they didn’t do this for everybody.

Peter DeLuise:
Most of the other G.E.L.F.s had pictures taken of them, but because they weren’t gonna continue throughout the series, but I was. The excuse for this was these were all the various skin tones that were naturally occurring on planet Earth with human beings in the premise of seaQuest. They mottled the skins to act as a natural camouflage always. OK, so my ear always had to be this color. These things couldn’t move. The skin always had to be exactly the same. So, they would use this as a reference, and it would be right next to me, and then they would paint my head this exact way. William also had this all over his body, so they had way more skin showing. There was a couple of episodes where I actually had to wax my entire body and show more skin, but for the most part, it was just …

David Read:
Your navy suit.

Peter DeLuise:
… my hands, my– I had a janitorial worker’s outfit on. He had to go through what I had to go through. But he didn’t shave his head, so it just went to his hairline. There were many people there, and they were swimming and doing tai chi and all sorts of really fun stuff to give you an example of what they were capable of. The whole idea was that their right to life, or their ability to exist and to have civil rights, were being denied because they weren’t being treated as actual human beings. They were being treated as what I refer to as HAC, the Human Assisted Combat. I had a T-shirt underneath my thing that had the letters HAC.

David Read:
That’s what that was.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s what HAC, the Human Assisted Combat, which, in fact, was a T-shirt that I had on hand when I came to the show, and I convinced the production designer to use it underneath my coveralls. And it was actually the Hollywood Athletic Club was the shirt that I had, and what happened was eventually, we were gonna have to see it. And I only had a couple of them, I think, and so they switched it so that it said H.A.C. Underneath where my zipper came to a close, which you couldn’t see, They eventually wrote the words Human Assisted Combat. So, it made sense if you ever did end up seeing it, the HAC would come in.

David Read:
They were camouflaged.

Peter DeLuise:
And that was because I had superhuman strength and wasn’t very smart, I was, “Well, I should have some wristbands for wrist support if I’m gonna be lifting heavy weights.” And I also had the, if you remember, the weight belt, the compression for my torso. Those were all things, because if I had to lift heavy weight, I was gonna need those things to help me out, and that’s why I had those particular things.

David Read:
You had to have been 280. I mean, you were a brick wall for that role.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, I had to be, and I was actually fighting with my weight, and halfway through the season, we went on break, and I ended up going to a much more strict diet to try to get my weight under control. But because I had the belt on, it forced me to– I had no choice but to sit upright and watch my posture.

David Read:
OK, so it made you stand more, at attention.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. But William, by contrast, was like a gazelle. He had 8% body fat, and he just looked beautiful with his shirt off. He was hawk-like, and his mottled skin looked excellent. There was a whole bunch of really gorgeous-looking people that they had found locally. Most of them were local. The lead G.E.L.F., she ended up marrying–

David Read:
Let me see here.

Peter DeLuise:
Andromeda, the lead from Andromeda.

David Read:
Kevin Sorbo.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. She was the lead–

David Read:
Sam Sorbo, Mariah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. She was the leader of the G.E.L.F. resistance. And then I was the prototype, but I wasn’t with that group. I was separate from that group. And eventually, what solved the entire problem, which I thought was a pretty clever thing, and I’m overselling it now. I realize this is about Stargate and not about SeaQuest.

David Read:
No, I love talking about SeaQuest.

Peter DeLuise:
One of the G.E.L.F.s had spontaneously not only gotten pregnant but given birth. And that wasn’t supposed to happen. The fact that they could not procreate was a reason that the human beings were giving that the G.E.L.F.s were not entitled to civil rights because they could not procreate. And then by spontaneously procreating, the idea, the concept was maybe stolen from sci-fi itself. But it’s a thing that proves that you deserve–

David Read:
You can make more of yourselves.

Peter DeLuise:
If you remember Jurassic Park, it was, “Hey, what happened? Aren’t they all the same sex? How could they possibly procreate?”

David Read:
African frog DNA.

Peter DeLuise:
So, once they went, “Well, now we have to be, we have to– They’re not just monsters. They’re not just genetic monster constructs. They’re actually living beings that deserve some sort of consideration and respect. So, I remember thinking that was really great– They even had a little baby, and of course they couldn’t use the PAX, that it was PAX paint mixed with medical adhesive. And medical adhesive is something that you use to stick like a colostomy bag on your skin. So, it doesn’t come off very easily. But it’s biological. It’s not something that’s toxic, not gonna hurt you.

David Read:
Isn’t that David’s daughter?

Peter DeLuise:
Who?

David Read:
The baby in the SeaQuest Season Two episode that was– I thought that was the baby with the dental issues.

Peter DeLuise:
Do you actually know the name of the little baby?

David Read:
Wasn’t that David’s little girl?

Peter DeLuise:
No. I wish it was. That little baby was , in fact, similar to my niece, you’re saying.

David Read:
I just wondered if that was her.

Peter DeLuise:
So, that was not my niece. The reason that you might have invoked my niece was because that was one of the ways I came up with my speech pattern. So, when my brother would ask his daughter to speak, he would say, “Say, say mama.” And she’d go, “Mm, dada.” And it was that ‘mm,’ that pre-sound of getting your vocal cords warmed up before you spoke, that I stole that from her. And I’d say, “Mm, I don’t like you.”

David Read:
Oh, man. What a character.

Peter DeLuise:
“Mm, You’re not a good man.”

David Read:
That’s right. “It was a mm bad thing.” Now, if you haven’t seen SeaQuest, folks, especially Season Two, each season is its own thing. You can watch them one at a time. I love them all for completely different reasons. But it’s great. It’s a great show.

Peter DeLuise:
I think it’s a fun show. And you know what? I lost the plot on the William DeVry thing.

David Read:
We were talking about William DeVry. It’s OK.

Peter DeLuise:
So, eventually, what happened was William was in Florida, and he said, “What do you think I should do? Should I stay here? Should I go to LA?” I think somehow I knew he was Canadian, and I said, “Before I got this job, I was very successful in getting work in Vancouver after I did 21 Jump Street, I ended up going back there.” And this is in the old days when they allowed you to do this, and I would audition as a local, and if I did get a job, I would have to go down to the border and reenter the country, and get a work permit and then come back in, and I would– I was an out-of-country local, as it were. So, I was providing my own money for my room and board. But they were hiring me as an out-of-country person. They don’t allow that anymore. You can’t just sneak that in. You have to get permission from the …

David Read:
Completely different.

Peter DeLuise:
… union now. But it made sense before because the production was relatively new back then, and they acknowledge that they didn’t have enough people to cover all the bases. But now they’re saying, “No, we’re good. If you wanna bring in some Americans, we’re gonna have to see some parity here.” They got a handle on that. William DeVry, a little while later, I was in White Rock eating lunch on the boardwalk there. There’s this strip in White Rock where there’s a whole bunch of restaurants. I was eating at a desk and there was a glass partition between our table and the people on the sidewalk. I’m sitting there, and here walks William DeVry. “Hey, Will DeVry, what are you doing here?” I said, “I came here because you told me to.” I said, “That’s very fascinating.” This was a year or two later. And he says, “Yeah, I’m up here now. I’m acting and I’m trying to get some work.” And I said, “That’s fantastic.” And I think I may have submitted his name or by sheer coincidence he ends up auditioning for the part, and I probably was anxious to work with him again, as …

David Read:
For sure.

Peter DeLuise:
… the recurring Tok’ra Aldwin.

David Read:
That’s right. Man, small world. Vancouver was so much smaller than it is now. But it wasn’t exactly that tiny then. That’s a great story. No, he’s awesome. We had him on earlier this year and he was just terrific.

Peter DeLuise:
What was his symbiote name?

David Read:
We never–

Peter DeLuise:
It’s just Aldwin?

David Read:
I think Aldwyn was–

Peter DeLuise:
We never find out.

David Read:
We don’t hear him talk very much. We don’t know what their two names were, I don’t believe. But another one with a symbiote, Musetta Vander in “Crossroads.”

Peter DeLuise:
Musetta Vander, yes.

David Read:
And Teryl Rothery relates the story of Don’s coming into his first scene with her, and he’s, “Hey, everybody, how you doin’? My God, you’re a beautiful woman.”

Peter DeLuise:
That’s exactly what– That’s so funny. She was a great observer of Don, and she has so many great stories about Don and the– What is it? It’s the Viagra story from when they went up for the convention.

David Read:
He didn’t tell her that.

Peter DeLuise:
Did she tell you the Viagra…?

David Read:
Teryl did. Teryl told me that story. You’re talking about Teryl.

Peter DeLuise:
Teryl is such a great storyteller, and the stuff that she had with Don, ’cause they–

David Read:
Father and daughter.

Peter DeLuise:
They had an enormous amount of scenes together, because there was a–

David Read:
Because they shot special features with them in character.

Peter DeLuise:
Not only did they shoot special features, but for the same reason they shot the special features, when they had certain episodes that were under time, which happened not often, but sometimes. It fell to them to create those …

David Read:
Moments.

Peter DeLuise:
… time fillers, for lack of a better word, where Teryl and Don would go over what had happened, what was happening, and they would do a debrief between themselves on what was going on, because they needed to make the time for the episode. You say, “Why are these two people talking to each other?” And so, on, and the unfortunate answer was because they were under time …

David Read:
They were short.

Peter DeLuise:
… and they needed to– They were a little bit short.

David Read:
I’m thinking back and I can’t think of one moment where I’m, “Well, this is an extra scene.” We ate it all up. They were great.

Peter DeLuise:
Because the quality of the writing was well done. So, he’s, “Is this new information? No. Hey, maybe here’s a little bit of extra information,” which would’ve separated it from sheer back sell exposition, which was, “Now, here’s a little bit of information that might be interesting for the enjoyment of the story.” And that speaks to the quality of the writing if you didn’t know it was a time filler scene.

David Read:
I know that there was a similar situation at the beginning of “Nemesis,” 322, after Michael had his appendix taken out, and supposedly much of the dialogue between Michael and Rick in that opening beat is just ad-lib. “Did you get your hair cut?” “Yeah, why?” “No reason. Can I see your scar?” “No.” It’s such a Daniel thing to say. They knew these characters inside and out. Musetta, she was fantastic in this episode. The CG Goa’uld, you guys had been kinda dialing around, what do these things look like? I mean, the one that Hathor had was enormous. “OK, where is this going to fit in with some of the shots?” You’re figuring out the CGI as you’re going along. This one, they– I guess all the Goa’uld don’t have to look exactly alike. The look refined over the years. Where was–

Peter DeLuise:
You mean, in the same way that Klingons refined over the years?

David Read:
From one regime …

Peter DeLuise:
I’m joking.

David Read:
… to the next, that’s another conversation–

Peter DeLuise:
Those are Klingons?

David Read:
Exactly. The big bulbous heads and everything. No, but–

Peter DeLuise:
You’re not wrong that the Goa’uld needed to, when it was a practical Goa’uld, and it was Hathor in the bubble bath? Or the Jacuzzi bath.

David Read:
That they’re the larva and then the bigger larva and then the queens and, yeah, they’re all different kinds too.

Peter DeLuise:
I guess you could potentially write it off as the difference has a lot to do with their age or their maturity.

David Read:
That’s true.

Peter DeLuise:
Not unlike an Unas becomes more and more. With the Unas, they have little chin horns and then they have massive chin horns. And then, that’s just any deer or a rhino or a thing, your horns get bigger.

David Read:
That’s it.

Peter DeLuise:
Are you horny? Do I make you horny?

David Read:
Yeah, I need to work on ’em. I’m hoping they’ll grow in one of these days.

Peter DeLuise:
I guess you could describe it away as if it was a rubber, a practical one, and we had one in “First Ones” where you had to catch it out of the air and snap it in half.

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
You remember that?

David Read:
And the blue blood.

Peter DeLuise:
Then if you’re gonna animate one, it’s gotta be more live and it can’t just be a half-dead rubber thing. It’s gotta make sense. And I think because it was so early in our CG experiences, the hole that we made wasn’t very big. And we were grabbing and pulling at her tunic …

David Read:
Abdomen.

Peter DeLuise:
… or shirt, as an interactive way in which the thing was wiggling around, and I was like, “This seems somewhat random. Are you sure we should be wiggling this shirt?”

David Read:
Cut away to Rick grimacing anytime you need, “Oh, I hate it when this happens.” That’s so funny.

Peter DeLuise:
But if something’s gonna be crawling on you, the thing should move, but there should be a rhyme or reason to why it’s moving that way. You shouldn’t grab it and pull at it. There was, “What part of its body is pushing against that at this point?”

David Read:
Less is more.

Peter DeLuise:
How does that make sense?

David Read:
And Peter Wingfield, this was his first episode …

Peter DeLuise:
He’s amazing.

David Read:
… as Tanith as well.

Peter DeLuise:
Did you ever see him on Highlander?

David Read:
I’m sure I did, but I didn’t know that it was him then. I haven’t watched Highlander since I was young.

Peter DeLuise:
What a commanding presence.

David Read:
I know.

Peter DeLuise:
He’s just amazing.

David Read:
He’s so good. I wish there was so much more of him. But he had a great arc in Season Four, it was, I guess it was really only– Was it only two episodes? But it felt like it was so much more. He came back obviously in Season Five. There was something so sinister, and through the smile. He was an early Ba’al in that regard, but he’s, “I’m taking my time,” with that British voice. It’s like, “Oh, of course you’re evil.” Tanith was terrific.

Peter DeLuise:
I agree. He was a powerhouse. And the idea that …

David Read:
He converts.

Peter DeLuise:
… Musetta Vander’s character thought that she had gotten through to him, and he was way smarter than that, and, “You’re not, you didn’t turn me. You hadn’t turned me at all.” And then a lot of times what’ll happen on shows is they have a wait-and-see kind of a feel to them. Falling Skies or Battlestar Galactica or all those multi-cast-member situations where you go, “Let’s see if we like this situation. Let’s see if this actor moves us or inspires us?” And then they write more towards that.

David Read:
Goa’uld Mardi Gras for Cliff Simon. That was half the reason for doing that: “Let’s see if any of these folks will stand out,” and when Cliff comes back in “Abyss,” those first couple of scenes, he was scary. That was good TV.

Peter DeLuise:
You see that the writers will watch, it doesn’t have to be a finished episode. They could watch just dailies and go, “Oh, I see something there. That’s interesting. I’m gonna write more of that.” Claudia Black comes to mind. I think that they were tremendously encouraged by what she was bringing to the table when they said, “Let’s write more of that. Let’s do that some more.”

David Read:
And with jet lag, she really, the stuff that she and Michael pulled out of those scenes was just amazing and ridiculous all at the same time The 100th episode, “Wormhole X-Treme.” What do you remember about the conceptual phase for this? One of the things that Brad always has said is that you guys secretly thought of SG-1 just as a straight-up comedy, and so 100 and “200” were flat-out embraces of that idea. You were in the writers’ room then. What do you remember going around the table as you guys were approaching 100?

Peter DeLuise:
My brother Michael and I and, and with David, we had done a behind-the-scenes sort of a rom-com called Between the Sheets, which was a riff on the thing when you break open a fortune cookie and you read your fortune and you add the words “between the sheets” at the end. I had experimented a lot with behind-the-scenes shooting of a movie, so I felt like I had a great dry run or a dress rehearsal for what was to come. And when I heard the idea, I was like, “This is a wonderful idea.” And I think Brad or Robert said, “What do you think of Michael for the character that lampoons Richard Dean Anderson?” And I went, “My brother Michael?” Because I couldn’t imagine him as some sort of equivalent. ‘Cause I knew all of it had come from Marty’s forgetful version of it. And so, where there was a woman on the team, there was a woman; a Jaffa, there was a robot. How does this– And where there was a fellow with glasses– How does Richard Dean Anderson, how does Marty think of my brother Michael when he’s thinking of Richard Dean Anderson?

David Read:
Didn’t get to make the last call on the lead, probably.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, of course. He was just a creative consultant.

David Read:
He was overruled.

Peter DeLuise:
He was consulted, and then they ignored him. That was funny, which was, I think, a little poke at me, when Joe and Paul wrote, “I’m a creative consultant,” ’cause I think that was my title back then.

David Read:
Really?

Peter DeLuise:
“We consulted you.” That’s how I started. I wasn’t a fully realized writer. I didn’t have a writer credit. I was a creative consultant. So, they went, I guess they thought that was a funny title and they were poking fun at me. A lot of the things were poking fun at things that I had done on the show. Every silly thing that they had ever thought of, they had a long list of, “If you’re out of phase, how come you don’t fall through the floor?”

David Read:
It’s great, and the stare on everybody’s faces while they compute that and there’s no answer.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, because it was just a film-friendly conceit that everybody went, “Well, we’re just gonna have to do this,” because there is no rhyme or reason to it, that the floor is not the same as a wall. The thing with the fruit where it was …

David Read:
The painted kiwi?

Peter DeLuise:
… with a kiwi. That was something I actually did. I made the props person take a kiwi and put paraffin wax over it so you couldn’t recognize it as something that was from Earth. And I think Joe was the first to catch wind of it and he went, “Why did you do that?” And I went, “Because it’s from another–” Fruit, do you know how much trouble fruit has to go through to become what it is that we eat today? If it developed on another planet it wouldn’t look anything like what– He wasn’t having it. He said, “That’s an apple.” So, when he eats the apple, how like Eden this is, and he eats the thing, it’s a kiwi, that’s Joe poking fun at me for doing that. And I took issue with, what was that wonderful– It was like a World War II planet where they all had rifles that exactly–

David Read:
There’s a couple of instances of that.

Peter DeLuise:
And I went, “What? How in the heck?” The way with all the amount of different ways in which rifles and firearms take. And on our planet alone, how different they look. Why would a rifle look like that on a different planet? And I went, “I can’t believe that you guys said that was OK.”

David Read:
It’s what Rob Fournier had in stock.

Peter DeLuise:
But he could’ve just as easily given them a more exotic, a Chechen rifle or something that you didn’t easily recognize.

David Read:
Dude, you used Super Soakers in this episode, for crying out loud. If there was a will, there was a way.

Peter DeLuise:
Andromeda did that. All the time. Andromeda took toys, children’s toys, and Super Soakers and reconfigured them and painted them over and put little diodes on them and made them look like they were–

David Read:
And Nintendo light guns for “Beneath the Surface.” The “Bigger!” Is that something that you were doing, or is that an exaggerated version of this director?

Peter DeLuise:
That was an exaggerated version.

David Read:
So, you didn’t do that routinely?

Peter DeLuise:
No. Well…

David Read:
Fell between the chain and devil.

Peter DeLuise:
I caught myself many times asking Wray to make the explosions bigger, because it cost me nothing and it just looks cool. But I also had in my head that directors who had nothing better to offer would just say, “Make it bigger,” or, “We’re gonna kill more people,” or, “We’re gonna make this, violence more splashy.”

David Read:
“Harrison, Harrison, faster, more intense.”

Peter DeLuise:
There you go. So, I just thought that’s the kind of dumb thing that would come out of a director’s mouth. And since we’re lampooning everybody and everything.

David Read:
Including Hank Cohen.

Peter DeLuise:
And Hank Cohen lampooned himself, a sexy alien. And I think–

David Read:
Did he have any input into that?

Peter DeLuise:
No. He was–

David Read:
Awesome.

Peter DeLuise:
He took it as a just-deserved punishment for–

David Read:
Ah, that’s great.

Peter DeLuise:
So, he was like, “I’m gonna have to do this, aren’t I?” And they were like, “Yeah, you’re gonna have to do this.”

David Read:
Repeat the line that brought Anise and Freya into life. That was terrific. A good sport.

Peter DeLuise:
I thought so too. And it… the CableACE. “Who else here has a CableACE award?” That’s what I thought. So, that was a direct– But I think Brad had told that joke on himself before, and it was OK to throw that in so that nobody went, “Are you sure you wanna make fun of Brad on this one?” I think Brad maybe even wrote it about himself, or somebody else said, “Hey, you’ve made this joke be– let’s put this in.” Do you remember that one? “Who else here has won a CableACE award?” Which is a–

David Read:
I don’t remember that part– there’s so much stuff in–

Peter DeLuise:
That was the producer. “Oh, look. Looks like a giant spaceship over there.” And he went, “No, we can’t. We have to see the spaceship.” That was his way of trying to get around not seeing the actual spaceship.

David Read:
OK, that makes a lot of sense.

Peter DeLuise:
And then he pulled rank by saying, “Who else has won a CableACE award?” And there everyone was like, “I don’t know why that is the arbiter of why something is correct or not.”

David Read:
How much of the last five minutes of the show was created because the episode was short? Perhaps not at all, or was it–

Peter DeLuise:
It was always gonna be a curtain call for– And Michael Greenburg and Brad Wright were always gonna do a walkaway, sort of to finish it and say, “And thank you very much for–”

David Read:
But then they go to all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And Christian Bocher, it sounds like he’s completely riffing on that. That was funny. That was really funny.

Peter DeLuise:
That came from– I think early on we did think we were gonna be short. Because I’m my father’s son, I was very aware that bloopers, the blooper reel, is always the super fun part of the movie. And I said, “We can’t not do this.” I said, “We should at least attempt to have some bloopers in there.” And I think Brad didn’t hate the idea. And he gave me some direction. He said, “Let’s do this and this and this.” There was way more bloopers in there than we added. And what we didn’t do is we never added what I would refer to as real bloopers. And so, you never did see the actual cast members going up on their lines or blowing a take. Because he did not– Even though we had access to that, he didn’t wanna pull the curtain back quite that far.

David Read:
Brad didn’t?

Peter DeLuise:
No. And I agreed. Even though we had the material, we didn’t use it. And of course that was the right decision, ’cause you don’t wanna betray that. So, one example would be Will & Grace. There was a bunch of sitcoms that ultimately added bloopers at the end, if somebody had trouble. And they were like …

David Read:
Home Improvement.

Peter DeLuise:
… “That’s fine, bro, that’s fine ’cause it’s a comedy.” There was no balance to, “Hey, we’re in trouble and we want you to care this time.” So, every sitcom, we know it’s a show. You can hear the people laughing. So, it didn’t matter in that case. But Brad was absolutely right that we didn’t wanna have real bloopers on the show, because it would betray the impact of next week’s story. You can’t care because of that the next time.

David Read:
On some levels I agree. On others, I think it’s a missed opportunity, particularly, and this may be an urban–

Peter DeLuise:
But it’s not missed because …

David Read:
It is in what I’m about–

Peter DeLuise:
… you get it for the sell-through units. You get it for the special features.

David Read:
But what I’m about to tee up is the–

Peter DeLuise:
OK, go ahead.

David Read:
One of the best bits from the show, in my opinion, is Amanda and Rick on the block of ice trying to dig out the DHD, and Martin had that set up, “You’re supposed to be McGadget, McGimmick, you’re McUseless.” And apparently, I don’t know who it was that said, “OK, that was year one, one and d– We’re not gonna do those anymore.” My understanding is that someone put the kibosh on things like that afterwards.

Peter DeLuise:
That was– You had to plan that. As amazing as Amanda is, I think she had a little bit of warning that that’s what she was gonna say or something like that.

David Read:
For sure. That was a setup.

David Read:
I’d always– I was looking forward to more of those over the seasons as it advanced and it didn’t really happen, other than Lou Diamond Phillips did with one of the Ursini years later.

Peter DeLuise:
Hours are long and it gets– Every once in a while, you need a pick-me-up and that seems like something that you would do. And if everybody is willing to play then great. The actors on Universe were incredibly funny. They had a lovely sense of humor. And a lot of them worked on comedies, before and after that show. So, it doesn’t surprise me that they would cut up quite a bit. The idea that you weren’t allowed to do that, there was a very loose, free-feeling, loose, comedic, but it’s just that whether or not the material would see the light of day, whether it was in good fun or you didn’t wanna punch down or compromise anybody.

David Read:
No. For sure. And they got enough dialogue to remember anyway, so it’s a lot to ask for, “OK, could… By the way, can you screw around for a minute here?” It’s like, “But I’ve got all this stuff. This is a two-hander for most of this episode. Really?”

Peter DeLuise:
Most of the things that you’re seeing in “Wormhole X-Treme” are a collection of weird, or conceits or things, the complaints that the writers had about things that they ended up not liking or ended up getting stuck with. The whole Zat gun thing about it makes it disappear and then they– That was something that they established early on and I think it was “1969” that they hated and they wished they hadn’t done it.

David Read:
The series Season One finale.

Peter DeLuise:
But when they had to make something disappear. And then the Zat had the ability to unlock a door if you shot it.

David Read:
Break locks. Exactly.

Peter DeLuise:
Exactly. And then Michael Shanks just started to hate the thing and because it looked like a phallus he was even more against it. He was like, “I don’t wanna carry this.” And I remember there was at least two times where I asked him, I said, “I need you to have this because I’m reusing a puddle pass-through from ‘1969’ and you had it on your hip.” And then he’s like, “I’m not pulling it out.” I said, “You don’t have to pull it out. I just have to have you wear it because we’re using the puddle pass-through to save on time and money.” So, I ended up using that puddle pass-through several times. Which required them to be wearing the same thing, so continuity.

David Read:
Continuity. Absolutely. You guys did that a couple of times, and the “Urgo” episode is reused from the beginning of “The Fifth Race,” so there’s a chance to save on some dough there and not have to go and reshoot something. You take back the hours, the precious seconds that you’ve got where you can.

Peter DeLuise:
But they also, uh, repurposing a spaceship going by was also– If you animated one shot of a spaceship going by the camera and then you watch it go by the camera, you’d get one use out of the spaceship doing a 180. Then you’d get a second use outta the spaceship just getting right to the camera, right before it starts to turn. You got the two uses. Now, after its turn, you just use the same shot after the spinning, the camera has spun, and you show it going away now. That’s three uses. Now, you flip it, you use the mirror of it, and you use the 180 going the other way, then you use the 180 just the first half, then just the second. Sorry. You got six versions of the same shot. Now, skip ahead to when Brad Wright says, “Hey, what do you think about a spaceship that is not symmetrical and has, it looks like an aircraft gear and just has this, this thing on the one side?”

David Read:
And you can’t flip it. You could flip the cargo ship in “Prometheus.” You couldn’t do that with–

Peter DeLuise:
I immediately said, “Well, it’s not symmetrical anymore. You can’t get those extra uses.” So, six became three shots. You could only use the three shots instead of the six shots once you made the ship not symmetrical ’cause you wouldn’t be able to see that the tower had gone from one side to the other.

David Read:
Geez. The amount of ways that you guys came up with for cost cutting, it’s just extraordinary. But you had to do that because– It wasn’t like you were starved of money, but you wanted to maximize everything.

Peter DeLuise:
No, but there was money.

David Read:
You wanted to maximize the dollar.

Peter DeLuise:
There was a lot of money. But it wasn’t feature money, it wasn’t feature film money. We still shot seven, eight, nine, ten pages a day. It wasn’t like feature movie when I’d see …

David Read:
Ten pages.

Peter DeLuise:
… Tarantino complaining about the fact that he’s gotta shoot a whole scene in three days. Oh, you poor thing. That’s terrible. No. Interesting side note is that in Seattle there’s a museum of popular culture. And–

David Read:
We sold the Stargate there. The first Propworx auction was there.

Peter DeLuise:
That would explain why I saw all those wonderful things there. I saw the ray gun from “Wormhole X-Treme” that my brother was carrying.

David Read:
Yes. We sold that.

Peter DeLuise:
I saw Ronon’s gun on display as well.

David Read:
That’s right. Yes. No, they’ve got the Stargate somewhere. They got the location Gate.

Peter DeLuise:
And they have Kirk’s original captain’s chair there too.

David Read:
They do indeed, absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
But I was thrilled and amazed because I was walking through this museum, and suddenly I’m looking at a prop that was handed to me by the prop master and going, “What do you think of this?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s pretty cool.” And my brother ends up wielding it in “Wormhole X-Treme.”

David Read:
You guys– Yeah, the black and gold ray gun.

Peter DeLuise:
And Ronon’s gun, which I had seen many times with him flipping it and– And while I was trying to give him direction and he was easily distracted and he’s flipping it and whipping it like that, and I’d say, “OK, so are we good?” And he’d say, “What?” I’d go, “Oh, God.”

David Read:
Oh, God.

Peter DeLuise:
“You haven’t heard a thing I said because you were flipping your gun around.”

David Read:
Oh, man. No, it was– It’s a great experience. It’s a pop culture museum in Seattle. It’s just at the base of the Space Needle. They’ve got a bunch of Stargate stuff in there. Was wondering whenever they would put the location Milky Way Gate on display, but I’m not sure if they ever have. But there’s all kinds of Stargate stuff in there as well. We sold 3 or 400 pieces over the course of two days. And you guys are a part of sci-fi history. It only makes sense that a few of those pieces would pop up behind glass. But I’m sure it’s still a hoot to go, “Oh, look. I remember that.” So, cool stuff.

Peter DeLuise:
Do they have any of those, do they have any of those pieces you have in the background there?

David Read:
Some of these are one of a kind. I’m gonna have to think. I don’t remember what all they bought. The location Stargate is the one thing that I remember they bought because it was 75 grand before the buyer’s premium. They paid 75 grand for the location Stargate, but there was no pedestal with it. They would have to rebuild the steps for it or something. But, yeah, it’s a great piece. We were supposed to have it for the first live auction, and that was the exact same week that SGU Season Two was filming on Langara in, and I never remember the name of the episode, for when they go back to the Milky Way galaxy in the episode “Seizure.” The exact same week. And Mark Davidson came down the week before with one of his guys to count all the pieces, and then a truck came and took it away. We were supposed to have it there for the live auction. It was like, timing, man. It’s 100 miles north. But you do what you can. And the nice thing was we didn’t have to ship it up there because it was already there, so it just transferred from Vancouver to Seattle.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s awesome.

David Read:
I’ve got some fan questions for you if you’ve got a little bit more time.

Peter DeLuise:
Sure, sure.

David Read:
All righty. Kevin Weaver: “Do you have any fun stories, Peter, from the episode of Supernatural that you guest starred in? It was fun to see you being a bad guy.”

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, yeah. That was a– The reason I was there was because of Kim Manners. Kim Manners was a producer. He’s since passed away. An incredible, a very talented man. He directed the pilot of 21 Jump Street and many episodes since then. So, I had some history with them, and I think he– It was his idea to bring me out to play this agent. And I think in his mind, what gave me credibility was that I was a little bit recognizable, and so it was improbable that I was a demon or I was gonna, spoilers alert, I was a demon or I was gonna die quickly. And so, they had me in, put a suit on, I came out, and I’ve been waiting. The demon that is in my body has been waiting to be contacted by these guys, and once I get notified, I go out and then I try to kill them. And I had to wear what they call sclera, all black contact lenses over the entirety of my eye.

David Read:
Oh, ’cause you’re possessed.

Peter DeLuise:
‘Cause I was possessed, and I had a tiny little dot so I could see, so that was interesting ’cause I had never done it myself, but I had directed many actors who had done it before, and I was like, “Oh, so this is what it’s like.” You feel incredibly vulnerable ’cause this is all you can see. It’s just that one part ahead of you. Also, I think at one point they say an incantation over me, and the demon is purged from me, and the way that the demon comes out of you is you basically, you vomit it up, and all these– Did you ever see The Green Mile? You remember all the–

David Read:
It’s basically pestilence.

Peter DeLuise:
OK, so the pestilence comes out, and I had to scream and flail, screaming with my mouth open, and they had the thing– And I always remember that Rob Fornier was there.

David Read:
Really? There would’ve been a lot of guns in Supernatural.

Peter DeLuise:
Rob Fornier was there, and there was a gun. My job as a character was I was going to execute them. They were trapped in the cell and I was going to shoot them with a gun. And, of course, there’s always some silly bit of choreography where somebody with a gun sort of brings it around, and the guy whacks it out of his hand, and I was like, “Well, how am I not gonna kill them if they’re stuck in a cell and I’ve got a gun and I’m out here? How are they going to defeat me?” And the answer was, you stick the gun through the bars so that they can grab it and then go. And then, of course, the question comes, why would I do that? And the answer is always, so they can disarm you.

David Read:
That’s it.

Peter DeLuise:
Not because it makes sense. When– Go ahead.

David Read:
One of my favorite moments from the original Stand, Mick Garris’s, is Lloyd Henreid is trying to shoot, um, My Favorite Martian, and it ricochets off the bars, and Randall Flagg goes, “What are you– Are you– You’re standing right in front of him.” So, it just makes sense to give the heroes a chance to grab the gun.

Peter DeLuise:
I guess there’s that. I didn’t want it to ricochet off the bars, so that’s why I did it that way. So, and it did that, and I think I remember that because the bars were not that far apart, it was a bit of a deal, and when they were disarming me, I got my arm wrenched a little bit, and I had to say the safe word. I had to say, “Cinnamon, cinnamon, cinnamon.” Hold on a second.

David Read:
Cinnamon. Jeez, man.

Peter DeLuise:
Whatever your safe word is.

David Read:
Whatever your safe word is, there you go.

Peter DeLuise:
Puppies, puppies. I don’t know.

David Read:
Raj Luthra wanted to know, looking back on your career as a director, is there anything that you do or know or are strategic about now that, you know what, if you could give yourself one note that you would’ve given to the younger version of you who was directing? I’m curious.

Peter DeLuise:
One note. Early on in my career, what happens is when you start directing, you start to spin and you think, “I’ve got to solve all these problems, and how could I possibly do it all?” So, there’s this: take it easy. The prep is this long, you have this much time to figure out what the issues are, one day at a time. We’ll fix today’s problems today and tomorrow’s problems tomorrow. And also, the idea that you have to know everything. You’re surrounded by a team of really, really smart people who have been doing this for a really long time, and they’ve got tons of experience on knowing what works and what doesn’t work. And when they ask you a question, instead of you thinking, “Well, I’ve got to tell them, they seem to know better than I do, but I’m gonna tell them,” an excellent way is just allow yourself to say, “I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to this question, but I’m willing to listen to your feedback,” or, “Do you have any suggestions?” And then, just like Kirk did in Star Trek, he would take this and then he would get recommendations from his crew and then he would make a decision. Which made him an excellent team leader. So, I would say, before I realized this, it’s OK to say, “I don’t know,” because the crew knows. You’re not fooling anybody.

David Read:
You can’t know everything. OK.

Peter DeLuise:
But the crew knows you don’t know what you’re talking about if you– In the first five minutes, when you block a scene, when you first walk out onto the floor and you block a scene, the crew’s sitting there and saying, “OK, let’s see what he does. OK, he’s got these people with their face towards the camera, great. And now– OK, he’s got that. OK, he’s got– Oh, now he’s–”

David Read:
This is not their first rodeo. How’s he gonna handle this?

Peter DeLuise:
Now he’s sending an actor all the way over there. But that’s a whole extra setup that’s unnecessary. If that actor was just here, we would know he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or he does know what he is. So, you’re not fooling them. Within the first five minutes, they know if you know what you’re doing in terms of blocking and what your experience level is. Or if you’re willing to, what do you call it, improvise. If you can improvise and overcome, and if you’re a problem solver, that’s great. So, I guess the short answer would be it’s OK to say I don’t know, ask everyone around you, they got tons of experience. Just because they make a suggestion doesn’t mean you have to take it, but you would do well to listen to the advice of the people around you.

David Read:
How many ADs did you normally operate with?

Peter DeLuise:
Well, you’ve got the first AD and then he’s got his team of people. The second and the third and then TAD, the training AD.

David Read:
Is it their job– Are you able to lean on them or is it more of a back and forth of leaning on each other or dividing and conquering …

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, in terms of schedule–

David Read:
… in terms of responsibilities?

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, so an assistant director, his main function is to keep everything moving and to disseminate information. And so, he’s not actually coming up with shots or shot designs, really. Some assistant directors will, as a side thing, make a suggestion. But they’re mostly there to keep you on track and on time. Because it is–

David Read:
I thought that’s what the line producer did.

Peter DeLuise:
The line producer’s job is to hire and fire and do budget considerations. Many ADs become a line producer. But the first AD’s job is to break down the script and come up with a schedule and figure out what you’re gonna shoot on what day.

David Read:
Wow, that’s their job. OK.

Peter DeLuise:
And then they stand right next to you and they say, “Is this the last shot in the scene? Yes,” OK. “Warm up so-and-so for the next scene.” Great. And then you get the last shot and say, “OK, send, travel the actors.” And then they’re standing there. You finish the scene, now you’ve got the actors for the next scene and you’re gonna block the next scene. So, they’re keeping everything tickety-boo.

David Read:
They’re your wingmen.

Peter DeLuise:
Absolutely. A first AD often will say, “I’ve scheduled this much material for this day. Do you feel that this is achievable?” And you can talk it through and you can say, “This is too much work,” or, “I think we can achieve this within the allotted timeframe.” Because everyone catches hell if you go over your allotted 12-hour day. Because then you’re getting into …

David Read:
Huge money.

Peter DeLuise:
… ridiculous overtime. And you don’t wanna do that. So, if you’ve scheduled too much work, you wanna be able to move the work around, but the locations dictate what you’re gonna shoot on which days. And then you don’t wanna move because ‘move’ is a four-letter word. And every time you move the unit, that’s time that you don’t have actors in front of the camera. So, what you wanna do is– And Brad was a genius about this. He would say, “We only have a half a day with these locations. And what we really should have, and this is an exotic location, what we really should have is a full day. And so, we need to write more scenes for that location, or none at all. Or move all of the scenes from this half day to a totally different place so that we can make a full day somewhere else.” So, he was really, really smart about that kind of stuff.

David Read:
And locations came in handy with that, too. If there was a house and a school, shot in the same episode, they were very generally on the same street, based on what Lynn Smith was saying.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s called marrying locations. So, if you had two different houses, you might as well shoot in the same house and just in a different spot.

David Read:
Yup, Hammond and …

Peter DeLuise:
And save yourself–

David Read:
… Kinsey. Yup, in “Chain of Command.” Exactly.

Peter DeLuise:
So, you could save yourself the location fee or moving. And as you pointed out, if you had a school, if you knew you had a half day at a school and a half day at a house, you’re gonna wanna have those two things right next to each other. And then now you’re not loading all your equipment from the school into a truck, having the truck drive, and then you unload the truck, and then go into the house. Imagine how much time you’re gonna lose doing that. But if you unload the truck once and all of your dressing room trailers and all of your trucks and all of your circus, what we call the circus, the support equipment, it’s just sitting there. Then you use that as a hub and you say, “Here’s our hub, we go to the school, then we eat lunch, and now we go to the house.” And then in that geographic area, you’ve shot one day. And so, you had to think in those terms. Because it was inconceivable, especially with the size of our units that we would ever move… We couldn’t move. And in fact, I think we never actually moved our stuff, because it was just a bad idea to pack up and go somewhere else.

David Read:
Are we here? We’re here.

Peter DeLuise:
So, we just never did it. So, if we were at a rock quarry and we had three and a half days, we had to either make it three days or four days. We had to add more screen time to that. Because you can’t shoot anything else at a rock quarry other than rocks.

David Read:
It’s a location, that’s it. Just go to your happy place. How much hell was there to pay if you went into overtime too many times? How big a deal was this?

Peter DeLuise:
It was frowned upon. If you didn’t– John Smith wouldn’t shake my hand. Isn’t that crazy? If I–

David Read:
He never raised his voice.

Peter DeLuise:
No, that wasn’t his style. But he was a producer on 21 Jump Street, and he was one of the guys that welcomed me over. He was the main guy who welcomed me over to Stargate. Early on, one of the lessons I learned from watching my dad and Burt Reynolds was they would just leave it rolling. This was in the old days with film where you only had 10 minutes of film. That’s why they have so many wonderful bloopers: they would just leave it rolling. They’d get punchy, they’d get drunk with fatigue and then they would start to try to do a scene. They’d go, “Hold, start over. All right, now say–” “No, I’m laughing, I’m laughing.” “Hold on, hold on, wait. OK, now we get the line.” And that was in lieu of stopping, cutting, putting the makeup on, re-slating, and then starting again. ‘Cause they knew they had about 10 minutes worth of time; because it was actual film going through the camera, they would run out of film.

David Read:
And there’s someone keeping track of all the time codes while you’re going, so you’re good.

Peter DeLuise:
They would leave it going. Why is that different from how they were doing it back then? In the old days, you would say, “I would take one.” I would blow a line, you’d stop. Or an actor would blow a line, you’d stop. “Take two.” Blow a line, stop. “Take three.” Blow a line, stop. “Take four.” It’s not very good. “Take five.” That was a good one. You did five takes to get one good one all the way through, which meant– And then you would only print the one take of it, but you had to do it five times. But my way was, we’ll do the first take and you blow the line, just pick it up and keep going, but then you’re forcing a cut there. It doesn’t really matter, ’cause you could, if you picked it up from the beginning of your line, you could cut away to somebody else and come back. Or, if you never did get the line properly, on the second take, you get it. OK. So, I’ll print one and two. I’ll print two takes instead of waiting till the fifth take to get it right. I printed two takes, and I’m moving on sooner. I don’t have the three extra takes to get to take five. Now imagine seven people around a boardroom table talking, and each one of them needs five takes to get their thing.

David Read:
And they all have a coffee mug.

Peter DeLuise:
Now imagine, instead of that, I just print the first two or three takes and move on. I get the thing from John Smith. He comes down and he goes, “Hey, you’re printing too much material.” And I say, “What do you mean I’m printing too much material?” And he goes, “Well–” And I knew exactly what he meant, but I made him explain it to me. In the column where it says printed material, this number’s much higher than all the other episodes. And I was like, “Yeah, it totally is. I agree.”

David Read:
Was it feet? Was it frames?

Peter DeLuise:
No, printed material. I printed two takes–

David Read:
In terms of the roll of the film. OK. The takes.

Peter DeLuise:
No, I’m talking the print: when you print the material, that costs money.

David Read:
I see, yes.

Peter DeLuise:
So, in the first scenario, take five was one printed take.

David Read:
Got it.

Peter DeLuise:
But it took them five tries to get there.

David Read:
Now I understand. Thank you.

Peter DeLuise:
And mine, I did the first and second take, and I printed them both, but it only took me two tries to get there.

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
You multiply that by seven, that’s several hours of effort, OK? Seven people around a boardroom table. So, I say to John, “Why don’t you crunch the numbers, and at the bottom of that column where it says printed takes, why don’t you compare that to the fact that we didn’t go two hours over, overtime?” Because the boardroom used to go hopelessly over because there were seven people around the table talking. Now, we don’t even think twice about it, because we’re all digital and you can leave it rolling, and I always do. I basically print everything that we do. Because it’s just memory space. It’s not actual film. But in the old days, that was an interesting new strategy, to do it, instead of getting one good take all the way through. And it was something I stupidly picked up as a child watching my dad and Burt Reynolds and them going and going and going and not stopping. So, John Smith would, if I came in under the 12 hours, I’d get the handshake. “Good job, buddy.” And if I didn’t, I’d get the… If I went over the 12 hours, even by a little, I’d get the… He really knew–

David Read:
It’s all the reinforcement.

Peter DeLuise:
He really knew that I was trying to please him so much. I was like, “I just want the handshake at the end.”

David Read:
Of course. Absolutely. I got a couple more and then we’re gonna let you go, OK?

Peter DeLuise:
Of course.

David Read:
OK. David DeLuise’s birthday is coming up November the 11th. cairoiancanuck said, “Any chance you’re gonna meet up with him, or is this gonna be a phone call?”

Peter DeLuise:
David, I live in Vancouver and David lives in Los Angeles. So, we’ll definitely do a FaceTime. He called me for my birthday. My birthday was on the 6th, so I’ve turned 59.

David Read:
Two days ago?

Peter DeLuise:
Yep.

David Read:
Apologies, Peter. Happy birthday.

Peter DeLuise:
Don’t apologize to me. I don’t know when your birthday is.

David Read:
They remember David.

Peter DeLuise:
David’s a fan favorite. Everybody loves David. He’s a sweetie.

David Read:
You’re my fan favorite.

Peter DeLuise:
So, David’s gonna be, I think he’s five years younger than me, so he’s gonna be 54, I think.

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
Either 54 or 55. He’s a Scorpio just like me.

David Read:
There you go.

Peter DeLuise:
And if you think of it, go ahead and say happy birthday to Pete Shanahan slash David DeLuise.

David Read:
S-t-e-v-e-D: “How much convincing did it take to get the Bat’leth into the scene of the gold throne room in “The Other Guys,” or was that–” Though, wait, you didn’t do “The Other Guys.”

Peter DeLuise:
I did not do “The Other Guys.” I think Damien Kindler wrote that–

David Read:
And Martin Wood directed it. I don’t know the details of that. I can’t even remember.

David Read:
Yeah, that’s not your episode. OK, I apologize for that.

Peter DeLuise:
But I wish it was. If I had any information, I would give it to you.

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely. Vegan Peace Rider: “Is there a story that you wanted to tell as a writer that didn’t make the script stage, or perhaps did but we didn’t get to see because it got crowded out?” I know that there was something that became “It’s Good To Be King” where you were wanting to have Michael Welch back. We talked a little bit about it. Actually, no, we didn’t really talk about that at all.

Peter DeLuise:
I think that would’ve been interesting, but–

David Read:
I think it would’ve been great.

Peter DeLuise:
But yeah, it would’ve been the clone of– It was such a loose end to have a clone of RDA out there, and not–

David Read:
I know. It’s a huge… and not wipe his brain.

Peter DeLuise:
Also, this is way before the Me, Too movement, and so he’s essentially a, what is it, 45-year-old man in a teenager’s body. And he looks back at some teenage girls from high school and he goes, “It’s gonna be OK.” And I was like, oh, this is gross. This is like Twilight. Twilight’s gross, but this guy is 100 years old, but he’s making whoopie with a 16-year-old virgin girl.

David Read:
He is, but he’s not.

Peter DeLuise:
What, what’s the end of that sentence? What’s the part where you say …

David Read:
He is old, but he’s–

Peter DeLuise:
… oh, but you save it.

David Read:
He has the experience. So, if he wanted to mistreat someone, he would know what he was doing more than a 16-year-old boy would, or younger, but at the same– I don’t know. It’s still weird.

Peter DeLuise:
Look, if we’re gonna–

David Read:
Semantics?

Peter DeLuise:
If a 60-year-old man was dating a 16-year-old girl, we would say, “Eh, probably that’s not a great idea.” And he’s, what is he, close to 100?

David Read:
Yeah, somewhere around there.

Peter DeLuise:
Wasn’t he, didn’t he have World War I experience? Wasn’t he, isn’t he closely–

David Read:
World War I experience?

Peter DeLuise:
No, I mean, isn’t that part of his existence? When was he turned? I don’t recall–

David Read:
You’re talking Jack? Jack was a Cold War veteran, so…

Peter DeLuise:
I’m talking about the lead character in Twilight.

David Read:
Oh, I’m not sure.

Peter DeLuise:
Twilight. So, he was a vampire.

David Read:
Oh, yeah, OK.

Peter DeLuise:
He doesn’t age. He looks like a little boy.

David Read:
That’s really creepy.

Peter DeLuise:
But he’s 100 years old and he’s dating a 16-year-old. That’s–

David Read:
That’s true.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s what I’ve been on about this whole time.

David Read:
Sorry brother. That completely went over my head. I thought you were talking about Jack.

Peter DeLuise:
No, but I’m drawing a parallel between–

David Read:
I understand.

Peter DeLuise:
He’s 45. Even at 45 it’s gross, so you shouldn’t be dating a 16-year-old.

David Read:
That’s true.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s what I’m talking about. And we just let that fly. I was, “Oh, maybe we should not have done that.”

David Read:
My last question for you: ScottieD wanted to know, how often would you, ’cause Rick was certainly his own beast in this regard, how often would you try to encourage a little bit of room to be left behind for the actors to riff with their characters and to improv? Because it wasn’t like Star Trek where every jot and tittle had to be exactly right.

Peter DeLuise:
No. So, Rick had tremendous latitude to do what, and he would– I think Brad very early on tells this wonderful story of his partnership with Richard Dean Anderson. And they get the script back, the script notes from Richard Dean Anderson. And there’s a check mark next to this line, and then another check mark next to this line, and then another, and they go, “Hey, he really likes–” He’s like, “Yeah, this is good. The check mark means this is good.” And Brad was like, “I don’t think check marks are– I’m just gonna check about the check marks.” And so, he brings the script and he knocks on Richard Dean Anderson’s door and went, “Hey, Richard, I just wanna, just for clarity’s sake, a check is a bad thing. Fix it?” And Richard Dean answers, “Yeah.” So, that was– Richard Dean Anderson, because he was an executive producer and …

David Read:
So, he got the scripts early.

Peter DeLuise:
… Michael Greenberg was there to protect Richard Dean Anderson’s interests. And which was a really, really smart way to deal with it. So, if you have executive producer status and power, it’s hard to wield it if you’re memorizing lines and trying to really– So, he had a whole other person, Michael Greenberg, looking out for his interests. You see how that works? So, if, what’s Adventures in Screen Trade…

David Read:
Adventures in Screen Trade.

Peter DeLuise:
The guy who wrote Princess Bride and– One of his rules is that–

David Read:
William Goldman.

Peter DeLuise:
William Goldman, thank you, is that the lead character should not talk about himself, nor should he talk about anybody else, and ask as few questions as possible. So, Michael Greenberg incorporated this in a really, really strict way. So, Richard Dean Anderson, his character often did not ask questions. If he did ask questions, they were in the pursuit of a joke. But if somebody else could ask that same question, they would. And it was better for him– I don’t think he ever ended up talking about another character. If it was character backstory to be given, it would be anybody else, except for him. And that was straight out of William Goldman that he was incorporating that. So, Michael Greenberg was really smart about making sure that Richard Dean Anderson was being serviced properly, and his character was being dealt with in the right– Because that was their only focus, was the O’Neill stuff. And so, what was my original point? About the pow– oh, so the latitude. If Richard Dean Anderson wanted to change a line, of course, he would have that latitude. And the only thing that would stand in the way of that is: Is the intention the same? Is the scene accomplishing what it had originally set out to do? But he was always very smart about that, and so was Michael Greenberg. So, if we added stuff and we knew we could cut it out, we’d try some stuff. But the idea was, these lines were not just thrown on the page willy-nilly. A fair amount of thought has gone into this. And also, we’re paying off stuff in the future, we’re teeing up stuff in the future that the actor might not know about. So, before you don’t say something, it would be way better if you did say it and you added something that you wanted to, that we may manipulate later. But often, I find that if an actor has too much latitude, they might not understand the use of the line, or it’s a secret to be determined later–

David Read:
You don’t want it to get lost.

Peter DeLuise:
So, you wanna make sure that the actors respect the system, and don’t arbitrarily change stuff. ‘Cause that could really throw the entire mechanism out of whack. Especially if you’re teeing up something for the next episode.

David Read:
That’s it exactly. I’ll never forget Brad saying to me, “If you’re changing it to make it better, great. If you’re changing it to change it, that pisses me off.” And it only makes sense.

Peter DeLuise:
And that would happen more times than we should probably admit, where you would say, “It is changed, it’s not better, it’s just different.”

David Read:
It’s just different. Exactly. Peter, this has been fantastic. My mother invaded the chat. Hi, Mom. “Hi, Peter. I think you’re great. Don’t you put yourself down to your brother. You’re wonderful and adorable. Great show, son.” Thanks, Mom.

Peter DeLuise:
Aw. That’s so sweet. What a sweetie.

David Read:
Appreciate you coming on, man.

Peter DeLuise:
Happy–

David Read:
It’s always a pleasure to have you.

Peter DeLuise:
And it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. I love these chitty-chats that we have. I love what you’re doing.

David Read:
I love that you watch the show. I’m tickled that you are one of our watchers.

Peter DeLuise:
I did. I watched Herbert Duncanson, who summed up the entire episode with the Asimov quote.

David Read:
Once he found his glasses.

Peter DeLuise:
Robert gave him that line, and I was like, “Robert, are you– you wanna– you sure that Herbert Duncanson should– OK, why not?” And he did amazing, and he had that wonderful voice. He hadn’t spoken. Maybe, I don’t know if you remember this. But part of what we were making fun of Chris Judge’s character was he didn’t speak much. He just says, “Indeed.” And not only does he just say, “Indeed,” he can’t even move his own eyebrow up. We had to pull it up with monofilament, so I was teasing him that even that small–

David Read:
And Herbert admitted it.

Peter DeLuise:
Even that small thing, he couldn’t even do.

David Read:
So, good.

Peter DeLuise:
And then Herbert Duncanson, I wish he had told you this, but he was in military service, and he confided in me once, and he said, “I can sleep standing up,” and I went, “No, you can’t sleep standing up.” “I can sleep standing up.” And I said …

David Read:
Prove it.

Peter DeLuise:
… “I don’t know if that’s a talent you should–” You shouldn’t brag about that if you’re in the military either.

David Read:
Or Don bench pressing you.

Peter DeLuise:
My God. He– Yes.

David Read:
Jeez, man.

Peter DeLuise:
He was a beast, Don. Don Davis. I know that for the memorial thing that you put that in, that was something that I shared.

David Read:
I really appreciate that.

Peter DeLuise:
When I had worked with him on 21 Jump Street, and it was like an old friend coming back, and he said, “Hey,” and I think we were five seconds into the pleasantries, and he said, “How much do you weigh?” And I said– I think back then I was about 220 pounds or so, and he goes, “I’m gonna bench press you.” And I said, “What?” And we were in the control room, and remember the stairs at the back? The stairs at the back of the control room?

David Read:
Yep.

Peter DeLuise:
He laid on his back underneath the stairs, and he said, “Stand on my feet,” and I held the banister, or the steps rather, for balance so I wouldn’t fall over, and I stood on his hands, and he pushed all of my 225 pounds up three times, and I was like, “My goodness, you’re …”

David Read:
Ridiculous.

Peter DeLuise:
“… Hercules.” Yes, he had no hair, but he was Hercules.

David Read:
Man. That was a strong guy in so many ways.

Peter DeLuise:
He was.

David Read:
Peter, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Peter DeLuise:
Good times, buddy. Give your mom my best.

David Read:
I will.

Peter DeLuise:
Give her a kiss on both cheeks, French style. Not with the tongue, just on both cheeks.

David Read:
Shudders, shudders. All right, brother, appreciate you. Be well.

Peter DeLuise:
Make sure you get the kiss, Mama.

David Read:
There you go. She’s got it, I know. Peter DeLuise, everyone. Really appreciate you tuning in to the Stargate Oral History Project. I have a class coming up in just a few moments here, so I’m going to get going. My tremendous thanks to my production team here today who pulled this episode off. Lockwatcher, Kevin Weaver, Raj Luthra, you guys made the show possible. Tremendous thanks to my production team, Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, and Jakub. Appreciate all of you guys. We’re gonna be coming back with Kirk Douglas, the special effects technician, not the actor, later on this evening. So, keep an eye out on Dial the Gate for those details. My name is David Read, and I’ll see you on the other side.