10/3/23
Newsletter #477
The Crack of Dawn
In 1993-94, at the very beginning of the eight-year experience of making Hercules then Xena in New Zealand, I ended up staying at the swankiest hotel in Auckland, the Pan Pacific, for six months. Fairly early into my stay at the Pan Pacific, New Zealand hosted their annual Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM), and all of the visiting prime ministers from the other Commonwealth countries stayed at the Pan Pacific. The Commonwealth, by the way, is (or was) the last remaining remnant of the British Empire. Although they were all independent now, these were the last countries to hold on to their ties to the motherland, England. There was (at least), Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Nigeria and South Africa. At some point I was standing in the hotel lobby, just a few feet away from Nelson Mandela and his people. I didn’t bother them, but I stayed right where I was for a while. Mr. Mandela was ten feet away. I could feel that I was in the presence of a great person, probably the most important person I’ve ever been close to.
New Zealand is a wonderful, beautiful, country, loaded with terrific people. It’s population is primarily white people of British heritage; then the indigenous inhabitants, the Maori people; then Pacific Islanders, mostly Samoans and Tongans; then people from all over Asia, who own and run all of the stores and many restaurants. I’ve heard, and I believe, that there are more Tongans and Samoans in New Zealand than in Tonga and Samoa.
New Zealanders are steadfast about certain rules that they will never allow to be broken. One of the rules is: No handguns. Not only do the people not possess handguns, neither do the police. Guess how many shootings they have a year? None, that’s how many. When the prime ministers of the Commonwealth countries arrived for the meeting, all of their secret service people had to surrender their weapons to the authorities. One of the secret service people was quoted as asking, “But what if somebody shoots our prime minister?” The NZ officials replied, “They won’t.” And they didn’t. Over the course of going there regularly for eight years, I don’t recall anyone ever getting shot. You can own a registered rifle there – they hunt wild pigs – but as far as I know, no assault weapons.
Also, New Zealand has no snakes and no poisonous spiders. Whereas Australia has most of the deadliest snakes and spiders. Since I particularly don’t like snakes, and neither did my mother, we were both highly fascinated by them. Mom knew a lot about snakes for a woman who hated snakes (“That’s a Diamondback Rattler common to the southwest . . .”). I’ll bet I’ve watched Steve Irwin’s The Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World ten times. All ten species are located in Australia, which was handy for Steve Irwin, who was nuts. His Crocodile Hunter show was on for years in Australia and New Zealand before it got to America. The late Steve Irwin never used one of those snake rods to catch a snake around the throat, he always grabbed them by the tail and held them out at arm’s length. I must admit, when I heard that he’d been killed by a manta ray I was anything but surprised.
The Pan Pacific Hotel had a well-appointed executive breakfast room on the top floor, and since it was included, I went there every morning. The only other cast member who stayed at the hotel and used the breakfast room was Tawny Kitaen, who played Hercules’s wife, Dianira. Although I was anything but close to Tawny, I did see her many mornings over a long period of time. Apparently, Tawny had been with a member of the heavy metal band, White Snake, and was then with a professional baseball player. I knew none of this until I heard it as gossip when I was there.
Every morning the hotel delivered the New Zealand Herald and USA Today to every room. One morning in the breakfast room, Tawny was yelling at the top of her lungs, throwing a conniption fit, “My baby’s father played last night, and I don’t know how he did!” Since most of the patrons in the breakfast room were Japanese businessmen, they had no idea what she was talking about, but she was a kind of fascinating spectacle. I took my USA Today over to her and showed her the box scores, which she had never heard about. Once she figured out how to read them, she hollered, “Oh, fuck! He lost!”
A random headline in the New Zealand Herald (America’s newspapers are by the city, theirs is for the whole country) was, “Good bloke betrays mates.” New Zealanders, known as Kiwis, just like the fruit and the bird, could not understand why that headline would never appear in an American newspaper, ever.
Right before Hercules arrived in NZ, two seasons of The Black Stallion TV show was shot there. Right near the end of his life, Micky Rooney starred in both seasons. Since Micky Rooney was the most obnoxious asshole that any of them had ever met, the clever camera department named a camera move after him. When the camera moves as slow as possible, that’s a Micky Rooney, or a little creep.
In America you can either zoom in or zoom out with a zoom lens. In New Zealand you zoom in, but you mooz out. Mooz is zoom backwards.
So, I directed the fifth of five Hercules movies. Therefore, I got stuck with a number of people finishing their parts, and there are usually little time-wasting celebrations for them. Like everything stopped for Anthony Quinn. However, in the case of Tawny Kitaen, it was a whole ordeal. She had mistakenly fucked up her schedule. She thought we were shooting all of her scenes in one day, then she could leave. Except that she was scheduled for two days. Except that she didn’t care, she was leaving. She had already booked her flight back to L.A. and her baseball player. I knew none of this. I had already shot with Tawny a couple of times, and she was generally ill-prepared. Tawny made her entrance onto the Hercules’s house interior sets, saw me and asked, “Do I have lines in this scene?” I blanched. I said, “Yes.” Tawny turned to the AD and asked, “Does anyone have a script?”
Meanwhile, there was this issue of Tawny leaving a day early – she had already booked her ticket – except that she was scheduled for the next day, which consisted of more scenes on these same sets. Finally, with Tawny loudly pitching a fit, the producers turned to me. I must admit, as a sheer factory man, this was one of my single best days at a TV director. I’m having trouble writing this, because I did such an awesomely good job. But so did Tawny and everyone else. This was like a huge crisis with the potential of lawyers getting involved. Somehow, this was all too easy to fix. I went up to her, trailed by the producers, Eric and Chloe. I said, “Tawny, I can shoot you out, finish all of your scenes, and get you on that airplane, but—”
“But?” she asked, her tits finally in their proper places. I said, “But — you listening?” — now she was — “you have to be great. You have to remember all of your lines, and actually give me a feisty, real performance. But if I have to keep shooting takes because of you, then I’m going to need to keep shooting tomorrow.” She reminded me, “I’m on a plane tomorrow.” “You are,” I said, “If you don’t fuck me up.” Rarely has a director held such leverage over his diva-like leading lady as I had that moment. She said, “Then I’ll be perfect.” I said, “We’ll see, now won’t we?”
That day as a director, I not only had the temperamental Tawny Kitaen, I was also working with Kevin Sorbo as Hercules (who was great), two little boys of 10 and 12 playing his sons, a wonderfully precocious 8-year-old playing his daughter, and a big, friendly, dog.
Tawny was at her very best. She didn’t blow a line, was feisty, sexy, perhaps even motherly for a second. Kevin was always good. The little girl, with whom I would work later, was lovely, the boys were fine, the dog did as it was instructed. We sailed straight through three full scenes.
And thank all of the god, Tawny made her flight.
Good on ya.
Snap!
Boy, The Kiwis HATED her! The crew talked behind her back right in front of her!!!!