2/15/23
Newsletter #248
The Crack of Dawn
When we first arrived in New Zealand in 1993 to make Hercules, I was the 2nd unit director. One of my first assignments was to shoot the front credit scene. Since nobody had the first clue what it ought to be, and the assignment of actually writing the scene was never given to the writers, I was simply winging it. I was constantly searching for anything that might fit. I saw a field of pretty yellow flowers. I got a close-up of one flower and tilted up to the whole field of flowers. It’s a nice, colorful, meaningless shot that ended up in many episodes.
So I’m thinking, how can I show Hercules’s mighty strength really fast? What if he wins an arm wrestling match with some tremendously huge guy, slams the guy’s arm down, breaks the table, and flips him. This could all happen in one fact action, and it sounded cool. I pitched it to Rob, the executive producer, and he liked it and said, “Shoot it.”
I called up the casting director, Diana Rowen, who was one of my favorite people in NZ, and said, “I need the biggest guy you can find.” Di found a fellow named Alister who was over 600 pounds and six-three. Perfect. But to actually shoot this bit, I actually needed Kevin Sorbo, the star, and the star never works with 2nd unit.
The shooting schedule was arranged so that during a shoot day the main unit crew would shoot everything but Hercules for a half day, and we’d get him on 2nd unit. Terrific. I ordered up ten costumed peasant extras to surround the arm wrestlers, then I had the art department build a breakaway table that cleverly split in half, then could be reassembled for another take. This was going to be cool and fun.
Unfortunately, Rob began obsessing about this credit scene back in L.A. As me and the cast and crew were loading up first thing in the morning to go shoot this scene, the co-producer, Liz Friedman, a very bright young lady, called me and said, “Rob needs you to show that Hercules is a really likable guy.” I said, “I’m showing how strong he is. That’s sort of likable, right?” Liz said, “No, Rob wants you to shoot Hercules playing with kids.” I said, “Today?” Liz said, “Yes. Cute costumed children are in the works.” I said, “OK. And Hercules is just playing with them?” She said, “Right.” I said, “Playing with children makes you likable?” Then, as an afterthought, Liz added, “Oh, and Rob hates arm wrestling. Make it a real fight.” I was dumbstruck. “I can’t do that,” I said. “This guy isn’t a stunt man, he's the biggest guy in New Zealand.” Calmly, Liz repeated, “Rob hates arm wrestling. Make it a real fight.”
We set up on a lovely green hill in a park in Auckland. Soon, I had five or six cute boys and girls dressed as peasants in burlap outfits, with goofy hats and blacked-out teeth, and they were having fun. Then out came Alister, all 600-700 pounds of him. Before he got from the costume trailer to the camera, he split his burlap trousers completely in half. Costume repairs went into action.
A car showed up and out stepped a costumed Kevin Sorbo as Hercules, making a rare appearance on 2nd unit. He was in fine spirits, so I went directly to him and the kids. We set up on the top of the hill, with a pretty blue sky, and Kevin asked, “So what happens in this shot?” I said, “You prove that you are a likeable person by happily playing with the children.” Kevin and the kids were all for it. I got a variety of shots of a smiling Kevin horsing around with smiling children. Nothing to it.
Kevin said, “Now, I’m wrestling a big guy?” I said, “Rob hates arm wrestling. He wants you and the big guy fighting.” At which point Alister returned with his pants fixed, but straining. Kevin immediately saw the whole problem and asked, “What kind of fighting?” I replied, “It can only be boxing. It can’t be anything else. When Alister sits down, he can’t get back up without assistance.” Kevin nodded, “OK.”
I set up the scene of the two men standing in front of each other, ready to box, and I said to Alister – whose arms each weighed fifty pounds – “Throw one punch at Kevin, and he’ll react like he’s been hit. He’ll throw one punch back, and you snap your head back like you’ve been punched. That’s all I want, two fake punches, one at a time.” I called action, Alister threw a punch and immediately lost his balance. I thought to myself, “Alister is the exact opposite of a stunt man. Alister is the most uncoordinated person in NZ.”
On the next take, I called action, Alister threw his fake punch, with 700 pounds of force and stumbling momentum behind it, and just clocked Kevin Sorbo. Knocked him out. Then Alister fell on his face. Me and Charlie, the 1st AD, looked at each other in horror. We were both going to be fired. The star of the show gets K.O.-ed on 2nd unit? Someone must pay. First aid, meaning bags of ice, were quickly applied to Kevin’s face. Alister had nailed him right in the cheekbone. We all stood there and watched as Kevin Sorbo’s face began to swell. Charlie’s walkie squawked, “We need Kevin back on main unit.” Kevin was hustled into a car and taken away. By the time he arrived on set his face was so swollen they couldn’t shoot with him for the rest of that day.
As Charlie and I stood there waiting for the ax to drop, the sound man said, “Listen to this.” He had pinpointed the moment of Alister’s fist hitting Kevin’s face – THWACK!! We all listened to it several times. Then Charlie’s walkie said, “Eric wants to see you and Josh in his office now.” Eric was the producer.
Eric is a reasonable man – he’d had a heart attack in his 30s and thus rarely got upset – and we explained and explained, but Universal had lost a half day of shooting, meaning like $75,000 or something, and as they say in the military, “I’m not saying you’re to blame, I’m saying I’m blaming you.”
But then Kevin Sorbo showed up at Eric’s office with an ice pack against his cheek, and his face was looking better. Kevin laughed and said how many times I had repeated, “One punch at a time,” and he thought it was going to be an arm wrestling scene. Anyway, all was forgiven. Kevin, Charlie and I were all back at work the next day.
In a vault somewhere is footage of Kevin happily playing with children (which was thankfully not used in the credits). There is also Kevin Sorbo getting knocked-the-fuck-out, then gigantic Alister falling forward on his face. Plus there was great sound for the punch.
And thus, another day – a miniature eternity – begins . . .