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Stargate Atlantis- David Hewlett Interview
By Kyle Braun
" I think we're more sci-fi for the non-sci-fi people, if
that makes sense. You want to be careful with a show like this
that it doesn't become too cheerful, otherwise you lose that
peril." -David Hewlett
Not only has David Hewlett been helping to save an alien
civilization on Stargate Atlantis, he's also found time
to write and direct a feature film during the hiatus. Instead
of playing Dr. Rodney McKay, who has been using his genius to
aid in the preservation of Atlantis, Hewlett used his downtime
to write, direct and star in A Dog's Breakfast. While
you can check out the details on www.adogsbreakfastmovie.com,
you can also look forward to seeing Hewlett on the fourth
season of Atlantis, which kicks off on September 28. We
tracked down David while he was running around Vancouver to
talk about his directorial debut and what's up with the new
season of Stargate Atlantis.
What are you up to today?
It actually works out that today, all I had booked was to stick my head in a
vat of alginate for a head cast. They had to book me in to go and do this
stuff for - Todd Masters is doing some weird and wonderful things to my head
for the last episode of the season. Hopefully nothing fatal is all I can
say.
How did you manage to make A Dog's Breakfast during your hiatus
from Stargate Atlantis?
I have no idea. The beautiful thing is that having a beautiful, talented and
organized wife really helps, because she produced the film. Jane Loughman. I
had been wanting to direct for ages, and I had done some writing and stuff
but never really pursued it. Then, I just said, "Look, I think I'd be crazy
to not try and pursue something while the show is going. It gives us the
time and the money to experiment." So we were going to grab a couple video
cameras and just shoot this little film with friends and family. Jane quite
wisely said, "Let's talk to John Lenic and see if he's interested," because
he's got God knows how many seasons of SG-1 under his belt, maybe he
can give me a hand. He just took it and ran and all of a sudden we had this
massive production, like a real production. It's entirely self-funded. The
film itself cost like $120,000 to make, all in, which by Hollywood standards
is pretty low. And it's just so much fun to make. I'm a huge fan of A
Fish Called Wanda and the original Pink Panther series. Peter
Sellers and those great, classic, fun, silly comedies. I just wanted to do
something where we got to play with that, and something that would appeal to
the fans that made it possible. There's some nice little nods to Stargate
in there, and I hope it's just a nice, clean, family murder film.
Where did the concept come from?
You know, it all came out of necessity. We knew going in that we had a very
limited budget and timeframe to shoot it. Living in Vancouver, it's a pretty
slow time between January and February - it's not the greatest weather and
people don't want to shoot then. So we jumped on that, knowing that we had a
crew that was going to start shooting again at the end of February. Again,
John Lenic was very smart about that, and said, "Look, if you want the crew,
this is a good time to get them." Somehow, despite having worked with me all
season, they were willing to forego their paychecks and come and do
something for fun. We just managed to knock it off in a tiny amount of time
- 14 days of shooting - and I based the script around what we had available.
I knew we had a dog [laughs], I knew I had a sister that could act, a friend
who could act in Paul McGillion - and who was willing to be abused by me -
and then we just asked people like Chris Judge.
I think when you do so much television, people are eager to get involved in
the feature side of stuff. I don't know why no one had done it before. So
many years of Stargate, I'm surprised no one else had jumped on this,
but I guess we were the first guys to get up the nerve and go ask people.
Working on an indie film, when everyone's there for love and not money, you
feed them well and it's like magic. That film was so much fun to shoot. We
tried to be smart about it - we knew we had access to some of the
Stargate sets, so we checked with them and I'd write little spots that
would work within the film from that standpoint as well. We tried to keep in
mind that people who watch it on a weekly basis, they like a certain type of
violence and comedy and such, so it's all been tailored somewhat to what we
had available and to the audience we knew we had.
I had heard there wasn't going to be a theatrical release for the
film until there was a groundswell of support.
Our original idea was, honestly,
our own handicams and we would, if people did want to buy a copy, we'd cut a
DVD for them. Then, we went, "Well, it's done in HD. We could probably
package this up and see if anyone wants to buy it." So we had a whole
self-distribution plan in place, and then we talked to a few of my friends
who had done films in the past, and they said, "Well, you'd be an idiot to
not even ask the distributors what they thought." So we literally started
small and then one day we just talked to MGM, and they expressed interest
and said "Yeah," and we said "Yeah, what?" They said, "Yeah, we want to
distribute it." I was like, "Wow, that's the U.S. taken care of," and they
said, "No, no, no, we want the world." Then I thought, "I love you," and
that was it. We had MGM behind us, and I think a big part of it was because
they saw our Web site - www.adogsbreakfastmovie.com - which is where I would
do a few blogs and talk about the film and just give people a sense of
what's going on. I had no intention of doing a blog until I did the movie,
but I thought, "I gotta let people know about this somehow."
How about Starcrossed, the show within the show. The last I hear it
had a chance to be developed all on its own.
To some extent, it already has been. We were hired by Sci-Fi last hiatus to
write a pilot for Starcrossed. We did that last hiatus and we're now
talking about how to pursue it further. There is actually a pilot script out
there that I wrote last hiatus. Fingers crossed on that. I think the time is
very right for Starcrossed, so I'm interested to see what the network
feels about it, because we've been talking to them for a while now. The
basic idea is, we wanted to do a Larry Sanders meets Stargate
to some extent. If you're on a sci-fi set for some extended amount of time,
you realize how ludicrous it is what you do for a living. It's not nearly as
sexy as it looks when they're finished. All those cool backdrops are just
big green screens, and all those monsters are six-foot-tall stuntmen who
just can't see where they're going and have lots of things on their feet. We
had so much fun shooting this stuff that I thought, "There's got to be a way
to introduce people to this without mocking sci-fi." I think the earnestness
of sci-fi can be very funny to me. But it will be nice to have something to
go to if Stargate ever gets cancelled.
There doesn't seem to be an imminent threat of that happening.
Well, you never know, because we go year to year and it always comes down to
the last. We'll find out about a Season Five in the next couple of months.
Season Four will start airing, and they'll get a sense of how it's going.
That's all that I'll tell you. The first few episodes are a great way to
judge the season.
Was it easy to get the Stargate crew to work for 14 days?
Surprisingly, yes. Paul I kind of knew he'd have nothing else to do. He
pretends to have a life, and it's very sad, so I pretty well knew we had
him. Kate [Hewlett] was really hard to get a hold of, because she's got a
writing/acting career herself, so timing her stuff was harder, and also Paul
knew about it from the beginning. I told him, "Look, we're writing something
for you. Are you going to be available during the hiatus?" and he said yes.
He actually put money into the film as well. As I put it to him, "So you're
paying me to hire you?"
Was it easy to fall back into the role of Rodney McKay after doing A
Dog's Breakfast?
Well, I said to the guys when I came back, they were like, "You ready to go
back to work? You're not too tired? You haven't exhausted yourself on your
hiatus?" I was like, "No, this is great, because all I have to do is act
now." Having worn all three hats, you're writing, directing and acting in
something, it's hard to keep all those balls in the air. In the future, if I
were going to be doing that again, I would probably give myself less of a
role. The reality on this one was that the only person I knew that was going
to be there every single day, who wasn't going to cause a fuss, was me. I
think the next time I'll have someone else in the lead, and maybe I'll play
Paul's part. Coming back to Stargate was great, because frankly, I
got to just focus on McKay as opposed to trying to do everything else.
I've heard Season Four is taking a new direction, and that it might
be darker than previous seasons.
It's funny. I was just talking
about this. It feels like, Stargate, we're the kid brother or sister
of Stargate, and when that started, it was almost 11 years ago now, I
feel like TV has changed. I think Atlantis is a product of that. The
audiences are much more savvy, and I think the content that we're seeing on
television is darker, so there's definitely more of a bite to Atlantis
than perhaps there was to start off with. I think it's a good thing, though.
I think the successes of the whole Stargate universe are these
wonderful characters that they've written. The science fiction is just a
fantastic back drop for these normal everyday people who are struggling to
cope with the extraordinary circumstances. That, to me, makes for the best
kind of sci-fi, because there's this great kind of escapist sci-fi, because
you can identify with these people and go, "I'm kind of like McKay. In a
situation like that, I'm probably not going to respond in the best way. I
tend to snap at people when I'm being attacked by aliens." I think that the
edgy stuff is sort of a product of its time, in a way. We're not as dark as
Battlestar, which I love. Jane and I watch that religiously now, but
we're not Battlestar. We're a very different show than that. We're
definitely more. I think we're more sci-fi for the non-sci-fi people, if
that makes sense. You want to be careful with a show like this that it
doesn't become too cheerful, otherwise you lose that peril. I think the
edgier stuff they've been playing with this year will help remind people
that we are all at risk.
Are there any significant plot changes that make it darker, or is it
just an overall change in tone?
Obviously, the biggest one is change of characters. We lost a couple of our
leads, effectively, and added a few more, too. Again, from an entirely
selfish standpoint, I got Amanda Tapping and Jewel Staite to work with. I've
got two female icons of sci-fi that I get to play with on a daily basis.
It's fantastic. But, by knocking off these characters, you don't know what's
going to happen next. I mean, they're talking about the cliff-hanger for
Season Four, and I'm like, "I hope it's not me."
With SG-1 going off the air, Atlantis is all alone in the Stargate
universe. If Atlantis had a similar 10-year run, is it something you'd want
to stay with for a decade?
I think McKay is definitely one of my all-time favorite characters. I love
playing McKay, and the scary thing is, I become more like him the more I do.
Hey, I'm more than happy to follow that through, and I think for me, A
Dog's Breakfast is the perfect way to stay interested in this kind of
stuff. There's always a danger with actors that they're going to fall into a
rhythm and you don't want to just go through the motions. You want to make
sure every one of those scenes has something cool and different and personal
in there. I think the great thing about doing something like A Dog's
Breakfast is that, in the hiatus, from my perspective, I keep myself
interested. This allows me to do that. I get to write and direct a movie, go
through that insanity, come back and work on the show. I find myself
listening so much better now because I'm sitting there going, "Hmm, what is
this show here? What's he doing? Oh, that's neat. What about that?" For me,
it's actually renewed my interest more than anything else. And my God, it's
a great day job. Saving the universe is just the best way to spend your day.
And there are so few shows like Stargate now. There aren't too many
shows where you can go, "Okay, there's a good chance we can get picked up
for Season Five." It's so uncertain out there in the industry in general, so
I'll do what I can to stay in the picture.
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