Speaker 1: The show has begun since your phases the fun you
Speaker 1: ARENTI full trip trip trip trips into the DCM with condom.
Speaker 1: It's the d CON.
Speaker 2: Same ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, trekkies and trekkers.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of the DCON Chamber. I
Speaker 2: am Connor Trenaire alongside my co host and co defendant
Speaker 2: Dominic keating and listen. I am so thrilled about our
Speaker 2: guest today. What I want to say here is that look, acting, directing, editing,
Speaker 2: and then camera. Those are equal measure of how to
Speaker 2: produce a TV show and a film. And our guest
Speaker 2: today for our show is our cinematographer, our director of photography,
Speaker 2: often our camera operator. And he has done and I've
Speaker 2: got my math right. This boggles my mind. Three hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy six episodes of Star Trek beginning with the
Speaker 2: next generation going through enterprise.
Speaker 3: Marvin Rush, Marvin V.
Speaker 1: Rut Rush, so much.
Speaker 4: For being here. Thank you mate, It's good to see you. Jack.
Speaker 2: My first question for you, Marvin is can you tell
Speaker 2: me what's the difference between a cinematographer and a director
Speaker 2: of photography.
Speaker 1: You know, the cinematographer is probably the older title and
Speaker 1: director of photography. You know, like there's the cameraman used
Speaker 1: to be the word, and now it's camera operator. And
Speaker 1: it's because in a long time ago, there were no
Speaker 1: women doing that job. So you can say cameraman without
Speaker 1: any problem. And you know today there are plenty of
Speaker 1: women that do that job, including cinematographer. A director photography
Speaker 1: is the title in the union cinematographers, I think more.
Speaker 1: I like that too. I like them both, but I
Speaker 1: think I like cinematographer gust You know, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're basically the top person on the call sheet,
Speaker 1: below the producers. You're you're at the top of the
Speaker 1: crew in terms of hierarchy. Not that you're the boss
Speaker 1: of all those people, that's not what I mean, but
Speaker 1: it is an ultimate kind of position for for a crew.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm interested to know. Your dad was aautical engineer.
Speaker 4: He was you know, instrumental in the Apollo mission and
Speaker 4: particularly the engine that got them off the moon.
Speaker 1: And well, you've done your homework, Oh yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: do our snooping.
Speaker 4: Well, well, obviously you grew up with a technical brain,
Speaker 4: which you need, but the artistry comes from where.
Speaker 1: My dad was an aeronautical engineer for rocket dying, and
Speaker 1: as you said, he was involved in getting the men
Speaker 1: off the moon designing. Just not to go to technical,
Speaker 1: but rocket motors of that type are called hypergolic, and
Speaker 1: they literally the fuel and oxidizer when they touch each other,
Speaker 1: they explode. That means you don't have to have an igniter.
Speaker 1: And my father's design was to design it in such
Speaker 1: a way that the fuel has to enter first before
Speaker 1: the oxidizer, and if they don't enter in a very
Speaker 1: tiny microsecond difference, then that rocket motor will literally blow
Speaker 1: itself apart. So my father designed a system where with
Speaker 1: a slide roll where he got the injector nozzles for
Speaker 1: the oxygen to have a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: bend and a little bit more distance to travel, so
Speaker 1: that one valve opening both of the fuel and oxidizer
Speaker 1: together would create that delay needed for the engine to
Speaker 1: work properly. It saved weight, it saved space, and it
Speaker 1: was extremely reliable and it worked every time.
Speaker 3: So was this environment for you?
Speaker 2: Was there any tie into how and what you wanted
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: With your life. I tried to go an aeronautical engineering
Speaker 1: school and I just hated it. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: wasn't what I wanted to do. And here's a funny story.
Speaker 4: You loved this.
Speaker 1: Remember Barbara E on Idreamaginie? Yeah, Okay, Well, when I
Speaker 1: was like twelve thirteen years old, I thought she was
Speaker 1: the most beautiful woman that had ever lived in the
Speaker 1: history of women. You're not alone, Marvin. I adored her
Speaker 1: from afar and I thought to myself, if my life
Speaker 1: works out, I'll get to work with people that are
Speaker 1: as beautiful as she is.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, sorry to disappoint.
Speaker 1: That was the starting a woman. That's a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old boy talking. Okay. But but inside of that, I
Speaker 1: went to I hitchhiked one time to the Rose Parade,
Speaker 1: like at two o'clock in the morning. I got up early,
Speaker 1: I got out, went a hitchhike literally thumb my ride
Speaker 1: from I was growing up in Canoga Park in the
Speaker 1: San Fernando Valley. My hitchhiked to Pasadena and I walked
Speaker 1: along the floats and I met some of the camera
Speaker 1: people that were working on that show for kt LACS.
Speaker 1: How old were you? I was probably sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: and one of the guys that was working for CBS
Speaker 1: invited me to play with his camera for a few
Speaker 1: minutes to go up on the platform, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: so I climbed up there and he let me handle
Speaker 1: this broadcast TV camera, big RCA camera, huge, yeah. And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, oh, this is the best job in
Speaker 1: the entire world, you know, I could never imagine a
Speaker 1: better job than that. And I met some other people
Speaker 1: on the street. That was a street reporter that was
Speaker 1: working for KTLA. Anyway, long story short, about six or
Speaker 1: seven years later, guess who was on the Rose Parade
Speaker 1: for KTLA Channel five working with the same news reporter
Speaker 1: on the street met Barbara Well, not with Barbara Aida, no,
Speaker 1: but with a street reporter. In other words, I had
Speaker 1: imagined a job that I thought was an impossible goal,
Speaker 1: and I got it. And it wasn't It was not
Speaker 1: a kind of that job. It was exactly the job
Speaker 1: that I had imagined would be the perfect job. Go ahead.
Speaker 2: At some point in that young age that you had
Speaker 2: sort of manifested.
Speaker 1: This, I just knew that camera work was the closest
Speaker 1: way to get to work with a person who's pretty
Speaker 1: is Barbara Eden. And not only that, but that when
Speaker 1: I watched movies like I saw the movie patent, and
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, if my life works out, I'll
Speaker 1: do something as important as that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just literally was. And it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I loved like just any old movie. I loved the
Speaker 1: films and I love the TV shows that got me.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I tell people that I have never actually had a
Speaker 1: job in my whole life, and you know, I just never.
Speaker 4: I mean we kind of feel the same. I mean
Speaker 4: there were long hours, dude, but we loved it, didn't we. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean I would have done it for free.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm in my first acting job, and if
Speaker 4: they only knew if.
Speaker 1: I would have done it for them, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't have been able to survive doing it.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that I wasn't doing it to
Speaker 1: make money and I didn't feel like I was working.
Speaker 1: Here's an analogy I'll give you that I think it's
Speaker 1: really cool. Imagine you're five years old and your mom
Speaker 1: takes you to the park for the first time. The playground, right,
Speaker 1: and you're holding your mom's hand, and you get to
Speaker 1: the playground. You look in the distance and you see
Speaker 1: the merry go round and kids on it, and the
Speaker 1: swing and kids swinging, and the sandbox and kids working
Speaker 1: with sand and the monkey bars, and you look at
Speaker 1: your mom and you go, can I go? And your
Speaker 1: mom says, go go play, And you run as fast
Speaker 1: as you can run to the sandbox and you dive
Speaker 1: right in and you see all these other kids playing
Speaker 1: and within a few seconds you got it right. And
Speaker 1: nobody gave you an owner's manual about how to play.
Speaker 1: You're born with that skill. And then the next thing
Speaker 1: to think about about the kid in the sandbox. This
Speaker 1: is really important. If you get down like you're an adult,
Speaker 1: you get down really low at their level, and you
Speaker 1: get on their eye level, and you look at the
Speaker 1: face of the child playing in the sandbox with the tonkatroy.
Speaker 1: That is the most intense, focused energy you will ever see.
Speaker 1: It's far from play. It's worked with a different name.
Speaker 1: As adults, we forget what play is. Play is intense.
Speaker 1: It is so intense, and it is so focused, and
Speaker 1: it's so it's driven by creating worlds. That child is
Speaker 1: inside that dump truck moving the dirt around, and when
Speaker 1: he's on the monkey bars, he's in the jungle with
Speaker 1: the tarzan you know. I mean, it's it's real for
Speaker 1: that child to be in the state of complete flow,
Speaker 1: you know, for in immersion, in flow. So my point
Speaker 1: is this, find something you like to do that puts
Speaker 1: you in the same place as when you were in
Speaker 1: that sandbox at five, and you will never work a
Speaker 1: day in your life.
Speaker 4: Did you learn everything on the jobble? Did you go
Speaker 4: off to film school?
Speaker 1: I was going to go to university and I interviewed
Speaker 1: some camera guys and I said, Okay, what's better for
Speaker 1: your or a year of experience? And they all said
Speaker 1: a year of experience. And I said, well, what about
Speaker 1: a month? And they said, yeah, a month of experience
Speaker 1: is better than a four year degree. And then I
Speaker 1: said what about a week and they said, yeah, a
Speaker 1: week of experience is better. I said what about a
Speaker 1: day and they said it's a toss up. That's a
Speaker 1: toss up. And then I thought to myself, if I
Speaker 1: try for four years and I get three or four
Speaker 1: days of experience, I'm four years ahead.
Speaker 3: How did you then navigate that to your next step?
Speaker 1: Well, I asked for a job at a TV station
Speaker 1: that was very, very small. It was a small religious
Speaker 1: TV station in Glendale. I just begged them to let
Speaker 1: me work for free, and they said, yeah, we'll lets
Speaker 1: you work for free.
Speaker 4: Did you wear a cross when you went to see?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, my religious beliefs have gone over have
Speaker 1: changed a little bit over the years, but I was
Speaker 1: nominally a Christian at that time, I would say, and
Speaker 1: I became more so during the time I was there.
Speaker 1: And maybe that was a choice of convenience because I
Speaker 1: really wanted a job. It was I don't think it
Speaker 1: was necessarily dishonest on my part. It was more like,
Speaker 1: you know, this was a chance to do the thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. And I was there for a
Speaker 1: couple of years and I learned a lot. And then
Speaker 1: I went to sports and I learned how I shot
Speaker 1: sports at the Forum, I did, you know, hockey and basketball,
Speaker 1: and then I did Angels baseball, Dodgers baseball at Dodger Stadium,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And then I transitioned to working with
Speaker 1: Dinah Shore on her talk show. That led to w
Speaker 1: KRP in Cincinnati, which I did that show for four years.
Speaker 1: I left KTLA and they went we went over to
Speaker 1: CBS Radford and all the way, you know, I kept
Speaker 1: getting hired and the idea of going to stop to
Speaker 1: go to university didn't make a lot of sense because
Speaker 1: I kept getting jobs, So that's where that led.
Speaker 4: One of your early gigs was was a sitcom, Easy Street.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, I was. That's the job I got
Speaker 1: moved up on. As I said, five cameras, four cameras,
Speaker 1: four camera Yeah, yeah, I mean it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where I worked for Hugh Wilson on w
Speaker 1: k P in Cincinnati, and I had shot a couple
Speaker 1: of single camera pieces for that show that was another sitcom,
Speaker 1: but I was a camera oprider. You actually called me
Speaker 1: into his office and says, would you like to shoot
Speaker 1: the pilot for Lonnie Anderson called Easy Street? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you mean to operate and he says no, the cinematographer,
Speaker 1: I go, beat beat Bete. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd worked my way up to that point, but I
Speaker 1: hadn't actually done it. So that was one of those
Speaker 1: failure points where you know Connor had said earlier, rise
Speaker 1: to the occasion kind of thing. I felt I had
Speaker 1: the skill to do it, but I didn't have the
Speaker 1: experience of doing it, so I had to prove that
Speaker 1: then I got After that, I got Tracy Ollman. Then
Speaker 1: I did a show called Frank's Place, which was one camera,
Speaker 1: and then I got I did a couple other sitcoms,
Speaker 1: and then I got invited to work on Star Trek next.
Speaker 4: Generation piece, The Hollowheads, Well Meet the Hollowhead, which was
Speaker 4: a party sci fi piece about sitcoms, which I thought
Speaker 4: was an interesting mess up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that came out of it was a makeup artist
Speaker 1: that had written the script. And I don't remember how
Speaker 1: I got hired for that exactly. It's been a long time,
Speaker 1: but you know it was. It was part of my
Speaker 1: learning curve, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: As a part of your learning curve, so going into
Speaker 2: sitcoms for camera and then you know, sort of dabbling
Speaker 2: into I think you're saying, like single camera stuff, what
Speaker 2: are you learning in that that.
Speaker 1: Get me to like help crouts? What I had done
Speaker 1: during the time that I was working on all of
Speaker 1: those shows earlier, I had formed a video facilities company
Speaker 1: called Video to Go. I created that company to provide
Speaker 1: services for like single cameras, and I worked on concerts.
Speaker 1: I worked on commercials, I did interview shows, all kinds stuff.
Speaker 1: But the real reason I formed that company was because
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn how to light, and I figured
Speaker 1: if I could get people to pay me to practic
Speaker 1: this lighting, that was better than if I was just
Speaker 1: lighting stuff and not having a paycheck for it. So
Speaker 1: I bought lighting equipment more than I could possibly use
Speaker 1: for the company size that I was working for. I
Speaker 1: literally poured every dollar I made into buying equipment, pay
Speaker 1: the mortgage, and buy equipment, you know, And that was it.
Speaker 1: And so the whole thing was I had generated. I
Speaker 1: literally created a school for myself where I was looking
Speaker 1: at my work and judging it and trying to figure out, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I can do better next time. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a whole process of basically self taught if
Speaker 1: you will, I mean, that's kind of what it was.
Speaker 1: And I was also working on shows, watching other cinematographers
Speaker 1: doing their work, mostly on multiicam shows. But when I
Speaker 1: graduated to cinematographer, suddenly I was on a multiicam show
Speaker 1: and I was lighting, you know, I was lighting the
Speaker 1: set and figuring out how to light it for four cameras.
Speaker 1: This was a real jigsaw puzzle. If you want to
Speaker 1: do a sitcom and have it look good, you have
Speaker 1: to be able to light for four angles at the
Speaker 1: same time. Right, it's really challenging.
Speaker 4: You know, I did live sitcom. It's it is challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was part of my school. When I
Speaker 1: went over to Star Trek, they asked me one question.
Speaker 1: They said, well, first of all, they said, we're not
Speaker 1: getting enough work done in a day. We're not getting
Speaker 1: enough setups. We're only getting twelve to thirteen setups per day.
Speaker 1: And they said, we need to do more setups, and
Speaker 1: we're going to make a change, and we'd like to
Speaker 1: know whether you think you can do more. And I
Speaker 1: had just come off of Frank's Place, which was a
Speaker 1: one camera, half hour kind of dramaedy. It was a
Speaker 1: comedy drama kind of show. Interesting show, a very good show,
Speaker 1: and only went one season. It was still it was great.
Speaker 1: But the thing was they were all fans of my
Speaker 1: work on that show. They'd all seen it. I think
Speaker 1: I won a Peabody Award for writing and it was
Speaker 1: It was a kind of kind of a cause celeb show.
Speaker 1: Not big ratings but good ratings but not great, but
Speaker 1: it was it was talked about. And also I got
Speaker 1: a cover of American Cinematographer off of it. You know,
Speaker 1: which was raised my profile, you know, just the lucky
Speaker 1: great that's all. So what happened was I went in
Speaker 1: and I said, well, I'm doing a show. I've just
Speaker 1: finished a show and we were doing twenty five to
Speaker 1: maybe even up to thirty setups a day, and they said,
Speaker 1: you're hired, you know, basically, you know, I mean, in
Speaker 1: other words, you have to there's art and there's commerce,
Speaker 1: and they're both related to each other. You know, if
Speaker 1: you are really, really good, but you take all day
Speaker 1: to get anything done, you know, they're not going to
Speaker 1: hire you because they can't afford you.
Speaker 2: Marvin behind behind the camera and like that regard, you're
Speaker 2: responsible not only for the camera operation and the basic
Speaker 2: camera design of what you're looking at, but you're talking
Speaker 2: about lights, you're talking about everything else that happens behind
Speaker 2: the camera. The responsibility must be kind of massive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, if you don't succeed, you get fired. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just that simple, you know. I and I actually
Speaker 1: I had a couple of situations early on on Next Generation.
Speaker 1: I got called up to the office and it was
Speaker 1: a very specific thing I had done. I lit a
Speaker 1: set and I had brought the actors in and we
Speaker 1: started to shoot it and I turned to the director
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't know. I just don't. I
Speaker 1: don't like what I did. I think it's horrible. Can
Speaker 1: I do you mind if I do it again? And
Speaker 1: the director was not particularly pleased, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: but he said okay. So then I ReLit it and
Speaker 1: the can't actors came back in and I said, once again,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, guys, I just think it's horrible. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't film this. It's terrible. You had spendings at
Speaker 1: that time. I take actors. We're talking to actors now, okay.
Speaker 1: I got called up to the office at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. It was made very clear to me
Speaker 1: that that will never happen again. We love you, Marvin,
Speaker 1: but you may not do that. And I took that
Speaker 1: lesson to heart. And it wasn't like I was mad,
Speaker 1: but I was holding myself to a standard that I
Speaker 1: don't think was achievable for a television schedule. And that
Speaker 1: was a hard lesson because I was shooting for perfection.
Speaker 1: Because I found I felt everything counts, and everything does count,
Speaker 1: but so does getting the work done. It's called show business,
Speaker 1: not show art. And the reason why is because it
Speaker 1: is also a business, and you know, you need to
Speaker 1: fit your art in the box with what the time
Speaker 1: is set for it, the amount of piece people involved,
Speaker 1: the work that has to be done. It has to
Speaker 1: fit in the box, or you're not welcome in that world.
Speaker 4: That rais an act to you. You learn to If
Speaker 4: they say the tape was great, move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's just one of those things television,
Speaker 1: But there's a there's a really nice thing about it too.
Speaker 1: What it causes you to do is to figure out
Speaker 1: how much perfection I can afford or how can I
Speaker 1: find a way to make it look great but not
Speaker 1: take all day to do it. So then you must
Speaker 1: come up with some theories of lighting and approaches to
Speaker 1: the set so that you can do the work that
Speaker 1: you're asked to do. And when they look at the
Speaker 1: dailies and go mar this great, how'd you do that?
Speaker 1: I figured out how much I could do, and I
Speaker 1: did what I could do in the time I had,
Speaker 1: as well as I could imagine, not saying that there
Speaker 1: wasn't another way that would have been maybe a little
Speaker 1: more interesting, you know, that would be certainly true, But
Speaker 1: it has to fit in the box or you won't
Speaker 1: get you'll get fired. Is that simple?
Speaker 3: What Marvin do you what are your influences?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm a source lighting person. And when I say
Speaker 1: that source lighting is very interesting, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: theory of light. And Spennyquist I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know who that was, but Spennquist to shot a lot
Speaker 1: of famous movies from the sixties and all. He's from
Speaker 1: from Sweden, I believe, see. Anyway, you know, I actually
Speaker 1: shot an interview with him, and after I was done,
Speaker 1: he actually complimented me on my lighting, which was amazing.
Speaker 1: You know. I had read articles of him talking about
Speaker 1: it and he said that. And also Bill Mosh Zigmund
Speaker 1: had said something in an article that I read. Bill
Speaker 1: Mosh was a famous cinematographer. He's not famous on yeah,
Speaker 1: close encounters, and he did. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: great films anyway, Heaven's Gate, I think he did anyway.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is what he had said was
Speaker 1: that when he was a boy, he looked out the
Speaker 1: window when he was in a train car and watched
Speaker 1: the natural world going by. He started recording in his
Speaker 1: mind what things look like, in other words, what the
Speaker 1: natural in other words, making essentially a mental map of
Speaker 1: the light of the world and how it looks in
Speaker 1: various conditions. And so source light is where you take.
Speaker 1: You know, if there's a practical that's on, you know,
Speaker 1: you play from that practical. Now if you don't like
Speaker 1: where the practical is, you move the practical, so you
Speaker 1: can use that as the source to light from. If
Speaker 1: it's natural light, you work with the sun and with
Speaker 1: you know, reflected light from the sun. In other words,
Speaker 1: if light's coming through a window, you play into that
Speaker 1: window and you you build the lighting of the room
Speaker 1: from the source that you've decided is the source or
Speaker 1: sources that source light. And I've always been very fond
Speaker 1: of that style of.
Speaker 4: Life, very clever with it one off show, I mean
Speaker 4: it was it was very apparent enterprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can bend the source a lot. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like a god. It's more like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a window on the left side and
Speaker 1: you key from the right, well, it's not going to
Speaker 1: look right because why isn't the sunlight coming through the
Speaker 1: window and the light on the actors coming from the
Speaker 1: same side. You know, So in other words, from a
Speaker 1: practical standpoint, you're looking at the sources, the practicals or
Speaker 1: the or the windows in the room or the doorways
Speaker 1: or whatever, and kind of shaping the light off of
Speaker 1: the natural sources.
Speaker 2: How interesting that you spent sixteen years creating the light
Speaker 2: that occurred in the world that we all lived in.
Speaker 2: There was no sun, there was no anything.
Speaker 1: We you were.
Speaker 3: Creating that emotional template for any scene.
Speaker 1: Well, in the case of Enterprise, the real problem was
Speaker 1: that we were in a submarine of of a sort.
Speaker 1: We were, and they actually, the designers set had actually
Speaker 1: gone down to the naval yard in San Diego and
Speaker 1: toured the nuclear submarines to be able to get a
Speaker 1: feel for how cramped the spaces are. And the idea
Speaker 1: was that, you know, this was the biggest ship they
Speaker 1: could build with the technology of the time, which it
Speaker 1: was a precursor, so it had to be smaller.
Speaker 4: Eve and Jim Conway watched the Hunt for Red October.
Speaker 4: I believe we did absolutely. I used a little bit
Speaker 4: of that. The thing is I would have gone deeper
Speaker 4: into darkness, but Rick Berman was not a big fan
Speaker 4: of ultra dark sequences, so I always tried to make
Speaker 4: sure I made the producers of the show happy. The
Speaker 4: thing is, though, one nice thing about having a little
Speaker 4: bit brighter level is when.
Speaker 1: Things go to go bad, you know, there's problems or
Speaker 1: explosions or systems are going down, you have somewhere to
Speaker 1: go in terms of darkness and in terms of contrast. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you start off with the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: dark and shadowy, and and then the power goes out,
Speaker 1: well what do you change? You know, so you need
Speaker 1: to be able to tell that story because that story
Speaker 1: comes up from time to time. Pretty often things go wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, in science fiction, the ship has problems on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, So you need to be room for that,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: I remember there was a trolley on our set, but
Speaker 4: that was just stuffed full of sort of jury rigged lights.
Speaker 4: Do you remember that.
Speaker 1: Well, we built We built a lot of our own lights.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because when you have a very
Speaker 1: low ceiling, like the ceiling is down here, you know,
Speaker 1: if you put a light here, like I'll tip this camp.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tip this up so I can show you.
Speaker 1: So let's say the ceiling is here, right, and there's
Speaker 1: a lamp right above that, just a few inches above it,
Speaker 1: and I turn it on and I light Dominic's face,
Speaker 1: the top of his head is going to blow out,
Speaker 1: and his chest is going to be dark because the
Speaker 1: light is so close to you and the camera's ability
Speaker 1: to handle that much contrast is quite limited. Especially in
Speaker 1: those years. The low ceiling forced us to light more
Speaker 1: from the side further away, so we'd have a little
Speaker 1: bit more reasonable throw and it wouldn't be that problem.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know the Captain's ready room, that was
Speaker 1: one of those things where the ceiling was even lower
Speaker 1: in that set. I mean it was really low, so
Speaker 1: the hiding lamps that weren't in the shot but would
Speaker 1: still light Archer and make him look good, you know,
Speaker 1: make him look handsome. Believe me, that was you know,
Speaker 1: Billy Pete's my gaffer and I spent quite a bit
Speaker 1: of time trying to figure that one out. We did,
Speaker 1: we did, but you know, it was tricky, you know, and.
Speaker 4: He could he could have looked quite honestly, demonesque in
Speaker 4: some of that lighting, couldn't it.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, And it wouldn't have looked It
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been this handsome guy that that Scott is.
Speaker 1: It would have been somebody that would be off putting.
Speaker 2: I think about Marvin, you know our show and truly, yeah,
Speaker 2: shadows and our restrictions and requirements for our ship. What
Speaker 2: was it like doing, say, Next Gen and Voyager both
Speaker 2: to me kind of like bright sets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was a bit darker. Next Generation. I came in
Speaker 1: on season three. The set of that show was somewhat
Speaker 1: established by those first two seasons on Next Gen, and
Speaker 1: if you remember, the ceiling of that set was giant
Speaker 1: panels of muslin lit from above, which is overhead lighting, right,
Speaker 1: basically a box of overhead lighting. Because of that, you know, well,
Speaker 1: that's an office building, Okay, I mean that's what an
Speaker 1: office building has. So if you lean into the reality
Speaker 1: of that again source lighting, that would mean that when
Speaker 1: conditions are normal in there, it's a bright place, not
Speaker 1: overly bright, but it's it's filled in. There's no shadows
Speaker 1: to speak of. And what we ended up doing was
Speaker 1: we put a key in to give Patrick Stewart a
Speaker 1: little bit more key like definition, and also Jonathan Frakes
Speaker 1: and whoever, Marina certain arena Marina, so that they all
Speaker 1: had a little they lifted them out and lifted their
Speaker 1: faces up a little bit. But the overall look of
Speaker 1: that show was more like an office building than a spaceship.
Speaker 1: Now you look at some of the modern shows that
Speaker 1: are done, the designers don't do that. They don't They
Speaker 1: give you all kinds of beams and darkness and structures
Speaker 1: above that that restrict that overhead feeling simply because they
Speaker 1: don't want it to look like an office building. I
Speaker 1: took it as a to me, it was a challenge,
Speaker 1: but I also thought, no, that's okay, because every twenty
Speaker 1: minutes something horrible happens, and it's a chance to get it.
Speaker 1: Make it dark, you know, because although you did.
Speaker 4: Look a bit caustic, you know, and it's in it's
Speaker 4: a natural environment, didn't it.
Speaker 1: And then and then the other thing is the Klingons,
Speaker 1: Well that's a dark set. Well then that's a differentiation,
Speaker 1: Like we don't want to make the Bridge or the
Speaker 1: Enterprise look like a Klingon set, right, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: because they're not the same. Their culture is different. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I I came to that show
Speaker 1: having a certain set look already established, and I probably
Speaker 1: could have changed it a lot more, but I didn't
Speaker 1: feel that was the right choice. I wanted the audience,
Speaker 1: the audience already liked the show. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: suddenly throw a monkey wrench and you know, have it
Speaker 1: not look like the show they've been watching. I guess
Speaker 1: the point I'm making is that they wanted the show
Speaker 1: to look They wanted me to take what I was
Speaker 1: doing on Frank's Place, the artistry on that show, and
Speaker 1: they wanted that artistry, and they wanted me to have
Speaker 1: the production speed to be able to complete episodes on schedule.
Speaker 1: Both were Both were true. It wasn't like they just said, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's fast, let's just get him. They liked the
Speaker 1: show that I was doing.
Speaker 4: What I've noticed with a lot of your work, Marvin
Speaker 4: is you're really good at having an actor move into
Speaker 4: a place to then bring the camera to the other
Speaker 4: actor's face. And it looked organic. Tell me a bit
Speaker 4: about that that well.
Speaker 1: I saw that. You you know, I learned from a
Speaker 1: lot of directors. One of the things that happens when
Speaker 1: you do that, and this is a trick, and it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a good trick. It's a trick if you've
Speaker 1: got a five page dialogue scene that's mostly exposition and
Speaker 1: you only have a couple hours to get that shot right.
Speaker 1: If you have the actors walk to the next person
Speaker 1: who's going to talk. Right, you don't have as much
Speaker 1: coverage to shit.
Speaker 4: Cal I used to call that, get a bag of nuts. Well,
Speaker 4: I do you want me to go there? Get a bagne?
Speaker 1: Okay, So now that's the cheesy way of doing it
Speaker 1: right now, the better way to do it is you
Speaker 1: start on somebody in close up. There's an entrance that's upstage.
Speaker 1: That person has some important information. They pan the camera
Speaker 1: and bring you to the person they're going to talk to.
Speaker 1: They talk to that person and get the information. Then
Speaker 1: somebody looks to the person where you originally work. The
Speaker 1: camera whippans over to that person, who says to Paul
Speaker 1: then says, well that'll ever work or whatever she says,
Speaker 1: you know other argues. She said, Well, now the point
Speaker 1: I'm making is now you've done something that's got drive.
Speaker 1: It's internally motivated by actor movement. That is that makes sense,
Speaker 1: It doesn't require coverage, and it has all kinds of energy. Okay,
Speaker 1: is that a conversation with your director?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that like the dance that you're going to turn
Speaker 2: on that And because I remember.
Speaker 3: Working, you know, we would have multiple.
Speaker 2: Directors and sometimes it seemed as though LeVar is a
Speaker 2: great example.
Speaker 3: I think you two worked very very well together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Roxan Dawson also fantastic.
Speaker 2: Rock and Dawson, you know, and and so you get
Speaker 2: this sort of symbiotic kind of relationship about how you're
Speaker 2: going to dance this scene. And what happens when you
Speaker 2: don't have that relationship.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what I did in Sink, And if you
Speaker 1: think back, you'll remember this is something I would do.
Speaker 1: I would get in where I thought the shot started.
Speaker 1: I would do this, and I would frame the shot
Speaker 1: with my fingers and I would walk around as if
Speaker 1: I was the dollie framing the shot while the actors
Speaker 1: ran the scene. And my reason for that was I
Speaker 1: was honestly exploring how I would cover the scene if
Speaker 1: I was going to be directing it essentially, or at least,
Speaker 1: you know, filming it on my own terms. Then the
Speaker 1: director would obviously see me doing that, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: director would say, well, I want to do it this
Speaker 1: other way, and we would do that, you know, I
Speaker 1: would do what they said, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: they go, let's do that, you know, or some version
Speaker 1: of that, right, And so I was essentially leading the
Speaker 1: parade a little bit. And also it was my own
Speaker 1: inspiration I was trying to get, you know, because directors
Speaker 1: sometimes turned to me and say, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do here? There are other directors that I call
Speaker 1: shot directors, and those are directors who have decided how
Speaker 1: they're going to cover the scene before they've even blocked it.
Speaker 1: They have plan, they have a camera plan, and you
Speaker 1: are going to fit into their plan, come hell or
Speaker 1: high water. And if I if I get a director
Speaker 1: like that, I might pitch something. And if I get
Speaker 1: if it, if it's fertile ground, it'll grow. And if
Speaker 1: I don't, then I just go, Okay, this episode is
Speaker 1: going to be you know, a different job for me.
Speaker 1: So I changed my job based on what the director's
Speaker 1: wanting to do.
Speaker 2: Did you also carry a shot list of your own
Speaker 2: as you walked into the day.
Speaker 1: Never, I wanted you to inspire me and move my
Speaker 1: feet with what you did. In other words, you were
Speaker 1: making me move and think.
Speaker 4: I think, Conna. Do you remember as actors we kind
Speaker 4: of blocked the scenes a lot ourselves, didn't we.
Speaker 2: I mean we would walk in, we would do a
Speaker 2: little loosey goosey one and then we would then we
Speaker 2: would do a one that felt right, and if that
Speaker 2: felt right, then we get taped off and then lit.
Speaker 2: We didn't have a lot of time, but yeah, we
Speaker 2: did have a bit of a It depended.
Speaker 3: It depended on the director.
Speaker 1: And on the scene.
Speaker 4: Obviously, if we were standing around the situation table, then
Speaker 4: you know we had our places where it was best
Speaker 4: to be shoot. But yeah, we were, we were actually
Speaker 4: walking and talking. Yeah, that was I think it was
Speaker 4: very organic that what we did. And then a good
Speaker 4: director would find a way to with Marvin's help, would
Speaker 4: would help would shoot it accordingly. And on the bridge,
Speaker 4: I tell you what was I noticed we had that crane,
Speaker 4: didn't we which was a very useful tool. You never
Speaker 4: had to lay Dolly track and uh yeah, tell me
Speaker 4: about the crane. Was that a lot of money?
Speaker 1: Well, no, because we owned it. We owned it.
Speaker 4: I mean, was that something you brought back in the.
Speaker 1: I didn't own any equipment, and I deliberately chose not
Speaker 1: to do that. I could have owned gear, and I
Speaker 1: could have made myself a whole lot of money if
Speaker 1: I had it. Chose not to in the reason is
Speaker 1: because I wanted my crew to be able to make
Speaker 1: some money. Off of those things because that makes the
Speaker 1: mot of it, you know, it makes it keeps some
Speaker 1: really juice.
Speaker 4: Randy, Randy, Randy Burgess.
Speaker 1: Randy Rgen. Yes, Brandy owned that, I think the first
Speaker 1: season he maybe didn't when it was on Voyager, but
Speaker 1: he ended up buying that crane and making a good
Speaker 1: a goodly amount of money off of it over the years.
Speaker 1: I did own the remote head with Doug Nap, So
Speaker 1: I did have one piece of gear that I did own,
Speaker 1: and that's because you know, we couldn't get the studio
Speaker 1: to rent one for us. They wouldn't do it, you know, So.
Speaker 4: The operational equipment was we made.
Speaker 1: A sweetheart deal with them, and it was it was
Speaker 1: the crane was affordable. And also the thing with like
Speaker 1: with Mary Howard, you know, and they all learned that
Speaker 1: I could set a shot with a crane. Normally, if
Speaker 1: you if you have a crane on a set and
Speaker 1: you don't use it all the time and you bring
Speaker 1: it in once in a while, usually the day goes
Speaker 1: terrible because everybody's learning how to use this tool they
Speaker 1: only use occasionally. If you use it every single day,
Speaker 1: almost every day, and we did, it comes completely ordinary,
Speaker 1: right and and you know Arian Domingus, my my, my Dolly.
Speaker 1: The armman on the show, Adrian, you know, is a wizard.
Speaker 3: Is he still around?
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't talked to him a couple of years,
Speaker 1: but I know I think he is. He does all
Speaker 1: and he does all kinds of shows, and he does
Speaker 1: a lot of crane work. And in fact, we did
Speaker 1: a show together. I worked on Glee for two seasons
Speaker 1: and I was their techno crane operator and second DP
Speaker 1: and Adrian Domingus and Jim sal Duty were my the
Speaker 1: The guy on the Dolly was Jim and the armed
Speaker 1: man was Adrian, and we created all kinds of dance
Speaker 1: numbers on show. We did it out of just out
Speaker 1: of complete like on the fly Man, making it up
Speaker 1: as we go. It was really fun.
Speaker 4: So we had some great shots. I mean that that
Speaker 4: crane could start at the back of that bridge set
Speaker 4: and come all the way to a close up of Scholar, which.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do with Dolly track. It would never happen.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Connor here, Hey, guys, Dominate Keithing here.
Speaker 4: We want to thank you all for tuning into our
Speaker 4: trek podcast, The Decon Chamber with a.
Speaker 2: We shtually opened our merch shop and we wanted to
Speaker 2: show you some of the T shirts you can get
Speaker 2: there right now.
Speaker 4: There are many designs, including these two wonderful ones I
Speaker 4: went to and oh I got. I was tied up
Speaker 4: in a basement with him. And let me tell you,
Speaker 4: this is just the beginning. We've got so much more
Speaker 4: to come.
Speaker 2: If you want to check them out, head to the
Speaker 2: dcon chamber dot com slash shop and.
Speaker 4: If you are a patroon, you get a discount all
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to support the show and rep
Speaker 2: the decon Chamber at the same time. And no new
Speaker 2: we had such an interesting dynamic where halfway through our
Speaker 2: show we went from film to digital. Yeah, I'd love
Speaker 2: to hear how that experience went for you in terms
Speaker 2: of one, uh, that obvious thing occurring, but also you know,
Speaker 2: how how vested were you in realizing being four uh
Speaker 2: digital or any of that?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 1: How because that.
Speaker 3: Was we changed as the industry changed.
Speaker 1: On our show, we actually were the first I think
Speaker 1: episodic television show to go HT in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, letter Box too, you know, sixteen by nine,
Speaker 4: that's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened was this first of all I'd mentioned
Speaker 1: that I'd started off in the live television world, so
Speaker 1: I had experience. I mean I did. I did the
Speaker 1: Dinah Shore Talk Show. That's a video show back in
Speaker 1: the day, you know, I mean I did. I did.
Speaker 1: I did Solid Gold as a handheld operator on solving Gold.
Speaker 1: I did, I did. I did. I did Days So.
Speaker 3: Scott's wife before Scott went met his.
Speaker 1: Yes, I did. I did Soul Training, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did a show for some time called Rock
Speaker 1: of the Eighties, which we did all kinds of I
Speaker 1: did Cindy Lauper and and uh what p I l
Speaker 1: and Berlin and I mean I did Jack mac in
Speaker 1: thee Heart Attack. And you know, a lot of concert work,
Speaker 1: tonya bb king, Uh, a lot of concert work. But
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is I had experience in the television
Speaker 1: world the electronic camera world before HD, so I was
Speaker 1: already quite comfortable with working with a digital camera. And
Speaker 1: I also knew something that nobody else did. I really
Speaker 1: did know this that in the in the foot race
Speaker 1: between chemistry and electronics, electronics is going to win. And
Speaker 1: I knew that the first generation of those cameras might
Speaker 1: not be it might be close to film.
Speaker 5: It might be better, it might be a little bit
Speaker 5: less good in in some ways, but it was going
Speaker 5: to win the argument, and I thought I would rather
Speaker 5: be on the leading edge of this than behind.
Speaker 1: Hey, we're science fiction. Why don't we do something new,
Speaker 1: you know, let's be scientific.
Speaker 4: Was it your idea to take that up or we
Speaker 4: pushed by?
Speaker 1: What happened was this We shot a sequence on Voyager
Speaker 1: during the time when Panavision had partnered with Sony with
Speaker 1: it with their version of a Panavized Sony HD camera,
Speaker 1: and it was set up to shoot twenty four p
Speaker 1: you know, twenty four frames, and we shot a sequence
Speaker 1: and it was it was successful. I think it was.
Speaker 1: Actually we might have very well done it on a
Speaker 1: board set. I think I might have been a board set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my memory is soft on this. I just remember we
Speaker 1: shot a couple of days, and I don't remember whether
Speaker 1: it was a pure test or whether it was whether
Speaker 1: it aired, might have just been a test, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I remember that Panavision asked us to
Speaker 1: do it, and of course I said, bring it on, man,
Speaker 1: I'm ready, let's go. So then when it was time
Speaker 1: to do it, I was for it. I thought it
Speaker 1: would be a lot of fun to do something, you know,
Speaker 1: a challenge, something different. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: and my crew were scared to death of it.
Speaker 2: Did you want to, like then explore what cameras might
Speaker 2: work for the show or.
Speaker 1: Well, at that time, there was one choice. At that time,
Speaker 1: there really was. There were a couple of other cameras
Speaker 1: out there that were clearly not good enough to do
Speaker 1: the job. And there was this sony I think it
Speaker 1: was the Red It wasn't Red. Red is a different company,
Speaker 1: was it. Yeah, you're conflating two cameras. The Red system
Speaker 1: is a is a different system. The guy that invented
Speaker 1: one of those guys that invented sunglasses, the Oakley I
Speaker 1: think Oakley Sunglasses was the guy that that pioneered Red
Speaker 1: no kidding, Yeah, yeah, And so they're not the same.
Speaker 1: And I and I worked with a Red. I haven't
Speaker 1: worked with it for a long time. I currently I
Speaker 1: shoot with the Alexa. When I shoot, I shoot Most
Speaker 1: of the time I shoot with the Alexa.
Speaker 4: The workhorse cameras was the Panaflex Gold. Wasn't it too?
Speaker 4: That was did you miss?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: That was your That was that the one you had
Speaker 4: on your shoulder all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had we had a goal to and we
Speaker 1: also had a lightweight gold that stripped down handheld gold,
Speaker 1: and that was the one I used for handheld most
Speaker 1: of the time, with a four hundred foot mag on
Speaker 1: the back.
Speaker 4: And you loved being in there, I remember in the ACA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I developed over the years, I developed
Speaker 1: a theory of you know, like I talked about a
Speaker 1: theory of lighting, right, I developed a theory of camera
Speaker 1: that I applied to the work I was doing. The
Speaker 1: theory was that when you go handheld and you go
Speaker 1: in close with the actors where you're physically very close
Speaker 1: to the actors, like let's say with a thirty five
Speaker 1: milimeter or a twenty eight millimeter in that range, and
Speaker 1: you film it, you suddenly are essentially like a non
Speaker 1: speaking actor in the scene. And so what happens is
Speaker 1: the cast begins to treat you like a non speaking actor.
Speaker 1: They share the intimacy with the lens in a way
Speaker 1: that you don't get when you fall back and you
Speaker 1: get further away. When you come right in, right in
Speaker 1: on top of that actor's face, you see every single thing,
Speaker 1: and they feel you as a person at least I'm
Speaker 1: speaking for you guys, you're the actors. But but my
Speaker 1: experience is that so that becomes experiential for the camera.
Speaker 1: The audience suddenly is invited into the scene in a
Speaker 1: way that they're not if they're observing from outside.
Speaker 2: I remember these times, and you know, I've had several
Speaker 2: of them in my career, but I remember these with
Speaker 2: with you is that you know, when that other character
Speaker 2: comes in, who's a non speaking part, it generates energy
Speaker 2: and intention within the scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's what it does, is it makes the audience
Speaker 1: feel that they're really a participant, you know, that they're
Speaker 1: actually just like the actors that are standing there. They're
Speaker 1: one of those people that are standing there watching, you know,
Speaker 1: hearing and watching and observing what's going on. And and
Speaker 1: so whenever the scene I felt was right for that,
Speaker 1: and and also especially when the stakes get high, you know,
Speaker 1: when when there's no it's imposing, you know, then I
Speaker 1: would do it only because we were behind, I have
Speaker 1: to hurry up, and I don't have to you know,
Speaker 1: I can get something shot more quickly, and it's for schedule,
Speaker 1: which was rare most of the time. When I went
Speaker 1: to that technique, and I sometimes would talk to the
Speaker 1: directors and they wouldn't want to do that. But after
Speaker 1: I'd shown them a few scenes, you know, over the
Speaker 1: course of seven or eight days, or if they'd worked
Speaker 1: with me before, you know, I'd say, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you want to do this handheld and they go, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. And they would say that for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One is they knew that it would add energy, it
Speaker 1: would add in an immediacy, and it also they knew
Speaker 1: that I would be able to get the scene done
Speaker 1: quickly enough that they could put some time into some
Speaker 1: of the other scenes. There were two aspects to it.
Speaker 1: One was schedule and the other was intention. But I
Speaker 1: think the most important was the intention part. It creates
Speaker 1: an intimacy you don't get any other way.
Speaker 4: We when we got to love you and trust you
Speaker 4: and get used to this black box in our face,
Speaker 4: it was. It was fabulous those scenes that we shot
Speaker 4: like that. Yeah, there was an immediacy and and a
Speaker 4: trust and you knew and you were such a good eye.
Speaker 4: I remember you used to sometimes just go and take
Speaker 4: it on them. You know, you were very clever at that,
Speaker 4: and you the director wouldn't hear you. You was just like,
Speaker 4: you know, you might want to do it this way.
Speaker 4: I remember once you say to me, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, you know, here's the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's get into a philosophy. Another thing, I guess. I
Speaker 1: always have a motto about just about everything I do.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that is a motto of
Speaker 1: mine is I really really want to be in love
Speaker 1: with my actors. You know, I really want them to
Speaker 1: know that I actually love them. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: like a romantic love. I mean the agape love, which
Speaker 1: is the love of so a man, but with actual, true,
Speaker 1: genuine affection, appreciation and love. And if you feel that
Speaker 1: I love you, you're going to trust me because I'm trustworthy, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And that we're a team. We're gonna work together.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, we're you know, we're compadres here.
Speaker 4: You know. That was an amazing thing about our set,
Speaker 4: in particular, given that we were coming to the end
Speaker 4: of what they call these legacy shows and a lot
Speaker 4: of you guys have been together for sixteen years, and
Speaker 4: it was such a beautifully well oiled machine, and there
Speaker 4: was so much love and trust on that set, and
Speaker 4: you welcomed us. That was another thing that really struck
Speaker 4: me was how much how easily you welcomed these upstars
Speaker 4: driving their new porches onto the lot.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know the thing is that you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, actors put it all on the line. This morning,
Speaker 1: I watched the scene from Terror a Terror Prime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Terror Prime.
Speaker 4: That'sked about the service for for Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: I mean I was bawling in that in that final
Speaker 1: scene was so great And that's I mean, and you
Speaker 1: you know, you really I told you. I remember the
Speaker 1: note I gave you too, because I was directing on
Speaker 1: that one. I said, I want you to break me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that, but that's what
Speaker 1: I said.
Speaker 3: You know, I will tell you the story behind this.
Speaker 3: We were pregnant with Jasper, my son, uh huh.
Speaker 2: And it was like, you know, you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: say anything until like three months in, until it sticks.
Speaker 2: I was hiding this information and when you said, you know,
Speaker 2: do that, I just let it all go. And it
Speaker 2: was literally my confession of being pregnant for Volk and
Speaker 2: a human never decided to have a child, it'd probably
Speaker 2: be okay.
Speaker 3: And also I had to walk away. I had to
Speaker 3: put myself together that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we and I remember you walked away and
Speaker 1: I just said, everybody, I said, just be quiet. We're
Speaker 1: not going to say a word. When he's ready, he'll
Speaker 1: come back. We have all the time in the world.
Speaker 1: Let's just relax and not worry about it. I could
Speaker 1: care less how long this takes. I don't care if
Speaker 1: it takes all day, it's fine with me. We're going
Speaker 1: to get a great scene because we're going to be patient.
Speaker 4: And toughing up stuff.
Speaker 1: Really right, And you and you did break me, honest
Speaker 1: to God, on the day. I was crying when you
Speaker 1: finish that scene on the set and I was crying.
Speaker 1: I was crying today watching it twenty some odd years later.
Speaker 1: So you know, no job, man, that's true.
Speaker 4: Here's what I think.
Speaker 3: Here's what I think about all of what we do.
Speaker 3: We are trying to tell the truth, yeah.
Speaker 2: In its essence, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 2: And that was one of those times when you know,
Speaker 2: the truth happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is in fact. What actors do you know?
Speaker 1: I mean I always tell people, I say, look, here's
Speaker 1: why it's so, why actors are so rare, why they're
Speaker 1: so special is because they have the ability to say
Speaker 1: things that someone wrote six months ago that wasn't them,
Speaker 1: and then to say it with absolute total conviction, be
Speaker 1: somebody they're not, and make you believe it. Now, you
Speaker 1: try that, anybody, Try that. Try that somebody else's words,
Speaker 1: you know, make them your own completely as if you
Speaker 1: just thought of it, even like not only as the
Speaker 1: written down, but you just just this moment thought of
Speaker 1: it while reacting to the other people in the scene,
Speaker 1: and make somebody believe that it's completely authentic, and also
Speaker 1: be somebody you're not. That is why actors are so precious.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in a negative majority way.
Speaker 1: I mean that in a rare way. They are rare,
Speaker 1: and the people that can actually pull that alchemy off
Speaker 1: are by definition a very small percentage of the population.
Speaker 1: It's true, and so and so when I work with actors,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. By the way, I cannot do
Speaker 1: that job that you do. I cannot do. And I've
Speaker 1: tried a little tiny bit, and I showed myself exactly
Speaker 1: why I should never try, Okay, because I can't do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just don't have the kid, so you do. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing, and that's why that's where that love
Speaker 1: comes from. It's from a genuine, deep appreciation for the
Speaker 1: reality of what you guys do.
Speaker 4: With that in mind, you do you prefer directing or
Speaker 4: did you like cinematography because it was just the steadier gig.
Speaker 1: That also, here's the thing about me. First of all, today,
Speaker 1: and I decided to wait until this morning because I
Speaker 1: wanted it to be fresh in my mind. I could
Speaker 1: have watched the episodes a couple of days ago. I
Speaker 1: watched them all back to back this morning because I
Speaker 1: wanted to be I wanted to be fresh for you
Speaker 1: guys with this this interview. And I watched tr Prime
Speaker 1: and I also watched Mirror Darkly two, which are two
Speaker 1: episodes of the shows that I directed. Okay, and I
Speaker 1: remember I had in the day at the time, I
Speaker 1: think I had some bittersweet feelings about directing. But I
Speaker 1: watched it today and I thought to my self, No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not fair. I hit two home runs.
Speaker 4: I think I did.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I really. I mean, I don't mean to brag,
Speaker 1: but I think I had done things that were not
Speaker 1: but but those were And if I had applied myself
Speaker 1: to the directing job, and really focused my energies. I
Speaker 1: probably could have been successful at it. But here's the problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm good at. When something I actually firmly,
Speaker 1: honestly believe in, like to the bottom of my heart,
Speaker 1: I'm unstoppable. But if I don't believe it, I suck, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: And when you're a television director, yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: be able to not suck all the time.
Speaker 4: As a roll of the dice on what episode you're
Speaker 4: going to get and uh, yeah, agreed, and so and so.
Speaker 1: For me, if I had been a television episodic director,
Speaker 1: I think I would not have ultimately been able to
Speaker 1: make a living at it because I would have been
Speaker 1: handed something that I didn't like, didn't get, didn't understand,
Speaker 1: and couldn't do. And that's not what a TV director does.
Speaker 1: A feature filmed. The problem with features is though you
Speaker 1: might go four or five years between projects, so you
Speaker 1: spend all this time getting it ready and never practicing
Speaker 1: the skill. Whereas a television director, man, he's working all
Speaker 1: the time, he's practicing. So the better circumstance would have
Speaker 1: been me on a show that I loved with actors
Speaker 1: that I know, and then I got invited to do episodes,
Speaker 1: which is what I did, you know, and we've gone
Speaker 1: on a couple more seasons. If we had, I'm sure
Speaker 1: I would have asked for and been offered more episodes
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, I think Terror Prime was
Speaker 1: pretty good.
Speaker 4: That's all finale Terror Prime, It really is.
Speaker 1: The thing about the Mirror Darkly is that it was
Speaker 1: a chance for the actors to like Archer was channeling Spock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was doing his version of Spock. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was great at it. It was it wasn't quite a copy.
Speaker 1: It was just he was inhabiting that character, right.
Speaker 4: And then Connor didn't much like what he did in
Speaker 4: the first as part of it, but he found an
Speaker 4: can't you found your You found your way in the
Speaker 4: second part beautifully, mate, Probably just a.
Speaker 1: Microfracture in the can't do it?
Speaker 4: You really want to interrupt the captain for that, I
Speaker 4: tell you. There's one scene that Flox has with Paul
Speaker 4: in the Messile when they asked after poor old Reed
Speaker 4: that's sort of had a you know, a rather sort
Speaker 4: of near fatal inner death. His reaction is just brilliant.
Speaker 1: What's major Reed's condition?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: At this point he could go either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 4: Or may not survive, but nobody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally don't care. I don't care.
Speaker 4: It was brilliant and that soon he got aware alame
Speaker 4: was just brilliant.
Speaker 3: Marvin.
Speaker 2: You you uh walked into directing this episode. It's just
Speaker 2: a two part question. One thing I'll say is that
Speaker 2: you know we had we also got the information that
Speaker 2: we were canceled.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you know you throughout your career.
Speaker 2: Have had you know, different shows go and then they stop,
Speaker 2: and then they go and they stop, and this for
Speaker 2: all of.
Speaker 3: Us, most of us, it was so very disappointing.
Speaker 2: But I guess the question I want to ask is,
Speaker 2: when you're directing an episode, are you still the cinematographer
Speaker 2: and the DP.
Speaker 1: I'm not credited then, but I I lit that show,
Speaker 1: I directed it and I operated it.
Speaker 4: I kidding, okay.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because I wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: give it to anybody else.
Speaker 4: Right, not even Doug Knapp. You wouldn't. I mean, Doug
Speaker 4: was good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Doug, you know, I don't. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: every shot that I did or didn't do. I just
Speaker 1: know that if it was on the shoulder. I did it,
Speaker 1: and I also know that if it was a wonner,
Speaker 1: I did it okay. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: wonners in those those episodes, Both of themizones have a
Speaker 1: lot of wonners where the actors take you to the
Speaker 1: moments right. There's a lot of movement in those scenes,
Speaker 1: like like in Mirror Darkly that episode. You know, if
Speaker 1: you look at that and break it down, you'll see
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shots that are won My favorite
Speaker 1: winner is the romantic scene between Archer and Hoshi exactly.
Speaker 1: And I told them, I said, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to shoot this in complete silhouette.
Speaker 7: I've never been the Concert of an Emperor before.
Speaker 5: Is there anything I.
Speaker 1: Need to know?
Speaker 3: I think you've got the basics down.
Speaker 1: We've never done a silhouette show episode and are seeing
Speaker 1: in any Star Trek that I've done. I recorded a
Speaker 1: little tiny bit of it, and then I had them
Speaker 1: look at the monitor and they saw it, and I said, guys,
Speaker 1: I said, here's the thing about that. You can do
Speaker 1: anything you want and the audience won't see anything. You'll
Speaker 1: see everything that they that they imagine.
Speaker 4: It was so sexy, it really was.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was those guys, they both got it. No,
Speaker 1: I got no pushback from them. I said, it's a winner.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to cover it. I said, so you know,
Speaker 1: we got to we'll do it. We'll do as many
Speaker 1: takes it takes to you guys, have one you like
Speaker 1: and I like you know. And that's the thing I always,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember Connor, I always said
Speaker 1: to you guys, I said, you know, were you happy
Speaker 1: you did you like that? Would you like another one?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: My?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did, Marvin.
Speaker 2: And you know what I would always I wouldn't always
Speaker 2: do this, but if it was a particularly i don't know,
Speaker 2: intense or important scene, the same I would say, Okay,
Speaker 2: we got it, and I would say to you, can
Speaker 2: I have one for free?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely. And the thing about that is is that
Speaker 1: very often what I would actually say to you guys
Speaker 1: was I'd say, Okay, you know, I love that, I
Speaker 1: got it. I got what I need. You know, all
Speaker 1: the values I was looking for, we got. Now would
Speaker 1: you like to do another one?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or words to that effect, which puts you in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, Yeah, I mean, it gives you the authority,
Speaker 1: so you know, in other words, I'm It's not an
Speaker 1: abdication on my part. It's more an invitation to be
Speaker 1: the author of your own work, right.
Speaker 4: Because the actor always knows if they think they could
Speaker 4: tweak it slightly better.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it was better. A lot of times it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But we also discovered it wasn't better. Yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we discovered that we hit the We hit the thing
Speaker 1: out of the park.
Speaker 4: And you know, I always have.
Speaker 1: The right to as an editor, that you know, be
Speaker 1: editing the piece, to pick the one I like the most.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's you know, and the producers have theirs.
Speaker 1: The antidote to the producers taking the show away from
Speaker 1: you is to make sure every single scene is so
Speaker 1: good they won't touch it.
Speaker 6: Marvin, I've always wanted to ask I behind the lens, Yeah,
Speaker 6: you tell what is a great performance when you're looking
Speaker 6: at it through the lens versus how you see it?
Speaker 1: Say, in the editing bay.
Speaker 2: You've got all these good examples of you know, Marilyn
Speaker 2: Monroe and other actors who who people were acting with
Speaker 2: and going like their pants.
Speaker 3: See them, it would be mesmeric.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know, yes, I think so. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm personally convinced to be a cheerleader for the system.
Speaker 1: In other words, I want to embody positive energy because
Speaker 1: I believe that if I put out put out positive energy,
Speaker 1: I get it back right, So I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be negative around the cast. I want them to do well.
Speaker 1: I want them to do their best work. I always
Speaker 1: want them to do the best work, and I assume
Speaker 1: they are doing their very best work. Some you know,
Speaker 1: some guest actors that we've had on shows. You know,
Speaker 1: I think, well, I think we could have done that,
Speaker 1: that could have been done better. Right, you know, that
Speaker 1: does happen. Right, But generally speaking, as I told you
Speaker 1: how I feel about actors and what it is that
Speaker 1: they do, and the fact that I know, for damn sure,
Speaker 1: I cannot even come close to doing what they do,
Speaker 1: So for me to criticize an actor would be pretty stupid, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean just not fair. So yes, the short answer
Speaker 1: is yes, I can tell when somebody affects me. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm one of these people that's on the verge of
Speaker 1: tears all the time. In other words, my emotional state
Speaker 1: is accessible. It's really close to the surface. I laugh
Speaker 1: when I see something funny, and I cry when I
Speaker 1: see something that makes me sad, and I tell people,
Speaker 1: I say, listen, if you want to know what I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: look at my face and you'll be able to tell
Speaker 1: immediately what I'm thinking. So I can't hide it very well.
Speaker 1: I'm not a very good actor, you know. In other words,
Speaker 1: I can't hide it, right. So, yeah, I'm a cheerleader
Speaker 1: by nature. I'm excited about the work. I want the
Speaker 1: people doing the work to do their very best work,
Speaker 1: and I'm patient for them to find their best performance.
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, I think that's important. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but when somebody nails it, it's like, yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: get it, you know. And that's why I'll come to
Speaker 1: you when i'm when i'm directing, and I'll say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I got what I was looking for. I
Speaker 1: got everything. Would you like to do one more? You know,
Speaker 1: have you got something color that you wanted to show
Speaker 1: me that you haven't shown yet. I'm not expecting you
Speaker 1: to get to do something better, because I've already gotten
Speaker 1: what I was wanted.
Speaker 4: You know. But sometimes I mean and sometimes it was better,
Speaker 4: and yeah, I will use that, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a this is a team sport.
Speaker 1: You know, it really is a sport. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on stage, well you control the performance completely.
Speaker 1: But if you're on a camera, the lens, the lighting,
Speaker 1: the other actors around you, the time you had to
Speaker 1: spend waiting in your trailer, you know before you had
Speaker 1: a chance to act. You know, those are all factors
Speaker 1: that affect what you're able to accomplish.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So when you work on some sets where
Speaker 4: you know the lead and others don't think of it
Speaker 4: as a team sport and it's a miserable affair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it can be. I have worked my career
Speaker 1: on excellent shows, you know. I mean, I really have
Speaker 1: another show that I'm very fond of is Hell on Wheels, right,
Speaker 1: and you know that show was like all the Star
Speaker 1: Trek shows, one of the ones that are put up
Speaker 1: with anything. I mean, I was inches.
Speaker 4: Away from getting one of the Irish brothers on that job.
Speaker 1: Oh really, the perfect for that.
Speaker 4: I know, they changed the ages and I was too
Speaker 4: young and too old for either one of them, but
Speaker 4: they were I was minutes of this clothes to get
Speaker 4: Oh wow, the older brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been fun. Well, you know, but
Speaker 1: you know the thing is that. I'm proud of that show.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I also, you know, that was completely
Speaker 1: different than science fiction. No, it doesn't have anything. It
Speaker 1: was a hard shoot up there.
Speaker 4: And where were you in albert in Calgaryeah, I mean
Speaker 4: in the dead of winter and.
Speaker 1: We had weather and we had you know, we had
Speaker 1: hot summers and it was Yeah, it was a physical job.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the thought because it is a seminal
Speaker 4: episode and you directed that, and Con and I both
Speaker 4: just looked at it. I mean, it is a throwback
Speaker 4: to you know, the original show, and in spades, tell
Speaker 4: us a bit about that because it was hell of
Speaker 4: a piece, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Here's what happened. Okay. I read the script and I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I get to be Federico Fellini, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean they're giving me Federico Fellini. Okay, yeah. I
Speaker 1: saw Eight and a Half. I know that movie. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'm doing my version of Eight and a half.
Speaker 1: Watch this. Then in the production meeting, I said things
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, we need some circus performers,
Speaker 1: you know, because this guy's a clown. Well, you can't
Speaker 1: have a clown without some circus performers and Mary Howard,
Speaker 1: God bless her. Mary Howard said, why don't we get
Speaker 1: some circusley from Vegas? And I said, oh, they came
Speaker 1: from Vegas.
Speaker 4: I thought maybe they were in the Godpark of Santa Monica.
Speaker 4: They got them from Vegas.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, let me be careful here. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly where she got I remember hearing Vegas. All I
Speaker 1: know is that we were originally going to have like
Speaker 1: twice as many and they couldn't afford it, but they
Speaker 1: but she's she fought for and protect me by giving
Speaker 1: me enough to make the story work. Well it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's number one. Michael McKeon was not a choice that
Speaker 1: I would have thought of first for that job. But
Speaker 1: when he read for the he read for it. We
Speaker 1: read for the part. I just said, I didn't read.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you read or not, but I
Speaker 1: but I thought to myself, he's a luney enough guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, is the characters he's played, not not him
Speaker 1: as a person, but I mean he he he will
Speaker 1: be able to be off the wall. And I thought,
Speaker 1: we need that guy to be maniacal and self absorbed
Speaker 1: and crazy. Okay, you know, classic and classic in a
Speaker 1: classic Yeah, yeah, he wasn't over the top. He was
Speaker 1: you know, from Shakespeare, and he was focused. That character
Speaker 1: was very focused on accomplishing what he wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: selfishly what he wanted.
Speaker 3: I have only one demand to exist.
Speaker 1: So they handed me this surrealistic Federico Fellini thing. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I said to everybody that would listen,
Speaker 1: I said, look, normally we pay attention to continu it.
Speaker 1: But because this is like a video game, when you
Speaker 1: jump to the next level, everything moves right instantly, you know.
Speaker 1: And in other words, the clown could be over here
Speaker 1: and then you whip the camera and he's over here,
Speaker 1: and you're here without an invitation, What is going on?
Speaker 7: Who is he?
Speaker 3: You will talk to me?
Speaker 1: In other words, he's wherever he wants to be at
Speaker 1: any moment he wants to be instantaneously. So there is
Speaker 1: no continuity in the classic sense when we're inside his world.
Speaker 1: And so that was the other determination. And then also
Speaker 1: just I said, you know, we've got to keep this moving, like,
Speaker 1: don't let the audience have a moment of rest. You
Speaker 1: know that the thing is spinning like a top. It's
Speaker 1: just pedal to the metal. No no chance to reflect.
Speaker 1: It's coming at you all the time. And so that
Speaker 1: was the that was those were the north stars.
Speaker 4: And you know, I know, how did you because the
Speaker 4: background artist was so you know, integral to the telling
Speaker 4: of this, how did you direct them? Because officially speaking,
Speaker 4: directors can't direct background.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, well that's true that you can't.
Speaker 1: And doesn't we actually cast anybody that had a bit,
Speaker 1: even the like the like the henchman, that the guy
Speaker 1: that chops off the heads, he had a little physical bit.
Speaker 1: Well we cast that part. If my memory is correct,
Speaker 1: this a long time ago, but we cast that. I
Speaker 1: mean I read that part, and you know I had
Speaker 1: them do it. And they were paid extra for you know,
Speaker 1: they were extras, I think, but they were also they
Speaker 1: were you know, they had a bit, right extra. They
Speaker 1: get a different pay rate. The little people. We cast
Speaker 1: those two Like there was one lady that was a
Speaker 1: little person.
Speaker 3: And we cast.
Speaker 1: And she had lines. She had one line or maybe two.
Speaker 7: Where are you from another town?
Speaker 4: There aren't any other towns.
Speaker 1: Talking to the extras, What I would do is I
Speaker 1: would have the A D stand next to me, and
Speaker 1: I would tell the A D and figure it out
Speaker 1: and act out what I wanted them to do. I'd say, now,
Speaker 1: I want you to tell them and I was literally
Speaker 1: like here and I'd say I want them to do
Speaker 1: and then when this happens, I wanted to do this
Speaker 1: thing like I'm doing right now, right. And then when
Speaker 1: this part happens, and I said it as loud as
Speaker 1: I could say so that everybody heard it. And then
Speaker 1: this is the director said, well, they'll just do that.
Speaker 4: What he said.
Speaker 1: In other words, in other words, I wasn't mean about it,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to miss them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No one from the DGA came down and went,
Speaker 4: this is not well.
Speaker 1: Well, I didn't break the rules. I was telling him
Speaker 1: what I wanted him to tell.
Speaker 3: Them loudly, loudly.
Speaker 1: I'm enthusiastic, that's all. I'm just enthusiastic.
Speaker 4: I understand you rehearsed, which is unusual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well what we did was I told I asked Mary.
Speaker 1: I said, look, I would love to run the show
Speaker 1: at lunch two days before we shoot.
Speaker 4: When you're working as a as the DP on whatever
Speaker 4: that episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I know I was I think I was.
Speaker 2: I was not.
Speaker 1: I was prepping because God, because I had to prep
Speaker 1: the episode I had to prep direct, but I came
Speaker 1: down to the set during a lunch one of the
Speaker 1: days during lunch, and the whole cast agreed to do it.
Speaker 1: They all agreed to do it, and I think as
Speaker 1: a favor to me, and I said, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We'll read through and I won't say it or I
Speaker 1: just want to hear it. And they read it through,
Speaker 1: and then I gave notes on each of the sequences
Speaker 1: what I thought was important to stress, and we ran
Speaker 1: it one more time. After each scene. I gave a
Speaker 1: couple of very brief notes. In other words, I didn't
Speaker 1: tell people how to act. What I was trying to
Speaker 1: accomplish is what was important from from the director's storytelling
Speaker 1: point of view about these sequences and what I wanted
Speaker 1: to stress. And then we ran it the third time
Speaker 1: at lunch, and we did it very quickly, ran the
Speaker 1: whole episode quickly. We had just enough time to get
Speaker 1: it one more time the third time, and I didn't
Speaker 1: give any notes. I just sat there and listened to it.
Speaker 1: When it was all done, I said, that's perfect, everybody
Speaker 1: what she did, because that's we're gonna shoot.
Speaker 4: It helps a lot, doesn't it. When you get to
Speaker 4: the luxury of that.
Speaker 1: It helped me because I knew what I was going
Speaker 1: to be shooting. I'd heard it from the performers.
Speaker 4: Because it could have been a clunk cut. I mean,
Speaker 4: it could have been a clunky episode if if it
Speaker 4: hadn't have been handled.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I honestly have to say I was fearless.
Speaker 2: I really was.
Speaker 1: I had no fear whatsoever because I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to do Fellini, and I knew Eight and a
Speaker 1: Half really well, and I knew that the spirit of
Speaker 1: Eight and a Half is what I was going to
Speaker 1: I was going to be channeling that movie, and so
Speaker 1: I did, and the best, to the best of my.
Speaker 4: The finale of it is just is wondrous.
Speaker 1: I wrote the line did you yes? Yes. Michael Pillar
Speaker 1: was the writer on the show, and I said to him,
Speaker 1: you know that that scene with Jane Way when she
Speaker 1: talks to the clown just before it's over to me,
Speaker 1: this this episode is a treatise on the nature of fear,
Speaker 1: that it's really about fear. And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, the thing about fear is that it's important.
Speaker 1: It protects us from danger, it keeps us safe, right.
Speaker 7: You Wanness of danger, remind us of our limits, protect
Speaker 7: us from carelessness. I've learned to trust fear.
Speaker 1: But fear, if you allow it to control you, it
Speaker 1: will destroy you. And I said, I said. I said
Speaker 1: to Michael, I said, so, could you write something like that?
Speaker 1: And I said, why don't they just say that? I said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's do that. I think you may have changed one word,
Speaker 1: but that's basically but it came from an honest place.
Speaker 1: I thought we needed a summation. And to me, the
Speaker 1: important thing is it's a funny, weird show, but it
Speaker 1: had a point. And the point was that you have
Speaker 1: to conquer fear or fear will conquer you.
Speaker 7: You know as well as I do, that fear only
Speaker 7: exists for one purpose, to be conquered.
Speaker 1: That's all we were.
Speaker 4: And the whole episode was about that, out into darkness.
Speaker 1: And then and then he came up with the line draft,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid draft bad. I heard that, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I initially, you know, it's funny. Initially I hated it.
Speaker 1: I thought that's that's wrong. But I didn't say that.
Speaker 1: I just sat there and I go, yeah, okay. And later,
Speaker 1: when he did it, I thought to myself, it's a
Speaker 1: good button. That's perfect. So I was wrong. My initial
Speaker 1: instinct was to try to control that, and I decided
Speaker 1: not to. You know, I thought, okay, well I can
Speaker 1: get rid of it. I don't like it. But but
Speaker 1: but but that wasn't that wasn't brought up. I simply
Speaker 1: thought it, and it took me a little while. When
Speaker 1: we actually shot it, I recalled thinking, yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good. When I saw it.
Speaker 4: Why it does work? But it does. It's his demise,
Speaker 4: it's his flipness, it's.
Speaker 1: His But it's also it's that character. It's that character.
Speaker 1: It is Yeah, it's honestly that character.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: To wrap this up, if you don't mind, I'm going
Speaker 4: to read you a quote that I found that Rick
Speaker 4: Berman said about you. More importantly, after thirteen years, Marvin
Speaker 4: comes to work every day and approaches each setup as
Speaker 4: if it were the first day of his first season.
Speaker 4: His enthusiasm and his unceasing desire to creatively find best
Speaker 4: solutions to problems just blows us away. And I think
Speaker 4: that sums up your work on our shows.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to say that sounds like me, because
Speaker 1: I really did love every minute of it.
Speaker 4: That was to say.
Speaker 1: There weren't a few days when I was thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you know, but they were very But there
Speaker 1: were very few of those, you know, there were very
Speaker 1: few days that weren't. And I always felt like the
Speaker 1: solution was that the job, the joy of it was
Speaker 1: to outsmart the problem and make something great. That was
Speaker 1: the job. I love you.
Speaker 4: I did it on the Space Bawel and it was
Speaker 4: an honor working with you. Marvin's an honor to know you.
Speaker 4: But you're so glad you came on side.
Speaker 2: We all have sort of categories in the craft we're
Speaker 2: all doing to try to make an art happen.
Speaker 3: Your your top shelf of what you do.
Speaker 1: Well, it was a lot of fun, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. I'm still growing, you know. I've got
Speaker 1: a little movie I'm gonna go do in Illinois coming
Speaker 1: up in a couple of weeks. Yeah, it's something I
Speaker 1: haven't done before, a genre that I really haven't worked
Speaker 1: in before. I can't say too much about it. And
Speaker 1: it's a small movie, it's a little budget feature. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a kid anymore. I still love
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, I still love it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: are okay, all right, I'll take that.
Speaker 4: You sail still, and do you still serve a bit?
Speaker 1: Do you have a little bit? Yeah, I don't serve
Speaker 1: as much as I used to, bless and I but
Speaker 1: I have my boat down in Mexico and I just
Speaker 1: got back, in fact, not too long ago, from a
Speaker 1: trip from barr nab Dog all the way up to
Speaker 1: Puerto Penasco and the Sia Cortes, which is like about
Speaker 1: a thousand miles.
Speaker 4: You single handedly, You single did that.
Speaker 1: I did a single handed Yeah, on a fifty two
Speaker 1: foot sail boat.
Speaker 4: Wow, big boat something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I usually have Patty there with me, but she didn't.
Speaker 1: She wasn't interested this time, so I did by myself.
Speaker 4: You are a maverick, sir, you really are. I'll let
Speaker 4: you know when it airs, so you're gonna have a
Speaker 4: look at it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Cool.
Speaker 4: It's just been a joy. Thank you, Thank you, Arvin,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 1: Take care.
Speaker 3: Boy boy.
Speaker 1: Boy Boy on