sga_squee | Joe Flanigan full talk video and transcript London 1/10/11 Part 1

It took me quite a while to do this, so please link here rather thandon't just cut and paste it to your own journals. The download is the complete video we recorded at EMS. Download 30m WMV of complete talk.

Before video kicks in - MC: Ladies and gentleman, Mr Joe Flanigan.

~ Start ~

JF: My god. This man has pink hair – Pink Power! I don’t know what that means – what does pink mean? Other than being A COMMUNIST (somebody shouted Pepto Bismol) Pepto Bismol that’s the digestive thing, right? (Guy calls out that it’s for charity) Charity Fund? Oh that’s right Charity fund, that’s why we took a picture with that…Okay. Well, I like it.

Can you guys hear me? They have these things faced at me instead of at you. Is that normal? The speakers are facing ME instead of THEM (Guy points out all the other speakers down the side of the hall.) Oh my god there’s more speakers! Alright, well, listen thank you guys for coming. I don’t really come here and deliver any speeches because nobody really wants to hear them – including myself – but I’d love to answer questions, so whoever has questions…I’d love to answer them. So, not unlike a bad talk show he’ll hand people the microphone and I’ll answer the questions.

So who has a question? Oh, oh, lots of people! Okay, over there with the panda – the panda shirts.

Q: What’s it like working with David Hewlett?

(Walks over to stage right and realises he can’t because of the mic lead) Wow. I can’t go any further! Oh…he’s a pain in the ass, Hewlett.

I love David Hewlett. I see him fairly often and erm, yeah. No, he’s fantastic. He’s actually as funny... he actually, I think, is funnier in real life - which is hard to believe - and what he does, he does this really insidious thing where he starts cracking jokes and doesn’t give you any pause time between one joke to another joke, and pretty soon you’re having a hard time breathing and he just nails you – boom – cause he’s a very funny guy. But every now and then I have to smack him and keep him in shape ‘cause he can be annoying. So… good question.

Yes

Q: If you had the chance, would you carry on Thoughtcrimes as a tv series? (Alex!)

JF: Would I? Say that again?
Q: Would you carry on Thoughtcrimes as a tv series?
JF: OH YEAH, I totally would. That would have been a good series. Wait a minute…I think they did. It’s called Medium. They stole our idea. And the truth is Thoughtcrimes was a pilot that was under an NBC-Universal contract and at that time a new president came in, named Kevin O’Reilly, who actually had tried to buy Thought Crimes the script when he was running FX and what he did was he inherited our pilot and basically took all the elements of it, re-worked it and made it Medium for NBC. They seemed to have some questions about the girl who was in it with me, but I actually think Medium wasn’t as good – it’s just more serious. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it was as entertaining as our show would have been. At least I like to think that, and I keep saying that to myself.

Q: If Atlantis had gone another season where would you have liked the storyline to go? What would you have liked for a storyline?

JF: I definitely would have ended up on a planet, like Captain Kirk and a bunch of women.

Well, actually, I really think that this episode Vegas was really opening up a whole new chapter of storytelling for Atlantis that we really should have exploited and it’s too bad because I think that would have created a really fresh season and to be able to go back and forth into these parallel dimensions – also visually, as a series – what the series needed is kind of a new imprint. Television is an interesting thing because movies you buy a ticket to, you go into, it’s dark – you’re held captive: you watch the movie. Television, you’re doing other things – so it has to kind of catch your eye. So if your audience becomes too used to the look, every now and then you have to create some kind of a new visual imprint that makes them stop and pay a little more attention to the show. I think going back and forth between earth and space would have done that and the storytelling through Vegas should have opened up that whole storyline – and I was going to get a boob-job, and I know that would have definitely got a few new viewers. But I can’t afford it now, you know…

(Waiting for mic to reach a lady at the back) I know. You... I can’t hear you either.

Q: What was it like working on Fringe recently?

JF: Oh yeah it was fun. You know they asked me to come up for Fringe, they wanted me to play this character – ‘come up, it will shoot two days, it’s not going to take to much time’ and then they called me at the last minute and they said ‘actually we need you up here now, and it’s going to work like nine days, or eight days, or something’ because, little did I know, (I hadn’t even read the script and I didn’t even see the show, so I didn’t know anything about it) I guess I’m dead! I’m like, “Oh great, you want me to play the dead guy, when he’s dead?” Well that’s just generally, you don’t do that - I mean, generally, they just get a double. I mean your dead for god’s sakes – anybody can be dead, right? But I guess they had to… I’m half-dead, or something, and you really needed… if they focused on it, that it’s me and not somebody else. I spent five or six days dead. That was erm…I’m not very good at that. I’m a little impatient. So, erm, it ended up, it was challenging. They pulled some awfully tough hours, but it was great working with all those guys. It was fun, a lot of fun. I knew Josh Jackson from doing Dawson’s Creek, but I went up there to see him and he wasn’t even in that episode. I was like…great, too bad. I think Fringe is more popular here than it is in the states, that’s what it seems like to me.

Look at that (shows us his elbow) –ah! Ow – I just finished a film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and I play the ex mixed martial-artists world champion and I have a tattoo that went from here (under his ear) all the way down here, down here (his wrist), a scar here and a little scar here (points to just above and just below his right eye) and when I come back from work into my hotel people would actually get out of the elevator. They were scared of me – everybody was scared of me – and I was like ‘Hey, this is kind of fun!’ You know “Your restaurant is crowded? There are no tables available? Watch…“ (Acting out tough-guy walk) So, erm, it was interesting, but we did a lot of stunts and I’m still paying the price – but it was a lot of fun - In case you wondering why my elbow looks like it has a giant tumour in it. I hit it; in fact somebody else hit it, it’s somebody else’s fault – with a machine gun. It was shot in Romania and the rules of stunts are a lot looser – they’re like

(In a wonderful faux-Romanian accent) “Alright, we blow things up.”
Yeah, you’re like, “Great, what are you using?”
“We use dynamite, that’s how you blow things up.” And they really do – they use dynamite. They are much looser with the rules – people have loaded guns and stuff – it’s… you have to be careful.

Okay, somebody had a question. Wait we need to get you a microphone.

Q: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve been asked to do for a photo-shoot? (Little D!)

JF: It’s funny you say that… just recently David Hewlett and I were in Chicago. There was a Japanese lady, who is so unassuming – because Japanese people are unassuming, they are very polite – but I realised after a while that she was very weird, very kinky and in to, like, kinky things. And she comes to do the photo op and she didn’t speak English. She’s trying to position us until finally I’m like this (bends over with hands on knees) and David is like this (acts out David standing right up behind him and pushing him down) and I went, “No, no, no, no, no. We are not doing this. I am sorry.” But for the right price… No. So that was weird, and we had to kind of tell her to back off and well, we did. So, yeah, that was kind of weird, but in general the tour is very easy, it’s fairly simple. I think what’s tough is that people look at you sometimes and they don’t realise that you are just a person, not necessarily that character, and they wanna like press a button and ‘Do this! Go like that!’ and sometimes it can be a little challenging. But my character is not that far away from home, so it’s not that hard. Why, are you going to ask me something really weird in the photo op tomorrow? He’s thinking about it… you’ve got 24 hours to think about that one. Thank you.

Hello.
Q: I was just wondering what you thought of Universe? The series?

JF: (Joe looks puzzled.) I don’t even now there was a Universe series…No, I’m just joking. Erm, I tried to watch it. I didn’t like it. I don’t know what to say – I know I’m not supposed to say that, but you know me, I’ve got a big mouth. I didn’t like it, I just thought it was… I know what they were trying to do, but I don’t think they did it, and at the end of the day, I mean – Battlestar is Battlestar, and Stargate is Stargate and the qualities that make Stargate to me are, a lot of times are like that self-deprecation, humour, a little repartee with the other characters and I didn’t see that in that show. In fact, actually, I saw a lot of people screaming at each other. A lot. Like, apparently, good drama is all about screaming. I didn’t know that. I’m going to start screaming a lot more, erm, for an Emmy. So, I just didn’t think it worked and no fault to anyone, I mean, those actors they’re all really talented. The actors were deeply upset with me and David Hewlett for not supporting the show, but it was never anything personal at all, I really I’m a big supporter of actors and what they go through. I would never want that show to fail, you know, but David did say to them, “You know you guys have to understand that we were essentially replaced by you guys. Had you guys not come along we would still be on the air.” So it’s just not that easy ‘Oh yes, support the next Stargate show’. So, I think it speaks for itself that Universe did implode and has buried the franchise, for the most part. The franchise has essentially been taken off the air for the first time in thirteen years so that is kind of unbelievable. They did it. (Fake cheer) Yea!