Hooves & Harlots
written by Steven L. Sears
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 21
SD: This episode brought the Amazons into the Xena series. Are the Amazons mythological or did they really exist?
Steve: That’s been debated quite a bit - whether they're purely mythological or not. They are mentioned in the Greek myths. The discussion is, were the ones in Greek myths based on actual tribes? The problem is that the word “Amazon” is now interchangeably used with practically any tribe with a matriarchy. The actual meaning of the word “Amazon” is “without breast” and there's no evidence of any tribe that deliberately removed a breast so they could fire arrows better.
SD: Was there any conflict between Amazons and Centaurs in mythology?
Steve: No, that was us. (chuckle) Hercules started with a two-hour TV movie called Hercules and the Amazon Women. Subsequently, they did an episode with Centaurs where they were outcasts. Everyone spit on them. I combined those two ideas.
SD: This was the tenth episode in the first season. How did it come about that an episode with Amazons was written?
Steve: I think Rob brought it up. He wanted to do something with the Amazons and I grabbed ahold of it because I liked that idea.
SD: Were there differences between how the Amazons were portrayed on the Hercules series and what you wanted to do with them?
Steve: I watched the Hercules episodes with the Amazons before we started the script. I liked the setup as far as their pride and anger. But I didn’t like the way the movie ended with the Amazons falling all girly into the guys’ arms. To me it said all they needed was to get laid. If it had all been one way or the other, that would have been fine. But the end invalidated the way the Amazons were portrayed in the beginning.
SD: Is that where the line, “It’s a man’s world, Gabrielle. Not because it should be, but because we let them have it,” came from?
Steve: That line came from an overriding philosophy of mine that deals with victimization. People victimize themselves more often than they are victimized by others. In that line, Terreis was saying, “We take responsibility.” As opposed to saying, “It's the men's fault.” People do that too often - put the blame on others instead of saying, “How am I complicit in this?” In relationships, guys complain, “How come I only date wacko women?” And women say, “How come I only date abusive men?” The truth is they're picking these partners. Terreis is saying, “We acknowledge the fact that it's a man’s world, but it’s not because they deserve it. We gave it to them.”
SD: It’s a genderless statement rather than a feminist one? It applies to all?
Steve: It’s meant to be an empowering remark for anyone. I’m not a fan of extreme feminism or extreme machoism. I think that’s to the detriment of everyone. I think people who look at things realistically do more for their gender than people who go out on a gender limb just for the sake of it.
SD: How did Gabrielle's part in the story come about - getting her staff, becoming an Amazon Princess and in line to be queen?
Steve: A lot of people have asked me if I had this long-term plan of Gabrielle becoming the queen and how the story played out through the rest of the series. I’ve had the same question about the “blood innocence” that was brought up in “Dreamworker.” The truth of the matter is that when you start to work on a series, you're finding the paths that work best for the show and the characters on it.
In “Dreamworker,” I came up with the “blood innocence” aspect of Gabrielle just to solve a problem in the story. I figured an obvious element of risk would be the story of a girl who has never experienced having to kill. I could have ended the episode with Gabrielle killing someone and we would have dealt with it right then. However, during the writing discussions of “Dreamworker,” it came out that that might be an important element to carry on for a few more episodes. And it ended up becoming a major pillar of her character.
In “Hooves & Harlots,” the only thing I wanted to be a continuing storyline was to deal with Gabrielle having a weapon. I wanted to set this up for the rest of the series.
SD: You didn’t want her to continue with Xena without a weapon?
Steve: We were getting tired of Gabrielle standing in the background yelling, “Go Xena, get ’em Xena!” Who cares about a character like that? She would become Jimmy Olsen, the cub reporter Superman has to rescue all the time.
SD: How did she come to have a staff?
Steve: I had to carefully consider what kind of weapon I wanted her to have. There was a specific reason for choosing the staff. When I was doing my martial arts training, the first weapon I learned was the staff. In fact, both of Gabrielle’s weapons, the staff and the sais, came from my own experience. No one at Xena knew what a sai was until I brought mine in to show them. Funny thing is, the prop department took one of my sais and took measurements from it to make the one for Gabrielle. Well, I’m quite a bit taller than Renee, so they were way too big for her. (chuckle) When they’re folded against the arm, they’re not supposed to extend past the elbow. I think, for the first couple of episodes, they used that pair, but they chopped off the ends.
Back to the staff - the reason I chose it is because the staff is a weapon which can be purely defensive. A sword can be defensive, but it’s basically an offensive weapon.
When I was taking my training, I had a wooden katana and my instructor had a staff. Putting the end on the ground, he held the staff vertically in front of him and told me to hit him with the sword. All he had to do was slightly move his body and the staff kept blocking my blows. I couldn’t touch him. I thought that was great. The point he was trying to get across was that with a simple walking stick you can defend yourself. And that’s why I started the episode with Gabrielle looking for a walking stick.
SD: That was a funny opening bit where Gabrielle was talking to Xena about this great stick she’d just found. “You can walk with it. You can lean on it if you need a rest. And, you can kill nasty little critters if you wanna lie down.” Then Xena takes it and does all these cool weapon-like moves. It really showed the difference between the two characters.
Steve: Xena looks at everything around her as a weapon. That’s a natural ability she can’t turn off. Gabrielle, up until that point, never thought in those terms. This was a functional stick that helped her walk.
SD: Back to Gabrielle becoming an Amazon and an Amazon Princess?
Steve: That wasn't intended to be an ongoing part of the series. In fact, I realize now that the line at the end of “Hooves,” that was meant to be a joke, actually set it up. Gabrielle says, “You’re a Warrior Princess and I’m an Amazon Princess. That’s gonna make such a great story.” At the time, that was just a joke. We played off that line again in “A Necessary Evil” when Gabrielle asks Xena, “Does an Amazon Queen beat a Warrior Princess?” And Xena replies, “Do you really want to find out?”
SD: This episode could have dealt with the battle between the Amazons and Centaurs without the story of Gabrielle becoming an Amazon.
Steve: Yeah. But I like to mine the characters and see what I can get out of them.
SD: Why isn’t Xena an Amazon? The Amazons stated at the beginning of the episode that she wasn’t one of them. Yet Phantes, the Centaur accused of murdering Terreis, said, when Xena denied being an Amazon, “If it looks like a Hydra and moves like a Hydra, it’s a Hydra.”
Steve: Xena could be an Amazon if she would embrace it. There are two ways to become an Amazon. One is by birth and the other is by Rite of Cast. Xena, although it’s never been stated, isn't an Amazon by birth. But she could be by Cast. If she had thrown in with the Amazons, eventually someone would have given her the Rite of Cast. Xena also, at that time in the series, had a different philosophy than many of the Amazons.
I have to backtrack a bit here. When I came up with this version of the Amazons, I decided to design the Amazon Nation which we hadn’t made reference to before. I modeled it on the Greek city-states and the Iroquois Confederation.
Both were linked internally by commonalities of ancestry. However, there were distinct tribes within these two groups. Even though Athens and Sparta were both Greek city-states, they were completely different in their philosophies. Sparta was much harder, much more of a warrior nation. Athens was much more pragmatic and interested in the arts.
My idea, which was agreed upon by the writing staff, was that the Amazon Nation consisted of many different tribes that had their own philosophies. I had to separate the tribe in “Hooves” from the one we saw in the Hercules movie. In doing that, I had to figure out why the Amazons were broken up into tribes. Why aren't they still one Nation? In a future episode, we showed the Battle of Corinth where the Amazons came in and allied with the Centaurs to defeat Borias and Xena. The Battle of Corinth was the equivalent of the third book of The Lord of the Rings. All the armies coming together to decide the future of the world. Nations were made and nations were destroyed.
I was thinking that when the Amazons fought at Corinth, their Nation had been shattered by Xena's army. That would explain the Northern Tribe of Amazons in “Adventures In The Sin Trade.”
SD: And Xena, by nature, is not a joiner.
Steve: No, she’s not. She’s a leader. She walks her own path. She’s had contact with the Amazons and that's why she knows many of their ways. She doesn’t hate them. The Centaurs are another matter.
Initially, in this episode, Xena doesn’t like Centaurs. As it unfolded later on in the series, she had a lot of anger because she never defeated them in battle and she had to give Solan, her newborn son, up to them for his protection. She didn't enjoy or appreciate that she had to do that. It was done for practical reasons and Xena resented the fact that she had to give up her son.
SD: With Xena's extensive medical skills, why couldn’t she save Terreis?
Steve: You can’t save everyone. Xena came over and looked at Terreis and realized it was a mortal wound.
SD: Why did Terreis give a stranger, someone who was so obviously not an Amazon, her Rite of Cast?
Steve: There’s a leap of faith here because there was no time to develop Terreis' character. Terreis was a very wise Amazon. Even Ephiny comments on that. She sees things in people others don’t. As we find out in the conversation between Ephiny and Phantes, Terreis is the one who believes the Centaurs are not bad. When Terreis first meets Gabrielle, she begins to interrogate her and realizes from her responses, that Gabrielle is actually an Amazon, at least she has the wisdom and strength of character to be one. It seems like they’re having a casual conversation at the beginning of the episode, but, in fact, Terreis is exploring who Gabrielle is. In one sense, Terreis is the wisest person in the episode and, had she lived, she would have made a great queen.
If you’d reversed the situation and it was Gabrielle who was dying, we would have bought that Gabrielle had the wisdom to see inside Terreis because Gabrielle can see inside Xena. That’s why Gabrielle ends up wearing Terreis’ outfit. Although it’s part of Amazon law, symbolically, for the audience, it shows us that Gabrielle and Terreis were kindred spirits.
SD: Terreis doesn't go through life blindly. She's curious about everyone she meets.
Steve: Terreis, like Ephiny, wants to know who these strangers are and why are they here. The difference between them is that Ephiny assumes Xena and Gabrielle are enemies and Terreis assumes they’re friends. That's Terreis’ philosophy. Both are interrogating Xena and Gabrielle. Ephiny staring at Xena is a form of interrogation. She hopes to rattle her enough so that she’ll start talking. It’s a challenge and a threat. But with Xena, it doesn’t work.
SD: I wondered why Ephiny was so antagonistic toward Xena from the beginning.
Steve: For Ephiny, anyone who invades their territory is an enemy.
SD: Ephiny asks Gabrielle if she told Xena that Terreis gave Gabrielle her Rite of Cast. Ephiny seems to want to keep this a secret from Xena. How come?
Steve: Ephiny does not trust Xena at all. The fact that the Cast has been given to Gabrielle, that's a fait accompli. But she is concerned that Xena knows about this. Xena is an outsider and not allowed to be part of Amazon dealings. The real surprising thing is that Gabrielle agrees not to tell Xena. But this is early in their relationship and Gabrielle wants to be respectful of the Amazon ways. She just doesn’t know what it all entails.
SD: Why did Ephiny attack Xena in the forest?
Steve: When Ephiny went back to check the area of Terreis' death for evidence, she saw Xena there. She’s already suspicious. Is Xena looking for clues or trying to cover them up?
SD: They find the evidence in a ball of dung - “Centaurs don’t eat hay.” Great line. (laugh) Ephiny accepted this as proof the Centaurs weren’t responsible for Terreis' death, why didn't Melosa?
Steve: If Melosa had been there with Xena to discover it, she might have. But she wasn't and the evidence came in very late. Also Melosa was human as well. She had her prejudice. They’d had incursions by Centaurs, Terreis was killed by a Centaur arrow - no one bothered to look for any other culprit. There was no trial. Even Phantes said, “If I had the chance, I’d kill you all. I just didn’t do it this time.” As far as the Amazons were concerned, it was another Centaur if it wasn’t Phantes, and, since they caught him, Phantes would pay the price. At that point, the idea of serving justice had gained its own inertia and trampled the idea of finding the truth.
SD: That’s the arrogance of prejudice and the ignorance of prejudice - the refusal to see the obvious.
Steve: Yeah.
SD: Why did Xena choose the chobos when she was in the challenge fight with Melosa and are chobos real?
Steve: There’s a story behind the chobos. We’re always on a quest to find neat ways to fight that don’t just look like sword fights. Another one of the weapons I worked out with are called escrima sticks. They consist of two short sticks exactly as you saw Melosa using. When I was writing the episode, my office had a window that faced onto the street. When I got to the point where Xena had to choose her weapons, I knew I wanted to use escrima sticks. I could not think of what they were called. I had to put something in there or I couldn't keep writing the script.
I was sitting trying to remember what they were called and a woman walked past my office window eating a churro. A churro is a pastry that looks like a short stick. I looked at that and laughed at the idea of Xena fighting with churros. I wrote down chobos as a takeoff on churros. I thought to myself I would change the word later on when I found out what the real weapon was called. I forgot to change it.
It wasn’t until I saw dailies from the episode that I realized I had forgotten to make the change and there were my chobos!
SD: Why did Xena choose not to fight with her own weapon, her sword?
Steve: Besides the fact that we simply wanted a different weapon, let’s look at Xena’s rationale. One, Xena’s proficient in almost every weapon. Secondly, when Xena goes up against an opponent, she thinks to herself, “What can I use that would give me the best advantage?” In this case, she doesn’t want to kill Melosa, so the sword is out. As Xena was sizing Melosa up, she saw something that gave her an advantage with the chobos. In my mind, It was Xena’s leaping ability. Combining that agility with a weapon such as chobos made a pretty difficult opponent. Melosa, though, was almost as good as Xena in the leaping department.
SD: Xena was fighting Melosa as Gabrielle’s champion. At the end of the fight, when Xena defeats Melosa, the Amazons bow down to their new queen. Who’s the queen, Xena or Gabrielle?
Steve: Technically, they were bowing to both. For that time period, Gabrielle has given over that right to Xena. But, also, they had just seen their queen beaten by Xena. No doubt that was impressive enough to gain their respect.
SD: If Xena is Gabrielle’s champion and Xena beats Queen Melosa, does that make Gabrielle the queen now?
Steve: That was a much discussed topic. Technically, yes. Once we realized that thread was going to play out during the series, the idea became that Gabrielle is queen of that tribe when she is there to occupy the post. When she’s not there, that position is delegated. Melosa would take over. When Melosa was killed, and after “The Quest”, Gabrielle bestowed that honor to Ephiny. I will say right up front, that rule was something we came up with after the fact.
SD: Gabrielle is faced with having to avenge Terreis’ death by killing Phantes with Terreis’ sword. That is her duty as an Amazon. As Gabrielle is against killing, this is a moral dilemma for her.
Steve: At the beginning of the series, Gabrielle’s attitude toward killing is wide open territory. And this was not the first time she had to make such a choice. She was also faced with this in “Dreamworker.” She was told in that episode she had to kill to survive and she found it hard to do that. Xena came to the rescue and Gabrielle didn’t have to make the choice.
I wanted to build on that aspect of Gabrielle. In “Dreamworker,” she was being told that, against everything she knew to be moral and legal, she was expected to kill. In “Hooves,” it’s the opposite. It is moral and legal to kill Phantes according to Amazon law. He was convicted as a murderer and Gabrielle had to carry out the justice. She was representing Terreis, using Terreis' sword, carrying out Terreis' sentence. It was stripped down to Gabrielle’s morality. Could she do it or couldn't she?
SD: Would she have done it?
Steve: For people who have been curious, she would not have done it. Even back then, when the choice was, either carry out the sentence or you will die, Gabrielle will give up her life to protect someone else and she won’t kill to protect her own life.
SD: Were there any changes from the original story?
Steve: After I wrote the first draft of the script, we all sat around puzzled because the script made sense, but for some reason it didn’t work and we couldn’t understand why. I finally figured it out, but my solution required a complete rewrite of the script. The main crux of the story was that the Amazons had accused the Centaurs of murdering Terreis and the Centaurs said they didn’t do it. But in that version, they didn't capture Phantes. So I just had Xena going back and forth between both camps reporting what each side was saying. It looked lame. It wasn’t interesting.
My solution was to have the Amazons capture the “murderer” so we could have them interact with the Centaur.
SD: You brought the discussion right into the heart of the people involved. You put them at the table face to face instead of someone going back and forth explaining to each side what the other side was saying.
Steve: Yeah, the problem with the original script was Xena was just a go-between. This way we could see the friction between the characters.
SD: That’s a really good point for anyone who reads this interview and wants to be a writer. Bring the conflict to the forefront, bring the combatants into the same room. Show it, don’t just tell it. You may say the Amazons and Centaurs don't like each other, but when you put them face to face, you feel it.
Steve: Right. It throws the conflict right on the table in real time. And you don’t want to have people repeating stuff the audience already knows. But a more important lesson a writer should take from this is that when writers finish a script, they're so exhausted they’re very willing to forgive their own mistakes. When they read back through the script, they find things that kind of bother them, but they hope no one else will see it. You can’t get away with that. If something bothers you, you have to stop and look at it and do anything you can to fix it. Even if it requires rewriting the entire script. That’s the real lesson. And it’s a hard one for new writers to do. But if scripts are too easy, they probably aren’t interesting. They have to challenge the writer as well as the audience. And the writer has to challenge herself.