Paradise Found
Rob Tapert - Director
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 07
SD: How did you decide to direct that episode?
Rob: I chose that one very specifically. “Paradise” was at the end of a block of episodes. We had done the two “Sin Trades” which were incredibly large and difficult shows and when I saw that “Paradise” had to be shot in six days to make up for all the time we had taken with those episodes, I thought it was a good assignment for myself.
SD: To make yourself do something in six days when normally you would give yourself the luxury of having a longer shoot?
Rob: Yeah.
SD: What did Executive Producer Rob Tapert not allow Director Rob Tapert to do?
Rob (laughing): Go an extra day! But the story didn't warrant it.
SD: You said, before we started this interview, that you cut something out. Was that for filming time or airing time?
Rob: I cut out a chunk for filming time. Rather than let second unit shoot another day, I cut a sequence.
SD: It was a nightmare sequence?
Rob: Yep. The series of shots that I’ve wanted to do since Xena started that I've never been able to get to.
SD: Which we're not going to talk about because...
Rob: Because one day I will do it! It’s a $100,000 gag is what it is. And we’ve had a hard time building it.
SD: You've got it storyboarded?
Rob: I’ve got every shot laid out.
SD: Besides the discipline of a 6-day shoot, was there anything that attracted you to this particular story?
Rob: I thought of it as a very small story and I wanted to do that and just work with actors. That’s what appealed to me. It was an opportunity to make Gabrielle look great and Xena look awful, monstrous. I liked that. And I loved just spending time with the characters doing very little in the way of action. Part of the story was an underlying tension that developed as the story went on as Gabrielle got more blissed out and Xena got more aggravated. From a performance point of view and from a directorial point of view, that was interesting.
SD: Renee referred to you as a very visual director. And the yoga scenes were a centerpiece of this episode. Is that how you would describe yourself?
Rob: Yes. Although I don’t hold a candle to my partner, Sam Raimi. There are specific images I see and the writers often have a tough time getting in my head to find out what I’m trying to explain. I’ll have an idea, a visual that I want to get to and I try to make the story go through those visuals or ideas. So there are pictures that I come up with and then work my way toward them through the story.
SD: Can you give me any examples?
Rob: In “The Debt,” I wanted that scene of the armies charging across the plains with the camera in a helicopter coming down into a big fight. And Xena in the stocks. In “Bitter Suite,” I started with all the images of the characters and worked to have a story around them.
SD: How about in “Paradise”?
Rob: I wanted to see Gabrielle doing yoga. The reason I wanted to do that is I was setting something up for the final episode that Eric and the director argued me out of.
SD: They can do that?
Rob: They can because it was expensive and time-consuming. I wanted in the final episode to have Xena and Gabrielle go to a spiritual environment where their spirits would be free in the air and do this wild spinning partner yoga stuff.
SD: Maybe you'll get to it some day?
Rob: Oh yeah. No idea goes away. All of Xena came out of wanting to do the strong warrior princess sitting on a horse charging down the hill. “The Gauntlet” had a lot of strong visual images.
Also in “Paradise,” I wanted the yoga bed with Gabrielle blissed out and Xena off to the side spazzing out.
SD: Who came up with Lucy doing situps and how many did she have to do?
Rob (laughing): I did. And she did heaps of them.
SD (laughing): And then you left the country?
Rob (laughing): Probably.
SD: In “Locked Up And Tied Down,” you had Xena covered in rats again!
Rob: I explained the sequence to Lucy and she thought the rat toss was funny. But I really did talk her into doing that.
And that's another example of starting with an image. I was working on the story with Josh Becker and said to him, “Do you remember that scene in Papillon where they’re taking Dustin Hoffman to prison, he's on the boat and they’ve got him hog-tied? He’s trying to eat his food and the boat’s bobbing up and down.” That was the beginnings of doing a Xena in prison movie.
SD: Did you know Renee was that flexible when you decided to have Gabrielle learn yoga?
Rob: Renee is great! I told her about a month ahead that we were going to have her do yoga. So she runs off and goes full bore. And she is really flexible. That was a blessing.
SD: There seemed to be a Maxfield Parrish influence in the production design of the show.
Rob: Very definitely. I walked down to Rob Gillies and said we wanted Paradise and he pulled out the Maxfield Parrish books.
SD: What other books have you used in the making of Xena?
Rob: “The Secret Language of Symbols” by David Fontana. Rob and I look through it and say, “Hey, we'll put this here or we’ll use that.”
SD: Now that I've talked to Renee about her directing, I've learned that directors even have input into things like costuming. I never knew that.
Rob: Oh sure! The great thing about working on our shows is the director has as much input as they’re willing to spend the time to do. Each director who comes in can meet with the costume, production, all the different department heads and say, “This is what I see, this is how I feel.” And then Ngila or Rob give their opinions. It’s truly a collaborative process.
We want their input as directors in every aspect of the show. If they want to make all red costumes for the bad guys, which T.J. Scott used to do all the time, we’d say, “Fine, that’s T.J. Make the bad guys all in red.”
SD: About that turtle. (I start laughing as Rob shakes his head and rolls his eyes)
Rob: I don’t know why it’s there.
SD: You don’t!?
Rob: I know originally why I put it there because I wanted the gag of Xena’s feet constantly landing right next to it as she’s doing all those moves. But I never got time to properly film it except for one shot where she lands with her feet one on each side. It was like her madness intersecting the slow plodding of something just going along.
SD: And speaking of the crazed Xena…
Rob: You know what, I was originally thinking of doing it all with light and shadow, but Lucy was having such fun with her teeth. She loved those teeth and that ratty hair and the contacts. Actors like props and Lucy was having a ball.
SD: She doesn't mind looking all grungy?
Rob: Nope, she likes it.
SD: I wonder if a beautiful woman doesn't mind looking ugly because she knows she can take it off?
Rob: I don’t think it would matter to Lucy. She likes the characters that are like that. It really gives her something to work with. The prosthetics give her an even greater opportunity to break out. Especially something so different from Xena.
SD: At the convention, when answering one of the questions, she instantly transformed herself into evil Xena.
Rob: Yep. She goes there in a hurry, wherever that is.
SD: What is done to help an actor when the person they’re talking to isn’t on camera with them?
Rob: Professional courtesy is to do everything to help the actor. For instance, in the scene with Aiden comforting Gabrielle, Renee and Jeremy Roberts would have been just off camera doing something. The actors always offer to do that. Lucy might say, “I don’t need that,” but if she does, it’s important because it helps the actor go to the emotional place they need to be. Renee could even be off screen crying. And that's invaluable.
SD: I know it's what separates the professionals from the amateurs, but I'm still astounded by Lucy and Renee being able to turn on their emotions so fully and quickly.
Rob: But once they get there, they don't want to be interrupted. I remember a very specific moment in “Sin Trade,” when Xena’s walking through the village screaming for Alti and carrying Anokin's dead body. We had to wait 20 minutes between takes because it was raining so hard. Lucy really had to keep herself sequestered so that she could stay wherever she'd gotten herself.
SD: There was so much in “Sin Trade” that people would like to know more about.
Rob: Our intention was to specifically have cleared up a bunch of loose ends. But it didn't get a positive enough response.
You know what I really liked? I loved some of T.J.’s direction. I loved Xena dancing in the rain over the dead reindeer. And then being on the horse with her arms out. And the twirling of the camera into the cave when Xena was making her outfit.
But I think the fans thought it was too trippy which is what we were trying to do. We wanted to become disjointed in space and time. We wanted the whole thing to be mystical and I think people got lost and didn’t like it.
SD: Can you give a bit of an insight of what a director might tell an actor during the shooting of a scene?
Rob: Renee has worked out what her character will do by the time she walks on set. And on “Paradise” I threw her for a bit of a loop. It was the scene where she's lying in bed talking to Xena. I told Renee, “I want you to pay no attention to anything Xena says. You're totally in your own head explaining where you are. I really don't want you even to make eye contact. You're sharing this information, but it’s not as if Xena’s important.” And Renee had the whole scene differently. It took a couple takes before she could flick off what she came prepared with.
SD: Renee says she's learned to be more adaptive to change since doing her own directing.
Rob: She'll be back as a director. When she was filming, I asked her if she was ready to be “chump de jour” again and she said, no, it was too hard. But I told her nothing's gonna give you those highs or lows again. And after it was over, she loved the experience.
SD: About those drops of blood.
Rob: They looked like crazy sperm. I kept throwing them out and trying to get better ones. I should have shot a blob of liquid against a cyclorama at incredibly high speed and used that. Technically it didn’t work, but I liked that sequence. Conceptually, that was something that came early on. Chris (Manheim - writer) was nervous about going there.
SD: Why?
Rob: The intercutting, the flashbacks, the drop of blood. It was very complicated. And it's hard to write “stroke/drip/slow motion/almost catch drop of blood.” It's not action or dialog. It's taking time to build suspense. My partner, Sam, is brilliant at building those micro moments over 30 or 40 seconds. I have to give him credit for influencing me over time on how to do that.
SD: I found it nerve-wracking.
Rob: Renee will understand this. I could have spent a day shooting that scene. Instead. it was. “Okay, you've got 43 minutes before lunch to get it.” (sigh)
SD: And after you were done with the episode you thought...
Rob: I wanted to direct again. I would say I was very pleased with some things and unhappy with other choices I made. The truth is, I really wanted to direct “Between The Lines.” I designed the whole thing and storyboarded large sections of it. But then I had to pull out. If I direct, other parts of the show suffer. I find that my contribution is strongest working with the writers and then passing on to the directors, “This was a key idea here.”
I spent a lot of time with Rick (Jacobson - director) talking about the scene where Xena and Gabrielle paint the Mehndi on each other in “Between The Lines.” I wanted it to be very lyrical. Everyone wanted me to cut it because it would take so long to put the designs on Lucy and Renee. But that was my original idea. Xena and Gabrielle go to a wedding in India and at the wedding they learn about Mehndi and we spend a day in Indian culture. I wanted to do a five-day show of Xena and Gabrielle getting painted and instead we had a nine-day show with lots of action.
SD: Is Gabrielle's outfit going to change again?
Rob (grinning): All the time. Outfits reflect the character and Gabrielle is growing up.
SD: Will she get her staff back?
Rob: Yes. And we’re going to alleviate people's problem with the staff. When the Amazons gave Gabrielle her staff, it had this bird's head on it. We’re going to come back to that.
SD: The bird’s head?
Rob: Yeah. That was the important thing on the staff. Truth is, we've broken the staff three times in fights. Alti breaks it in “Between The Lines” and whacks Gabrielle with it.
SD: Are you going to give her something to wear besides sandals?
Rob: You know what, I told Renee she only had to make it through the end of the season with the sandals. But I'm going to ask her to lose her shoes for “Ides Of March.” But Gabrielle’s going to get a set of boots. And I learned a lesson. It’s too hard to have characters play barefoot when shooting outdoors on film sets. For Gabrielle, the attachment to the earth was stronger that way. But I understand Renee’s reluctance. It was a hassle for her.
It’s a silly thing to say, but I really liked that scene at the end of “Between” with Xena and Gabrielle, both in different costumes, walking down the road.
SD: Any hints about what's coming?
Rob: Gabrielle becomes a warrior. (He shows me a painting by Gustave Dore in a book called “Angels.”) And we get to meet Callisto again. How about this? Xena and Callisto don't fight in the last show.
Then Xena sets up Julius Caesar so that (censored) while Xena and Gabrielle (censored). That's how the season ends!
Tune in to see how it all turns out!