Creation Entertainment Stargate Convention
Burbank, CA 21-23 November 2008

Stargate Q & A Sessions

The guests from Stargate each participated in a question and answer session and the Sunday guests had a joint panel as well. We have a run down of what they talked about. Guests included Alexis Cruz (no panel details, sorry) Dan Shea, Kavan Smith, Rachel Luttrell, Jason Momoa and David Hewlett.

Dan Shea

Stargate SG1 Stunt Co-ordinator Dan Shea’s panel was very energetic as he rushed all over the stage enacting the stories he was telling about working on stunts for Stargate and other shows. Dan talked about working with Peter DeLuise two nights ago doing a Robin Hood movie. He was told he’d need to fall off a log. On set it was pounding rain and there were a couple of others who’d played Jaffa on Stargate that were also working in the scene. It was time to do the stunt so he looks around for the “log” and they said, “it’s over there” and it turned out to be a BC Fur tree, the type of tree that’s known for being so big you can drive a truck through it. He said it was close to 25 ft high and he had no time to put on proper pads and he was only prepared with little thin ones. He went on to describe how difficult it was to shoot the scenes where he was supposed to be either laughing or pretending his sleeping but when he was supposed to be sleeping Peter D. kept saying he didn’t look relaxed, Dan said it was because he was panicing about having to fall of this huge tree in the pounding rain with nothing to land on. Unfortunately the story loses a lot in the translation, it was a very entertaining story. Dan talked about a couple of stunts that went really wrong. One involved a car gag that used a nitrogen ram to roll the car. As the car is driven along, at the right time you need to slap on the e-break and go up on a ramp and it flips the car. The important thing is that the e-break works. During the setup they blew out the e-break and Dan kept insisting that they needed to fix the e (emergency) break before they did the gag. There was a week to go and every day Dan would ask if it was fixed and eventually they showed him the bill of sale showing the e-break was fixed. It comes time to do the gag and the e-break didn’t work. Eventually they got the e-break to go and the gag came out great. There’s an episode of SG1 where they really wanted to use Ben Browder for one of the stunts where he gets slammed backwards into a wall. They decided to do it and he’d be really close so there wasn’t much risk but by the day of shooting they’d moved him much further away but It all worked ok in the end. There was a scene Dan had to prepare for a driving sequence in the feature “Fantastic Four” where they had to do a car stunt in a tunnel. He had worked all day and was really tired so drank a truck load of Red Bull to try and stay awake. He went on to talk about issues the crew faced after drinking lots of Red Bull with no bathrooms around! Unfortunately when it came time to do the gag they were all prepared and Dan was on the e-break button, they yelled action and one of the guys fell asleep and fell onto his button and his car went off and tearing off and did a spectacular crash and everyone was in shock and then started clapping and thinking it was fantastic, meanwhile the stunt guy wakes up all tangled up in his harness not quite sure what happened, so the gag that went terrible wrong ended up coming out great and Dan said the guy became a stunt legend for that shot. It was a mistake, but the producers looked at it an thought it was fantastic. Someone asked if Dan ever wears long pants. He said no, but he told a story of one time he went to England and had to wear long pants and the big ordeal he went through because of having to sit on the tarmac for five hours and the weather was terrible, it rained and he was wet and itchy and not at all happy. There were stories a-plenty from Dan about various gags that went wrong but worked out great in the end including one where Amanda Tapping nearly got burnt.

Kavan Smith

Stargate Atlantis’ Kavan Smith talked a little about Sanctuary and mentioned that he hopes to be more involved with the second season. He said in the TV version they’d fleshed out his character a little more than in the web series. Kavan told the story again of his audition & filming of the X-rated Outer Limits episode he filmed and how difficult the green screen sequence was and how embarrassing the audition had been. Someone asked what Kavan’s favourite role was and he talked about the pilot they shot for a remake of the 60s series Time Tunnel. He was disappointed the show never got picked up but they did put the episode they shot on a DVD release of the original version of the show. Someone asked how Kavan felt about some of the crazy names fans had come up for his Atlantis character. Kavan said it had become a big deal and had become a bit of a joke on set. It turns out that in an early episode the name Evan was actually on his uniform so that’s the name they stuck with on the show. Kavan told a story about an experience when he was young and was driving to school and there was a cute girl driving beside him, he was trying to impress her and went to throw something out the window, but the window was closed and it splashed all over the inside of his beautiful car and he was totally embaraassed and tried to hide in his seat. The light turned green and she wouldn’t go, she was waiting to embarrass him. They were getting honked at and finally he came up and she blew him a kiss……a humiliation kiss. Someone asked about his funniest scene with David Hewlett and Kavan said that watching David was always funny. Kavan delighted in telling everyone how David Hewlett enjoys whining and blowing up at things. He told us that they’re actually very good friends and that now that Kavan knows him so well David doesn’t have as much fun whining on set. There was one time during filming Search and Rescue where David kept getting dirt in his eye and he kept whining “My eye… my eye” and now Kavan makes fun of him about it all the time. Kavan then encouraged everyone in the audience to cry out “my eyes, my eyes” when David came out on stage. When someone asked Kavan what show he’d like to guest star on Kavan said there are lots but he’d pick something that his wife watches so that she’d actually watch him.

Unfortunately due to a technical fault I lost my notes from the following three Q&A sessions and part of the following session with all three Stargate guests so I’ll have to try and flesh them out if I find something to jog my memory

Jason Momoa

Stargate Atlantis actor Jason Momoa spoke briefly about the incident with a “young man” and a beer glass last week that cost him (according to the LA Times) 140 stitches and some serious damage to his eye. He said he was very thankful to still have his eye and joked that it was ok because chicks dig scars. Jason had to wear a hat and dark glasses for the weekend but was still gracious enough to pose for the many photo ops people had purchased. Most of us were very surprised to see him at the convention when we’d heard the news about what had happened. Towards the end of his session someone brought out a guitar. It was Jason’s own guitar and he played a little blues and then put the guitar up for auction. Sadly there was only one bid, but that bid did raise $500 for charity. One of the members of the audience asked Jason what his arm tattoo symbolised and he shared how it’s a “family crest” and is a guardian, a shark, and the black represents the darkness coming out of you and the light area brings the light in. Someone asked how many of his own stunts he does and he joked he does them all. He said most of the fights are him but when he gets slammed into a wall, that’s the stunt guy. Someone asked who was the better surfer and Jason or Joe Flannigan and Jason said that Joe was better, that he’d had more practice and been doing it longer. He was quick to add that Joe “sucks at everything else”. Someone asked about Ronan’s lack of relationships on the show apart from the “dead woman” and Jason pretended to be insulted saying “that was my wife”. He went on to say he thought a relationship with Wier would have been fun – especially when she could say “I need to see you in my office…”

Rachel Luttrell

During her panel Stargate Atlantis’ Rachel Luttrell sang a little lullaby to the delight of the audience and with some encouragement from the audience later in the panel she also sang a few bars from the song in the Atlantis episode “Critical Mass”. Someone asked about Atlantis movies and Rachel replied that to her knowledge there was going to be one but that nobody had actually been signed yet. She said that some of the character was drawn from her own life experience, having moved to North America as a child where she was different to the people she met there. Rachel has really loved working on Atlantis and said there isn’t a day on set she hasn’t laughed. Rachel confirmed that he son in the show isn’t played by her real son and she had no interest in going down that road. She talked about filming the episode “The Queen” and how she was concerned how her son would react to the wraith makeup because she was still nursing him. She said that leading up to the shoot she’d wear beauty masks to try and prepare him and apparently it worked because he wasn’t at all bothered when she was in full wraith makeup. She says she has a photo of herself nursing him in the full wraith outfit. Someone asked if she was happy with the way the Michael storyline ended and she said she was, that she couldn’t see it ending any other way because Teyla couldn’t have let him put them at risk again but then she added, but … there never was a body, so who knows.

David Hewlett

David told a story about an incident earlier with his son Baz who’d he’d been playing with at the pool. David had his back turned for a fraction of a second and in that time Baz had managed to bite his lip and there was blood everywhere. Before taking him back to his room David called Jane (his wife) and warned her that it was worse than it looked. Aparently Jane handles that kind of thing much better than David does anyway. Someone asked David what advice he has for someone wanting to start out in acting and David said very quickly “don’t” but then went on to recommend learning multiple skills and writing stuff for yourself and just grabbing a camera and filming it and getting it out there which is so much easier with the internet these days. David said he’s working on writing a few things and he’d love for all the Atlantis cast members to be involved. He made mention that he’d just talked Joe Flannigan into something. He mentioned that his ideas for “Starcrossed” (The fake sci-fi series used in David’s film “A Dog’s Breakfast” which was going to be developed into a kind of behind the scenes of a sci-fi show thing) were moving it towards film format and there were some other things he was working on. David mentioned that he’d done an audition for something while he was staying at the hotel and that his wife Jane had helped him film it in the bathroom. Someone asked about the joking around that happened on set during the filming of the Atlantis episode “Trio” and David talked about their plans for a wraith musical. He also went on to talk about how much he loves “Firefly” and when he first met Jewel he just wanted to ask her all about Firefly. Someone brought up Dr Who again and David mentioned how much he’d love to play the Doctor.

Joint Stargate Panel

After David Hewlett’s panel, Jason Momoa and Rachel Luttrell joined him on stage for a joint session. When someone questioned how much emotion was written into the script and how much was left up to them Rachel responded that she sometimes disagreed with what was written and David and Jason both indicated that they filled in a lot of the emotional stuff themselves saying that they’re basically paying you to bring your personality to the role. Someone asked about David being naked on set and he remarked that when he wrote the scene in “A Dog’s Breakfast” where he’s naked on the ground it didn’t even cross his mind that he was going to be the one that had to do it. He said there are some people who look good naked and some that just look funny and he’s one of the funny ones. Someone asked about the upcoming movie and David responded that if it happened he thought it was going to start shooting in April. Someone asked what they do for fun and David and Rachel both said that when they’re not busy being parents they like to watch movies and Jason joked that he goes to bars and gets into fights with glass then went went on to say he built a skateboard ramp for his daughter and a built stuff around the house including a garden and it was nice being at home. Jason talked about having to carry David Hewlett in the Atlantis episode “The Shrine” and remarked that he was really heavy and he popped his hernia while trying to lift him. David claimed he was big-boned and Jason said “he’s really dense”. David then told us he was supposed to pick up Jewel in Brainstorm he was supposed to run in, pick her up and run off but David said “no offence, she’s not heavy, I just can’t” so they left it out of the scene. There was a time when Jason messing around and threw a water bottle at David who tried to dodget it but it hit him “in the jewels” and the look David gave Jason actually scared him and Jason thought he was a psycho. David said Jason’ face just dropped, it was like watching a kid who’d knocked a lamp over. Jason was going “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and David said it cracked him up because Jason is 4 times his size. Someone remarked that there were a few Firefly actors in Stargate and asked David if there were to be another who would he want it to be. Without hesitation David answered Nathan Fillion. He said he’s amazing. Jason hasn’t watched Firefly and Rachel said she’d want Nathan Fillion too. To finish off, someone asked about each guest’s most amazing experience. David said “every day” the amazing lunches. He said the most amazing experience was that every morning someone brought him breakfast. Jason’s favourite moment took place off-set. He told a story about one day after shooting a super hard day and he was driving home with Joe in his truck and they were really beat. They spotted David ahead in his little Echo, Jason proceeded to take great delight in telling how he’d acted like a 10 year and “mooning” David as they drove past. David helped re-enact the moment by sitting on the stage floor pretending he was driving in his little car with Jason in the large car beside him.

See Also: [ Convention Summary ] [ Special Event Podcast ] [ Firefly Q&As ]

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Firefly [Blu-Ray]

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A Dog’s Breakfast

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Other Posts of Interest

• November 29, 2008 -- Report: Creation Burbank Nov 08
• December 3, 2008 -- What’s Coming Up
• November 7, 2008 -- Armageddon Melbourne 08
• January 13, 2009 -- A Dog’s Breakfast online
• January 5, 2009 -- Stargate Vancouver Sellout