Stargate Co-Writer and Producer Dean Devlin joins David Read to answer questions surrounding the feature film and answer questions about his originally planned two additional feature films!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:41 – Call to Action
02:23 – Guest Introduction
04:04 – How David approached Dean Devlin
07:36 – Working on Independence Day
09:22 – Seeing Star Wars Opening Night, 1977
13:21 – Personal Heroes
15:16 – Creating Stargate
19:29 – First Choices: Russell and Spader?
21:50 – Creating Compelling Characters
25:17 – Building the Sets
28:01 – The Hero’s Journey and Story Mechanics
34:29 – Shooting in Yuma
37:25 – The Original Trilogy Plan
39:50 – What Devlin Thinks of Stargate SG-1
42:16 – The Stargate Reboot Project
45:48 – Is Stargate off the table for you?
47:07 – Any cast from the original movie that surprised you?
50:38 – Pyramids as Power Stations?
51:35 – Working with Editors While Filmmaking
55:29 – Designing Horus and Anubis
57:38 – What would you have done differently if you made the movie today?
59:49 – Was Egyptian mythology always meant to be at the center of the movie?
1:00:57 – Where’s the third Independence Day movie?
1:03:16 – Scenes or Dialogue Just For Fans
1:05:24 – “Almost Paradise”
1:06:11 – Stargate Novels Published After the Film
1:07:03 – Electric Now and Devlin’s legacy
1:11:04 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:21:07 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Welcome to Episode Seven of Dial the Gate, my name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining me, everyone who’s out there live. We have 80 in there right now and the last program ended with 250, with Paul McGillion. So, thanks again to Paul. This episode… my hair’s a mess, sorry, folks. This episode, I have the honor and privilege of bringing in Mr. Dean Devlin, who was the co-writer and producer on the original Stargate feature film, one of my all-time movie heroes. So, we’re going to bring him in in just a moment here. But before we get that started, I’m gonna let you know how this is going to work. So, after Dean comes in, I have a round of questions for him. The audience will be invited about midway through the show to submit their questions, you can do so right now in the YouTube live chat feed. And then, at the end of the show, I have an amazing piece of fan art submitted by a Stargate fan, and it’s… the Stargate… I can’t describe it. It’s Stargate in a Japanese art style. It’s absolutely beautiful and I thought it would be perfect for this. So, that’s what we have. Before I get in to bringing Dean into the show, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon, and giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guests changes, which may happen all the time. This is key if you plan on watching the show live, and clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Alright, without further ado, I’m going to bring in Mr. Dean Devlin. Hello, sir!

Dean Devlin
Hi!

David Read
Dean, this is such a pleasure. You are one of the reasons why I want to…

Dean Devlin
It’s too early to say it’s a pleasure yet! I think you should curb your enthusiasm a little bit and reserve that judgment for later in the show.

David Read
I mean, you are one of my sci-fi heroes. And you have always been so very good about being there for the fans, because you’re a fan of sci-fi yourself.

Dean Devlin
Totally.

David Read
I appreciate you being here. What have you been working on lately? What’s been going on?

Dean Devlin
Well, during this year of the pandemic, we’ve actually been shooting three TV series on three different continents.

David Read
Wow.

Dean Devlin
So, we’ve been in the Philippines on a show called Almost Paradise. We’re shooting The Outpost for the CW in Serbia. And we just started our reboot of Leverage 2.0 that we are shooting in New Orleans right now, so it’s been a wild year.

David Read
My goodness. How do you keep it all straight? Just patience and sleep?

Dean Devlin
Lot of caffeine.

David Read
This set behind you here, this is an image from one of your shows, right?

Dean Devlin
Yes, this is one of the sets from Leverage.

David Read
OK.

Dean Devlin
It’s virtual, I’m not actually on the set.

David Read
Right, exactly. I ran into you, not last fall, I believe, but the fall before, you were doing the promotion for Bad Samaritan. And you were walking through the convention floor and I was like, “Oh my God, it’s Dean Devlin!”, and you’re doing your live show…

Dean Devlin
Was that Denver, or Long Beach, or… Where was it?

David Read
That was Anaheim, yeah.

Dean Devlin
OK.

David Read
Yeah. And I stopped you in the middle of your show and asked for a photo and you were gracious enough to provide one, a selfie, and then after the panel for Bad Samaritan, I told you about a show that I was working on, a new Stargate interview series, and you said “Let’s do it!” That particular one went the way of the dodo, MGM, they closed that, but now I’m doing my own thing, and I really appreciate you holding up your end of the bargain and saying, “You know what, we can still talk.” So, this means a great deal. I loved that movie. It was a great thriller, and what I really loved about it was the notion that people who are good can still be led astray, and can still do some pretty evil things. And sometimes they have to be smacked on the side of the head, and reminded that this is not the way to behave.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, I mean, it was an interesting story, in that you had someone who was not exactly law abiding, but at the same time was not violent, who got sucked into a violent situation. And, obviously, it’s a situation that wouldn’t have happened had he not been of dubious morals. But in that moment, his true core of his morality comes to play. Will he stand up for someone he doesn’t know who’s in danger?

David Read
And in the process also say, “Yeah, by way of coming across this information, and this individual, I was doing a bad thing.” So, in order to do the right thing, he must disclose what he’s done and pay the piper accordingly.

Dean Devlin
That’s right.

David Read
Yeah, it was a great film. Anyone out there who has not seen it, I totally recommend it. There are two films from my childhood, that stand out to me as a movie goer — I was born in ‘83 — and the first one is Jurassic Park, and it just set the bar for me in terms of how mind-boggling visual effects could be, and how amazing they could be to tell a compelling story, and sound and well acted and everything else. And then the second one for me, as a child going into the film was… I bet you can guess the second one.

Dean Devlin
Star Wars?

David Read
Independence Day.

Dean Devlin
Ah…!

David Read
1996, right?

Dean Devlin
Yes, that’s right.

David Read
I loved that movie. It was fun, the casting was perfect, the visual effects were amazing, you didn’t go all digital, you used models where it was appropriate, used digital where it was appropriate, where, I think, more films that came out later should probably have done the same. That film changed my life. It was such a fantastic experience. Do you have fond memories of that after all these years?

Dean Devlin
You know, it’s a movie that’s hard to talk about because it’s the only time in my life where every single thing went right from the very beginning to the very end.

David Read
Really?

Dean Devlin
[inaudible] waiting for the second shoe to drop. It’s like, “OK, it can’t be this good. It can’t be this…” I mean, we wrote the script in two weeks. We sent it out to studios on a Wednesday, we were in pre-production on the following Monday. I mean, these things never happen. And to get our dream cast, I mean, it was just… we had more fun than anyone should have with their clothes on. I mean, it was crazy.

David Read
Did you believe the success of the film? Because it exploded.

Dean Devlin
Well, we had a feeling that it would do better than our previous film, which was Stargate, we thought this will do better than that, but we had no idea it was going to be, at that time, the number one movie in the history of the world. That, we didn’t even dare to dream about.

David Read
Yeah, that was… it was insane. And I bought all the memorabilia from that, all the disks, the floppy disks, that came out with all the games on it. It was… it really was the perfect film, I really think. Even today, I’ll go back and I’ll watch it on my big screen. And it holds up better, I think, than it did… the visual effects certainly look more amazing than they did on the VCR cassette tapes and everything else. It’s one of the…

Dean Devlin
The only thing that doesn’t hold up for some reason, is the helicopter blades. Somehow, in the transfer from film to video, they get real wonky and…

David Read
Really?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, one day I’d love to go fix that. Other than that, it’s pretty much the way it looked at the time.

David Read
You were 15 when Star Wars came out in 1977.

Dean Devlin
13.

David Read
You were 13?

Dean Devlin
Wait, wasn’t I 13? No.

David Read
’77?

Dean Devlin
No, you’re right. I was 15. That’s right. I think I hadn’t turned 15 yet, because it was March, right?

David Read
Yeah, it was March. Weren’t you going to turn 16 that year? OK.

Dean Devlin
I would turn 15 that year in August.

David Read
Understood, OK. You were at the first showing the first night.

Dean Devlin
It was actually the afternoon, it was the first showing, and it was in the afternoon. I was number nine in line, and I had no idea what it was I was going to see. I hadn’t read any reviews or anything. At the time I was living in The Valley in Studio City, and I took a bus by myself to Hollywood. I went to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, got in line, and it was so amazing because it was sold out. Again, none of us knew what we were going to see, and within the first three minutes of the movie, Darth Vader walks on screen and the entire audience starts booing and hissing. And I was like, “How do we even know to do that? How did this audience participation happen?”

David Read
He’s in black.

Dean Devlin
It changed my life.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. There is something about that franchise and how it just is bulletproof in withstanding the test of time. And I think there are elements inside of it from Joseph Campbell, that I think Lucas really keyed in on, and a lot of samurai movies as well. It just has that perfect combination that just have generations coming back to it again and again.

Dean Devlin
It was a remarkable film. And I mean, that whole first trilogy, for me, was just spectacular. But you know, it’s interesting, because I know we’re gonna get into Stargate at some point here. You know, when you do have something like a Star Wars, where the fans connect to it so deeply and passionately, you ultimately end up with a fan base that is almost impossible to please.

David Read
That’s true.

Dean Devlin
You know, because their own imaginations and their own investments are so deep. I mean, I find it very interesting as each one of these new Star Wars movies comes out, and to see how they get savaged and loved at the same time. And I’m always surprised how rarely I’m in agreement with most people on it. And the fact that people can love one movie and hate the other, and yet still keep coming back for more is a real tribute to how deep that love is for that fanbase.

David Read
It shows how you can’t really get upset over something that you don’t care about.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, that’s true.

David Read
It shows that the fan base has taken it and made it, and from my experience, it’s almost a religious event going and seeing one of those movies. It’s like going into church and just having this thing, a presence wash over you, and to be elevated and transformed through storytelling is a wonderful experience.

Dean Devlin
It’s really interesting, my eldest daughter, when she was really young, I turned her on to Star Wars and she fell in love with it. She wanted to have Star Wars stuff on her bed. And I’ll never forget, when she ended up going to school [inaudible] for being a girl who liked Star Wars, and she ended up feeling embarrassed about liking Star Wars because of this pressure, and she kind of like rebelled against it afterwards. And I thought that was such an interesting thing that, I guess at that age, the boys wanted it to be theirs, they didn’t want the girls to share in it, it was such an interesting thing.

David Read
I think Carrie was a fine example of, ‘No, it’s for everyone.” Dean, who are your personal heroes? People in your life? People literary, people of the film and television industry?

Dean Devlin
Well, you know, there’s heroes in different aspects. I mean, I think we’re blessed to live in a time where there’s a lot of heroes and a lot of villains, and a lot of people that you can relate to. I think if we’re talking about filmmaking, without a doubt Spielberg is at the top of that list for me. Roland Emmerich, who was my partner and my mentor, definitely one of my heroes. My father, who was a filmmaker, was definitely one of my heroes. And that’s really kind of the path I went down, but then I also, I was really motivated by the films of François Truffaut, Scorsese, Woody Allen, James Cameron, so there’s a lot of heroes in my life.

David Read
Who set you on the course to becoming the man you are? Who was the most influential?

Dean Devlin
Probably my father. We had such a contentious relationship in that my father was a movie producer, and he hated the movie business.

David Read
Really?!

Dean Devlin
He hated it. And he literally forbade me from being in it. And we went over a year without speaking because I was going to do it with or without his permission, and ultimately he accepted the fact that there was no turning me away from it. But I think those early lessons from him on what made it so miserable for him so that I could create a path for myself that would not be miserable. And his advice and his wisdom was really helpful for avoiding a lot of the traps that can happen in the entertainment business.

David Read
Tell us about creating Stargate. You co-wrote it with Emmerich. Which of you came up with the idea of the gate itself, originally?

Dean Devlin
Neither of us. So, what happened was this. I was an actor in a movie that Roland had done, and I had ended up — it’s a long story — but I ended up doing some rewriting on that and he ended up liking my writing and we started to work together doing scripts. And as we were looking at projects to do, he kept telling me about a project that he had been working on since he was in film school, called Necropol. And what it was about was, it was about a spaceship that was buried underneath the Great Pyramid of Giza. And he had these great scenes where these children are lured there at night, and they vanish and everything, but he had never really flushed it out, but he really love this idea of a spaceship buried under the Great Pyramid of Giza. And I had been working on something that was very rough in my head that I jokingly would call ‘Lawrence of Arabia in Outer Space’. And mine, it was a good guy, bad guy who were chasing each other in space, and they go through a wormhole, but the good guy, he hesitates for five seconds before he follows him in. But those five seconds end up being 30 years on the other side when he lands, and by then the villain has taken over this other world.

David Read
There’s a time change, OK.

Dean Devlin
So, that was my project, Necropol was his project, and we said, “Maybe there’s some way to kind of connect these together and turn it into one project.” And a wonderful production designer named Oliver Scholl, he was hearing our idea and he said, “You know, there’s a device that’s used very often in science fiction literature, but not that often in science fiction films.” And he said, “It’s the teleportation device. We saw it in The Fly, and of course, it was in Star Trek, but you don’t really see it as often as we see it in literature.” And that’s when it just snapped, and we said, “That’s how we connect these two movies. It’s the Stargate. It’s the thing that… it’s the teleportation device.”

David Read
It was originally triangular, wasn’t it? There were several versions of that.

Dean Devlin
That’s right.

David Read
Was that a pyramid echo?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, exactly. But then, when Roland came up with the idea of how the chevrons would align and move in, then we knew the triangle wasn’t going to work.

David Read
Yeah, and also the circle, one of the most universal symbols in the world. So, there’s something to be said to that too. Did the whole gate spin on set? Or was it just sections of it?

Dean Devlin
The inner ring [inaudible]

David Read
I’m losing you a little bit there, can you please repeat?

Dean Devlin
[inaudible] The entire inner circle spun. It was built by our VFX guy, Kit West, who had done the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies. And so, it was a really functioning device on set, and the chevrons that clicked in and the inner circle’s spinning. That was all practical.

David Read
My, oh my. So, if I can go down the rabbit hole in terms of minutiae — you can be like, “I don’t know, man, this was 30 years ago.” — there are seven chevrons in the sequence but there are nine on the gate. Were there plans for the other two chevrons? Was it just a design aesthetic that nine looked better?

Dean Devlin
No, no, the original plan of the movie was to do three movies and so there was going to be three major addresses and that’s why we needed the nine. But we never got to do parts two and three.

David Read
Got it. So, the second film would have included an eight chevron address?

Dean Devlin
Well, it would have included one of the other chevrons that was not in the original.

David Read
Ah, I see. So, one of the chevrons is for one… OK, so each chevron of the three that were remaining on the end had to do with a different location.

Dean Devlin
Yeah.

David Read
OK, so the Stargate was going to go in other places?

Dean Devlin
Yeah. We had big plans for it, but we never got to explore it.

David Read
Were there any other contenders for the roles of Jack and Daniel or were Russell and Spader the ones from the beginning?

Dean Devlin
You know, I think they were our first choices. I’m not 100% sure on that, but, again, remember, this was an independent movie. MGM was not involved in the making of this film.

David Read
Right.

Dean Devlin
And so a lot of this had to do with, “How do we get the money to make this film?” And I’ll never forget, when we were talking about trying to figure out big stars, it was kind of like, “Well, who’s your wish list?” And, you know, as a guy who grew up on Kurt Russell movies, man, I can’t imagine anyone better than Kurt Russell. And he actually turned the film down several times before he finally said yes.

David Read
What made him say yes? Did you adjust something? Or was it a schedule thing?

Dean Devlin
No, it was money. We just kept offering him more money until he finally said, “Yes.” And I’ll never forget, he came into the office, after he’d said “Yes,” and he said, “Look, guys, I just want you to know, that the kind of money you’re offering me is incredible and I’m really grateful, and even though I think that this is a really stupid movie, I’m going to work my butt off on it, because you’re paying me so much.” So, he left the office, and we kind of were like, “Wait, do we really want him in the movie?”

David Read
This guy did Big Trouble in Little China!

Dean Devlin
What we found out later, was he had been given the wrong script. That the reason he turned it down is somehow, somebody had sent him the very first draft, which was awful. Roland and I had worked on this thing for years, and I don’t know how the first draft got to him, but the first draft was almost like a high school kid wrote the first draft. So, when we finally gave him the shooting draft, he was like, “Oh, this is really much better.”

David Read
And how much money could you have saved had the right script…?

Dean Devlin
Unbelievable.

David Read
Oh, my gosh.

Dean Devlin
But he was a joy. He was an absolute joy to work with. I mean, he told us the truth. That guy worked his butt off on it, he was 1,000% committed. I mean, you could see it in his performance in the movie. He was totally committed. Even when we were doing really goofy stuff, he just was… he was on board, man, and it was great.

David Read
Him and Spader. My favorite scene from that movie is Spader going to him and saying, “I don’t want to die. These men don’t want to die and these people don’t want to die. It’s a shame that you’re in such a hurry to.” And they have that heart-to-heart connection where Jack admits to Daniel, “This is the reason I’m here. My kid’s gone.” Did the story of a father who’d lost his son come from any place specific?

Dean Devlin
You know, I don’t remember how we came to it, but what’s interesting, that you’re bringing this up, is that had been cut from the film, along with some other things, because our Executive Producer believed that the film was too slow. And so we’d cut out all the character stuff, and it was just kind of pure action. And the movie tested in the toilet. It was gonna be a giant disaster. And everybody walked away from the movie. I mean, literally, they walked away. Roland and I walked into the editing room, and it was empty. I mean, they’d sent everyone home. And then Roland and I just said, “Well, listen, if everyone thinks this is gonna be a disaster anyway, let’s put back all the [inaudible]. So, we put back that storyline and all the other character storylines and all the stuff that they said made the movie slow. And then we got to test it one more time before we released it, and the slow rating vanished. So, what we learned very early on is, it’s not how many things blow up or how many action sequences there are, it’s how engaged are we with the characters. And, as you just brought that up, that storyline with him is what made his character compelling. And when that was missing, he was just the tough guy being mean for no reason.

David Read
How was James Spader in his execution of Daniel, versus Daniel on the page. It’s a fantastic performance.

Dean Devlin
Well, he’s a guy who brings so much. I mean, he’s a very serious actor. Just to give an example, there was this… you know, there’s this old joke that they always have in screenwriting, where the writer will write, “The army marches over the hill,” and then it’s a 15 minute sequence of armies, right?

David Read
Don’t do that, yeah.

Dean Devlin
I had kind of done that, in that I wrote in the script, “They walk through the Stargate.” That’s all it said in the script, literally one line, “They walk through the Stargate.” But, of course, when you see the film, the first group goes through, and then Kurt Russell lifts his gun and then he goes through, and then… but the last person is Spader. And when we went to shoot…

David Read
The inquisitive one.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, and when we went to shoot it, he stopped at the water and he put his hands in, and then he pulled his hands out, and he looked at his hands. And meanwhile, Jeff Okun, who was our Effects Supervisor is yelling in my ear, “We can’t hold the effect that long. Tell him he can’t do that!” And I’m like, “Shut up, shut up! We’ll figure it out!” Literally while we were shooting, and he’s going, “We can’t do this!” And, of course, it’s my favorite moment in the entire movie, and that was not in the script. And there’s dozens of things like that, that Spader brought, where he would just be the character and suddenly this magic would happen that we had never intended.

David Read
Was it his intent to rip the one page of the newspaper away from the guard? It’s little things like that.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, exactly. That was really all him.

David Read
I have had the privilege of getting to know Alexis Cruz over the last several years. I love that guy. He just had a baby.

Dean Devlin
Really?

David Read
Yeah, he’s awesome. And he talks about being 16 years old, and being cast in the role and then having it be revealed to him the scope of what this actual movie is, and being shown his action figure. And you just taking him through all this stuff, because that wasn’t presented to him when he was cast — according to his memory — it was after the fact that he’s seeing, “Oh, my gosh, this is a whole thing!”

Dean Devlin
Again, you have to remember, this is ’94.

David Read
Yeah.

Dean Devlin
And CG was not very good in ’94. So, when we wrote that there was a 15-story set, we had to build a 15-story set. So, that whole entrance of the Pyramid was built for real. That chamber inside was built for real.

David Read
Ra’s ship, his main thing.

Dean Devlin
Yeah.

David Read
Wasn’t that one of the biggest soundstages in the world?

Dean Devlin
It was actually… it’s where they used to keep the Spruce Goose, the Dome in Long Beach.

David Read
Wow.

Dean Devlin
So it was gigantic. I think that, again, when people read it in the script, they didn’t realize the scope, they didn’t realize the scale. And again, I give that 100% to Roland, because Roland is so visual, and he imagines these things that I wouldn’t dare, as a writer, because I’d say, “We can never afford to do that. We can’t…” He doesn’t care.

David Read
“We’re going to make it happen. We’ll find a way.” It’s like the gliders, the first version of the gliders was like this brick-shaped object with weapons turrets, and you know, it’s…

Dean Devlin
But they were meant to look like… the original ones were meant to look like chariots.

David Read
Yeah.

Dean Devlin
That’s why they had that shape. But then Roland was like, “That’s gonna look like… that’s gonna look terrible.”

David Read
It was just a design aesthetic, it was like you were filming it…? Because there’s footage in the special features of them being shot across the set on wires.

Dean Devlin
Yeah.

David Read
So, Tatopoulos did a last minute design change and created the gliders?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, absolutely.

David Read
Wow, what a genius. Jeez, that guy is just brilliant. I mean, his work in Stargate is good, his work on Independence Day is just ridiculous.

Dean Devlin
He was a gift. And, you know, he has an acting part in The Patriot.

David Read
I did not know that. And I just saw The Patriot again recently.

Dean Devlin
If you see The Patriot again, when they’re being rescued by the French ships, he’s the Captain of the French ship commanding them to fire.

David Read
Absolutely. We’ll go back and see that. I mentioned before we started, how Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey is crystal clear in this movie, as far as I’m concerned, in three ways. You’ve got Jack definitely as the reluctant hero going on a journey, Daniel as well. And Skaara. You’ve got three men who have to take on various tasks to either keep from killing themselves, to survive with a paycheck, and to rescue their people from a malevolent, evil force. Was that deliberate, or did that just organically appear? And do you agree with that assessment of those three? Are there more?

Dean Devlin
There’s more. I mean, if you look at — and I’m forgetting her name right now —

David Read
Sha’uri?

Dean Devlin
No, the woman who found the…

David Read
Catherine Langford.

Dean Devlin
Catherine Langford is our older advisor character.

David Read
Yeah.

Dean Devlin
I mean, look, it’s not a coincidence. We literally — and I feel so bad that I don’t remember her name at this…

David Read
Viveca Lindfors.

Dean Devlin
No, no, no, we hired a woman who was an expert in Joseph Campbell. And she’s the one who worked with us on the script. And, forgive me if you’re watching this, I think her first name was Linda and I’m forgetting her last name. But she came in and looked at the script and then started talking about Joseph Campbell. And then we started making adjustments and that’s when the script really started to sing, when we were able to kind of see what we were trying to do but then put it into a more traditional framework.

David Read
Yeah, the characters all have that arc. And it’s again, an example of characters that… there are certain rules that you just use because they withstand the test of time. There are a lot of story mechanics and world-building and rule-building in this film. The wormhole only goes one way. The reason for that is so that it prevents them from getting home. There’s similar content with the rings and everything else. Did those kinds of things come easy when you were developing the script? Were they something like, “Oh, geez, we have to do this in order to make this story work this way.” Or was it the whole process? “Oh, this is amazing. Let’s do this because it’ll lead to this.”

Dean Devlin
Well, that particular thing was essential, because what we were trying to tell was a stranded story. So, in a traditional stranded story, you’re on a ship, you’re going somewhere, but then the ship gets wrecked and now you’re stuck on an island. How do you get off the island? Right? And so that was the idea. And then to give it more character, the being stranded wasn’t an accident. Daniel didn’t tell them that they would be stranded.

David Read
He knows good and well what he’s doing.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, because he wants to go on the adventure so much.

David Read
Right. “You’re a lying son of a bitch!”

Dean Devlin
The part that was surprising is, we made up a whole lot of Ancient Egyptian mythology. We just made it up. And then we hired an expert from UCLA to come in — Stuart… forgive me [inaudible] — and he came in and basically said, “Oh, almost all of this is correct.” And I was like, “It can’t be correct, we just made it up.” And then he kind of smiled and he said, “Well, that’s the amazing thing about Ancient Egypt. If you go in with almost any theory, you will go there, and you’ll find evidence to support your theory.” And then he actually created… or the recreation of the Ancient Egyptian, which doesn’t exist. And I’ll never forget, our Executive Producer was so angry when he found out how much money I’d spent to recreate a language that no one on Earth would know if it was real or not real. And I kept telling him, “No, it’s important, it’s important.” He goes…

David Read
It needs to be correct.

Dean Devlin
…”You could say ‘blak blak blak’, no one will know!” And I said, “Trust me, it’s important.” And I’ll never forget, before the movie came out, I was doing the tour of all these science fiction conventions, and there was enormous hesitancy to support Stargate before it came out. Mostly because we have the word ‘star’ in the title. And so they thought, “Oh, they’re trying to rip off Star Trek or Star Wars.”

David Read
Battlestar Galactica.

Dean Devlin
And it wasn’t until they found out that the language had actually been really recreated that they started to take us seriously. And it was a very interesting thing, I remember actually being at the Denver convention, and as that information came out, more and more people came over started asking about the language and suddenly we were OK because we had taken that step. So I felt vindicated.

David Read
Well, you proved that science fiction can be serious within its context. I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble to create something, and you give a crap about it, you’re going to make it as faithful as you can to what we can create or recreate. So, that makes that makes a lot of sense.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, man, look, it is a fantasy movie, but every place we could put a little bit of an anchor in, it hooked into something, whether it was conscious or subconscious.

David Read
And I’m sure you’ve been told repeatedly throughout the years of people who have… I’ve lost count the number of people that I’ve encountered who have become historians, or instructors, or Egyptologists, based on their initial encounter with this movie.

Dean Devlin
I would say over the years, it’s been a few dozen times people have said something to that effect to me.

David Read
Yeah, that’s gotta be rewarding? I mean, you’re creating a piece of entertainment, and, in many cases, you’ve changed lives.

Dean Devlin
It’s remarkable, but I mean, that’s what this whole fandom is, though, you know? I mean, whether it’s off of this movie or any of the others that are supported by this group, is that they tend to take people who are very smart, but felt that they were outcasts, or felt like they were weird.

David Read
Daniel.

Dean Devlin
Yeah. And then through these fandoms, they realize, “Oh, I’m not so weird. There’s a lot of people just like me.”

David Read
Yeah. “And I have something to contribute, I just have to figure out what it is.” Tell us about shooting in Yuma. What month, what time of the year was that?

Dean Devlin
I don’t remember what month it was, but it was hot. It was over 120 degrees, and we had PA’s with big water barrels strapped to their back. And they had sprayers, like the kind you would normally do to put insecticide on plants, and they would just walk down and spray down the extras because it was so hot. And we had several collapse in the heat that we had to take the hospital and it was insane.

David Read
And you had…

Dean Devlin
And that poor horse, that had to wear the costume. You know, that was one of those Clydesdale horses like you see in the Michelob commercials…

David Read
Ah, for the Mastadge, yeah.

Dean Devlin
And that Clydesdale horse had this huge costume on in that heat, so we were constantly keeping that horse watered down and cooled down. And, it was nuts.

David Read
And the logistical issues of something so ridiculous, and important, and when you think about it — because the cameras go in there — of wiping away footprints in the sand, carrying the…

Dean Devlin
Today, you would just erase it digitally, it wouldn’t be a problem. We couldn’t do that then, and I remember at one point, Roland had this brilliant idea, he said, “We’ll get a helicopter and it’ll just blow the sand!” So we brought in this helicopter and it was a disaster. [inaudible]. I remember one day, there’s that great moment where Kasuf screams at the top of the hill, and he runs down and they all follow him. Well, take one of that, we had nine cameras going, and what we should have said to the extras is, “Just follow Kasuf.” What we ended up saying to the extras was, “Run straight towards the camera.” But there were nine cameras. So, he goes, “Aaaah!” and he goes running down the hill and everybody disperses. And by the time Kasuf got to the bottom of the hill, he was alone! [inaudible] Entire sand dune was completely ruined, because there were footprints everywhere, and we had to move to another sand dune and do it all over again.

David Read
So, didn’t bother resetting? “That’s the next one, let’s go over there. They’re all the same!”

Dean Devlin
We had no choice.

David Read
Oh, my God. That’s fantastic. Eric was exceptional in that role, and he’s done… his CV is a mile long at 10 point font. What a talented actor. I would imagine — and maybe you did write it in — the amount of humor that he brought in? So much of that had to have been him?

Dean Devlin
Well, we always try to put humor in wherever possible. Once we realized we had someone with his gift, it was just, “Oh, let’s crank it up, let’s just crank it up.”

David Read
Absolutely. I was so surprised years later in finding out that there were two more films in the original trilogy planned. Because there are so few movies these days that end with “The End”, and Stargate does. I was like, “That was good!” And then I found out that you wanted to do two more. For the original trilogy, is there anything that you can say about what you wanted to do with it? I’d love to hear whatever you’re willing to say. You just told earlier that there were two other locations that were planned, so a location for each additional movie.

Dean Devlin
I’ll say this, just because I don’t think we’re ever going to get to do it. There are two different places on Earth that are famous for pyramids. One was an Egyptian, and our second one was going to be a Mayan culture.

David Read
OK, so not necessarily Ra’s race again? He was the last of his race for good.

Dean Devlin
Yeah. And then the third was gonna tie in almost every mystery that we’ve ever had on Earth, whether it was Bigfoot or the Yeti. We were gonna tie everything into a larger mythology…

David Read
Tapestry.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, and it was gonna be so much fun, it was gonna be so wild, but we never got to go there. We never got to explore it.

David Read
Was it the TV franchise, the success of the TV franchise, where MGM was like, “No, we’re just not interested in doing it this direction.” What was it? Money? What was the biggest factor in not pursuing that?

Dean Devlin
It was the television show. I mean, what had happened was — again — the film was made entirely independently. There was no studio involved. So, MGM agreed to release the film when no one else would release it, because no one believed in the movie. And the week before the movie opened, the people who had financed the movie — which was a group out of France — they were so sure that they had a bomb, they sold the movie to MGM for $5 million. So then, MGM owned the movie.

David Read
And I’m guessing, even at that money, that was a steal at that time, right?

Dean Devlin
Oh, yeah, well, it’s a movie that cost $50 million.

David Read
$50 million.

Dean Devlin
And it made over $200 million at that time. It was the largest October opening in history at that time. And so MGM now owned it, and they decided they wanted to do a TV series, Roland and I went in to meet with them to talk about the series, and they said, “Oh, we don’t really want you guys involved.” And we were like, “Really? OK.” And they went on their own. So it was a very painful thing for a long time, because you’re watching…

David Read
Yeah, something that you gave birth to.

Dean Devlin
…somebody else raise your children, you know what I mean? So it was very hard. And that’s why it was so interesting, because I was very hostile to the series, especially as [inaudible].

David Read
I don’t blame you.

Dean Devlin
But the first couple episodes of the series had full frontal nudity.

David Read
Yeah.

Dean Devlin
And I was like, “That’s not Stargate. Do you guys have any idea what show we’re doing?”

David Read
Yeah, even Brad Wright had a problem with that. That was Showtime. Showtime said, “If you want this, it’d have to have it.” And then they never did it again. And the final cut of Children of the Gods, they took it out.

Dean Devlin
Yeah. So, I had kind of rebelled again, I was angry that the studio had cut us out of it, that they didn’t want to do the movies, but what was interesting, is that many years later, it was obvious to me that even though I had not been watching the show, that they must have been doing something right, because you don’t get to live that long, you don’t get to have that many fans, you don’t get that kind of passion unless you’ve done a really good show.

David Read
17 seasons, 350 episodes, something’s working. And the passion of the fan base has only grown.

Dean Devlin
So I reached out to Jonathan Glassner, and I said, “Let’s go have lunch.” And [inaudible]

David Read
Can you repeat that, Dean? I just lost you. You reached out to Jonathan Glassner?

Dean Devlin
I reached out to Jonathan Glassner, who I’d never met. And as you said, 17 seasons of Stargate, and we go out and we have lunch and we hit it off, and next thing I know, he and I are doing The Outpost together. He and I have actually talked about a very different Stargate idea, and I hope one day I can talk to MGM about it. As a series.

David Read
So as a series, not the reboot trilogy that you were working on.

Dean Devlin
No, I think that ship has sailed.

David Read
OK. I want to speak a little bit on that. You hired Nicolas Wright and James Woods. My understanding — and this may be rumor — but I was in LA at a Props Warehouse at the time, selling off a lot of the original Stargate props, and I knew people who said that they had friends in the industry where they were building new helmets. I mean, it got that far, they were — according to them — they were building new prototype helmets for a new Stargate. How far did that go?

Dean Devlin
Well, that may have happened. What basically happened is, the script for the movies came out right after the sequel of Independence Day. And the making of the Independence Day sequel was a — for me — a terrible experience.

David Read
Really? OK.

Dean Devlin
And then when I read the script of where we were going with Stargate, I basically just lost interest, I thought, “I don’t like working at studios, I don’t have a good time doing that. I like being independent. I don’t like the direction where the script is going.” And I basically bowed out. And then I know they went on for a little while after that, so they may have they may have gotten that far, but I wasn’t involved anymore at that point.

David Read
But a script for the first reboot film exists.

Dean Devlin
Yes.

David Read
OK. Interesting. Did it include any of the characters from the original or was it…?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, it was the original characters, but then kind of with this other global warming idea that felt heavy-handed to me.

David Read
OK. Would it have been a straight reboot, or would it have honored the content that had come before, from the original film?

Dean Devlin
From the original film, there was a lot being pulled from that, but then, like I said, it went in a whole other direction and didn’t at all connect with the series.

David Read
Got it.

Dean Devlin
I think that was another thing that could have been very tough for the fans.

David Read
It’s so frustrating, that development Hell, so much stuff lives there in the industry. Some things get out and get made radically different to what they were meant to be and some things, like Independence Day, it just all came together. What a legacy, though, with this franchise. I would have so been interested to see what your take would have been, with the property, going in the direction that you had wanted to, despite the fact that I love the TV property as well. And I think that there’s room in the Multiverse for all of it.

Dean Devlin
Well, that’s the beauty of Stargate, is that between all the series and the movie, and the different worlds, is that there’s a lot of stories that can be told. I mean, honestly, I think if there ever was a property that lent itself to a cinematic universe, it’s Stargate, and it hasn’t really been exploited. And that’s why I said, when Glassner and I started talking about how to do a Stargate that was not stepping on the toes of anything else, we came up with something and got very excited about it. But then COVID hit, and we never had a chance to tell anyone. Who knows, maybe next year, we’ll sit down with MGM and pitch it.

David Read
Oh, so that was my next question, so — COVID notwithstanding and everything else that’s going on — Stargate is not off the table forever for you?

Dean Devlin
I think the features are.

David Read
OK.

Dean Devlin
I think under the right situation, I would consider doing a series again, if it was the right show and done in the right way. I’m in a kind of crazy, fortunate place in my life where I’ve been able to work somewhat independently, and not everybody likes the stuff I do, but I like it. And that’s kind of [inaudible].

David Read
You have to make it for you first.

Dean Devlin
Yeah. That’s kind of Heaven when you get to do the stuff that you like doing and then it gets embraced. So, yeah, if we can set up something like that, I would go back to it. And also, I just love working with Jonathan. He’s been great.

David Read
He’s cool.

Dean Devlin
We’re [inaudible] gonna have 46 episodes of Outpost soon that we’ve done together now and I just love his work.

David Read
Absolutely, I do, too. I have some fan questions here that have been submitted, if you don’t mind. Spartan-343… No, we’ve already addressed that with the plans for the sequels. Excuse me, I’m just pulling this open for the first time here. GateGab, can you talk about the casting process for the original movie? Any of the characters that we haven’t discussed that surprised you when they were brought to life?

Dean Devlin
We were having a lot of trouble finding our female lead, Sha’uri. We’d already started shooting the movie, and we hadn’t cast it yet. And everyone was freaking out, and just saying, “What are we going to do?” But Roland was absolutely adamant, he said, “I’m not casting someone who’s a compromise. She’s got to walk in the door and we got to know it’s her.” And when this young actress from Israel showed up…

David Read
Mili Avital

Dean Devlin
…it just blew our minds. Mili not only nailed it, but also gave her a strength and an independence that was beyond what we were writing and made it much more interesting. And I learned a real valuable lesson from Roland that day that you don’t compromise. You got to get the right casting or it just doesn’t work.

David Read
Yeah, the consequences can be…

Dean Devlin
The consequences we had on that was Jay Davidson. Because Jay Davidson had just been nominated for an Oscar for… what was the name of that movie?

David Read
The Crying something?

Dean Devlin
The Crying Game. And so our Executive Producer said, “Holy… this guy’s gonna be worth a fortune for us in in foreign sales.” But we thought, “Is this guy really someone who can go toe-to-toe with Kurt Russell? Is that going to be believable?”

David Read
And Spader.

Dean Devlin
Yeah. And we shot the movie and it didn’t work. And he didn’t work. It was bad casting. It just wasn’t right. And I’ll never forget, Roland and I were in a car together just lamenting that our whole movie was falling apart because our villain was not working. And then I remember, I turned to Roland, I said, “Wait a minute, Roland. Ra doesn’t work for the aliens. He IS an alien!” And Roland goes “We’ve already shot the picture. How do we do that change?” And I go, “We’ll do a day of reshoots!” And so that whole turning Ra into an alien was all done on a Sunday.

David Read
Beforehand, he worked for them?

Dean Devlin
The original… If you look at the extended version, there’s the scene where they come and grab him. And in the original, they grabbed him to come work for them. So he was their slave master, in essence. But that didn’t work at all.

David Read
Cheeky buggers, you hid it well. Never would have considered that.

Dean Devlin
So when we changed it, we made his voice weird, we made his eyes glow out, we put an alien inside of his skull. And all that weird behavior he was doing suddenly had a meaning.

David Read
Absolutely, no, that’s great! I’m blown away. Wow, OK. Well, you have to work with what you’ve got, you know, and if it’s already in the can, what do you do? Absolutely, you’re gonna find a way.

Dean Devlin
The interesting thing was, I was so worried that he was going to be upset because that’s not what we had intended. And I’ll never forget, he saw the picture and he came to me with tears in his eyes and he said, “You saved me.” He goes, “I thought I had ruined the picture.” He goes, “You saved me.” So he loved the changes that we’d done. That was surprising.

David Read
How nice. Absolutely. JohnFourtyTwo, if the “Ancient Aliens” TV show… oh, boy… was around when you were writing the movie, would you have considered making the pyramids power stations instead of landing platforms?

Dean Devlin
Well, no, not for our story. A lot of what our thing came from was the [Erich] von Däniken novels, The Chariots of the Gods, and the mystery of why were the pyramids built. And so the idea that they were actually landing platforms, one, gave us an answer to a mystery, but it also cracked us up. I mean, we literally fell over laughing after we came up with it.

David Read
Who’s gonna sit on that?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, we were just like, “What a bizarre thing. What if that whole thing there was just to prop up a spaceship?” It gave us it gave us a thrill.

David Read
Absolutely. Ian says, I’m an editor, I’m working on a short film currently. What skills do you like to see in editors that you work with? And what are your favorite kinds of cuts; smash cuts, J cuts, L cuts? I’m assuming you would know what that means.

Dean Devlin
So, it’s an excellent question. I love the editing. That’s my favorite part of the entire filmmaking process. I think if my career ever took a nosedive, I would try and get a job in an editing room. I absolutely love it.

David Read
It’s fun, yeah.

Dean Devlin
Well, it’s the last chance you have to fix things. I mean, you can’t take a terrible movie and make it a great movie, but if you have a movie that’s almost there, you can get it the rest of the way. And you can get rid of all those things that bump you right out of the picture, too. And sometimes you can really change performances and change intentions, and we sure did a lot of that on Stargate. I wouldn’t say that I have any favorite kind of editing, because I think it really depends on what you’re doing. If someone were to look at, say, the pilot episode I did of Leverage versus Bad Samaritan, they’d see completely different styles of editing, even though I’m the same director because you’re trying to accomplish things differently.

David Read
What does the story need?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, and what of the tone because I would stay on shots for a crazy long amount of time on Bad Samaritan to try and make your skin crawl. I would never do that on one of these other shows, where I want it fast and pop-y and fun. So, I like all the tools, and the fun part is figuring out what’s the right tool. And what I look for in Editors is Editors who have their own ideas. Beth Riesgraf was one of the actors in Leverage, she just directed — for the first time — an episode for us. And I was telling her that so many times when I’m directing, I’ll see the first cut and I’ll say to the Editor, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s not supposed to go like that. You start with this shot, then go to this shot, then go to this shot.” Then they’ll do it the way I said, and then I’ll look at and go, “Show me the way you had it again!” Because very often, it’s that fresh eyes. What I would say I don’t like in an Editor is someone who’s simply doing what I tell them to do.

David Read
Follows the rules, just follows the rules.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, I like an Editor who has opinions, even if I don’t agree with them, who has a vision, who says, “Well, what if we try this and what if we try that?” And then usually between what I want and what they want, or what they come up with, then real magic can happen.

David Read
I can completely see where you’re coming from with that. I had the privilege of working with a team when I was in college, and creating a Choose Your Own Adventure DVD movie as my final in college back in 2005. So, it’s before Netflix and all these other things, and it had 15 endings. And I was privileged to collaborate with a group of young people that had great ideas. It was my project and I had, “It’s gonna be this way, you know, but please give me your ideas, but I’m gonna shoot this first.” Eight, nine times out of 10 their ideas would improve upon it. I mean, maybe I just have crappy ideas. But no, I mean, they’re also seeing it as well.

Dean Devlin
I think really good filmmaking is being open to ideas from everyone. The PA’s sometimes have the best idea. You never know, but if you’re not open to hearing it… Tony Bill once said to me that he looked at the Director as a funnel, not as an engine, that he gets the greatest ideas from everyone around him and funnel[s], and then his taste — or her taste — funnels it down to the right choices.

David Read
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. FreeSpirit999, how did the design of the Horus & Anubis guards come to be? What gave the production team the idea to go with the mechanical helmets and were they based on the depictions of hieroglyphs? Some impressive effects. That could not have been easy?

Dean Devlin
Well, that was actually the first CG that Roland and I had ever done, because we couldn’t figure out a way to make the helmets actually do any of that. And it was an Effects House called Kleiser-Walczak, and they designed how the mechanics worked. And the visual was designed by Tatopoulos. But it was a scary thing, because we didn’t know if that was going to work.

David Read
Your camera’s moving, the actors are moving. It’s an intense… I can’t imagine how much that cost.

Dean Devlin
In those days, it was really cutting edge, it was one of the few things we did that was cutting edge because most of the stuff we did was kind of old-fashioned techniques, because of the budget we had. That was the one thing where we couldn’t figure out any other way to do it. Do you know the Director Randal Kleiser? It was actually [inaudible] did those back?

David Read
Can you back up, Dean? Director Randal Kleiser what now?

Dean Devlin
It was his brother whose company did those digital effects. So, yeah, I was real proud of that part. But yeah, it was a tricky design, because obviously we had to do something that represented the original designs of Horus and Anubis that you’ve seen on hieroglyphics forever. But we needed to have that hidden… that they’re not really gods. It’s a facade to hide the person underneath.

David Read
Just press this little button right here. Gibb says…

Dean Devlin
And, of course, that’s Djimon Hounsou.

David Read
Yes, exactly before he was big.

Dean Devlin
So, years later when Spielberg said he’d discovered him… Not so fast! We found him in a cattle call, and we had him first.

David Read
Absolutely. And what a career he’s had, I love watching his stuff.

Dean Devlin
He’s a force.

David Read
Gibb says, given the advancements in tech, how or what would you have done differently, in filming or production, if you made the film today?

Dean Devlin
I think we would have — as big as it was — I think we would have made it bigger. I think we would have made the cities bigger, we’d have done more set extension. I think things like that, just to give it more lush. You know, when you saw all the extras lined up, most of those were sticks with costumes on them.

David Read
And you’re just panning, you’re moving fast enough that you don’t tell. Oh, I did not know that. My God.

Dean Devlin
Today, you would actually just digitally add thousands of people and make it amazing. Then, we had about 300 extras at the front, and then everything behind them was sticks with wardrobe stuck on top of it. It works!

David Read
I bought it! That master shot of the city, and 16:9 screen — actually, it’s 21:9, that aspect ratio for the film — and it just keeps on going and going and going. It’s one of the most magnificent images. I mean, that’s got to be a model?

Dean Devlin
No, that whole center was built for real. The things on east and west, that was an extension with the model, but that whole thing that they walked through was actually built, so when you see that big crane shot, that’s craning through an actual set. Those were the biggest sets I’d ever seen in my life, before or since.

David Read
Wow. And Alexis talked about the burning them like an effigy at the end of production.

Dean Devlin
Yeah.

David Read
Man, oh, man. So the city was never a model for the wide shot at all?

Dean Devlin
Yes. Because when we had that dust storm come, we built a model for that. And that first big wide shot was a combination of the real set with the model.

David Read
Got it. OK. Absolutely. Give me just a moment here, I have to set everything back up just a little bit. I apologize. I’m juggling a couple things at once here. OK, perfect. Let me see here. Was Egyptian mythology always meant to be at the center of the movie’s story or were other ideas explored for the initial film? You said Mayan would have eventually come later.

Dean Devlin
The first one was always intended to be Egyptian, but we did then want to go into other mythologies afterwards, and then we wanted to try to make connections between them.

David Read
Absolutely. That’s one of the things that Stargate itself, SG-1 and Atlantis, went on to do. So, the Atlantis mythology — one of the guys in Daniel’s audience brings up men from Atlantis — and SG-1 eventually went on to do that, so it’s interesting that… and it makes sense that a lot of those elements would have been in your story anyway, had you had the chance to explore that. All right. Teresa McAllister, do you believe it’s possible that that technology exists on earth hidden somewhere?

Dean Devlin
Possible? Yes. Probable? No.

David Read
OK. Pete Mein, where’s the third Independence Day movie, Dean? The way you set it up at the end, it’s a fair question.

Dean Devlin
Well, I’ll tell you this. The original version that I wrote with Roland Emmerich was actually two scripts.

David Read
The ‘96 movie or Independence Day 2?

Dean Devlin
Independence Day 2, when we actually submitted it, we actually submitted part two and three. Two full scripts written, but in those scripts, we had Will Smith.

David Read
Ah, OK.

Dean Devlin
And when Will Smith changed his mind and decided he didn’t want to do the film, then the first script got rewritten dramatically. So, I don’t really know where part three would have gone. I really wish we could have shot the version that we wrote because… It was interesting, because when we first handed it into the studio, they said it was the best first draft of anything they’d ever seen. And then by the time we made the movie, it was a radically different film.

David Read
Is it just because along the way you had to compromise, or along the way things just changed by the nature of the beast is what it is?

Dean Devlin
I think the first thing was not having Will Smith. And that really changed it a lot, and changed where the focus was, and then once Will Smith was not there, then there were a whole lot of voices involved in development that… Because, remember, when we did the first movie, Roland and I wrote it ourselves, nine studios wanted it, and when we sold it we had total creative control to do the sequel. Suddenly, we didn’t own our own movie anymore. And we had to please a lot of different voices that, frankly, I don’t think ever really understood Independence Day. We had notes from the studio saying, “Well, you know, you can’t do comedy today, because it’s not modern.” I was like, “But, Independence Day is borderline comedy.”

David Read
Independence Day requires comedy. That’s what makes the glue.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, I mean, that’s what made it fun is we acknowledged what was silly and said, “Yes, go with it!” And everyone did and had fun. So yeah, that did not go well.

David Read
Marcia Middleton. Hi, Marcia, friend of mine. Dean, you’ve always been close to your fans, and we adore you for that. Have you ever put in just a little something, a scene or a phrase, in one of your shows just for the fans? Like, a nod?

Dean Devlin
Oh, all the time. I mean, most of the Easter eggs, I know that the audience aren’t gonna get who are new to it. That really it’s only the hardcore fans. And usually, especially on our TV series, as we get farther along in them, I stop writing for new fans at a certain point. Because I figure, if you’ve if you’ve come up… if you’re in Season Three and you’re still with me, I’m writing to you at that point.

David Read
Yeah, exactly.

Dean Devlin
So, yeah, I’m a big believer in doing that. And then sometimes, I’ll tell you this, because you know, I do love to read what the fans write about the show. That’s the beauty of social media.

David Read
Exactly. For better or for worse, there it is.

Dean Devlin
But I’ll tell you, I have, especially in The Librarians, I altered the course of where I was going based on doing things the fans…

David Read
Oh, feedback?

Dean Devlin
Well, just hearing what the fans were wanting or where they were misled, or things that they had questions about made me go, “Hmm. That’s actually not a bad idea, maybe we go that way. Or maybe I can answer that question in a different way.” I really enjoy it.

David Read
That’s great. It’s like, “No, it’s gonna be exactly the way I wanted it, and you’re gonna eat it, you’re gonna like it.” That’s what my mother used to say to me. But as long as it’s still from a place of where your vision is, why not?

Dean Devlin
Yeah, I mean, I think when people plan out five seasons of a show, they’re missing out on the best part of the creative process, because often the actors are going to do things that you didn’t expect, and it’s going to create… In the original Leverage, we never really planned for Hardison and Parker to have a love affair, but when we saw them on screen together, there was magic and we said, “Oh, wait a minute.”

David Read
It made sense.

Dean Devlin
“This is going somewhere. Let’s explore it.”

David Read
Absolutely.

Dean Devlin
And I remember, on also on Leverage, there was a moment where Tim Hutton, when they mentioned his father, he turned and his eyes got all… and I was like, “Ooh, what the story between him and his father? Let’s go figure that out!”

David Read
And that was Hutton’s gesture, a little piece… Wow.

Dean Devlin
So, I think you have to be open to so many things, because that’s where it gets interesting, that’s where it gets creative.

David Read
Sommer wants to know, any information yet on a new season of Almost Paradise? Where can I show my support for the show most? ElectricNOW? Amazon Prime?

Dean Devlin
We will be making an announcement in the first quarter of next year of where the show will be available, and when we make that announcement, please, everybody, rush there and support the show. And they’ve told us that if the show does well, they’ll pick up Season Two. And we’re already working on storylines for Season Two, and Christian Kane’s desperate to get back to the Philippines. So, first quarter next year, stay tuned to our Twitter feeds and we’ll be making an announcement.

David Read
Great. SG1Props, along with the movie there were a series of Stargate novels published, the Bill McCay books.

Dean Devlin
Yeah, those are great.

David Read
Were any of your notes in that, or did he just take those in a completely different direction? You guys say, “OK, go have fun.”

Dean Devlin
No, no. We worked with him on those original ones, and I’m real proud of those, and I support those entirely.

David Read
Do you consider them to be in your canon?

Dean Devlin
Yeah.

David Read
OK, so they are natural extensions of… so, your movies could have folded those in?

Dean Devlin
100%

David Read
Wow. OK. I did not know that. There’s a lot of fans who have read them and loved them. I have not actually read them, so I’m gonna have to go read them now.

Dean Devlin
They’re quite good. He’s a really good writer. He’s really engaging.

David Read
Alright. Absolutely. Someone brought up ElectricNOW, and I had not been aware of ElectricNOW before you had mentioned it in our email exchange leading up to this interview. What can you tell us about it?

Dean Devlin
So, what we came to realize is that we have these wonderful fan bases. We have this great fan base for Leverage, we had a great fan base for The Librarians, we had a cool fan base for The Triangle. And I thought, “You know, we need to have some one-stop shop where everyone can go and congregate. And so we created a free streaming app, but because it’s free, it has commercials, but it’s absolutely free, free to download, free to watch, and it has all the shows that Electric has made, and all the shows that we have distribution rights to, and we’re adding new content all the time. We’re still working out some of the bugs on the app.

David Read
Right, you have to start somewhere.

Dean Devlin
But we got some big changes happening very soon, we’re about to add about 200 hours more of content. You know, I think in a time where everybody’s paying a lot of money for their streaming services, it’s nice to be able to get additional content that you don’t have to pay for. And the fun thing with ElectricNOW is, it has — for those of us who like the old school, just turn on your television and have stuff on — it has a live channel that plays 24/7. And it has a program guide in the app to tell you what’s on. And it has our movies, it has our TV shows, and it has our podcast network. And that kind of exploded, we were really surprised. We launched the Inglorious Trekspurts, which is our podcast of Star Trek…

David Read
I recognize some of the people on that. I watched it and was like, “I know that guy. Oh, this is good!”

Dean Devlin
Yeah. We’ve had amazing guests on it, and they’ve got something like 25,000 subscribers now, so it’s just nuts.

David Read
Wow. Do you think that Dial the Gate could find a place there?

Dean Devlin
I think Dial the Gate needs to be on ElectricNOW. I think you need to put it on our channel. Not exclusively, you can still put it other places, but I think you should be on our place, 100%.

David Read
Absolutely. I’m definitely very open to pursuing that.

Dean Devlin
Excellent. We would love to have you.

David Read
I would love to. Dean, this has been a treat. I have been looking forward to this for weeks now, and I hope that fans have enjoyed this as much as I have. We’re already at a nearly 1000 playbacks, so the interest in this franchise and in your work has not gone away. It is an evergreen piece of art that, in many cases, is more relevant now today than when it was when it came out, in terms of the questions that it asks, in terms of making us question who we are and what our potential can be as individuals, and where our place, frankly, is in the universe. And your work has changed my life, and it means a great deal to me to be able to sit down with you and talk with you about it.

Dean Devlin
Well, I’ve had a lot of fun and I’m so excited that your podcast has been blowing up.

David Read
It’s ridiculous.

Dean Devlin
And I hope that you keep growing. But you know, I think the thing is why your podcast is doing so well is kind of what I think has been the reason that I’ve been able to have success, is that I actually really like the stuff I make. And that passion becomes infectious and I think your passion is infectious and that’s why when people see this, it’s genuine, and it’s not just something the studio is paid for to promote their work. It’s actual passion, it’s actual love, and nothing is more infectious than that.

David Read
Well, I appreciate you, sir, and I do appreciate you taking the time. And we’re just getting started here and I think that there’s still a lot left to do, and I’d love to have you back on in 2021.

Dean Devlin
You got it.

David Read
Thank you so much.

Dean Devlin
Take care.

David Read
You be well and take care of yourself.

Dean Devlin
Bye bye.

David Read
Mr. Dean Devlin everyone. My word. I’m over the moon right now. Wow, OK. Thank you so much for everyone, first, for sticking around. This interview here was one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast to begin with, and when he said yes, it was like, “Well, I mean, we’re gonna go to town on this one.” And thank you again, Dean, for that. So. Fan art. I love this piece, I saw it on the internet and I said, “I’ve got to reach out to the artist because I want it for my show.” Kiger Neko. She says, “I made this piece because every time I feel uneasy, I like painting in a Chinese and Japanese art style. They are simple in composition and relaxing to create, every brushstroke has character. For this one, the reason was the same, and after seeing many fans ask for Stargate back, I wanted to challenge myself by creating a fan art piece in a style I have so much fun with. The style of the show didn’t match my painting style, but that was the challenge I liked trying out, to make the match and give off the same vibe as the times SG-1 goes through the gate to a foreign planet, everything feels foreign to not only them, but for the watchers as well. And if you notice the symbols in the painting are the symbols to Earth to match the style.” Thank you, Kiger, for submitting this. And you can submit your own original art — make sure it’s yours — at [email protected]. I will also be putting a link to her store where you can buy a copy of this print after the show, so give me just a minute here and I will update that link to Kiger’s store as well. OK, to business on a couple of things before I let you guys [go], we are in beginnings of week three of this project and it’s becoming very evident to me very quickly that there needs to be a little bit more in place moving forward. Someone commented in the threads in one of the YouTube feeds, they said, “You need to use the YouTube marker tool and put in markers where there are specific moments.” I don’t have time for that, unfortunately, and the next answer is, “Well, find someone who does.” I mean, I can’t allow control to that content, because that’s specifically the YouTube side of things I need control of. However, I have registered DialTheGateArchive.com and with DialTheGateArchive.com I am going to need archivists, but I need at least two or three. A web dev. I need someone who has experience in wikis, and we are going to take each episode of Stargate and give it a landing page, and each episode of Dial the Gate and the episodes that come, and give them a landing page. And so, when Joe Flanigan talks about Rising and talks about shooting the big gun at the Wraith darts, we will then have, on Stargate on DialTheGateArchive.com, a list of all of the specific talking points from each podcast. And you’ll have, on the landing page for Joe’s interview, Joe talks about shooting gun in Rising. Link. And it will be the YouTube timecode where he talks about that. Also in the Rising listing for the episode it will be copied there as well. And in the Rising listing for Rising Parts One and Two, it will have every beat from Dial the Gate where everyone has ever mentioned or brought up that episode. Martin Wood, we’re gonna be having the director on, so his comments will be broken down based on topic and links so that you can go and watch it. That’s what makes Dial the Gate a true oral history. I’m not going to worry about transcribing. I’m convinced that in the next 15 to 20 years, YouTube will have an algorithm that will transcribe perfectly and you just have to go in and touch it up here and there. It will be perfect and flawless in just a few years. Right now, it’s a mess. And I’m not going to have anyone sit down and do that unless they really like pain — and you’re out there somewhere — then reach out to me at [email protected]. But anyway, that’s the intent. So that’s the new call to action right now, I’m looking for someone who is going to be interested in helping me build that wiki. I can’t ask one person to do it. We have too many shows every weekend, sometimes two and three. Two will probably be the norm, three will be excessive. Four is butt-kicking and I will likely not do that ever again, but it was our launch weekend. And then be able to go through it and say… Nothing like, “Does Joe prefer coffee or tea.” Maybe on the Joe Flanigan interview landing page, it may link to that, but I’m not looking for every single exchange, but the ones that are historically relevant to Stargate. I want people to be able to go and look them up in the Dial the Gate episode, and also be able to, after hundreds of episodes, go to the Fifth Man in Season Five of SG-1 and read about those experiences for that episode and be able to link to the specific Dial the Gate episodes and that timecode that talked about them, so it becomes a true oral history. Does any of that make sense? Anyway, if you want to contribute to that, if you have the technical expertise, please hit me up, because God knows I don’t. All right, call to action. If you like what you’ve seen in this episode, I would appreciate if you click the Like button, it really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. If you plan to watch live, I recommend giving the Bell icon a click, so you’ll be the first to know of any schedule changes, which will probably happen all the time, and it’s already happened to us at least once. Bear in mind, clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. The clips are designed to relay specific moments from the show and Dean’s episode will be chock full of them. So, if you’ve been watching the channel, I didn’t put any out this past week. I was in Costa Mesa, California, hanging with these lovely people right here. But we will be doing that, I will be getting into that rhythm again pretty soon here. Thank you again to Dean, thank you to my moderators, Tracy, Keith, Ian, Sommer, you guys, I couldn’t do this without you. Andee Frizzell and Rob Cooper questions. So, both Andee Frizzell and Rob Cooper are going to be released on Halloween, but they are pre-taped this coming week. I am recording Andee Frizzell, the Wraith Queen, on Tuesday October the 20th. If you have questions for Andee, go to DialtheGate.com — not on your mobile device but on a desktop or laptop — and go to the bottom and submit a question to Andee Frizzell by October the 19th. For Rob Cooper, Executive Producer and Writer of SG-1, Atlantis and Universe, I need his questions by October 21st. He and I are filming on the 22nd. So those are the dates, the 19th for Andee, and the 21st for Robert C. Cooper. That is pretty much all I’ve got for this episode. Tomorrow, we have a huge episode that will not include me blabbing for most of it, in fact, I’m going to be barely in it. I’m going to be watching with the rest of you in the YouTube chat and I will have the opening and the ending while we watch David Hewlett, Alexis Cruz, David Blue, Julie McNiven, Rainbow Sun Francks and Simone Bailey — I can’t believe I got them all. Yes! — go through a simulated mission of the Stargate SG-1 Role Playing Game. The Stargate RPG has been doing its Kickstarter now for the past several days. They’ve hit milestone after milestone, still a long way to go to some of the stretch goals and I know what a couple of the stretch goals are and we need to really unlock those, but tomorrow at… is it 2pm? I don’t even know what time my own show is. 2pm Pacific Time, that Role Playing Game with the six Stargate actors, and a Game Master, and two of the folks from Wyvern, are going to be in real time and it is going to be a hoot. I know for a fact David Hewlett has been practicing, so he’s probably gonna blow us all away. But yes, that’s tomorrow, so I hope to see you all back here at 2pm Pacific Time for that program. Thanks again to Dean Devlin and thank you all for watching the program and making it a part of your weekend. Or if your time shifting later on in the week, I cannot believe that we are already at 2000 subscribers. That says to me that this thing is working, and that there are Stargate fans out there, yet, who are hungry for this new content. A lot of them are discovering it on the streaming services for the first time, and we are grateful that you’re with us, and we’re grateful that you have found the show. That’s all I’ve got. We’ll be back tomorrow for a two and a half, three-hour gaming session. So, stay tuned. I’m David Read for Dial the Gate. I’ll see you on the other side.