One of our favorite Stargate directors stops by to give us a gut-busting good time filled with laughs and fond memories. Director Peter DeLuise, notorious for his cameos and clever jokes, shares some of the most entertaining and poignant Stargate stories yet.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:57 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:59 – Guest introduction
08:54 – Peter Shares His Collection
16:03 – SGA and SGU’s Cancellations
20:50 – seaQuest and Jonathan Brandis
22:49 – How Peter Came Into the Industry
27:58 – 21 Jump Street
29:16 – N John Smith and Stargate Hiring
33:44 – Thor’s Hammer and Demons
39:34 – Unas and Teal’c
43:14 – Urgo
49:46 – Serpent’s Song
55:21 – Peter Williams – Directing the Actor
58:06 – Sokar
1:01:37 – Cliff Simon
1:09:50 – Show and Tell and Reetou Charlie
1:15:01 – Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner
1:20:06 – Unexplained Happenings on Screen
1:23:20 – Picking Your Battles as Director
1:25:14 – Were you a Fan of Sci-fi Growing Up?
1:27:33 – A Lost Opportunity with a Shot or Scene
1:35:45 – Favorite Commentary
1:38:23 – Favorite Episode Filmed
1:43:59 – Unexplored Projects
1:45:22 – Working on Sanctuary
1:47:02 – Christopher Judge and God of War
1:47:57 – Voicing Dagwood
1:50:56 – David thanks Peter for his appearance
1:52:20 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:53:53 – 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 everyone to Episode 71 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thanks so much for joining me. And if you celebrate, “Happy Easter” to you. I’ve been really looking forward to this one. So, we’re not going to make him wait too terribly long here. If you enjoy Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, and that’s the wrong button… that’s the right button. If 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. And 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 guest changes, which, as if you’ve been watching the show, do happen from time to time. This is key if you plan on watching live. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on the GateWorld.net YouTube channel. All right, folks, it’s the man of the hour. I’ve been waiting to have this guest on for a very long time. I was so excited when he accepted. It’s not often that you get to talk to your heroes and people that you really admire, and with this show, I get to do that nearly every week. Let me welcome in Mr. Peter DeLuise, episode 71. It starts. How are you?

Peter DeLuise:
I’m very well. And just to add to that last little bit of information that you’re giving your viewers,
you don’t have to like just this episode. You can go to every single episode on the YouTube channel and just keep pushing “thumbs up” all day long, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. Am I right, David?

David Read:
Like my parents do. I love your background. Did you take that?

Peter DeLuise:
Yes.

David Read:
What a beauty!

Peter DeLuise:
This was on the set of Stargate Universe. And I’ll get out of the way so you can see it closer up. You can see the detail. You can see the detail of the thing. It’s the Jules Verne, the steampunk version of the Stargate.

David Read:
Yeah, I’ve always thought the Destiny’s predecessor was the Nautilus. Ya know, it’s just, it’s so frikkin’ cool. That was my favorite Stargate. That was my favorite set. Lucky enough to see all three of them. But James C.D. Robbins was brilliant.. absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
Wasn’t he?

David Read:
He still is brilliant.

Peter DeLuise:
I mean, well, he’s still alive, but ya know, he might not be challenged as much as he was. That would be good to be… This… the kind of stuff that he put out there was just breathtaking, I think.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
So I’m going to show you a couple of more pictures while I’m here, and then I will spare you. So this is, this is a darkened version from the back of the set. I took this as well. And then, um, I already showed you that one. So this is a close-up of the, uh..

David Read:
The door!

Peter DeLuise:
That was, that is the, the door thingy. Yes, that was easy. You have one of those?

David Read:
Yeah, the staples.

Peter DeLuise:
That was easy. Yeah.

David Read:
Uh, jeez. Good product placement.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. Where is this? OK, so this one… this is with the rear screen projection in.

David Read:
Right!

Peter DeLuise:
So we had, we had a practical puddle that we would, we would put a projection in. And that was, that was championed by Jim Menard.

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
Ya know, there’s no reason why. Because it was so cost-prohibitive to show the gate with the puddle on that we would stay off of it. So Jim correctly said, “Why don’t we create an animation, take a very powerful projector from behind, put a projection screen in the thing itself, and then just have our actors act in front of an actual screen? And there was a lot of hesitation because the visual effects department said, “Well, what if it doesn’t match the look of our rendered image?” And so there was a lot of hesitation and a lot of hemming and hawing. But finally, it turned out that cooler heads prevailed. And it and turned out to be the smarter choice because then you got to see it on camera way more, right? And here’s one over the, over the little control dashboard, right?

David Read:
Wow!

Peter DeLuise:
Was that fun?

David Read:
When the set is lit, it’s magic. It’s absolutely magic.

Peter DeLuise:
It is. I completely agree.

David Read:
Although I wonder, who is directing the cast and crew when you’re taking all these pictures?

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, this may, this may have been during lunchtime. I don’t know. They were, they were all maybe, they were going for hair and makeup. So now I’m going to take my, I am going to take off my background. And now I have to tell you that I felt very intimidated by your background because you have a lot of cool stuff. And of course, David Hewlett… I watched quite a few of your…

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
And I saw that David Hewlett’s background is awe-inspiring. He’s got the blinky lights and you’ve got the Enterprise, and the rotating Atlantis.

David Read:
Actually, I’ve got a couple of them. I’ve got another Enterprise over here. This was the tree-topper that Hallmark released. But, and I did not want it. And of course, my parents said, “Well, we hope you decide that you wanted it because it was under the tree this year.” But yeah, I know it’s… a lot of these are fan-made. The Ha’tak is fan-made, that Stargate was just revealed. And, yeah..

Peter DeLuise:
The Ha’tak is just… the Ha’tak is just such a better way of saying it than, Mothership,

David Read:
Mothership.

Peter DeLuise:
Do you agree?

David Read:
Exactly. Yeah, something we can upload a virus into. And the Destiny is, and the Atlantis are both fan-made. They’re just brilliant fan creations. I love them to pieces and everything else from the show.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So, I’m watching your… I’m watching your past episodes, right? To try to get a feel for what you do. And I think what you do is awesome.

David Read:
Oh, thank you!

Peter DeLuise:
Absolutely awesome.

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
Clearly, you’re a super fan of the show. You know so much about it. You have an encyclopedic recollection of all the episodes. It’s like you just keep watching them over and over again. They’re so fresh, right? And then and then I see way back in the corner behind you. It’s not doing it now, but in the past episodes, you’ve had the Atlantis model rotating.

David Read:
Yeah, I tried a Lazy Susan and it sucked because it was this cheap little motor and it was just like, “yuh, yuh, yuh,” and that’s not gonna work.

Peter DeLuise:
If you can’t say something nice about Susan, don’t.

David Read:
OK, understood.

Peter DeLuise:
OK, so then now you’ve got big, Big Bob over here behind you. Who’s…

David Read:
Yes,

Peter DeLuise:
..he’s got a flashing thing on it, right? And you’ve got the Enterprise and it’s flashing and I’m thinking to myself, “Does he not want us to look at him because, all that flashing stuff.” David Hewlett… David Hewlett’s got his opium den, right? Where he’s got the jibble of colored LED lights. And I was like, “I can’t compete with this.” So I was like, “OK, what can I do?” So I got a laser and I thought “That’ll,” oh, you can’t see it, can you? No, maybe it’s like, take off the light here. Can you see it now?

David Read:
No, I can’t. Oh, there it is. Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
And so I was like, “Can you, you understand what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter what I’m saying because you got flashy cool lights behind. “So tell me about when you first had your testicles laminated.” “Huh? I don’t, I didn’t catch that. I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything because of the lights flashing behind your head.”

David Read:
Well, let’s talk about some of your toys. I see a “To Infinity And Beyond”!

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right. Buddy over there has got the…

David Read:
Yeah!

Peter DeLuise:
…the yeah, I’ve got “To Infinity And Beyond”!

David Read:
Do I see a robot on the desk there, blue with red shoes?

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, tin toy. You got the tin toy there.

David Read:
Yeah. OK, there we go. You’re still a kid at heart. And then…

Peter DeLuise:
I’ve got

David Read:
…yeah,

Peter DeLuise:
this was a crew gift I gave. This is a crew gift I give, it says… you can’t really see this… it says ”Super Great Crew” SGC, Super Great Crew. That is how old this is. I have never used it, but it’s still… the image has faded.

David Read:
Ahh.

Peter DeLuise:
I’ve got my, I’ve got my noisy, noisy…

David Read:
Noisy crickets! Oh, my gosh. Don’t point that at me! Wow, that’s legit, that’s great. What a good movie!

Peter DeLuise:
I’ve got several reference books, one of which I wrote an afterwards for. And I’ve got this beautiful work of art, this deco. This is a ray gun made of glass.

David Read:
Wow.

Peter DeLuise:
And it was created by this artisan.

David Read:
That’s upside-down, flip it for me.

Peter DeLuise:
Upside down?
Sorry. This showed off this amazing artisan if you want to do a frame capture of that.

David Read:
OK, Jeff.

Peter DeLuise:
I don’t even know if he’s, I don’t even know if he’s still alive, but he is called Joe Blow Glassworks. And so this is blown… This is blown glass made to look like a ray gun, almost a…

David Read:
That’s almost a circa 1960s…

Peter DeLuise:
Flash Gordon.

David Read:
Yeah, or earlier.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So blowing, I’m going… this is made of glass and there’s just one little machined bit of metal here.

David Read:
Wow!

Peter DeLuise:
This is blown glass, like… well the key to this is, (clears throat) getting the glass to buy you dinner first before you get the blown glass. Right.

David Read:
(face-palms, laughing)

Peter DeLuise:
And, well, I’ve got the predator, I’m a big fan of predators. So I’ve got a couple of predators there.

David Read:
You are one handsome person.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes.

David Read:
And there’s another ray gun!

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. So this is made of, out of an air gun. This is machined out of an air gun and this is also a beautiful work of art. And this was made by Perry Lane.

David Read:
Wow. “Aliens got you down.”

Peter DeLuise:
So isn’t that cool? Yeah, I love me some ray guns. My wife saw that I liked that, and so she got me the… these choice pieces and are…

David Read:
Beautiful!

Peter DeLuise:
This is great. Yeah.

David Read:
And I’m not going to ask you to show off Ann Marie next.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, Ann Marie’s, Ann Marie’s the best.

David Read:
That’s a good answer.

Peter DeLuise:
Then this is a junk-bot that I created from re-purposed parts for…

David Read:
Yeah. Look at that! Little coaxial audio cables. Yeah. You made that Peter? That’s so cool!

Peter DeLuise:
Made that out of, out of found out pieces. And so that, that’s a little bit of Johnny number five and Chappy and Wally.

David Read:
Right. Exactly. Yeah [inaudible]? So cool.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. I like that little guy. He’s fun. And then I’ve got the…

David Read:
Yes, the companions!

Peter DeLuise:
You got the companions, right. So I did the afterward in… Let’s see here. I got the afterward, and a dedication from Thomasina. You know Thomasina, don’t you?.

David Read:
Thomasina Gibson! [I]met her once. Yes, she’s wonderful.

Peter DeLuise:
She’s lovely. She said “Thank you so much for the afterward. I’m sure you’ll sell many more millions of copies because you did that.” And then she didn’t mention at all, my crappy grammar or my shitty spelling. She was like, “Yeah, it’s all good.”

David Read:
That’s Thomasina for you. You know, she’s great.

Peter DeLuise:
And then what else I got here? I got the ultimate visual guide.

David Read:
Yes, it’s a great collection.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah,

David Read:
Absolutely. And it’s up to I think season eight. If I’m not mistaken, Kathleen Ritter put that out. Yeah. And I think she got Rick to do the forward on that.

Peter DeLuise:
This is amazing. So, what… she put together a lexicon that was absolutely invaluable.

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
That was really helpful to all of us when we were writing it. And then so, and she inspired me to… Her work inspired me to collect all the Goa’uld words and create a document of those because up until that time, nobody had… there was, you know, except for Kree, and the odd word here and there, there was no, you know..

David Read:
Collation,

Peter DeLuise:
… definite way of expressing it. We wanted to be consistent. So what I did is I went… I had a stack… I had just an absolute stack of…

David Read:
Scripts?

Peter DeLuise:
Video tapes.

David Read:
Oh.

Peter DeLuise:
because we had videotapes back then. We didn’t even do discs, right? So you watch the videotape and you watch the episode and you… and I also cross-referenced that with the script and you’d have… the Goa’uld would say something and then something would happen. Right? And you’d have to surmise what he had said. Right? And so, like, there was one time I remember specifically thinking of, where there were innocent people being held and they were… and the Jaffa were pointing their weapons at them, and Apophis said, “something” right? Something in Goa’uld. And they went to shoot the helpless prisoners and they were momentarily distracted. And then Apophis said, “something else.” And I was like, well, he must have said “Kill them!” like to execute them. Right?

David Read:
Kek.

Peter DeLuise:
And, then, why, of course. And then he said something else. And I was like, “Well, what could he possibly have said that’s worse than “Kill them? Kill them more?” Right? I had a little bit of a problem trying to figure out what would be after “Kill them.” Right? And then Kek, of course, found its way into the Unas language. Right? Which was “Ka keka”

David Read:
Ka keka!

Peter DeLuise:
So, “Ka keka”, that got shortened to Kek. Right? So, because I thought for sure that they would be influenced by… over the millennia, they would be influenced by the Unas. Right?

David Read:
The stuff behind the scenes that you guys did…

Peter DeLuise:
[Inaudible]to try to connect those.

David Read:
You know, we can only we can only scratch the surface with so much of it. But, I mean, the work that you put in to make it as authentic as possible is staggering, you know, it’s a testament to all of you that it ran for 364 episodes. Something was working, I must say, you know, it was really well done. I was just disappointed that Atlantis and Universe ended when they did. But you know what?

Peter DeLuise:
So am I. I was quite upset. I was not more upset than Brad because that was his… and Brad and Robert because that was their baby, but because they had created it from scratch. But I was pretty… I was like, “Oh, man, that’s the end of an era. That’s the end of a decade of my life and all of those wonderful creative people that I’ve been so fortunate to be able to work with.” And then for some, you know… no matter how hard you work, eventually all shows get canceled. Sometimes you can walk away, like Seinfeld gets to walk away from a show. Right? And, you know, but there are certain travesties that happen, like in the canceling of Firefly. That’s a great example of a wonderful show that, just through crappy timing and bad decision-making, they ended that amazing show. Right? And I always think it’s, sometimes it’s just out of your control. No matter how hard you work, no matter how good the show ultimately is, if you’re up against… I think in the case of Firefly, they were on Friday night, they were up against, you know… that was the death knell. That was the death time slot. And they just couldn’t… It didn’t matter how good the show was. And of course, everybody knows how good Firefly is. That show totally didn’t deserve that, the treatment that it got or how it got canceled.

David Read:
Well, let’s not forget Seaquest, you know? I mean, Seaquest had, in my opinion, had really found its legs in season three.

Peter DeLuise:
Seaquest, finding the legs of Seaquest. Here we go.

David Read:
Ha Ha, Yes! Descent! Absolutely! Absolutely! And if you’re going to go do that, hang on just a second.

Peter DeLuise:
What do you get? Are you getting your stuff? I’m getting my stuff too.

David Read:
On the top of my bookshelf. Sorry, everybody.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, sorry. We’re doing… we’re collecting our stuff.

David Read:
Oh, wow!

Peter DeLuise:
Like that?

David Read:
That is fantastic! (laughing) Wow, look at that, that is great!

Peter DeLuise:
This is…

David Read:
and the GELF makeup and everything.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, this is me. Yeah, I’m just gonna get that out of there.

David Read:
There you go. That took care of him. Wow.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, so this is, this was to make sure that the modeling, all the different skin tones were always in the same exact spot. This was the reference, the key rather, right?

David Read:
How long would it take every morning to spray paint you up?

Peter DeLuise:
It would take between an hour to an hour and a half, at least. But first, there was the shaving.

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
To get it down to the nub. And then the hour… then, so it was PAX makeup with medical adhesive, you know, the stuff that… the biodegradable adhesive that they use to stick colostomy bags to your body?

David Read:
Not personally, but yes.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, if you did… let me tell you, you don’t know what you’re missing, buddy. You got to try that at least once.

David Read:
So I had this on the top of my bookshelf.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, yeah, show me.

David Read:
This is my baby, so.

Peter DeLuise:
Love it. Living skin.

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
From Seaquest.

David Read:
The bio-skin. Absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
The bio-skin.

David Read:
I loved that design. Always loved the ship. So that… they put some money into that thing.

Peter DeLuise:
Some say too much! It was a very expensive show. It was the most expensive show on the air for its time. Yeah. And I think even for today’s dollars, the fee, the amount per episode was shocking.

David Read:
I have to say, and I’ve never talked to you about this before, when the news of Jonathan’s passing came about, I was devastated. That was, that was so hard.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. That was, I was… I always thought that Jonathan was, was an amazing actor.

David Read:
So talented.

Peter DeLuise:
And very, very smart for his age. I had spoken to him two weeks before he died. And he had just made a short called the Gainesville brothers. The Gainesville Boys, or the Gainesville Brothers. And it was about two brothers who during the Civil War, when it first breaks out and one of them decides they’re going to go with the north and one of them is going to go to the south. And it was… just took place in this, this house, this farmhouse they lived in. And it was his little go at directing. And I was so impressed with his ability to have put this project together and found these actors and designed these shots. And I was on the phone and I was just pouring my heart out because I was like, “Dude, you’re a director, you’re a filmmaker!” And that was that was two weeks before he died. And I was like, “I don’t… I don’t understand. I don’t understand what happened.”

David Read:
Some people are hurting. And, you know, you never, you never know.

Peter DeLuise:
I didn’t know. I didn’t know, and I felt like, “Was I not listening enough?” Or, you know, I didn’t know he was in pain. I didn’t know that that’s where his head was at. And I always think about that. Never take for granted your exchanges with anybody. Even you!
Even you David.

David Read:
Absolutely, yes, sir.

Peter DeLuise:
This is, we’re gonna have some quality time now. You and I.

David Read:
I, really, it really means so much to me to have you on. You are one of… yes, it was, it’s Brad and Jonathan and Rob’s baby. Largely the show can be attributed to them. Your component in this cannot be understated. But before we get to that, I’d like to establish a little bit of background. If you could tell us a little bit about where you’re from, who you were as a young person and how you really got launched into this industry, if you don’t mind.

Peter DeLuise:
Uh,sure. So, I’m the eldest son of Dom Deluise and Carol Deluise, professional name, Carol Arthur. I was born a poor black child, to quote The Jerk. And when my mother took one look at me, I don’t think she thought I was very attractive. She took one look at me and when it came to breastfeeding, she said, “Let’s just be friends.” And I was, “So that’s how you’re going to be.” So no, I’ll fast forward to the part where, when I was a little kid, I thought everybody worked on television and were actors because I couldn’t imagine a better way to exist. Right? I didn’t understand why anybody would want to… because of my naivete, I didn’t understand why anybody would want to collect garbage, per se, or dig a ditch, so..

David Read:
It was your world. Those are the people you’re surrounded by.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So my dad would go out the front door and then his face would appear on the television. And like if he was going out to do Johnny Carson, I would go… And this is, he actually told me this story. He said, when you were a little kid, you like, you “When you go out there, you’re going there to the TV.” “Yes, yes, that’s what I do!” He was so proud of me. And my mother and father both did musical theater when I was young. And Greg Garrison from the Dean Martin show discovered my father on, doing musical theater on-Broadway and off-Broadway, and recruited him to do sketch comedy on the Dean Martin show. And then slowly that grew into such a huge, recurring job that my father moved us out from New York to Corsica. Uh, not Corsica. So I mean, to Los Angeles is what I would say. We’re Italian. And we still live in the same house that we… that my dad first moved us out to. And the whole time when I was coming up, I was like, my dad would bring us to the set, and we would hang out in the wings or we would be an extra or something like that. And my dad put us in movies, gave us bit parts. And slowly but surely, you know, he didn’t want to force us into it. But he also he also, didn’t want to rush us… when we started to express interest, he didn’t want to rush us into it either.

David Read:
Didn’t want to kill it for you.

Peter DeLuise:
It wasn’t until we were of age that we got agents and then started to audition like, like regular people. And then, and then we were beyond his ability to give us work at that point. And then so if we couldn’t deliver, we weren’t going to get the part. Whereas before, we had… he would just make sure that we didn’t suck, right? When we were in things. But then it became… then as each one of us came to age, both of my brothers did just a huge amount of series. My brother Michael did, you know, one sitcom after another. My brother David ended up doing a fair amount of work and then ultimately ended up doing Wizards Of Waverly Place. He played the dad on that, he was a Disney Dad on that. And then he was able to parlay that into a you know, a ton of work because he’s very, you know, I guess gregarious is the right word.

David Read:
Yes, it is.

Peter DeLuise:
And there’s a crossover. Oh, you interviewed him, you know him, you know him better than I do, and he’s my brother!

David Read:
Oh, come on. David’s a good guy.

Peter DeLuise:
Isn’t he though? And he’s so funny and lighthearted. It’s hard not to… when he starts laughing it’s hard to not laugh. In fact, you can try it, but you will fail.

David Read:
I agree.

Peter DeLuise:
And then, so pretty early on, after a handful of projects, I ended up auditioning for a thing called 21 Jump Street. And I got that role on 21 Jump Street. And that shot up here in Vancouver where I am now. That’s where I’m doing my part of this broadcast. Where are you, by the way?

David Read:
Phoenix, Arizona.

Peter DeLuise:
Awesome. Is it warm there?

David Read:
It was 95 yesterday.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. Am I right?

David Read:
Well, I used to say that, but when you lose an AC like I did last year and $14,000 later, but that’s beside the point.

Peter DeLuise:
You don’t want to lose AC.

David Read:
Nooo!

Peter DeLuise:
This is how you know it’s humid. If you first go out, if you go out outdoors and then the first instinct is to drop your bag, then you know it’s too humid out. Right? But if you don’t do the tea Dip, the tea Bag, then you’re like, “Ah, it’s dry. It’s good.”

David Read:
What did you learn on 21 Jump Street? What did that teach you?

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, you’re getting me back on track. Thank you. OK. So, while I was in the 21 Jump Street, I was very keen to start to direct and have more of a say in the finished product. And so I was able to finally, after a few seasons, get them to agree to allow me to direct. And I ended up directing three of those episodes. And then two of the producers from that show, John Smith and Jonathan Glassner…

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
…ended up much later in my life going on to a show called Stargate. So I went off and I did Seaquest and I directed other things. And I came up here, came to Vancouver to… after the pilot season, to try to get some guest-work. And John Smith, who was working on a series called TWO, T-W-O, about the twins, pulled me aside after I had auditioned for him, and he said, “If you had… if you were a resident of Canada, if you qualified for Canadian content, I could hire you as a director because I had a very good experience with you on 21 Jump Street.” And so it took me a while, but I finally established residence up here in Canada, became Canadian. I am a full-blown, not just a resident, but a…

David Read:
Citizen.

Peter DeLuise:
…citizen, thank you. And when the Canadians speak, I understand every word they say, every single one. And yeah, I called him and I said, “I’ve got my… landed immigrant status. I qualified for Canadian content.” And he said, this was after about two years of paperwork, and I finally got around to it. And I couldn’t just call it in. I couldn’t just be a resident and not be physically here. I had to physically establish residency. So I was physically here. I had gotten myself an apartment, I got all my paperwork done and I was so excited, I was going to maybe direct. And I called John Smith up and he said, “Yeah, all the slots are full on Stargate.” This was right at the beginning of the second season. And then I was like, “Oh, dang.” And I was super disappointed. And he said, “But if anybody falls out, you’ll be the first alternate.” And I went, “Oh.” Which sounded like he was putting me off, right? Like he was just like, “Yeah, we’ll see.” Because I was like, “No one’s going to pull out. No one’s going to go away and I’m going to be put in.” And as it turned out, Mario Azzopardi, who had been a huge part of the first two seasons, got an assignment where, I think he was doing a movie-of-the-week. He had a conflict with the movie-of-the-week, so he had to pull out. And sure enough, true to his word, John Smith plugged me in and I did that first episode, “The Serpent’s Song.”

David Read:
That’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
Towards the end of the second season. And I must have impressed, or not pissed off… you choose… the powers-that-be. And I think they had a special little discussion on the side. You know, “Do you like Peter? Are you OK with him?” Richard Dean Anderson…

David Read:
Of course!

Peter DeLuise:
… and, I think that he had to have been consulted. And ya know, I don’t know what he said. I can’t quote him verbatim, but maybe he said, “Yeah, he doesn’t suck, let’s use him again.” So then I ended up doing, what was it? “Show And Tell.”

David Read:
Correct.

Peter DeLuise:
So those are the two, the first two episodes that I did on season two for them. And then they just kept hiring, they just kept having me back. And then, I was super keen to not only just direct, because I was so stimulated in the visual effects and working with these actors and having all this, all these resources, right? Because I had worked on some really low-budget stuff where pretty much everything you came up with was, “We can’t do that. We don’t have enough money for that. We’re not, we can’t do that.” So this was really refreshing to be able to say, “What if we tried this?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we could totally do that.” And I ended up directing a show called “Demons,” which made me really think about… and because I had watched all the episodes to that date, the stack of cassette tapes, remember I told you, the cassette tapes, that I had seen the one with the Unas in it. With, I think they had James Earl Jones in it.

David Read:
As the voice. Yes. “Thor’s Hammer”.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, that was so great, right?

David Read:
That was very cool, much like your [Inaudable].

Peter DeLuise:
And the sound, uh, the sound design was so great too, right? Remind me about the sound design, because there’s a story, there’s a punch-line to that story as well.

David Read:
Sure.

Peter DeLuise:
So they had real animals and, [arrrggg] this is so cool! And then we had the Unas on “Demons,” he would come and collect potential hosts, right? And he would take them away. And I said to Brad, I said, “Hey, why don’t we investigate?” That Unas has a Goa’uld symbiote in its head, and that’s what’s causing him to interact like a thinking, like a relatively thinking… instead of a primordial or a primitive being. Why don’t we talk about the planet where the Goa’uld and the Unas first came together? And wouldn’t that be great? Because then we’d have all this great history. And Brad, I think, saw how keen I was and how excited I was, and he was like, “Yeah, OK. I will let you write that.” And after a couple of false starts, he sent me on the right path. And I ended up writing “The First Ones” for him. And that was, of course, that was with Dion Johnstone who played Chaka…

David Read:
Amazing performance.

Peter DeLuise:
…whose namesake was for the Land of the Lost, if you’re familiar with Chaka,

David Read:
Right?

Peter DeLuise:
Dion Johnstone was just so great. I love that guy. And the biggest thing on the design of the… because he was supposed to be a juvenile, was doing walkabout. He was doing walkabout, and he was just coming up. So he had to be underdeveloped. He couldn’t have the major ching horns, so we had to differentiate between him and the other older ones. And I was like, “You got to make him, ya got to make his costume so he can pee.” And I they were like, “What are you talking about?” Well, he’s got those big rubber things on. And like, if he can’t get to his junk, you gottta… And they were like, “OK.” So if you pulled up his thing, you would see that there was a big zipper where his junk was and a chain with a huge ring. I don’t have a ring. It was a huge ring like this, right? So he could put his giant rubber claw and pull the thing down so he could get to his junk so he could pee. That’s the kind of stuff you have to think of, right?

David Read:
That’s true.

Peter DeLuise:
Because no, like, yeah. And they’re like, “Oh, OK. We’ll do that.” So now I’m going to finish that other story about the, Arrrggg. If you remember, “Enemy Mine… yes “Enemy Mine”

David Read:
Yes, with Lou Gossett.

Peter DeLuise:
Where I had multiple Unas.

David Read:
Oh, the movie… the TV episode. Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
You’re not wrong. Lou Gossett was in the feature film, “Enemy Mine.” And I stole the title because M-I-N-E is a mine, like mineshaft, right?

David Read:
Correct.

Peter DeLuise:
Or mine enemy, and also mine because they were digging and it was… archeology was in there. And my actors, all my actors who were playing Unas would go, “Rahhhh!” which is a human way of expressing yourself, right? But you had to make the vocal chord strain and go, “Rahhh!”and I, foolishly just assumed they would go back, like they did with the Lou Gossett Jr. Unas and go, (much bigger sounding), “RAhhggg!”

David Read:
Oh, the James Earl Jones Unas. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
[Inaudible] James Earl Jones had, but his character had lion growling and bear growls. Low, and the sound design was great, right?

David Read:
Oh, OK.

Peter DeLuise:
But then my, my episode came out and I had like five… that I did a, ya know, a crowd duplication shot where I had hundreds of them. But if, but like when Alex Zahara as Iron Shirt would express himself and he’d go, “Aaaah!” It would just flange his voice. So it sounded like a human being with a crappy filter on it. I was like, “Oh no. Why didn’t you put the cool animal-growl, like you did with the James Earl Jones. How does this happen?” And the reason it happened is because once you directed it, all you did was turn in your cut and you move on to the next thing, right? You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be able to supervise anything that had to do with post-production sound.

David Read:
Wasn’t Sharp Sound doing post-production on Stargate?

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, but it had been many years in-between. And so nobody was able to carry that ball forward.

David Read:
Oh, no.

Peter DeLuise:
These guys, these beings are supposed to be… had growls that are akin to animals, right? Like when Chewbacca growls, it’s a sea lion and a bear, and ya know, it’s several different… (growls).

David Read:
That’s pretty good!

Peter DeLuise:
So I was like, “Oh darn, that was a missed opportunity.” Because that… and then so the conceit was, it was only flanged. They only just flanged a human voice because there was no Goa’uld in the host body at the time. And that’s why the growl was different. And I was like, “OK, it would have been cooler though. You know, sounds count too!” So I was a little bit disappointed. I know I’m going all over the place with that, but I remember thinking how cool the “Thor’s Hammer” version was. And that coupled with “Demons” inspired me to want to write for the Unas and then coming up with an Unas language. And I was like, “Let’s do that. Let’s really investigate those beings.” And you know, we could have sympathy for our enemy, which was another great… I always loved that, when you were able to, “Oh, they’re horrible. They’re killing us indiscriminately.” And then you realize, well, it’s not them, it’s the Goa’uld controlling your bodies. They’re actually not that… they’ve got their own problems to worry about.

David Read:
Well, it’s one of the great sci-fi tropes, all the way back to like the “Horta” and “Devil in the Dark” in the original Trek, you know, sympathy for your enemy is one of those great things that… the desire, the willingness to understand another form of life or another person as it were, which is what it’s trying to get to. That’s cornerstone sci-fi.

Peter DeLuise:
To that end, David, that’s why it was so ingenious to have Worf be part of the regular crew. Right?

David Read:
That’s right. So we’re getting over certain issues. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. It’s like we’re past that now. We’re on to the next thing. And Worf is a viable compliment to this crew, so let’s include him. Right? Which is not unlike what you… that’s why you would want someone like a Teal’c on… that makes sense too, right? That you have your enemy, enemy amongst your… if you have a turncoat from your enemy, your enemy of your enemy becomes your friend. That was slightly different than the Dagwood character that I played. Although he was “other,” he was alien-ish. He was a child. His mentality was childlike, whereas Teal’c was an old soul. He was, you know, he’s over a hundred years old.

David Read:
Right. But it’s interesting. You put him in situations on Earth and he would, he would have a very childlike perception of the world. I think there’s a reason where he was occasionally paired with children.

Peter DeLuise:
[Are]You talking about Teal’c?

David Read:
Yeah. Teal’c himself, because I mean, the scenes with Colleen Rennison, for instance, in “Bane”, there is a childlike nature to him. Teal’c and Dagwood are very similar in term[s]… I mean, they’re both genetically modified, they’re both a warrior cast, even though Dagwood was the prototype, you know, there’s a great deal of similarity between those two beings.

Peter DeLuise:
Agreed. There, there is quite a lot… there are similarities. But the difference, I guess, in my mind, the different… what you’re pointing out is being naive to social norms of Earth is what I’m…

David Read:
Right!

Peter DeLuise:
That’s my takeaway.

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
So, if you take that out of the equation, Dagwood was only… he had accelerated growth. He didn’t… he wasn’t as old as he looked like he was. And he had very little information about how the outside world worked. And his experience interacting with anybody was limited. Whereas Teal’c had been the First Prime of Apophis for, you know, arguably at least a Earth human’s lifetime.

David Read:
Yeah. And he was a hundred at the start of the show. So yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. Right. But he looked good!

David Read:
He sure did!

Peter DeLuise:
If I look half as good when I’m a hundred…

David Read:
And he still looks good!

Peter DeLuise:
He sure does. He’s a sexy beast.

David Read:
Oh my gosh. I want to jump ahead a little bit if I may to…

Peter DeLuise:
Jump away.

David Read:
…Urgo. So did you…. where are you going?

Peter DeLuise:
(standing up) Are you looking at me bum? Are you bum-looking?

David Read:
Maybe just a little bit.

Peter DeLuise:
Cheeky bum. Yeah. So there’s…

David Read:
Ahhh.… there’s the card. Absolutely. “Boobalah.” Yeah. There you go. What an awesome [inaudible]

Peter DeLuise:
So my dad…they approached me to have my dad on the show and they said, I think Tor Alexander was the… he had the seed of the idea and he pitched that to Brad, and then Brad and Tor both approached me. And I was like, I was in the principal’s office and they said, “What do you think if,”… and I was like, “Oh, what’s going to happen now?” …”If we had your dad on the show? “What, you want my dad on this show, the show with the guns and the lasers and the, [gun noises] what, what, how does that work?” And then they explained to me that he would be an amalgamation of all their inner, the id, the inner child. And I was like, “Oh, my dad could totally do that! That would be awesome!” And I said, “Yeah, let me call him.” And we called him and he was super excited about the idea that he would get to work. He loved… my dad loved to work on anything. You know, he was a… he much preferred to work than to not to work. And he was still quite mobile then, not totally, but still enough. And I said, when we were prepping the show, I said, “It’s very important that my dad had a proper chair to sit in.” And they were like, “What are you talking about?” (Peter) “My dad needs a proper sturdy chair to sit in on the set. So because, then we’ll get his best. If you… he can’t sit in a regular director’s chair and he can’t be in an uncomfortable little folding chair, so you’ve got to give him a proper chair.” And they sent away and got me this really skookum… I know I’m talking about a chair on a sci-fi show, but I have to tell you this chair, this beautiful chair, had tons of padding, very sturdy. It was like a throne, right? And that… even though it sounds dumb… it put my dad at ease and it comforted him. And he could… all he had to do is just, he could sit right frigging there, right? Right off camera. And then stand up, and then be alive and do whatever he needed to do. And then when we weren’t shooting, he could just walk one, two, three, point, and just sit down, which is exactly what he needed, right?… To give us 100%. And it was exhausting, the kind of stuff that he was having to put out… put out that energy.

David Read:
He runs that show.

Peter DeLuise:
I would, yeah, I was shooting two shots of him. Like, I would shoot his coverage and then I would also keep his shot alive with another two-shot while I was shooting the other coverage, cause I… whatever he was willing to give us, I wanted to get, right? And he came up with so many fun lines that, we had so much extra material. We had multiple… I don’t know if you realize this, but you know, the Judd Apatow and stuff, when he makes his movies, he throws in couplets. He was like, “try this joke, try this joke, try this joke.” Steve Carell, same thing. They tried jokes on the fly. So that’s kind of what was happening was he would try this joke and try that joke. And then so, you know, Chris Judge or Teryl Rothery never knew what he was going to say for sure. And then they would laugh.

David Read:
Don’t laugh!

Peter DeLuise:
Bite your cheek! And then God bless Brad Wright. He went through all of the material, all of the alternate takes, the one lines, and he crafted… because I couldn’t do it. I mean, all I could do was give him what he wrote and, you know, a couple of zingers, but Brad went deep, deep in, and he got all the fun stuff. And he brought that forward. And he… what Brad ultimately cut together was just, chef kiss, double chef kiss. Right? And, and that experience, I would treasure that for the rest of my life. I’ll never forget it. I got to work with my dad. We all got to work with my dad, but I got to work with my dad. And I got to say, “Anytime Pop, go for it.” And he came up with such joyful, joyful things. And people still quote, you know, “I want to experience life. I want to eat pie,” right?

David Read:
I wanna eat pie!

Peter DeLuise:
And “How can you resist this?” Right? That was his line.

David Read:
Yeah. That was your line that he dubbed. ”Can you resist this?”

Peter DeLuise:
Well, he said, he performed… It’s funny. He performed it, and then I assumed the same position and I tried to imitate him exactly. But I, you know, I did the best I could, but he was determined to have me be the younger, nicer version of himself. “But dad, there’s way more handsome people here we can get in.” He goes, “I want you to do it.” I was like, “OK, fine.”

David Read:
You were already doing cameos at that point anyway. So it wasn’t, you know… it fit. It worked.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, it did fit. It was, it made sense for me to be in there. Yeah. So that was a joyful moment, a high point for me on that show. And I will cherish it.

David Read:
Yeah. Did you ever think you’d direct him?

Peter DeLuise:
Um, I had directed him before…

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
…On other things, but not to that degree, not to that level. And we had worked together on Seaquest by that point, all the brothers.

David Read:
That’s correct.

Peter DeLuise:
We’d also done, we did… we ended up doing a Third Rock From The Sun as well, as a group. And so we, there was a couple of… Hot Stuff when we were much younger. That was a movie that he directed. So there was a couple of few times where we got to work with him individually and as a group. And so it didn’t feel like it was the only time I ever got to work with him, but it was definitely one of the most special times I got to work with him.

David Read:
Wow. “Serpent’s Song” is… so back to that for a moment. It’s your first directorial shot.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right

David Read:
So that was originally Mario Azzopardi. And then that went to you.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So that was, that’s Apophis… Apophis is trying to get away and we find out. So we’ve got a major crash, a crash in the desert. And then we’ve also got where we start to see Peter Williams as Apophis and we see him… once the Goa’uld sort of goes into a coma… we see the host body… what the host body is experiencing, which is really interesting because that was a great way to help us clarify what was happening and who was who. And again, give us sympathy for your enemy.

David Read:
That’s right. Yeah. That’s…

Peter DeLuise:
Peter Williams was so great at that, in that part, you know, speaking the ancient Egyptian and not understanding what was happening. And I just thought that was… he was quite good at that. And all of that came about… the Goa’uld and the fact that the host bodies and the conceit of how it works. The bad guys are hiding in our… I mean, it’s as a sci-fi conceit, it’s been around for a while. You’ve got Puppet Masters and various things like that. Like, you’ve got… what’s the one with Donald Sutherland with the attack of the, the plant people?

David Read:
Oh, the… oh, for crying out loud! Uh, the pod people. Yeah. That’s, kind of [creature noise] yeah. I know. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes.

David Read:
So, it’ll come to me.

Peter DeLuise:
There’s… throughout history, there’s been a sci-fi conceit that you know, the aliens are amongst us, right?

David Read:
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

Peter DeLuise:
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. And then there was the other one, that wonderful one they called the… who’s the dude from Twin Peaks? Uh…

David Read:
Haven’t seen it, to my detriment.

Peter DeLuise:
Kyle, Lyle, Kyle… and then remember the thing went into his mouth and it would take over your body and he was trying to find… it would go from person to person.

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
Now I can’t remember. So it wasn’t new, but to Dean Devlin’s credit once, once he realized that Jaye Davidson’s character wasn’t that scary, and they were like, “He’s just a dude,” right? He was supposed to be the front guy, right? He was supposed to be the frontman for the aliens. And then I think Dean Devlin said, “We don’t have much of a bad guy here. We got to figure this out, let’s add glowing eyes, a flanged voice. And then when he dies,” this is the part we, we conveniently forgot about. Once he got blown up, you saw this weird-looking, uh…

David Read:
Almost Asgard!

Peter DeLuise:
…Michelin Man looking…

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Uh, yeah. It was a white-headed weird-looking thing. And you were like, “I don’t… we’ll just ignore that part, but all the other stuff we’ll take.” And so the idea, to Dean Devlin’s credit, was “What a great way to fix it in post, right?” So Brad Wright, and I guess, Jonathan Glassner, ran with that because now that was canon, that was part of the show, is, you never know if you’re talking to a regular person who’s pretending to be that person. Cause you get, you get us, you get their memories as well. That was also a conceit, was that the Goa’uld would go in there, tap into your brain, bore into your brain, and then get access to some of your memories so they can kind of fake it. Fake that they were that person. Right? And then so what’s nice about that is… and the same thing with Battlestar Galactica in the re-creation, right?… Was, you never knew if you were dealing with the enemy or your friend, right? And I thought that that was a great… and also it makes your enemy more relatable, but it also makes it cheaper. It’s like having an invisible enemy, right? If you, if your enemies can be depicted by normal-looking people, then you’re gold, right? And, and then once in a while their eyes will glow and they’ll have superhuman strength…

David Read:
And flange and everything else. Absolutely. It was a great… one of my favorite lines, from this is, you know, when SG1 finds out what’s going to happen to Apophis if he gets returned to Sokar, uh, Martouf, played by J.R. Bourne says, “Surely you welcome this.” And the looks on everyone’s face is like, you know, “we don’t, we don’t welcome it. You know, we don’t want anyone to… anything to suffer.” You know, I love that beat.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, the different philosophies well, and of course, Martouf is, he’s a war veteran.

David Read:
Yeah. He’s been at war with him for thousands of years.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So of course he wants the enemy to suffer, but they’re like, “Well, what about the host body of the guy? Like that’s not cool. Why would you do that?” Yeah. Having various shades of gray and three-dimensional problems, as opposed to black and white or, not black and white, but two-dimensional problems, is so much more interesting, right? When you start talking about the preciousness of life and being better than your enemy, you know, rising to… being on the higher path. Right?

David Read:
Peter Williams is regularly referenced by Amanda and Chris and some of the others as one of the best villains the show had. Certainly he was the first, you know… he picked up what Jaye Davidson had introduced in the feature, but I mean, he was just a giant. When he was on that screen, he took over. He WAS Apophis. Tell us about directing Peter.

Peter DeLuise:
So that’s interesting because I came in towards the end of the second season, so I was all about playing catch-up. And also, you know, candidly, and frankly, I will tell you that I was trying to endear myself to whoever wanted to possibly hire me. Right?

David Read:
God knows, you went through enough to get there by what you just said, so I wouldn’t blame you!

Peter DeLuise:
Fair enough. Yeah. So I watched the show all the way up into that point. And up until then I realized we had only ever seen him… Peter Williams… going, (holds out hand, palm facing camera, making threatening sound) yeah. And this was the first time we were actually going to see him in a very vulnerable position. And so making him old, and giving him cataracts eyes, and having him call out… those, I was like, that will haunt… that should, if people are paying attention and they’re empathetic, or sympathetic at all, they would understand…

David Read:
Everyone but Teal’c for sure. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. That poor, that poor host body that was… that’s had to endure that, needs, you know, deserves your empathy. And so that was the goal was to make sure that that happened. And of course, Peter Williams is just so, so laid back and so cool. Right? Like he did… He’s the opposite of what Apophis is in real life. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s all good.” Like, “Are you OK?” “Yeah, it’s all, it’s all good.” I can’t do his accent, but you know, he had to put that rubber old wrinkly stuff on his face. And he had to put the cataracts when he was helpless. He couldn’t see, right? And he had that choke… he had that chain on. And also, we had to make him look like he was Hannibal Lecter. Right? So we had to, we had to restrain him. And so he was completely vulnerable. If his nose itched, he was shit-out-of-luck because his hands were strapped, right? And he had that rubber on his face. And he had the cataracts. And I, “Are you OK, man?” And he’d be like, “Yeah, it’s all good. Can You scratch my nose? Can you scratch my nose, because it itches?” And I was like, “Yeah, how did he, go to the left! Oh, OK. Great.” Yeah, he was an absolute joy. Yeah, he was lovely.

David Read:
That show is, is definitely one of my favorites for the reasons that we mentioned, the visual effects were great, the performances are great. It introduces Sokar, who came back later on. David Palffy did a masterful performance as Sokar and later as Anubis.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, so that Sokar… I had a fair amount of fun with that. The Sokar, um,

David Read:
The effect?

Peter DeLuise:
I wanted him to look well, the way he looked right? The veininess..

David Read:
Through the iris, or no, we’re talking about, OK, Jolinar’s memories in the “Devil You Know”, season three. Because he first, the first time we see him, he’s on the iris. Yes. So by the time we see him in the flesh, he’s season three.

Peter DeLuise:
Right. So David Palffy has an amazing speaking voice. It’s like, melted butter on toast. Delicious. And… but almost like, we’ve got to make him look really gnarly, right? Because he’s Sokar, everyone’s going, you know, “Sokar, Sokar, Sokar.” So he can’t just look like a regular dude. He’s got to look cool, right? And so, you know, Robert Cooper… I don’t know if you’ve gone into this detail… he’s a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise. And so it wasn’t a mistake that Sokar was… he was cowled and he was older and he was like… it was like shades of, The Emperor?

David Read:
The Emperor.

Peter DeLuise:
Right. But the other part of it was, what is the scariest eyes you could possibly have, right? And so the, the veininess, the pale, the pallor with the veininess, that was like a little bit of Dune coupled with… and then the eyes, if you look really closely at the eyes, the colored eyes, they’re the exact color… which is the tip of the hat… to Darth Maul, which I said, I was like, “Hey, I’m pretty sure the scariest eyes on ever in the history of cinema are the Darth Maul eyes. Let’s do that. Let’s do the Darth Maul eyes.” So they were like, “OK, we can recreate the Darth Maul eyes.” So then, so I was grabbing… because my theory was, we only have a week to figure this out. And George Lucas had years to develop what he thought was the scariest-looking eyeball, right? For Darth Maul. And so I was like, “Let’s just be inspired by that, you know. Call it homage while we’re at it. Or it could be an Easter egg. Here are the exact eyeballs that Darth Maul has.” “Oh, I didn’t know that.” That’s a fun little Easter egg. And I may have even expressed that on the filmmakers’ commentary. Have you ever watched the filmmakers’ commentary?

David Read:
For “Jolinar’s Memories” and “The Devil You Know?”

Peter DeLuise:
For Stargate SG1 in general.

David Read:
Yes. Yeah, when they came out on the DVDs, I listened to them all. So it’s been a long time. But yeah, they were great.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So in in… while I was doing… in between scatological humor between myself and Gary Jones and Dan Shea, I would occasionally put in the Easter egg like, these are Darth Maul eyes. Yeah. And then I’d go back to the toilet humor.

David Read:
And it was the only Goa’uld whose eyes glowed red when his eyes would glow. So he had obviously figured out some kind of special…

Peter DeLuise:
I had forgotten that! I didn’t put that on my cheat sheet. So thank you. That’s awesome.

David Read:
While we’re on the subject of villains, we recently lost Cliff Simon. Do you have any words for Cliff?

Peter DeLuise:
Uh, I don’t… I really, really, really, really liked Cliff. I thought I told you Peter Williams was pretty laid back. Cliff was also incredible, just an absolute joy to work with. He wore uncomfortable clothing. He was very accessible. He had to do multiple… like there was that one where he was multiple versions of himself…

David Read:
Yes!

Peter DeLuise:
…which is very time consuming and getting uncomfortable. I went on a convention to Germany with him and we hit it off. We were just, we were just like… I didn’t know him outside the show. But because we had worked together and because he was so laid back, he was like, “Yeah,” I think we were trying to… we were trying to raise money for charity, a local charity there. And you know, after a while you’re like, “I’m running out of stuff. I don’t know what to auction now.” Right? And so I was like, “Hey, Cliff, what do you, what do you think? Do you want to, do you want to do like, a body shot or something?” And he goes, “Oh yeah, let’s do that.” So we auctioned off a body shot. He, where he put… cause he had ripped abs and he was, I mean, he was an Adonis, right? He was so in shape and I think he put salt and lemon on his belly and he put the… or I think he put a shot here and a lime in it. And, and you know, the fans absolutely went wild and they raised, you know, a fair amount of money for the opportunity to lick salt off of his belly, do a shot, and then get the lime from his lips. And he was all over it and he was like, “Yeah, no problem.” I was like, “I love this guy!” So I mean, I wanted to tell a joyful story about him, cause, I never saw him lose his temper or, get pissy. I just thought he was just wonderful. And I really enjoyed working with him. I didn’t get to work with him as much as Martin Wood did, but I really thought he was amazing. And, Andy Makita, I think, worked with him quite a lot. But I mean… so I rarely got the Baal episodes, the character that he played.

David Read:
There was…

Peter DeLuise:
The Baal,

David Read:
…the Baal episodes. There was one story that he told me, and it was, and I hope you’ll forgive this. It was a disagreement about… I’m pretty sure it was “Off The Grid” in season nine. And it’s one of the many times where Baal has passed. In this case, he blows up on his mothership. And he said to me that you directed to him that, “OK, Cliff, when, when this thing goes, I want you to scream.” I’m interested to see if you remember this. And Cliff was like, “Peter, there’s no way Baal is going to scream in this situation. When the thing blows up, I don’t think I can, I don’t think the character would do that.” And you were like, according to him, he was like, “Wait, you’re not going to scream?” He was like, “I don’t think I can.” It just doesn’t fit for the character, you know? And to me, this says, this is an actor who really feels that he knows that role and knows what that character would or wouldn’t do.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. Well, that sounds like something that I would ask him to do. And if he didn’t feel it was right, then the, you know, he can make his case, or he could make his case back then. Um, that sounds like something that did actually happen. Like, I don’t remember that, it’s not fresh in my mind. But for me… um, yeah, I’m sure I was going for the more shallow, more melodramatic version of, “Oh my God, I’m going to die! Right? Right? And, and I think what happens is you get caught into this thing where… and I’ve seen other people talk about this on the show where they go, “This is the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen on the green screen!” And the actors go, (makes blank stare)

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, and I’ve heard you talk about this and you’re like, “Can you be just a little bit awe-inspired? Well, I’ve already seen ships and stuff blow up and then, so how am I supposed to get excited?” I was like, “Well, now we have a problem.” And this has nothing to do with Cliff, although, kudos to Cliff for standing up for his character. And he’s right. I mean, if he’s one of hundreds of versions of himself, even though I think clones want to survive ultimately, that if he wants to die in a dignified way, it’s hard for me as a filmmaker, who’s job is to be visceral and to get the audience super excited about it.

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Or if, you know, all I can do after… if you’re like, you don’t want to scream, what am I going to do? I’ll just go…(stares into camera) Uh, oh! Right? What can I do? I’m about to die. I’m about to be engulfed in a fiery ball.

David Read:
Baal!

Peter DeLuise:
Here comes the fiery ball! Then I get called into the “How Come?” room.

David Read:
Oh yeah. You say you hate the “How Come?” Room.

Peter DeLuise:
After they all watch the dailies, you know, in between burping and slurping while they’re watching during lunch, you know, watching dailies, you get called down, “How come you didn’t have Cliff Simon do a big reaction?” “He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t scream.” Well, I’m jumping to something else.

David Read:
He didn’t feel that it was right. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. So I was like, “Yeah, he’s right. You wouldn’t scream. You’re, you’re a combatant. You’re a military… you’re dignified.”

David Read:
But suave!

Peter DeLuise:
And he was more… yes, so suave, right? He was more sophisticated than I was. And he knew more about his character. And I’m glad he stood up for himself. And I’m glad I lost that,
that… I’m glad he didn’t scream. I mean, but can you imagine? I mean, there’s been other uh… there’s a bunch of Star Trek guests where the ship blows up and stuff like that, where they, “Ahhhh!” right?

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
Right, and then, Boom! And it’s just more satisfying than people, somebody going, you know, “Ah, I’m about to die.”

David Read:
Exactly! We interviewed you during production of season nine, and I’ll never forget this. It’s just one of those things that like, stuck in the back of my brain.

Peter DeLuise:
You interviewed me during season nine?

David Read:
Right. Yeah. Ben and Claudia were with you at that point. It was just before, like around nine, uh, 9-05, 9-06. And we were getting excited about the new season. You guys were hinting at the stuff that was coming. And for whatever reason, this has always stuck with me. You said, “Baal is back and his collars are taller and pointier than ever.” (Peter holds up collars) That’s perfect!

Peter DeLuise:
Well, they, well, they were, they were quite pointy, right? They were like… he would go…

David Read:
Exactly right.

Peter DeLuise:
He couldn’t, he couldn’t go like that (turns head). He couldn’t turn his head like that because he’d get a bunch of collar in his face. “What’s happening? I’ll have to turn like this.” Yeah. He had some awesome collars. But I mean, to me, that was the thing. If you were watching with the sound off, that’s what you would notice first. And then you’d go, “Oh my God, he’s the most gorgeous man on the planet”

David Read:
From South Africa.

Peter DeLuise:
And he’s got high collars.

David Read:
Absolutely. “Show And Tell” season two of SG1. Much of this episode hangs on the performance of young Jeff Golka. And this is…

Peter DeLuise:
Charlie! The guy who plays little Charlie.

David Read:
That’s exactly right. Charlie. And it’s a heavy visual effects episode where we’re going after an enemy that’s not there. Carmen Argenziano’s in this one. This is… I think it’s arguably a bottle show. I suppose you could call it that because it’s mostly, pretty much all at the base.

Peter DeLuise:
Because it all takes place on the base.

David Read:
Pretty much except for one off-world shot where, you know, we go and see this huge field of nothing and then they point their little thing with the T.E.R.

Peter DeLuise:
With the cliff, looking down, looking down at the Valley of the lobsters.

David Read:
The Valley of lobsters! Yes. That’s about right! Any memories from “Show And Tell? Another one with Carmen Argenziano.

Peter DeLuise:
I remember working with, the little Charlie and he was underage, so we had a time constraint on him, which I remember thinking in retrospect that that was a giant pain in the ass, having to get him out on time. You know, having to juggle all the other things and also getting him out on time was, you know… I’ve since made friends with the idea where, you know, you shoot the kid first always, or shoot the kid out, always. And then maybe have a double if you need to double for an over the…

David Read:
Shoulder.

Peter DeLuise:
…over the shoulder shot on to somebody else. But we had not planned our day in a way that made total… took advantage of totally of working with the kid. And I remember specifically thinking, “Oh, I’m not going to get him out. I got to get my shots right away.” And then, that was the… that was when I played the machine gun guard.

David Read:
Yes, you did. You peaked around the 50 cal. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
So what… one of the things that happened was I was reading a script and I saw that they were all in the control room. All of our core characters were in the control room and there was no speaking characters in the main… the Gate Room. And Charlie’s character comes out, but he’s just a little kid. Right? And they correctly go, “Oh,” but then I was like, “It’s going to take a while for him to come around, to get all the way out from the control room, come all the way around into the gate room.” I was like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if a dude, like one of those hardcore machine gun dudes looked around and like,”… cause I’ve got a giant weapon pointed at him. I’m like, “Is that a little kid that came out to the…?” And so I thought, wouldn’t that be an interesting level of intrigue if a gate guard, a machine gun guard was like, “I hope I’m not expected to shoot this little kid, because I don’t know if I can do it.” And so I added that level of… I thought that would be a funny little sort of a elbow jab, but also it would create time for the core actors to come around. And also, I had great respect for Alfred Hitchcock, who did a lot of cameos. That inspired… for me, that’s what inspired the cameos in the first place. That’s why I was doing… because I just thought that could be fun. I’ll just do some… I’ll put myself here and there. I’ll put myself in a piece of art or, or a file folder.

David Read:
File photo! Yeah. Like the Russians. That was funny.

Peter DeLuise:
But Hitchcock did all those things way before I did, you know, way before it was trendy, like he was like the trendsetter, right? And I was like, “We can do that. Maybe I can do that a couple of times.”

David Read:
More than a few. And they’re great because like Hitchcock, you have no speaking lines, you know, it’s just like blink and you’ll miss him, you know, it’s a, who was it that did the pineapples? Um…

Peter DeLuise:
Will Waring.

David Read:
Will Waring, that’s right! Pineapple man. You know, there’s just certain things that just like, “Oh, it’s a Will episode, there’s a pineapple,” you know? This is good stuff. This is one of those benefits of being a long-time viewer.

Peter DeLuise:
Will Waring… I think that came from when he used to operate, prior to that, he would invariably not only sneak pineapples in, but also camera equipment, like the pan wheel and stuff like that. That, we’d just hide it in the background. And there was another show that was shot on the Bridge Studios as well, called Outer Limits. And because it was Canadian, and this was the Canadian incarnation of it, they would hide a hockey puck, in various shots. And so every once in a while, if you… for the keen-eyed viewers of the second-generation “Outer Limits”, you would see a hockey puck and you’d go, “Why is there a hockey puck there?” And then I remember vividly this wonderful story about the line producer coming out screaming at the crew, “There’s no justification for a hockey puck to be on a buffet table! Now stop it!” And I always thought that that was quite funny. Like, yeah, you take your chances, you put the hockey puck wherever you can.

David Read:
Another excellent series. Brad and Jonathan were involved in that one too. I think for the first three seasons of SG1, they were also co-producing Outer Limits. So they had their plates full.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. Yeah. So the way I heard the story was, they were both co-writing and producing Outer Limits. And Stargate, The Movie came out, with James Spader and Kurt Russell, and they both independently recognized that that was a great, great way, device rather, for a series. Because there’s a slang expression in storytelling, story writing, where it’s called “the door in”. What is the door into the story? Well, the “door in” is quite literally a door to another planet, right? And you don’t have to get bogged down with the… it’s not unlike Time Tunnel… how great Time Tunnel was a great idea. You can just go back and stop anywhere you wanted. But they both independently recognized that the show, which was being done by MGM, would be a great vehicle for a series because you have a door in to any planet you want, and you don’t have to get bogged down with spaceships and space. You just walk through and you’re there, right? And so it’s cost…

David Read:
Friendly

Peter DeLuise:
… Yeah, it makes sense. It’s cost-friendly. And you can invest in… the greatest part about Star Trek was all the different cultures that you were coming up on, right? And so, you go to a different culture and you’d see… and I know a lot of people made fun of the fact that there was a lot of woodland areas, but we, we..

David Read:
It’s what we had to work with.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, we always thought that, there was a terraforming device, you know? Like, it was good enough for Star Trek, it’s good enough for us. We have a terraforming thing. We’ve already explained in Stargate The Movie, that humanoid people have been brought to other planets to populate them. Now you’ve got all these different cultures that were inspired by historical gods of our planet, right? So you’ve got… you can just throw it that way, that way, that way. So any era on Earth, or any God mythology that you had, was open game for the show. So any planet… because if a Goa’uld was going to take over a planet and they had to assume a God-like thing, to manipulate people to be slave labor, that’s what made sense. Right? And then so you had… that was the base. And then you went off in every different direction from there. Right?

David Read:
Which works,

Peter DeLuise:
Which I thought was a great idea.

David Read:
Yeah. So did a lot of fans for 17 seasons.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, that… the other part of it, and I think I’ve heard you talk about it on other podcasts were that, the issue of speaking English came up. So, and then you correctly pointed out that Star Trek tried to deal with that a little bit with the universal translator, except, I mean, they never did it perfectly because your mouth, the actor’s mouth is not forming a different word, it’s forming the exact word that you’re seeing. So then yet another layer of intrigue has to come up with their… well, you’re not actually seeing the mouth forming the word that it’s actually forming. You’re watching the mouth form a different, you kno… it’s an illusion that the inner soul was like, well,”How? What?” And this is the other thing is, Jordy-to-bridge, right? You’d hit the thing, right? (tapping imaginary communicator badge) Jordy-to-bridge, beep, beep, beep, you’re like, “Does everybody hear that? Is it just the one guy who hears that on their show?” And so there was a certain amount of conceit like, we don’t have to get into it, like, maybe this thing is smart enough, it goes, “Oh, to bridge! You want to go to bridge!” Just like, you know… so that means it’s not the exact time, it has to figure out who you want to talk to.

David Read:
Exactly. There has to be a lag, [a] cause, for it to go somewhere.

Peter DeLuise:
There’s a tiny lag. So on… it’s not… if you watch “The First Ones”, you’ll see that the Unas are speaking Unas, right? And the Goa’uld have their own language. And then so did the Jaffa, they have their own languages, which was, in the show, is kind of based on ancient Egyptian that James Spader was able to help figure out. But almost immediately, if you don’t all speak English, almost immediately, every single episode becomes, “Nano Nano”. What’d he say? He said, “Bananobano. What? I don’t know what Bananobano means. Oh God, how much of this can we take? Bananobano again? Click! you know, the show’s off, right? Nobody wants to hear “What’s he saying again?

David Read:
Let’s get to the story, you know,

Peter DeLuise:
Let’s get to the story

David Read:
And you play with it in “Wormhole Extreme” too, you know, when Jill Teed comes up to you guys and says, “OK, I’m out of phase. Why don’t I fall through the floor?” And it’s that great beat where everyone’s like…(puzzled stare)

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, perfect.

David Read:
I have no answer.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, and also, I mean, if you had just watched, you know, a wonderful movie, Ghost, right?

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
Where you… everybody had watched Patrick Swayze, where the commonality was the floor. And so this, this was fine, but you can walk through this anytime you wanted, right? You go through the door, it was fine, but nobody sank through the floor. And it was like, “yeah,” and every once in a while you get Paul Mullie, Paul and Joe, they go, “You know, they never explained that.”

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
So that ends up in the movie because that’s a conceit that we’re all just going through. The commonality is the floor. We’re not going to go past that.

David Read:
And if I may like, to have a quick aside, there is an app online and I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s basically a choose your own adventure movie. And one of them is where people, once they die, they become ghosts and they can only stand on the physical ground. So anytime that they go into buildings, they’re like here and they can’t go upstairs. And it’s an interesting storytelling tool, but it’s also very distracting. And it’s like, you know what? I’m just glad for most sci-fi stuff, you just don’t deal with it. Their feet, the bottoms of their shoes are exempt. They’re able to walk wherever they do and often perch themselves up in strange corners in the rooms as well. I don’t know why that’s a thing, but we do that too. So, you know, it’s just… there’s certain things that you have to do to make the story work.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, and if… in The Sixth Sense, that was the case, then, M Night Shyamalama Dingdong would be out of luck, right? Be like, “Oh, I think that guy’s totally ghost. He’s up to here in his chest in the counter.” That’s a dead giveaway, right? So, when… to that end, I actually had an episode where we did that, where Ben Browder was out of phase..

David Read:
Correct.

Peter DeLuise:
…With Carter, right? Right. And I had him fall, I had him fall into a counter. James Tichenor was the supervising vis[ual] effects [guy]. And I had him, I had him fall back and he’d come up…there was a counter right there, like a rolling Island, like you would expect to see in a kitchen, in the lab. And I had him poke his head up through the

, like this, and James Tichenor went, “What are you doing?” I go, “Well, it’s funny, right? Like, it looks hilarious!“

David Read:
Out of phase!

Peter DeLuise:
And he’s like, “He’s out of phase, all the way up to here, in the thing.” He was like, “OK.” But he wasn’t ready for that. He was like, “Oh, I didn’t think we were going to do that.” OK. Well, we’ll figure that out.

David Read:
No, you have to make it work with what you have.

David Read:
Yeah. And come to think of it, we would have had to have shot a clean plate, with the thing rolled out of the way anyway. It may have not…

David Read:
I don’t recall it.

Peter DeLuise:
It may have not ended up being in the show.

David Read:
I don’t recall it making that.

Peter DeLuise:
Maybe, maybe they overruled me and took it out because it’s too, uh, too advanced, too ahead of its time.

David Read:
You have to pick your battles, you know, if it’s with actors, or it’s with visual effects, you know, you can’t die on every hill. I’m sure that’s something that, you know’..

Peter DeLuise:
You’re absolutely right!

David Read:
…that all of the directors have to realize long ahead of time. It’s like, “What, what am I going to say, put my foot down and say, “We have to make this work for the story that I want to tell.” So…

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. There’s the KISS principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Uh, but then, you still have to… it still has to be entertaining, to a certain extent.

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
So there’s a balance between… Andy Makita talked about this too with it… once in a while you’d get a script… like all the scripts were pretty darn good, but every once in a while you’d get one that was just OK. You know, like, “How can I distract the audience?” Because then, now it’s about execution, right? I’m going to distract the audience a little bit so that they, they’re invested in what’s happening. How can I raise the stakes so that they’re invested in what’s happening and not distracted by how simple or, transparently, you know, simple this story is? So you add… it would add a layer of intrigue, to it where there would be a cool shot or, you’d show the humanity of a particular character when they died or thought they were going to die. Right? And then bring it, bring the stakes back.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
Because that was a balancing act too, because I mean, how many times have you seen in a show where somebody was pointing a weapon at one of our core characters and they were flipped and, you know, they didn’t… they weren’t intimidated, right?

David Read:
It’s a staple of Rick’s comedy.

Peter DeLuise:
Absolutely. Right. So if you do that too much, then it becomes cartoonish, where the audience goes, “He’ll be fine. It’ll be great. It’ll all work out in the end.”

David Read:
I have fan questions for you, Peter.

Peter DeLuise:
I like fan questions.

David Read:
Here we go. GateGabber wants to know, “Were you a sci-fi fan growing up? And if so, which series did you like?”

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. What’s, what’s this dude’s name?

David Read:
GateGabber. It’s my co-producer. Linda.

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, I love it. What’s this lady’s name?

David Read:
Linda.

Peter DeLuise:
Linda. Big shout out to Linda. Linda! Star Trek. I love Star Trek. I love Planet of the Apes. I know that’s not pure sci-fi, but man, I love… when I was a little kid, I just loved Planet of the Apes. And I loved Star Trek growing up. I… somehow my dad got his hands on the three-quarter inch tape of the bloopers of Star Trek. And we just thought that was the greatest thing

David Read:
Wow!

Peter DeLuise:
…of the bloopers way back then. When cassette tapes were this thick and it took a while for it to spool up. Yeah. We just loved that. Um, I also loved Wild Wild West.

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
I thought that was a really cool show when I was… and Mission Impossible. I was quite… I really liked Mission Impossible. Combat. Uh, Vic Murrow. What else did I like? I watched Time Tunnel, but not, I mean, only watched a few of those. And oh, you know what I love? Voyage to the Bottom Of The Sea.

David Read:
I loved it!

Peter DeLuise:
And also Incredible Journey. I love the Incredible Journey SO much! I used to read Heinlein books.

David Read:
Yeah!

Peter DeLuise:
I read all the Heinlein books. I thought those were pretty cool. And did I answer the question?

David Read:
Yes, you did.

Peter DeLuise:
Mostly Star Trek. I watched every single Star Trek a lot. That’s what I did.

David Read:
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea came on late night, I think Saturday nights. And I loved that show. It was Star Trek under the sea. Just like, you know, SeaQuest.

Peter DeLuise:
It was.

David Read:
It was Star Trek under the sea.

Peter DeLuise:
And a flying sub. Yeah, it totally was.

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
Those all had an influence on me for sure.

David Read:
Carlos Takeshi: “Is there a shot or scene that you weren’t able to get into one of your Stargate episodes, but just really wish that you could? That’s not… yeah, there’s a lot of episodes.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, there was that… I had created a rig for “Warrior”. I helped, I co-created a rig with Ray Douglas and his team, which was called the Revolve-a Shot camera rig where we would spin around very fast. And we were simulating a practical effect of… that they had done in Matrix.

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
And that was our goal. And I had hoped to do that again for, for the shot where, where Richard Dean Anderson was, was going around in a circle with his machine gun.

David Read:
Yes. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
And remember that?

David Read:
Yes. In “Allegiance” in season six, with… that was Dan Payne’s first episode.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right. So in “Allegiance”, I had hoped that we would use that rig as well for that. And then it was cost-prohibitive, so they overruled me and they said no. So that’s my fast, my quick answer to that, was I wanted to use the Revolve-a Shot rig for that, again. But it was, there was a huge amount of setup and it was it was quite pricey to get that done. So they correctly overruled me and said no.

David Read:
Is that also, in that scene? I’ve heard… maybe it’s myth, but that Rick used basically an entire season’s production budget of bullets in that sequence?

Peter DeLuise:
I don’t doubt it, but we used the saw, right? So I had the big, the C-can, you know, the hundred-shot can of the squad weapon. And as an alternative to the device that I wanted, I made Jim Van Dyke, who was the Steadicam operator, counter-rotate. So, as Richard Dean Anderson went around this way in slow motion with, spraying the bullets, I had Jim Van Dyke go around the other way and there was no way around it. He was using practical… I wanted to see the shells flying and going crazy and everything. Because this was the absolute pinnacle of the whole episode. Like this was the big… this was Richard Dean Anderson figuring it out and making it right, you know, and fixing this… having a solution to the problem. Right? Because of this invisible foe, right?

David Read:
Yeah, he’s tired of everyone being killed over this thing. It’s like, “OK, I’m putting matters in my own hands.”

Peter DeLuise:
So, Jim Van Dyke had a plexi thing on his face and he had a huge body armor in front of his body. Right? All the way down. And he had gloves on. And Richard Dean Anderson was shooting, pop pop pop pop. You remember, the shells were rolling out, and they counter-rotated each other, which made it look pretty cool. And we were shooting at a… we were over-cranking, which means we were shooting more film, which meant that it was going to be shown in slow motion. That’s way back when we were still shooting film, back then. And we shot it once and it didn’t go to plan. It didn’t happen the way I had hoped. And so we… there was going to be a take two. And so we got, not a whole rotation, but part of a rotation… either it was a gun jam or, it didn’t happen quite the way I had hoped. And I remember looking at Jim Van Dyke, who is, you know, a real mensch. He was it was an awesome dude for doing the shot. But I’m I’m sure he was like, “This doesn’t seem safe. You’re spraying bullets across my body,” which you generally don’t do. But this is how I wanted to get the shot. Right? So we made it safe for him but his whole body was vibrating. I remember after the shot, his whole body… he’s had such an adrenaline rush. And, and I looked at the padding on his body and on his hand and there were these little marks where the, where the flash had come out, maybe burning compression caps or something, that had sort-of made marks on his body. And I was like…

David Read:
“Wow,

Peter DeLuise:
…”Does that hurt?” And he didn’t realize that they, [he] was like, “No, I didn’t feel that, I’ve just got a rush.” OK. I said, “Can you do it again?” And he said, “Yeah.” I feel bad now because again, he probably didn’t feel like he could say no. And it was a pretty cool shot. But we ultimately got the shot of Richard Dean Anderson doing a full 360, the muzzle flash, the shells flying. And I mentioned the lunchtime, the next day daily, they would eat lunch… They’d go… I go like this, and they’d go, “That shot sucks. Well, that’s pretty funny. Well, that’s OK. No, no, no. Ya ruined that joke.” Pffff. Right? That’s how they would like… We’d be killing ourselves to make, to get this footage to them. And they, in between burping and slurping. They go, “Yeah, they kind of got that right. Yeah, that was funny.” And, you ask Joe next time you talk to him…

David Read:
Mallozzi

Peter DeLuise:
… ask him to deny it. Ask him to deny it.

David Read:
OK. All right.

Peter DeLuise:
He’d be going, “Do you think we need to reshoot that? Yeah, I don’t know. So what I actually… I ran up there because I wanted to see what their impression was of the dailies of that shot, and Richard Dean Anderson, going, bwapp pop pop pop, and it’s the big [inaudible]. And I’m going, “Imagine this with the music and the thing! And this is the big moment where Richard Dean Anderson saves the Day, a giant hero”, and while the shots going, and the shells are flying off in every direction, Robert Cooper goes, “Richard Dean Anderson is the new poster boy for the NRA.” I was like, “Ahhh, yeah,” yeah, it is kind of pro-gun, which was an unfortunate… you know, maybe we should have done it with lasers. Yeah, because…

David Read:
Given the circumstances, you know, you’re going to use what you got, so…

Peter DeLuise:
Well, of course. But I mean, because I’m originally from the United States. And so I was like, well, this is what was in the script. And it never occurred to me that I was being pro-gun to solve your problems. I was like, it is kind of that, it does kind of feel like he’s the poster boy for the NRA. And so there was, there was a small part of me died in that moment when Robert correctly pointed out the flying machine guns. Yeah. But, but it was a cool shot, and I stand by it. But I had originally intended for it to be the revolve-a shot that we used on “Warrior” during the big capoeira fighting. And the correct pronunciation is capoeira.

David Read:
Capo-whata?

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, the fights, the fighting style, the Brazilian fighting style is called capoeira.

David Read:
Got it. We had Rick Worthy on.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s a Portuguese word.

David Read:
He was amazing. Just what a brilliant actor. What a brilliant choice for that.

Peter DeLuise:
I watched that all the way from start to finish. And I was like, “Come on, man, talk about me. Tell him how great I am.” And he did, this much. But that, he’s… does that guy’s voice sound like buttered toast or what? I could listen to him read the phone book.

Peter DeLuise:
The Dictionary.

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. (as Rick Worthy) “I did not say that this would be easy. You will be free Jaffa!

Peter DeLuise:
I wrote that. I wrote that.

David Read:
Yeah. With Christopher Judge as the “story by”. Great show.

Peter DeLuise:
But I mean, I’m talking about… I wrote that speech is what I’m saying.

David Read:
Ah, gotcha. Absolutely. It’s a great one.
Eva Lipinska: “What is the funniest commentary of the commentaries that you did for Stargate? What’s your favorite?”

Peter DeLuise:
I mean, of me? You want me to be, you want me to compliment me?

David Read:
Well, I mean,

Peter DeLuise:
They’re all wonderful.

David Read:
For people who haven’t listened to the DVD commentaries, who hopefully still have the DVDs sitting somewhere, which one would you would you suggest that they pull out and listen to the DVD commentary? That’s how I that was how I think that she’s, phrasing it.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, I think they’re all… I think, this is what I suggest. I can’t tell you which is the funniest. But if you take your favorite episode, if you’re looking for commentary that I did, just… I would just go watch your favorite episode and then watch the commentary. Because what I would do… the reason I’m answering it this way is because I have no recollection of what was the funniest, because I couldn’t I couldn’t answer that.

David Read:
It’s been a while.

Peter DeLuise:
I can’t give that any… I can’t credibly answer that question. But what I would do is, when it came to be my turn… if they were available, you know, I would call Gary Jones and Dan Shea and/or, and I would ask them to come, because I would want to, bounce off of somebody. But sometimes I would do them all by myself. And my thought process was, “These are very dry, and they can be incredibly boring.” And part of the… and I wasn’t being paid any more money for that, I was doing it out of the generosity of my heart. And also the love of filmmaking, I was doing it for that. But the upside of that was, when somebody had to decide whether they were going to rent or buy the disc, if they were going to rent it, they wouldn’t have time to listen to the filmmakers’ commentary. So they… what they found was that when it had deleted scenes and filmmakers’ commentary people would tend to buy the, what they called sell-through, they would tend to buy the unit. So they would make more money on that labor, right? And so I was like, “Yeah, I’m happy to do that. You don’t have to compensate me for that.” But I was going to have fun doing it. And I wasn’t going to do something dry or boring, either. So I am a huge fan of Mystery Science 3000. So I was like, “Yeah, I’m totally going to go there.” And I did, as much as I could. Yeah,

David Read:
Absolutely. Gorin Andanowski: “Out of all the Stargate shows that you directed, which one stands out as your favorite?”

Peter DeLuise:
Well, “Urgo”, “Urgo”, for sure, because I got to work with my dad, and it was so funny. And I think a lot of people have that in their… I know “Window Of Opportunity” is a huge fan favorite as well. That was..

David Read:
Huge!

Peter DeLuise:
That was a joy. Not a lot of people…and of course, “Wormhole Extreme”, because I got to work with my brother Mike. And, you know, and I got to work with my brother David in an episode that I wrote and directed. So that was kind of cool, too. Well, working with my family was always a highlight. I know “Window Of Opportunity”, which… whenever I read the fan thing, I see this. (Holding up post-it with Woo written on it)

David Read:
Yes.

Peter DeLuise:
And I go, “What is woo? What is it?” Oh, oh, it’s “Window Of Opportunity” again.

David Read:
It comes up so often they created a shorthand for it.

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah, yeah. And, and not a lot of people… I don’t… I watched you an episode on that. And then I was like, Well, I don’t know if this was covered, but it became obvious almost immediately because of the Groundhog Day thing, that when you do Groundhog, you don’t have a gozinta or a gozoutta, which is slang for people walking up and going, boink, right? So, so you just start as late as you can, which was the door opening or him eating Fruit Loops. And we had to glue the Fruit Loops so that they would all be in the exact same spot every time. And that’s why we glued them. I know that it came up before because I actually brought that up in the concept meeting. They go, like “What do you mean you have to glue?” And I said, “Well, if the green one’s on the tip this time, but the green one’s on the back the next time, then everybody’s gonna know it’s different. You have to glue it…

David Read:
Yeah,

Peter DeLuise:
…to the thing, so. He could…

David Read:
Time resets, right in the middle of the pick-up of the of the spoon.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right. So it had to be exact. And so that’s where my head was. And everybody went… you could see them all go, “Oh, yeah, it’s got to be glued. You can’t move.”

David Read:
And Rick drops it on the third one. So I mean, they have to be on there pretty good.

Peter DeLuise:
I think I’m pretty sure we had. I’m pretty sure we had multiples. And if we didn’t, then that would have been a mistake. But it was definitely not going to move. It was… those Fruit Loops were on that spoon the way they were exactly supposed to be. But one of the things that happened when I… when you talked [with] Joe [Mallozzi] about “WoO,” that it became clear almost immediately that we were going to come in under, which was very rare that we were going to ever come in under. And, so I went upstairs and I said, “Hey, our timing is coming way under. We’re gonna have to come up with more stuff for the montage to”… think. So some of the things that came up was, the juggling. Like I just asked him, “What can you do?” And Chris and RDA, I go, “Can you guys juggle?” Which you… something I ask actors all the time because if they can, like, “Hey, that’d be cool.” And they both could juggle. I was like, “Let’s have you juggle.” So they really do juggle in real life. I said, “Well, let’s do that.” And then the bicycle going “Hey Vern,” do the bicycle thing. That was new.

David Read:
Right.

Peter DeLuise:
The golf thing, that was all made up after the fact. And I think the Callaway golf bag. I think, I think Brad wanted a new golf club set, so he’s like, “Hey, if we put Callaway, and we put this nice bright light, you know, shining right on the Callaway bag…” And so that was heavily featured. And I think Brad ended up with the Callaway bag.

David Read:
That’s great. So let me…

Peter DeLuise:
So we had to come up with a whole bunch of extra little things to fill out the time, which made it even more fun. Right?

David Read:
So this is just to be…so the montage was planned, but it was not supposed to be as long as it was.

Peter DeLuise:
It was not nearly as extensive.

David Read:
I thought the montage was created from whole cloth because it was short. OK. Did you know that you were a…

Peter DeLuise:
The mon… Well, it was because we were short. I don’t know how much of the montage was, but it was definitely… you can’t do a time loop… you can’t do a Groundhog Day or… and then, there’s this new wonderful one with Adam Sandler, no, not Adam, uh. But was it called Palm Springs? That’s a good one.

David Read:
OK.

Peter DeLuise:
That one that just came out on Netflix. I highly recommend that.

David Read:
You have to experiment with your situation. And that’s what that montage does.

Peter DeLuise:
Totally. Totally.

David Read:
Just go to town. So did you know that you had a gem when you were directing that one? Especially with Rick’s speech at the end?

Peter DeLuise:
I didn’t know how well received it would be, but I did know… there was some… it was very dramatic at the end. And oh, by the way, the act[tress]…, the lovely lady at the end, who’s wife of the guy, of Robin?

David Read:
Uh huh,

Peter DeLuise:
That is Nicole, who was the wife of Peter West, our DP, who was also the head of accounting. And she was the vision. She was the wife that he was trying to save.

David Read:
The little thing that he pulls out. Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right.

David Read:
What a great solid show. Tracy:

Peter DeLuise:
I did not know… I thought people might like it, but I didn’t know how much they would like it.

David Read:
It’s brilliant. It’s top five easily. Tracy wanted to know, “Is there a project that you would like to work on yet that you haven’t had an opportunity to explore before?”

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. I would like to work on a show. A single-camera comedy, you know, something like a Schitt’s Creek or The Office. I know that that’s a bit of a cliche because everybody always says The Office. Extras comes to mind, where they, where the little guy, the underdog is being champion, but it’s rife with humanity and comedy. Yeah.

David Read:
There’s so much good television on now. You know, I think we’re really…

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, there is

David Read:
… in the Golden age for of TV because we’re finally telling… you know, the mini-series has finally caught fire. I was a huge fan of the Stephen King mini-series, the ABC mini-series of the nineties. And, you know, we’re finally really catching up.

Peter DeLuise:
I just, I just watched The Stand, the one that just came on the… it’s wonderful.

David Read:
The new one? You like the new one?

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah.

David Read:
I haven’t started it yet. I’m a Corin loyalist for one thing. So, we’ll see. I’m looking forward to it.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, you, you, you can watch it and then not tell anybody.

David Read:
OK, that’s fair. What was your experience working on Sanctuary like? Chantalio wants to know.

Peter DeLuise:
Sanctuary was pretty cool because it has a sort of a steampunk version of Men in Black. That kind of feel to it. Right? And Damien Kindler and Amanda Tapping and Martin Wood were the showrunners on that. And I thought that that was a great… and they were… they pretty much made that happen for themselves, which I thought was amazing. I enjoyed the noir, the old-timey feel of it. I thought the… at one point during the sizzle reel, there was one, the first little bit that… when it was going to be… originally it was conceived that it would be an internet show or, like a web show. And it was before its time and they couldn’t make that work. And so they just made a proper show out of it. And yeah, if I had a hat on, I would tip it to them. That’s… oh, I’ve got my dad’s hat here.

David Read:
Hey!

Peter DeLuise:
I tip my hat to them because they really made that happen. Ryan Robbins, what an amazing dude, Robin.

David Read:
He’s brilliant.

Peter DeLuise:
Robin Dunn. And of course, Chris Heyerdahl. Oh my God. I love that guy.

David Read:
Guys brilliant. We’re wanting to get him on the show. So one of these days. What do you think of Peter Dollard? I’m talking with Peter Dollard. Jett Ison

Peter DeLuise:
Peter Dollard is awesome. Very handsome.

David Read:
Mike Who: What do you think of Teal’c becoming the God of war? Christopher Judge is now Kratos.

Peter DeLuise:
I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s got an amazing voice. He’s an excellent actor. And I thought that was a long time coming because he’s such an amazing voice actor anyway. I mean, he’s a wonderful actor in general, but he’s a very gifted voice actor, and his voice is exactly the kind of power you need for that character. So I thought that that was very appropriate. So I’m happy for him.

David Read:
I wanted to know Peter, last, before I let you go, would you do Dagwood for me?

Peter DeLuise:
You’re going to let me go?

David Read:
Yeah. I’ve got to bring Elyse on in a minute here.

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, Elyse, of course. She’s awesome. Tell her “Hi” from me.

David Read:
I will. You can say hello to her if you stay on for a second.

Peter DeLuise:
OK.

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
What, so what was the question?

David Read:
Could you do Dagwood for me?

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, you want me to do Dagwood for you? So Dagwood… one of the things that I did, the Dagwood, because he was new to the world around him, and because I imagined… because he was the prototype, they hadn’t quite gotten him right. So I would make my voice be in my throat. And I used… my niece at the time had just started talking and one of the things that I would say, say, “Say Dada.” And she’d go, “nnnnDada!” So she’d like, warm up her vocal cords and then say it, right? And I was like, “I’m going to use that.” And so I imagined that the vocal cords weren’t quite fully developed. I’m trying. I would think that uh, that Dagwood was a prototype. “I’m the prototype. And that’s why I’m here,” right? And then I was also, I was also thinking of Lenny from Of Mice And Men,

David Read:
Right!

Peter DeLuise:
But his youthful, his inner child coming out and being just, just impressed with everything and having his own little speech problem. So if somebody were to say to him, “hold on.”, and he didn’t understand what that meant. Like invariably people hold on to a bulkhead. So I just went like, I didn’t know what that was. Right? And, um, I also knew that my character would have been trained, not unlike the soldier that Kurt Russell played in, um, I guess it’s called The Soldier, right? Is that the one where he… Soldier?

David Read:
I’m trying to remember. I’m not exactly sure.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s not Universal Soldier, but yeah. So he was bred to be a humanoid combatant, right? But that’s why it said H A C on my chest…

David Read:
Yes!

Peter DeLuise:
was, Humanoid Assisted Combat. H A C, which was really… I had stolen the shirt from the Hollywood Athletic Club and it couldn’t come up with it. So they… what you never really saw what it said until when I, when I finally undid it, they recreated the Hollywood Athletic Club shirt and made it H A C and then put a strip on the bottom and Humanoid Assisted Combat. So we made it made sense after that.

David Read:
Yeah, I was watching…

Peter DeLuise:
But I would go, Dagwood [inaudible]… all my voice was coming from here. And sometimes I would scream to make my voice a little bit rough. (as Dagwood) “David, I really enjoy being on your show. It’s the best.”

David Read:
Thank you, sir. It was tremendous having you. I’d love to have you back at some point here in the future. There are so many stories to tell and it’s been a blast having you on. Truly.

Peter DeLuise:
Well, I’ve enjoyed myself hanging out with you, and the fact that you do this show without pants is just extraordinary.

David Read:
You weren’t supposed to tell anyone that! I do have pants. They’re just not long. Peter DeLuise:, my friend, it means so much to me to have you on. Be well, sir.

Peter DeLuise:
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you.

David Read:
Welcome.

Peter DeLuise:
Welcome. Welcome. Which is what my, what my niece would say as well. We’d say “Thank you.” “Welcome.” When I saved… when I blew the ballast and I saved the whole ship and Roy Scheider said, “Dagwood, you did it, thank you!” “Welcome.”

David Read:
Actually, he says, actually, he says “Very Good!” And you say, “Thank You” in that particular scene.

Peter DeLuise:
Are you sure? Are you sure? I didn’t say “Welcome?”

David Read:
Prove me wrong!

Peter DeLuise:
OK.

David Read:
My friend, I’ll catch you… if you want to stick around for Elyse, she’s going to be coming in in just a couple of minutes here. I’m going to wrap up the show and, we’ll see you on the other side. Catch you in a minute, man. Peter DeLuise, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you’re enjoying the program. We have a new giveaway for the month of April. Dial The Gate is partnered with BigJ Customs Art for the month of April to give you a chance to get your very own custom pop figure. To enter to win one, you just need a desktop or laptop computer to visit dialthegate.com, scroll down to submit trivia questions and your trivia that you submit to us may be used in a future episode of Dial the Gate. Please note the submission form does not currently work for mobile devices. Your trivia must be received before May the first, 2021. And if you’re the lucky winner, I’ll be notifying you via your email to get your address, and be sure to check out our partners website at BigJcustomsart.com.

We have Elyse Levesque coming up in just a few moments here. So we’re going to go ahead and get the show ready for her. If you liked the program, please consider clicking that “like” button, leaving a comment, sharing some love, uh, share this with a Stargate fan if you have one in your life. Hopefully all of you have one in your life. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I really appreciate you tuning in. Thanks again for my moderating team. You guys are the best and thank you again to Peter DeLuise for making this show possible. We’ll see you on the other side.