So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  NOAH HATHAWAY

  We had the same birthday. I was November thirteenth; she was the fourteenth, so we would have our birthday cake together. She was my best friend while we were shooting. She was wonderful. I chased her the whole damn movie.

  BOONE NARR

  She went off to breeding in Florida and she has had babies. The experience on the show was actually quite unique for me. It was early on in my career, and to work with John Dykstra to develop that daggit suit was great. We ended up doing Johnny Carson with that, and a lot of people were fascinated by it; they could not believe there was a chimp inside that suit.

  The show featured a large ensemble of supporting characters, like Jack Stauffer’s Bojay, Tony Swartz’s Jolly, and Ed Begley, Jr.’s Sergeant Greenbean (one of his earliest roles), as well as George Murdock’s Dr. Salik and John Dullaghan’s Dr. Wilker. In some cases, the same actor could be called on to play numerous roles over the course of the series, as was the case with Alex Hyde-White.

  ALEX HYDE-WHITE

  On Galactica, I felt like I was part of a prestige unit of “freedom fighters.” We would go from episode to episode, sometimes playing a different character, and at the end of the shooting week they would see what they had and put the episode together. We were a “counterinsurgency” with a big military budget.

  My father, British actor Wilfrid Hyde-White, played the head of the Council of Twelve in the pilot. He and Ray Milland [who played Sire Uri], who at his heights had been a big film star, enjoyed their time and my dad got a few laughs. Glen liked him. I was nineteen years old, selling real estate in the desert, when he called to say he was going up to Universal for ten days or so and his usual “man,” Mike Lally, was unavailable because he was working with Peter Falk. So I was my dad’s “assistant” for the pilot. It’s nice having somebody with you when you’re sitting around a set waiting to do your scenes. Otherwise, especially for the older character actors, it can get a bit lonely. So I was hanging around, too.

  My dad’s agent, a character himself named Abby Greshler, who had been sending my head shots around town for a few months prior because, like I said, I was selling real estate in the desert, called and told me to go see Mark Malis, the head of TV Casting at Universal. Abby calls and says to me, “Punch, this is Abby Greshler.” I think, “Duh.” He says,”Is your father behaving himself?” I couldn’t see him at the time, as I was on a pay phone outside the stage, so I said, “Oh yeah, he and Ray Milland are having a good time.” Then he says, “Go see Mark Malis at the Black Tower [where Universal’s executive suites were located and the most iconic building on the lot], I just spoke with him and he wants to see you.” I thanked him, said I was on my way, checked that Dad was good. He was. Ray Milland and he were enjoying their “Styrofoam cups” while sitting in canvas chairs waiting for the next setup. It was around noon on a late spring day in 1978.

  Mark Malis was an efficient, easygoing “cog in the wheel” company guy. He couldn’t have been more receptive and seemed genuinely interested in giving me his time. After a few minutes he asked if I had time to do a “cold reading” for him. I did, thank you, so he gave me a two- or three-page scene and I went back out in the reception area and read it over a couple of times.

  “That was quick,” he said, when I was let back into his office, where he introduced me to Alan Levi, the director on the next episode. We read the scene. It was a scene where my character was literally “flying JETS in SPACE.” It was fun, and I swear I hit every beat. After the ninety-second “audition” scene was over, Mark says, not really asks,”You’ve never done this before?” Then he says, “Do you know about our Contract Players program?” I stopped selling real estate in the desert the following week.

  I signed on a Monday for three hundred and fifty dollars per week guaranteed, and the next day was in Griffith Park telling Jack Klugman as Quincy to “leave my mother alone.” USC Heisman running back Charles White was one of the extras, as an LAPD uniformed officer at the funeral scene.

  Two days later I was on stage twenty-seven sitting on an apple box in front of a blue screen with the Viper-pilot helmet wiggling around my head. I think the only direction Alan Levi gave me was to not move my head too much. Wow, it was quick. And … I was flying jets in space!

  Within no time I was staying in Westwood, and driving over to Universal as needed. The contract program lasted two years, alongside actors Sharon Gless, Lindsay Wagner, Andrew Stevens, George DelHoyo, Rick Springfield, Alan Stock, Larry Cedar, Sarah Rush, Leann Hunley, and others. We were, indeed, a band of brothers and sisters, a happy, happy few. The then SAG president Ed Asner led the union in a militant strike that lasted over six months. The contract system was done.

  3.

  I’M IN CHARGE HERE …

  “Commander, we’re picking up some attack signals between Purple and Orange Squadrons. We don’t have Purple and Orange Squadrons.”

  Although Battlestar Galactica visual effects supervisor and producer John Dykstra, fresh off his revolutionary work on Star Wars and lured away from ILM to work on the series, had been toiling away for almost a year on the telefilm’s elaborate special effects before production even began, the three-hour premiere finally began filming in mid-1978 in what was planned as a twenty-nine-day shoot and had stretched to fifty-two by the time it was finished. Director Richard A. Colla was hired to helm the ambitious movie, but by the time it wrapped, Colla had long since been replaced by director Alan J. Levi. Associate producer Winrich Kolbe (who would later direct extensively for the Star Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager), a veteran of the Marine Corps who served as a point man in Vietnam, was charged with keeping the troops in line for a star war unlike any that television had ever attempted before—or has since—with some of the cast not even being finalized well into production.

  The immense and ambitious production tells the story of a thousand-year war between man and machine and the betrayal of the humans by the president of the Twelve Colonies’ trusted advisor, Baltar, who helps facilitate a Cylon sneak attack, à la Pearl Harbor, against the human fleet, which is obliterated along with its home colonies. Only the battlestar Galactica survives, leading a ragtag fugitive armada in search of the mythical planet of Earth, home of the legendary Thirteenth Tribe, pursued by the Cylons intent on eliminating the last vestiges of humanity.

  DIRK BENEDICT

  (actor, “Lieutenant Starbuck”)

  I have the original script that Glen gave me. It was a three-hour pilot, so the script is almost two hundred pages. It’s full of these beautiful paintings and artistic concepts of the show and how it would look. The part of Starbuck was wonderful but he really was something of a supporting character. He only became more a part of it as the show went on. Originally, he was just one of the pilots, but I loved it because he was such a bad boy.

  RICHARD HATCH

  (actor, “Captain Apollo”)

  After three days of negotiation, we finally came to a deal, and it was the very day they were filming, so I got the agent calling me up and saying you’ve got to get over there now. I drove over to Universal, ran into wardrobe and hairdressing and then onto the set. And it’s not like some quiet set; there is publicity, there are news crews. From the moment I walked on, it was this huge deal. There were no read-throughs or time to get to know anybody and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, what have I done?” The deepest insecurity hit me. It was a really terrifying day.

  Hatch, who had literally just been handed his pages for the day, shot the scene in front of the giant glass map on the bridge with Boomer and Starbuck as they constructed a plan to destroy the mines in the Nova of Madagon, allowing the fleet to escape the Cylons and safely reach the planet Carillon, where they could refuel.

  DIRK BENEDICT

  It was first class all the way and it was exciting to be around all this artistry and all these wonderful creative people, from sets to wardrobe. The costume designs by Dorleac were all handcrafted that he made specifically fo
r each character, and then you had the special effects of John Dykstra and hundreds of extras all made up of creatures from various galaxies. We had all these huge soundstages and the front projection and all the back projection. Every day was just like getting up and going to Disney World—only better. You never knew for sure what it was going to be like. It was this fantasy.

  RICHARD HATCH

  I must say, with each day it became quite an incredible experience, but it was like going to war. We had no time off. It was eighteen-hour days. You lived on the backlot. You lived in your motor home; you barely had time to even go home. They were working overtime to do this theatrical-style television series which had never been done before. Most shows were shot in seven days; this show took ten to twelve days per episode.

  But we did survive and I must say this: After I read the script I realized this was not a Star Wars clone. It was inspired by Star Wars because the success of Star Wars opened the door for sci-fi to come on television, but it was a totally different story and in many cases I thought it was an even better story because the epic story of it was like Moses and the Israelites. Even though everything was not thought out, the potential of that story was phenomenal.

  People don’t realize this and they judge Galactica too harshly. First of all, it came out with all this hype; then it went into a series format without the proper time to set up for a series format. We were up against the wall getting production done in time when it was still getting all worked out. If you look at every first-year show, including Star Trek, most are notoriously bad because most times they haven’t worked out the kinks and flaws and they don’t know how to use each character properly and the stories are not fully thought out. It’s in the second and third year that you have the time to really begin to focus in on the characters, to use them the right way, to find which plotlines and storylines work, and to bring out the best in the show.

  We were trying to do something that had never been done before. We were attempting to do theatrical-style effects and a theatrical-size show for television—and it had never been done—without even the proper preparation. They didn’t want to lose the momentum Star Wars had created in terms of sci-fi being successful, so they didn’t give Larson enough lead time to develop it properly.

  WINRICH KOLBE

  (associate producer, Battlestar Galactica)

  My first contact was when I got a two-page outline for the pilot Battlestar Galactica, which was in 1977, and then it just took off from there on a level that I was not included in. I was an associate producer for Glen Larson on most of his shows, including McCloud, Switch, Quincy, and Hardy Boys, so then I was scheduled to be associate producer on Battlestar.

  I felt that, given the state of the art of special effects at that time, there was just not enough time to do the necessary amount of special effects on a weekly basis. Especially since episodic television per se is a very short-prepared medium, and with Glen being a five-minutes-to-twelve person, it was even less preparation. He kept fine-tuning the script and writing elaborate scenes and expecting quality work, but there was not enough time to do all that compared to what we have today, where we have a digital system and video blue screens which at that time didn’t exist since everything was done on film.

  As far as the special effects was concerned, they were all done by John Dykstra, so they had to fight that battle. My job was to take the finished version and shove it through postproduction, make sure that the editing was done on time. The dubbing and all the inserts that had to be shot was my responsibility.

  RICHARD COLLA

  (director, “Saga of a Star World”)

  I just finished a movie and I went into George Santoro’s office [the head of production for Universal Television], and I would sit down and chat with him. We got to be friends. He was really my mentor. He was a guy who had worked in the crew, and had worked his way up to the [Black] Tower, into his position, so he really knew how to make movies. He knew the ins and outs, the ABCs of it, the craft of making movies, so I found great insight and great wisdom from this man.

  I went into his office, and I said, “What do you want me to do?” and he said, “Well, I’ve got a couple of scripts, what would you like to do?” I said, “I’d like to do a picture on a warm beach with a lot of pretty girls,” and he said, “Well, you know I’ve got this pilot with Dennis Weaver to be made in Hawaii.” [Pearl, 1978] He said, “Would you like to do that?” and I said, “Well, gee, Dennis and I get along really well, that’s kind of a nice idea,” and he had this other thing sitting on his desk, and I said, “What’s that?” He picked up this fairly thick script, and he said, “This is Battlestar Galactica.”

  RICHARD JAMES

  (art director, Battlestar Galactica)

  It had a lot of talented people on it. You had Leslie Stevens, who I admired a great deal, and you had John Dykstra, who is a very talented man but he was out of control. He was using his clout coming off of Star Wars to do everything.

  RICHARD COLLA

  I knew that Johnny Dykstra was attached to work on it, and he said, “Would you like to do this?” I said, “I don’t know, let me read it,” so I took it back with me, and I read it, and I came back and I said, “So George, you’re going to make this movie?” And he said, “Oh yes, we’re going to make this.” I said, “Boy, this is really ambitious. How much is this movie going to cost?” He said it was going to cost one million and eight. I said, “It’s going to cost one million and eight?” We were making movies for seven hundred and fifty thousand, you know? He said, “Yeah.” I said, “I don’t know, George, are you sure?” and he said, “Well, sure. But, if you want to do it, you’ve got to let me know because we’ve got to get started.” I said, “George, can I have another day?”

  I took the script back to my office, and I read it again, and then I started going around all the department heads that I knew—to camera, to editorial, the grip guy—and I sat down with everybody, at different times, and I said, “So you guys have this script? What’s it going to cost in the camera department to do this?” And they would dig out their estimates, and I asked, “Can I have a copy?” and they said, “Sure.” So they’d give me a copy of this thing, and I took all of these estimates from all the different departments back to my office.

  I sat there, and I looked at them all and I read the material and I added them all up, and I thought, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” So I went back to George’s office and I said, “George, what’s the budget for this movie again?” He said, “It’s a million eight. We sold it … Glen [Larson] sold it to ABC for one million and eight. That’s what we’re going to make it for.” I said, “George, I just spent a couple days going around talking to all the department heads. You can’t make this movie for one million and eight!”

  And he said, “Sure you can. I’ve got the budget right here in my drawer,” and he opened his bottom drawer, and he pulled out this budget for one million and eight. I said, “George, I’ve got the budgets from all the departments. This picture is going to cost you twelve million dollars!” He said, “No! It’s one million and eight!” So he called all the guys, all the department heads from all the different departments, and we had a meeting in George’s office. George asked, “What’s this going to cost us to make,” and they gave him their budgets, and it was twelve million dollars. Well, they sold it to ABC for one million and eight!

  He was stunned! What were they going to do? They’d already made the sale. Glen had sold this thing to ABC for one million and eight, and committed the studio to make this thing for a budget that was going to be twelve million dollars. And I said, “Wow! Goodness!” Now, everybody else left, and George and I sat there with a cup of coffee, and I said, “You know, I’ll help you any way that I can possibly help you here, but how can we do this?” And he said, “I’m going to need a lot of help here.” I said, “George if I can help you, I will, but this picture can’t be made for a million eight, whatever it’s going to be made for.” And so he got th
e budgets from a lot of the departments, like the stages and sets. How do you build the inside of a starship [and] how do you do the hold of a starship when you haven’t any money to build a set? What do you do with the bridge? How do you do all the special effects?

  ALAN J. LEVI

  (director, “Gun on Ice Planet Zero”)

  John [Dykstra] is still a friend and we see each other at Super Bowl parties. We became very close because I understood and appreciated what he was doing and on set he was just so bloody helpful it was unbelievable. He was right there all the time. He was an active producer on set. Even though he was doing all of the effects with Apogee.

  RICHARD COLLA

  By the time we got it cast and started shooting this picture, the studio was about twenty-four hours ahead of us in getting things ready. [We] never knew for sure what sets would be ready, or what sets wouldn’t be ready. I would turn sometimes, and I’d say, “George, you know in another day or so I’ve got this huge scene to do and there’s no sets for it.” And he said, “Well, have you any ideas?” I said, “Well, I tell you what. Let’s go over to stage twelve,” which was the biggest stage there. “Get me a bunch of the steel shipping containers, the forty-foot containers. Let me stack those up, just have them go in there and stack those things up. Let’s take the green beds from up above, on their chains, and just drop them down so that they’re like ramps all through this thing.” I said, “I don’t even care what’s on the other end. I’ll get the other end of the stage,” which was their biggest stage, “and I’ll start shooting everything on three-hundred- and six-hundred-millimeter lenses to get some sense of size to this thing.” Well, that’s what we do. We pump a little smoke in to confuse things, and give a sense of depth, of scale to these things. It got to the point where George and I used to have these wonderful conversations.