- TRANSCRIPT OF BEN MURPHY'S STATEMENTS
ON TV PROMO, PART 2
Granada Plus (UK Cable Channel)
- Aired March 2002
Alias Smith and Jones was a sort of a television version of Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid so that relationship, I'd seen that picture,
which was very popular, and so that relationship became obvious.
There were some differences: he was a gunslinger, he was a man
of few words as opposed to the Hannibal Heyes character which
was a very loquacious character. So I made him a little stoic,
a little quiet and sort of ironic and sardonic but a man of few
words - as fewer words as you could have on television which
is a very wordy media. That's basically how I approached him
and a quick draw teacher who is still a friend of mine, Monty
Laird, he was an old cowboy wrangler in the true sense. Not like
us television actors but he was this wiry little guy that escaped
the Koreans during the Korean War and he taught me but one of
the problems I had was I would practice the quick draw all the
time and I had this habit like children have of going 'ptchoo'
(MIMES ACTION AND NOISE OF DRAWING AND FIRING A GUN). I'd pull
out my, I'd practice and every time I'd make that sound (MAKES
SOUND) you know, and the problem became when the camera would
roll I couldn't stop making that sound so part of me would do
the quick draw and a part of me, my mouth, would go (MAKES AS
IF TO MAKE THE NOISE) and the problem with not making that sound
on camera and I can remember take after take of me (MIMES AS
IF TO MAKE THE NOISE) contorting my mouth trying not to go ptchoo
because I'd make that sound all day long as I practiced.
AN OBVIOUS CUT
I can remember the first thing that hit me on the set is that
when we went into wardrobe, I was a young actor, I didn't know
about these things and you know how hot it can get in Southern
California and we were filming in the summertime, was that they
made my pants, they made my pants and shirt out of wool and I
remember thinking to myself, 'Man, this is uncomfortable,' and
the first thing I did was get everything changed to cotton. That
was one of the greatest moves I ever made in that show. Go straight
to cotton, get rid of the wool. That, that's what I remember.
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