I’m Paul Donovan.
This is the world headquarters of Salter Street films, it’s a production company of LEXX.
I’m a kind of writer, producer, director,
and this is Lex Gigeroff and Jeffrey Hirshfield, they are also writers on the show.
I am standing out here because
we agreed to make this show a hundred twenty minutes longer
something like that for UK video,
but it’s actually only ninety three,
so we are adding additional material in the end.
That’s what you are watching right now.
But it’s raining outside, so we’re going inside. See you!
Ok, we’re indoors, it’s dry.
Back story on this whole project:
about ten years ago around 1985 I directed a film called “Def-Con 4”,
and it was not the greatest film ever made.
- It was a ugh… - A c-grade film.
- Yeah, c-grade. - Pretty great!
Ok, don’t beat yourself up!
It didn’t have that tiny little criminal.
Anyway, Def-Con 4 made a lot of money,
it sold sixty thousand video units in the US
and this was huge to that times.
The distributors made a lot of money, we didn’t make any money,
but we realized may be there is something to this genre.
In the show itself there were some good scenes.
Most of it wasn’t that great,
but there are still a few things I personally like even in these days.
But it kind of stuck with me that I… we…
I we as a company might want make something science fiction.
SO.. and then I get a lot about this stuff, sci movies and tv movies and those things.
About three years ago I wanted to make a world war I film,
and it cost about 35 mln. Dollars.
But I haven’t got 35 mln. Dollars,
so I investigated the way how to make it cheaper using computer animation.
Now, this is Canada,
and in Canada many of comp. animation programs are normally used in films
come from Softimage, Prisms, Discreet Logic,
these are the companies that make things like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park
or bombers change in Curse or whatever.
We took some propeller heads in CG and put them together
and shook them up with ideal percent science fiction show.
And we made a promo and the idea was to bring this promo to largest buyers of TV programs
or specialty broadcasters around the world
and see if we can get the money.
So this promo is not perfect because it is actually cruder CG,
this is three years ago, and we actually didn’t have the money to set up a real infrastructure.
But you can see this promo right now.
And this is what I ran around in my briefcase with the show on.
OK, there’s the promo,
and there’s Stanley Tweedle, wearing different costume.
People liked it.
Now the CG is a little bit primitive,
that computer graphics, compared to what we have now.
But you know…it’s not bad...
And so we needed some people to write the show,
so I looked around, in Canada all the good writers have gone to Hollywood, let us face it.
So I had to.. ugn.. hook around to what is left
and there are some people and they might have had the potential to be good writers
but at least I could get them cheap, and that’s Lex and Jeff.
And they’re like.. let’s call them gems in the rough.
We are cheap and easy too.
What I’d also like to talk about is that I’d like Jeff... and Lex to tell about themselves.
Here they came from and what they did before they started working on this show.
Well, I came up as an actor,
and I did some theatre,
I did some kind of special kind of “Straaaght Fooord, Straaght faaaawwwrd on the Avon”,
and then I went to Toronto and struggled to get a day on Jimmy Farm move of the week,
and I didn’t get that, so I slung fishburgers at some Toronto restaurant,
and just before I was to go out and start hooking,
Paul came behind and gave me a career.
So I’m forever in his debt.
And the world never knows what they really missed.
- Yes, that’s a pity, I would have made… - Next step...
- I would have been a terrific hooker… - Yes.
And I still might.
But now I can do it just for fun, you know, not trying to pay the rent.
Well.. and I.. I was you know sort of doing whatever I had to do to survive...
And you know there’s no whore like an old whore.
And you know…for me literally I would do such things as murder mysteries, pirate tours,
here in Halifax we can have a lot of tourists that want to know about the sea...
So you take like rich Americans and say like:
URRRRGH everyone in a buss in an hour…then we’ll cruise the damned water in front of her!
and you know little French plays and I worked in the radio
and did little sort of acting here and there, here and there.
But the hooking option was not an option for me,
‘cause look at me.. quite frankly…
And then we started writing.
So we would go to the beach and you know hand around bars...
and Fair to this.
...whatever… and we started working on the overall idea of all this entire series.
What you’ve seen in show #1 picture#1 is all set up. It’s introduction of the characters.
We have plans where it goes it is through the fore picture
which are kind of a cycle and also beyond.
But I can say what we really wanted to do was to make something which had
you know a little bit of "Dirty dozen" meet "Alien" or "Beavis and butthead" meet "Alien"...
like I don’t watch much that TV, but some people do…
Meets highschool hard bellies… which is one of my favourite shows.
- Sordid and suck. - Terrific, fine acting.
And then we kind of like science fiction, and we certainly exercise action, like you know.
Skippy costume...
Dancing costume science fiction. I like Alien, you know, and…
And Stargate.
And I liked Dark Star.
I mean it was kind of cheap good looking, but it was fun.
And most of science-fiction I see on TV isn’t that much fun in these days.
So we wanted to make something that had fun
and sort of had some production volume, was a little bit subversive, and had some dark humor.
Most shows come from Los-Angeles.
Ok, now in Los-Angeles people aren’t that funny,
I mean there are lots of smart people down there, but they’re kind of serious…
And polite...
Well, sometimes polite, not always.
So this is a very weird thing, because it is a show comes from Canada
and we’re on the east coast of Canada,
and here people are… you know… they don’t take themselves too seriously,
because frankly they do not have a good reason to.
Well, you know…
I mean how serious can it really be when we have to get up every morning
and club herbs for the breakfast,
through the ice, we have to dig a hole in the ice, and…
I know you british people are very upset about you know the fur stuff… but it’s food for us, that’s how we...
When you have to deal with that, kind of lovely brutal violence on a daily basis,
then are humans what comes out organically?
One thing you may notice in the show that there’s a lot of bug stuff.
Like we want things to be very insectoid or at least certainly very organic.
And part of it is that I always wondered: why is the future you know... modern?
Like modern as in modernism with all these hard angles and flat smooth surfaces?
It was the style that was in fashion as the style of future in the 1920s, but why…
you know everyone’s got the octagonal doorthing?
Are they going to have the octagonal doors in 20 something. I don’t know.
So we figured it may be they won’t.
So we’re in our particular world
because of these back story of the insect wars,
we have broadened the insect technologies, and of course the insect design.
And instead of having one designer,
as in a normal show, we have about eight production designers who worked fairly independently.
We wanted to avoid the concept of a town
all designed by one architect with never a variety of look.
I should have mentioned we have an email contact,
called if you noticed by the end of the show, www.lexx.com,
and under the section called naked money grab we wanted to sell you few things
and you to give us your money.
But we didn’t actually have to…
You can actually give us your money…
If you can just anything really really…
not food to film the new episodes, but just for us personally,
you know, if you’ve got anything, cash preferably...
…Yorkshire puddings…
Is there anything we’ve left out?
- Well, we’ve got the fore movies.. - Fore movies?
Going up before LEXX… which is you know they’ve just seen the movies.
OK, the fore movies. What’s the next picture about?
The next one is called Supernova, and there’s a lot more sex in it.
Basically.
Never enough, we’re gonna work on it quite seriously, there’s never enough
here’s a lot of sex, lot of sex...
There’s something like...
We’re gonna get Zev in the pit.
Exactly.
Now, do we have abything new about Zev, for instance?
Actually that was a set up question.
Well, go...
Did we learn anything about Zev?
Well, during her love-slave transformation, her haircolour changed.
And there’s a big mistery surrounding her... how to say… well was it just hair on her head?
Or where else? Where do people have hair. Where, you know..
Is it blue everywhere?
Is it blue everywhere? This is you know inquiring minds want enough.
And all will be revealed. In good time.
So. That’s pretty well the highlight of number 2.
OK… And what else shall we talk about?
- What have I missed? - What about the title.
Oh, the title. Do you want to know how the show got the title of…of Lexx?
Oh, it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse.
- The LEXX Files. - The LEXX files is good.
Oh my God, oh my God Oh no.
Let’s see that, let’s look at that.
Joy ride?
Can you see it?
It’s not getting any better...
Lexx cycle Lexx—o-;icious
It’s just a sort of.. we’re a disaster. Lexx-citement…