The series began as four two hour made for TV movies.
The success of the movies spawned 20 one hour episodes.
Now in its third season LEXX has mutated once again.
The making of the LEXX
For season three what we’re hoping [to tell] a story in thirteen parts.
With each part of the story… each long part of the story
so be more or less self-contained.
So exactly where are we?
Between Fire and Water
There’re two planets that have a sort of
they’re almost in the same orbit share an atmosphere at one point.
One is called Fire which is totally dry and has not water at all and very hot
and the other is Water which is all water.
The Lexx has been drifting for like over four thousand years
and it drifts into their atmosphere and they think it’s a comet –
the people down on the planet think it’s a comet –
so they travel using hot-air balloons.
So they go up in this hot-air balloon
and they shoot an arrow at it and basically -
it’s like shooting the white whale you know - they get it...
and it pulls them along and then they sort of really get in.
And get on board.
The story arc is clear, the on the characters is clear
and I think the introduction of Prince
like a sort of like a almost a fourth prominent cast member in a sense.
That worked really-really well.
He’s one of these characters that has unlimited power.
He has unlimited power, unlimited abilities. He can do what he wants to…
He just decides what he wants to do and does it. Because he can.
You command the Lexx. And I have learned that the Lexx is a great weapon -
a weapon that will finally tip the scales
I think in some ways Stan represents - in the broad sense of the word
“the common man”.
Stan wants to survive - he wants to survive the best he can -
and wants to avoid unpleasant circumstances
and wants to engage in pleasant ones.
The sensual man – that’s Stanly basically.
He’s up to find anything to engage anything that brings him pleasure.
And to run as fast as he can from anything
that will require complication responsibility or pain.
You see, an evil planet is gonna be blown into tiny little chunks,
and then the Lexx, hopefully, is gonna eat those chunks,
and then we'll be able to sail away from a place
where I really don't wanna be anymore.
So in terms of my own identification with Stanly
I would never wanna be the guy you know but… - in real life -
but in terms of a character I think it’s a wonderful role to play.
I mean its… it’s so broad, there’re so many possibilities in there
as oppose to Michael playing Kai whose role is essentially eliminated.
Did they hit us?!
Not where it matters.
After first day, couple of what are we gonna do,
your character is so dolly. I recalled "no-no-no!
You wrote him dead, he stays dead,
I am gonna do it. He doesn't wanna be alive or be half-human like…
No I’m dead-dead-dead, I just want to be dead".
And then as oppose to that he became more mechanical
and then in the last year the thing was
that he can be superman - sort of -
or he can have a kind of a really extreme physical stability
or whatever but it’s got to be vulnerable as well.
Kai becomes…. Well I don’t wanna actually say
but we will actually see a whole other… possibly
the whole other side of Kai character which
actually even has more to it then meets the eye at first.
Kai? I thought that you had somehow come to life,
but you are still dead, aren't you?
Yes.
So how can there be two of you?
One is dead - the other is alive
That had a nice sporting touch with the Japanese bow
which I managed to learn pretty well how to do.
That was fun, that was really fun to get that [artily] in.
Xev gets an opportunity to see a different side of Kai
which she finds shall we say attractive and interesting.
She’s got the appearance of the love slave
and the soul of an independent fearless warrior woman.
She can sort of… she’s very good at serve playing things
to get her way and… plays a double agent a lot of the times I think.
What?
Why I'm happy to accept your deal under the right conditions.
You bring out something in me that doesn't always find proper expression...
There was some particularly satisfying falling
at the very beginning
where Halifax rigger
got a very nice body rig.
You’re posited from two lines in the middle
and so it gives a great deal of freedom in falling
and kind of tumbling and parachuting at stuff.
And that was nice physical stuff very satisfying
to do and to be able to do.
Am I too low? Lift me up...
That good?
Now the guys in audience will probably identify with this.
Imagine having somebody grabs you close to a delicate area
and holding on very-very tightly for like two or three hours.
You know, a lot of vaseline, a lot of baby powder...
It’s not really that much of a problem you know.
You react to the immediate situation.
Yeah, I spent some time under water
with about thirty five pounds of weight on my body
so, I would sink like a [....]. One of the satisfying things is
what you do then is you work it out very-very technically
step by step and just execute.
And so you do it and then you stop doing it and say
“ok, I’ve done that, I did every step just right, it worked out fine”.
And you kind of go... “oh, that’s a thrill! That is fun!”
But it’s all delayed all the fun is sort of delayed.
We're going to have to start with a little bit of pain...
I'm not good with pain!
We tried it with that actually on the nipple...
oh, no no no no no!..
And then what we did was actually the make up girls made nipples
that were likely larger out of latex and that was fine.
They glued them on that part was fine... that was fine...
but when they came off...um...you know.. It was harassing I tell you...
One of the episodes that I directed – Gondola –
is entirely shot in the... in this gondola.
The gondola was great. That was really the finest piece
that we designed this year.
We went through about thirty or forty changes
and different design ideas,
thousands of drawings and sketches and we wracked our brains for weeks
finally come up with something that was rude but at the same time was elegant.
But also would work practically.
The ship is a whole was a... I think it was good in the air.
I think that... Think that... probable very nice to look at.
You know I got mixed with... I’ve got conflicted relationship with gondola.
I spent a lot of time in there with the hot lights,
the sand blowing...
This was a middle of summer down in Halifax.
You can’t have the air condition turned on because it makes too much noise when you're shooting.
So it was hot and close. You get to know people real well in that situation.
Prior to season III, lexx was shot in studios in both Halifax and Germany.
It had always been ironic to me to move from a studio in Canada
a show which is primarily shot in the... totally shot in studio
to yet another studio thousands of miles away across the ocean
and so I thought why not to take advantage
of what Berlin has offered in terms of locations.
Let's find some places and break the show out of the studio
and try to find some interesting locations to take some of the episodes on to.
It's a little tough for all the crew shoot in location
than it is within the certain comfort of the studio where is a lot of control
because - as you know - there're a lot of green screen, a lot of special effects down in the show.
Instead of this we tended to rely on the location to tell the magic of the visuals
rather then creating a lot of camera effects… you know kind of CGA effects.
We let the location kind of to tell us where we are and to understand that location.
We are in the Rudesdorf near Berlin.
The very decayed location.
We will soon start to shoot.
We shot in a place called Rudesdorf
which was an abandoned cement factory.
And it was abandoned in the late sixties.
And it was pretty hard for all the cast and all the crew,
we spent two weeks shooting there.
And snow outside, no windows and there was no way to actually heat the place
that was totally impossible, out of the question…
Scene 9 E take 4
Brian, action!
It was a horrible miserable place in many ways
it was dark, dusty so there the problems were…
the crew you know inhaling the bad air and it was dark.
You know the building was kind of falling apart but it wasn't.
So you know under those circumstances things go wrong, things are slow down.
But we were very well propped
so whatever went wrong we could handle.
- Scene 12 take 3. - Thank you.
Brian and Xenia action.
Come on, this way!
Cut!
And quiet, please, stop this joking around here we gotta concentrate!
Please keep quiet!
Giggerota! you're alive!
Who's Giggerota?
Underneath here… this is not fake that is a real fire.
So the tub was ending up to be so hot
that the first time I wasn't sure what temperature it had, the tub
So I asked for warm water but in the twelve hour I was starting to hallucinate
because that was so hot.
So basically they set this kind fire and the tub would boil.
And in the meantime that would also have the dry ice effect
and a smoke effect on top of there.
So we're dealing with an old building
with smells and rats and bats, fire, smoke, dry ice, water,
costume that weight eight hundred pounds,
and I was still smiling!
Drumsticks, drumsticks, drumsticks, drumsticks!
It was fun and it was challenging
I thing Lexx for an actor is the most incredible experience
I'm laughing at how much fun I had on this because I can basically do everything.
I mean, usually you're told 'less is more'...
more is not enough on this show!
Council time, your majesty!
Oh, boring, boring, boring, boring!
Here we are, chilly Thursday morning in Fort Hahneberg
preparing for a run-for-head shot with Stanly Tweedle running from the psychopathic homicidal maniacs.
We're like in the shadows.
Underneath this fortress there are these tunnels a maze of tunnels that are quite beautifully build
this is round beautiful brickwork in kind of a little labyrinth of tunnels.
So we spent… yes, two weeks shooting in these tunnels.
So we achieved some interesting visual elements with these tunnels.
It was really fun to backlight, you know…
Play the sound in these tunnels… play the maze of running through.
It was wonderful cos there… it was an amazing building.
There were these long, long tunnels which would go up.... and then down
into nothing, into nowhere, just into darkness
And a couple of shots… we've done long shots of us walking just walking, walking,
walking toward the camera. which looked amazing.
But it was just freezing.
I remember one time I meant to be on Fire which is very hot
and I'm talking down into a hole to Stanly.
And all I can see is my breath coming out all the time.
And they say: "Can you see it on the camera?" - "Yeah, we can…"
Well, you can stay down there if you want to, Stanley, but I have to tell you
that They never come up here.
So we had a big heater down in the hole
and a fen blowing it up so that I didn't have a cold breath
Crazy.
We'll be at hell soon and we'll be in heaven on Monday mourning.
- I feel exactly the same way. - You do?
Yeah. Lily, I wanna water your garden.
Will you let me do that?
I wanna water your garden…
We shot in the botanical gardens in central Berlin
which is an old Jules Verne's architecture of glass and steal structure
Inside - house with these beautiful lush tropical plants and flowers.
We were really relieved when we moved into the botanical gardens.
It was: oh, god… it's all the way up to ten degrees Celsius here so this is great…
And it was a lovely location. But unfortunately we were thereonly for a week.
I'm enjoying this so much I'm starting to think I must be a little bit autistic...
Now.. I gotta say either I'm autistic or my character is autistic whatever...
but being buried in the earth for my character was...
I think that's close to a nice erotic sensation
that Kai has ever... kind of...experienced...
And except for the misadventures of that episode
I think he happily would've stay there,
seriously and very very very determinately
trying to decompose there, under the earth.
Why are you buried in the dirt?
It is the natural way of all dead things.
It was like guerilla filming you know… it really was… not the animals, the people.
Because it was a tiny unit that we had and we'd go out and set up camp, wherever we happened to be.
It's an amazing countryside, it's so completely different from anything
that you'll see here in North America, just completely different.
He won't get out for weeks!
It was excellent ideal situation.
The countryside was beautiful, the crew was wonderful, the food was great. I mean, everything!
There wasn't a single thing that I can say: that was wrong
or in any way off-putting about shooting in Africa.
You know, these silly little pink and blue and green umbrellas
to walk around and keeping a shade… Very strange…
Brian: "I say, Rudolph?" Nigel: "Yes, darling?"
Brian: "Are you enjoying the vacation so far?" Nigel: "Awfully, awfully good
I must admit it's awfully nice to be able to get away to these latitudes.
Brian: "Oh these latitudes, yes indeed, yes indeed...
I find that the salt breeze does the skin a remarkable amount of good."
Nigel: "Oh yes, very!" Brian: "My complexion has cleared up remarkably."
Nigel: "Remarkably!"
We were on the beach in Namibia and it was windy as hell
it was really-really windy.
I have to turn around...
I will see you later, Stanley Tweedle!
They set up a green screen behind me.
At this photograph that we have you can see the cameras here and the green screen is there
it's bellowed out like that and there four guys with ropes holding it down.
And I'm standing there like this in front of it blowing in the wind!
And it's just like WOW!
I was standing on the beach and I said to Paul:
"So lets wait for the waves to die down a bit, ok?"
He said: "No, those are the small waves". You know…
and I said "Oh, God…"
This is the calm water...
Oh boy, that's the calm water.
…it's get windy and waves get big…
These aren't big waves?
No, these are tiny.
And the water was about eight degrees Celsius. That's a cold shower!
I had a wet suit underneath my costume. But getting into the waves… I don't swim!
At one point I…one of the waves picked me up and washed me right into the camera.
Right into the tripod. I ended up with my head between the legs of the tripod.
That was pretty strange...
The payoff is when you finally see those images, those locations on tape…
when you see the finished product and you can say:
"well, guess it was worth it that after all."
It's amazing to me because… these three actors -
Michael and Xenia and Brian - are very talented,
really know their stuff… put up with a lot of… abuse!
Because it's a tough thing making the show, it's very physically demanding.
There's a lot of stuff where they're acting in front of green screens, and there are long hours...
and they are the most good-humoured, patient and talented people.
Jesus Christ… I almost..
I was just wondering…
what * was I wondering? What was the * line?
Subtitle: Lunatic, Bars, Helen