SOUTHWEST AIRLINES MAG.

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <IMG SRC="33cbf060.jpg" border=0 width="191" height="262" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> SOUTHWEST AIRLINES MAG. </div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>        <IMG SRC="33ed6430.jpg" border=0 width="470" height="323" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>INTERVIEW ON SOUTHWEST AIRLINES MAG.   WITH LFN CAST</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>OUT OF THE SHADOWS </B></div> <div> <B>By Porter Anderson </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Under the ever-watchful gaze of Operations, played by ERG, TV's dark action drama LFN opens a fourth season. In this on-set visit with the members of the company, we shed light on some of the secrets behind the show's skintight tension. (*eg* that created a nice visual for me, how 'bout you?) </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Two operatives, a man and a woman, grapple on a mat. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Their fight is part aikido, part wrestling match. All business. This isn't a prelude to a kiss. One of them may die in this fight. The're surrounded by winking computer sensors, pulsing bars of light, looming semi-circular ghost-white combat cages. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>And as they struggle to take each other down, a man watches. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>He stands on a glowing, raised light-landing, in something like an airlock. He's backed by a gleaming elevator door. He's in an Armani-artful black shirt, the thinnest gray line etched into its fabric for contrast. Black tie. Charcoal jacket. Black trousers. His hands are folded. His expression is interested but serene, engaged but merciless. Sadly pleased. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>This man is Operations. He controls Section One, a deeply classified counter-terrorist installation in Europe. On the mat are Nikita and Michael, his two most sophisticated operatives. He has pitted them against each other - by reprogramming Nikita's emotions - because they loved each other. Romance made them vulnerable. It opened them to feelings of guilt when people had to be killed. It inspired concern for each other when their assignments required ruthless obedience to a lethal plan. Operations wants this love business out of the way. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>On-set for this reaction shot, ERG as Operations watches actors PW and RD assault each other as Nikita and Michael. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Never mind that it's a balmy, sunny day in suburban Toronto outside the warehouse in which this formidable cult hit is filmed. Inside this cavernous space, it's dark. And Glazer's icy expression freezes everyone watching - actors, designers, camera people, grips, stunt workers. That expression of implacable regret is an emblematic moment in this month's fourth-year premiere of USA Network's techno-drama LFN. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Even the most loyal of the show's Internet-avid viewers may have doubted that the program could recapture its skintight tension after 66 episodes. But when this scene comes to their screens, they'll face a gratifyingly cruel little reprimand for that lack of faith: The Glazer gaze once again has called LFN into awful session. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>What they won't get to see is the native New Yorker's wide grin just moments after the shot is ordered printed. Someone has fingered Glazer's lapel - with its inevitable POW pin - and complimented him on the fine threads his character always wears in the show. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Oh, yes," he shoots back with a deft tug at his tie. "We dress very well in Section." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>And the fans won't see Australian born Wilson, she of those hangdog-heavenly blonde looks, in a moment of indecision that Nikita would never suffer. When an assistant asks if she wants her stunt double to establish the fight shot with her black leather jacket on or off, Wilson is stuck for an answer. "On or off? On or off?" She swaggers back and forth, considering her option as she sizes up her reflection in a mirror. "Shoulders," she decides, tossing off the jacket so her sleeveless fight gear reveals those golden-shapely arms of hers. "I think we want shoulders." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Three seconds later. "Oh, now I don't know for sure. Wait a minute." She turns to a companion "Do you think we want shoulders?" </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>And the viewers won't get to see Quebecois actor Dupuis in Michael's trademark black Lycra stretch-wool pants plus Gaultier T-shirt - and fuzzy blue bathrobe. His French accent softer in this fourth season on an English-speaking show, Dupuis sits in his sparsely furnished off-set office. He muses on how "the future will belong to people who need the fewest things." And he reminisces about the trip he and his girlfriend, took last summer. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I've decided to get into sailing," he says. "But I don't know much about it. So we went down the eastern coast of the United States, and we learned about it and what kind of boat we might want to get." Charmingly unaware that he's now speaking in neither French nor English but bumper sticker-ese, Dupuis considers the long wait ahead before his next scene will be shot, and smiles wistfully: "I'd rather be sailing." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>What may be most striking about a day with the company of LFN is that these are intensely personable folks producing one of network television's most rigorously disturbing shows. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Their ends are just," as Wilson-as-Nikita says about Section One in the shows open. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"But their means are ruthless." </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>CLIMB OLYMPUS </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>LFN is touched by no angel. If your're not familiar with the show, you should know that Ally McBeal wouldn't survive to the first commercial. Neither Dharma, Greg, Will, nor Grace is here. Nikita & Michael this isn't. Friends - need not apply. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"As much as the fans always tell us they want to see M & N get together," says producer Jamie Paul Rock, "if we ever let that happen, the show is over." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>LFN is based on French writer-director Luc Besson's 1990 film - Nikita. It was released in 1991 in the US as LFN. The story, in both the film and the television series, centers on a young woman sentenced to prison and then moved to a secret government espionage agency. In the original film, Nikita is correctly convicted of killing policeman. In the TV show, she's made more sympathetic - she's framed in a street killing she didn't commit. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>But that's where most similarities between the film and television drama end. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A wicked thing happened to LFN on its way from France to the States, and from the beginning of the 1990's to this year's fin-de-siecle season: The show got smarter. And meaner. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Glazer as Operations runs a Section One that jets agents to the Middle East and North Africa, to Asia and Eastern Europe, to Latin America and all points west. The targets are terrorist cells, illegal weapons transfers, rogue states' commandos. Executive consultant Joel Surnow's writers - they're based in Los Angeles - always seem to be brushing off the dust of a real-world embassy bombing or a marketplace explosion. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Section One's agents are almost all conscripts from prison, carefully chosen, tested, trained for various tasks, and relentlessly monitored for obedience. They're given a choice. You work in and for Section One or you die. Being "canceled" is the term: the agency is too discreet to say "execution" - and too highly classified for an uncooperative operative to be allowed to live. Blood is rarely seen on the show. But casualties are. Aided by a fabulous array of computerization, digital communications, and micro-cameras, the people of Section are deployed on precisely timed forays, the guiding principle being that the deaths of several terrorists and agents - and innocent bystanders, if necessary - are better than attacks on whole populations. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>But here's where many potential viewers may have been fooled by commercials for the show: LFN isn't an action-adventure series. It's not for kids, no, but not only because of its violence. What makes it so distinctive is what happens back in Section One, where everyone, as Glazer notes, is so well-dressed. The program is a social thriller, a modern morality play. Section One is a latter-day Hermes garden, a tiny sealed culture in which life and death are managed by what Dupuis likes to say is the conflict of ideology and logic. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Some say the Nikita audience sees the show as an allegory for today's corporate politics in which another layer of executive force seems to darken each glass ceiling overhead. Indeed, Rock says Operations' conflict with his own "masters" - the mysterious super agency called Oversight - will have increasing importance this season. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I think we'll climb Olympus this year," he says, "and just see what's up there." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The discovery can only spark more power plays in the sensual twilight in which these characters jockey for information, advantage - and peace of mind. </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>LAST HOLDOUT AGAINST CHAOS </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>That environment itself, the vast luminous underground complex of Section On, and the loftier reaches of Oversight, makes up one of the most expressive players in the show. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Up until now," says show designer Rocco Matteo as he watches director Jon Cassar glide by on in-line skates, "I've never had a chance to show viewers the real size of Section. We haven't been able to show viewers the scope of the place. This season we're doing it." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Matteo stands on a kind of runway that spans the length of this giant warehouse in Mississauga, Ontario, outside Toronto. Tall, wire-mesh cages hold physical-training equipment. Actors playing new inductees to Section One are in those cages working out. "The idea here," Matteo says as he walks across a camera-dolly track, "is that in the fourth year we're finally seeing how huge this place is. This end, where it's dark, is where the grunts are tried out. If they make it through basic training, they get up to the fight area where Nikita and Michael try to deck each other in the first episode. Beyond that are the upper reaches of Section, where the briefing-center hub and communications pod are located, overlooked by Operations' command bridge. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A specialist in period design, Matteo sees his Nikita work as a chance to develop "future style," as he calls it, often with only the subtlest touches. "You see a big screen here, a computer readout there," he says, "and you know the machine is somewhere just out of sight. The sort of clean, epic lines we use in the show I think are where we're going as a society. In the future, we'll embrace purity - as our last holdout against chaos." </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>WE WANT SHOULDERS </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Shoot! I'm sorry! I thought I had it turned down." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Wilson pulls her knit-capped head back out of the artificial manhole she's working in as her cell phone goes off on her rolling makeup table. The phone has rung just as a quick scene was being filmed. The shot will have to be redone. She's lying face-down, 15 feet above the warehouse floor on scaffolding that holds the wooden cylinder of the fake manhole being used in the shot. By placing the camera at the bottom of this cylinder, the in-line-skating director Cassar can shoot upward and make it appear we're looking up to see Nikita's face. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Within minutes of the scene's conclusion, it's clear what a credit to Velcro it is that Wilson can be kept in costume while discussing her pet project. Ask her how plans for her school are coming. With that, one of Sydney's most ravishing exports is pressing her face to within six inches of yours - that's no exaggeration - those wide eyes glaring, arms flying in enthusiastic debate. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Look, I'm talking about the Catskills or maybe Buffalo. I want the kids who come to my school to get out of the city, get out of their urban problems, out of what they live in. I want them to have pretty, nice rooms to be in. And doctors. And therapists, Holistic medicine only. Everybody will come - actors, other performers - they'll all come and work with these kids." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Wilson, 29 and signed to a five-year contract with LFN, off-camera is nothing like the understated, sulking siren she plays on the show. She's passionately committed to setting up what she describes as a Juilliard-style school for inner-city children. Not to teach them to be artists but to give them enough contact with practicing performers and thinkers that they can find their way out of the crime and poverty that often holds them back. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I have to make this happen. I have to." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>She and her brother were raised as the Australian equivalents to American Army brats, spending the first 10 years of her life based on Papua New Guinea. "I want to love, and be loved," she says, both defiant and imploring at once, "because I know what it is to be an outcast. We were raised in a native community. Rob and I were accepted there and treated as special because we were different. Then we moved back to Australia and the children wanted nothing go do with us. I was made to be an outcast there because I'd been raised in a native culture and therefore I was scary because I was different. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Childhood gave me this. I was different. I know what it's like. And I don't want what happened to me to happen anybody else." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>So while in Toronto - the show's shooting schedule runs to June - Wilson says she's contacting youth services organizations to see if whenever an actor friend visits from Los Angeles, as Sam Shepard did recently, she might take him or her into the city for a session with some underprivileged youngsters. "It's a way to start, until I can get the school going." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>For years, Wilson has spent her free moments with her LA based boyfriend and independent filmmaker Damian Harris, son of actor Richard Harris. Together they've made a film adaptation of David L. Lindsey's 1990 novel about serial killings, Mercy. Wilson costars with Ellen Barkin in the film which Wilson says she hopes will be released this spring. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>For now, she wrangles with Cassar and Rock about scripts, arguing for emotional honesty where she thinks it's being slighted. "All I ask for in this role or any other," she says, "is truth. I mean, some actors, you know, they set up their characters so they're low maintenance. That's not real acting." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I'll do whatever it takes to get truth into Nikita. Otherwise, none of this means a thing." </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>LIKE I LOOK AT BOND </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Faithful Nikita viewers enjoy the winks the show's producers share with them. They know, for example, that the first season's 22 episodes have one-word titles. The second season's episodes two word titles, and so on. They also can look at a show and tell you from what season it comes by the hairstyles. Last season Dupuis' long locks (*sob*) were cut off. This season, Wilson has the shortened hair. "I did it myself, too, in a hotel in Italy last summer," she says, "I just decided I'm sick of all this hair." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Glazer, on the other hand, rubs his hand through his crew cut as soon as a visitor enters his trailer on the set. "Look!" he beams triumphantly. "My own hair color is back this season." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>That bleached-white buzz cut of last season has been replaced by darker hair now, and a younger-looking Glazer knows male viewers look at his character, "like I look at Bond. The real James Bond, I mean - Sean Connery." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Once he's seated in the makeup trailer and has a moment to reflect, however, Glazer concedes he has a much more sobering personal connection to his role in LFN. </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>"I've become a 'Vietnam-phile,'" he says fascinated by stories of American POW's who, unlike Arizona Sen. John McCain and others, are thought by many never to have made it back out of the jungle. His own military service, Glazer says, was a routine stint in the Army. But in recent years, he's followed up on "leads, so many leads, people who contact me, give me someone to call, people once 'attached' to the CIA." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>What's triggering this input on the POW issue is an element of Glazer's character - he's scripted as a former Vietnam POW. In one episode, Operations talks of how he missed seeing his son grow up because he was imprisoned in Vietnam. And that POW lapel pin has become Glazer's connection with something searingly emotional, amid the sartorial cool of the master spy's wardrobe. When he tells the story of a legless Vietnam vet reunited with a former North Vietnamese soldier - helped by American vets to get the medical treatment he needed - the Glazer gaze goes misty. There's a human compassion here no operative in Section One could imagine. It drives this artist, whose actor-wife Brioni appeared with him in one episode, to take nothing for granted. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"What I worry about in the show," he says, "is that some moments are constantly repeated. You can go on automatic. Phone it in. This is our fourth year. We have to keep it alive, and that's not as easy in television as it is on stage. On stage, I can change things, make them different. Here . . . ." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Well, look, people love this show because they love the idea that they've got a female lead, handling herself like Nikita does. And people love to hate my character, Operations. And yet they want to be like him. Power. Control. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Hell, I wish I were like him." </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>FIRST WINDOW </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I was in Los Angeles last week for a charity benefit. Jon (Cassar) organized it. And we auctioned off visits here to the set of LFN." (*somehow I think they got their cities confused) Producer Rock sits at a picnic table, an incongruous bit of lawn furniture stationed outside the filming warehouse for the show. Inside, Matteo is overseeing the setup for another take. The size of his new, big-scale Section One has slowed down the shooting schedule. Timing is off. Nerves are showing. This scene must be shot before the crew finally knocks off around 10 or 11pm. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"To my amazement," Rock says, barely showing his impatience with the lagging shoot, "those two set visits went for $21,500 and $19,600. I mean, what does that tell you about the popularity of this show? They're paying that kind of money just to tour our set." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>He waits only a beat before smiling broadly and adding, "You, I'm only going to charge $10 today." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>It's Rock who's charged with keeping this company of actors, designers, and technicians challenged for another 22 hour-long episodes this year. "And that's not always easy, trying to make this story work, trying to make it look good for the money." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The money is reportedly about $1 million, just a bit less. Not a huge budget for a season of dramatic television, let alone TV as opulent as Matteo and costume designer Laurie Drew provide. That's one reason the show is filmed in Toronto. The US dollar will buy almost $1.45 in Canadian dollars, a helpful boost when your company numbers as many as 180 people from first shot through post-production. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I'm dependent on this gang I've assembled," says Rock - ironically a former producer with the SCTV comedy team. "This is a remarkable group of people on Nikita, fabulous creators. I take a lot of pride in the result. What we have here is something oh-so-dark, but we can't let get too dark." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Seemingly the only man in these studios not carrying three pagers and two cell phones, Rock ambles back into the shadows of Section One, where Matteo is tugging at the white mesh on the battle cages, making sure his design in the next shot - establishing the newly revealed size of Section One - will look perfect. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"You know that idea of how we're going to see more of Operations vs. Oversight this year" - that attempt to "climb Olympus" that Rock is talking about for the season - "it could even mean we get up above ground for the first time. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Oversight might even be able to see out. We could have the first window." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>After the original Section One in Paris was destroyed last year by its own operatives because its location had been exposed, the current Section One facility was put together in a city that viewers haven't identified yet. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Lyon, I think, if it's still in France," Matteo muses. "Or if in Germany, we'd have to decide between Berlin and Frankfurt. Right now, Frankfurt has the most interesting skyline in Europe." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Quiet, please!" the shot starts. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>That Glazer gaze is back in place, the POW pin shinning on the lapel. Wilson's newly shorn hair catches the same light. Dupuis hits the mat, hard, on his back. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Nikita no longer has any feelings for Michael," Matteo says, watching the fight. "This is the show in its pure state. She's the perfect operative. No emotion to get in the way. And that's how we start this year." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"No remorse." </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>      <IMG SRC="340e3150.gif" border=0 width="227" height="21" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="340e3150.gif" border=0 width="227" height="21" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ROY DUPUIS ARTICLES"><U><IMG SRC="3563d240.gif" border=0 width="61" height="36" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A>                                                            <A HREF="id72.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="National Post Interview with Roy Dupuis"><U><IMG SRC="3473c230.gif" border=0 width="60" height="35" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>