Interview with Ted Raimi

by Ron Wilson
www.terrygoodkind.net

Ron: Hi Ted, this is Ron Wilson.

Ted: Yes, I heard you would be calling.

Ron: I appreciate you taking my call. I have a recording device, however cheap it is - part of it is from Radio Shack and part of it is from Best Buy. We are going to try and record this so we can make sure we get everything right and hopefully stream it from the internet - from Terry's websites.

First of all Terry wanted me to pass along the fact that he is a long-time fan and he wanted to give you his heartfelt thanks for appearing on the show.


Ted: What a cool thing - that is wild to hear. I have been a fan of his books for years. It is mutual.

Ron: He was really looking forward to you being on the show and hopes that at some point in time there is going to be more Ted Raimi on Legend of the Seeker.

Ted: Oh I hope so too. If he thought I was doing his books justice tell him it's Rob, honest to goodness. Rob will put me back on in 2 seconds. One phone call away and I am back on the show.

Ron: That answers one question - you have obviously read the books.

Ted: I have read the books, and they are fantastic! What Terry did was kind of redefine the fantasy genre. I am certainly no expert but I will certainly say I have read a great deal. Those books take those kinds of characters - those classical, mythological characters, at least mythological in the Western sense, and take them to a whole new and exciting level. I think that is what really attracted me to them. Generally speaking I am not a big fantasy mission guy because very few authors can transcend what J.R.R. Tolkien has done, very few. But I would put Terry Goodkind if not at least on par with Tolkien's character creation and hero journey then if not beyond it in many ways as well. He really blew that genre out and made it exciting.

Ron: Cool. I know he will be thrilled to hear that. I have known Terry for a good many years. He is one of my best friends. I agree his works have really reinvigorated a lot of the fantasy that is out there even though I understand from him he does not claim to write fantasy per se, and we certainly see that within the scope of his books - different themes that are dealt with within the pages of the books.

Ted: I would agree with that. It is good fiction, as all good fiction is in which character's are developed woven into stories that are intriguing. With Terry's, it could be if you were to flip that story around it could be about a young IBM executive's journey to the top of that ladder to that company.

Ron: Interesting you should mention that. Terry is working on a couple of new books and Sam's already expressed interest in his new works because their setting is in a contemporary world - actually our world and from what I have read they will be right down the alley of Ghost House, Renaissance, and actually they scared the socks off from me when I read the first few chapters.

Ted: I am sure. He is a surprising writer. I am sure that in one way Terry and I are very much alike in that when people hear our names they say 'oh yes, he is the guy who writes that' or 'he is the actor who acts in those movies'. That is a good and bad thing - it is a double-edged sword because on the one hand you simply work more. People go 'hey, get the guy who knows how to write the stuff with the sword and sorcery thing.' For me they say, 'get the guy who acts in all the sci-fi fantasy shows, we have another one for him.' So it is a good thing but in the end any good artist realizes that it is not the genre that makes the artist it is the craft, which is universal. If you can write fantasy you can probably write, if you can write fantasy well rather, you can write anything well - it is not that fantasy is easy it is merely that all the mechanics of writing just as all the mechanics of acting are the same - no matter the genre.

Ron: I picked up on the fact you said you are not a huge sci-fi fantasy buff per se, but looking over this long list of your filmography accomplishments you have had quite a few roles within that genre.

Ted: I didn't mean to say that I wasn't a sci-fi fantasy fan, I am a huge fan, what I meant to say is that I sometimes shy away from things called 'fantasy' because they so seldom deal with anything other than three or four rehashed characters say from like Tolkien. But this is what is so fantastic about Terry Goodkind's books, all of the Wizards First Rule Books are that all those characters - while fantasy inspired - they are so unique and so rich and so fun. I had a great time playing it. I was a little concerned when I heard that they (Sam and Rob) were going to be doing fantasy again. I thought 'I don't know how much more the genre can take, we brought it Xena - we brought in all the gods and goddesses and all that stuff.' Then Rob Tapert told me they were doing Terry Goodkind's book - I thought 'that is going to be fantastic!' I think the sci-fi version of some of Mr. Goodkind's books insofar as being varied and blowing the genre out are these other ones remind me of in a small way - a series called Gor - an old series back in the '70s. I think they died out in the early '80s. Those were fantastic books. They reminded me of his book only in terms of their characters being very gritty and there is a lot of sexuality in it and it is really interesting stuff.

Ron: Terrific. Sebastian - tell me how was it being in Joxer's old stomping grounds?

Ted: A little strange but mostly incredibly welcoming. I went back to the same set locations we had shot Xena in and met a lot of the same crew members that had worked on it. The sets were not dissimilar form Xena, the costumes were not dissimilar. It was a bit of a mind trip I'll tell you that!

Ron: Watching the first three episodes you could get a bit of a sense of some of that same setting as Herc and Xena. I am from Michigan myself in fact I am calling from Holland, Michigan right now.

Ted: I love Holland!

Ron: I love being out in the woods up north and up in the Upper Peninsula, it is phenomenal seeing the tundra and woods of New Zealand because it looks exactly like Northern Michigan.

Ted: Yes, it has that same wild feeling as the UP does - absolutely does. A kind of a mellow populace - by that I mean there are not an uptight people, generally speaking. They are very calm mannered and even-tempered and clear thinking. Very refreshing coming from a city like Los Angles to a city like Auckland which in itself is also urban but much different way.

Ron: I have never been there but I can only imagine it is quite a bit different. Terry's fans have been wild since hearing that Sam and Rob were tackling this project, of course, but not just over the fact that it was Sam and Rob, but there is the wild speculation who is Ted going to play and who is Bruce going to play and how in the hell are they going to get the car in there.

Ted: (laughs)That car is going to be tricky I think in this one.

Ron: If anyone could pull it off I think those guys could. Are there any possibilities of you playing any other guest staring roles other than Sebastian?

Ted: It is possible. In all of these movies I have been doing they have been very fond of disguising me and putting me in different parts at the same time. I have done that in many movies - the most recent one is "My Name is Bruce" , I play three different parts just for the hell of it. It's just really fun to do. So, who knows, maybe in Legend of the Seeker I will be disguised and play a couple more parts and the fans can figure it out. It is a hell of a lot of fun to do.

Ron: We have seen you play other parts within a role and I always find it immensely fun to be watching and all of a sudden say 'hey! That's Ted'.

Ted: I pop up in a lot of places - I am like a termite in many ways - you can try and gas me all you want but I will still come back next year no matter how lousy the reviews are.

Ron: We try not to listen to reviews and critics because unfortunately they are loud, they have a voice but most often I find, myself, that they really don't know what they are talking about.

Ted: No and ultimately the truth about most critics is they are not on par with the regular viewer. An artist maybe forgotten in 50 years but a critic will surely be forgotten the moment you stop reading the damn newspaper! That is one thing about the critic. You actually have to feel sympathy and not hate them because in the end I think in this country a field of letters - people used to be men of letters and critics were something you could be - it was part of any writers bag of credentials that he was a man of letters that he could criticize Chaucer and Shakespeare and all these guys. It was a thing of the 'learned class' to do that. Not a thing to do anymore and now critics are really just newspaper fodder. Since the internet has come around even that isn't important anymore. I really feel bad for critics - I used to hate them and now I just feel kinda bad for them.

Ron: I hear that, after watching this last election I feel that about these newspaper and TV reporters - I feel sorry for them. Back to Sebastian. He seemed like a nice enough scoundrel. We didn't see enough of him but it seems like there is some of Sebastian left on the cutting room floor? It was almost like, you could sense more, a palpable sense of there being more to the story of Sebastian. Certainly more creative background to the character. How did you feel about Sebastian?

Ted: Sebastian was a very very well drawn character. It was great to play him because he was the middle class representation of what happened under the D'Haran to all those lands. You could see -he is just your average guy trying to make ends meet- he is like your Joe Six Pack to quote Sarah Palin - he really was that. I didn't try to play him like a bitter guy - which you can't do anyway - I didn't try to play him the cartographer - I just played him as your average Joe I used to know.

Ron: You kind of picked up that he was a little exasperated with the situation at hand - he had to make a living, he wasn't happy about it but he had to make a living.

Ted: Yes, that's right. He is the guy who has fallen from a better job and is now in a little more of a crummy lifestyle. That is how I was playing him and he was easy to play like that. A lot of fun.

Ron: You did a phenomenal job - I think most everybody loved the process of Sebastian making the maps. To me it was a new bit of magic that you haven't seen within the Sword of Truth world but it was I think inventive and very ingenious - I thought it was well spelled out - you did a great job portraying that character.

Ted: Thanks. I appreciate that. A lot of that is the screenplay writer but most of the credit goes to Terry Goodkind because in those books what I really liked - what I took to that character was that the people that perform magic in the book are not oftentimes like all powerful, they are normal people who know magic. That is what was so appealing to me about all those books so when the part of Sebastian came around I just tried to do that. I am just going to do it within the books - it worked so well which was be a normal guy who happens to know magic. Don't play a magician who is trying to look normal. That is what was pretty cool. I thought it turned out quite well with that parameter.

Ron: I have to ask you this - I have been a long time fan of Sam and Rob, but back in Sea Quest - (laughs), here I am a 49 year old man and I am thinking I am going to admit to all these people who are going to be reading and listening to this online that I not only loyally watched but actually loved Sea Quest! I really enjoyed it, I was a huge fan of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea back when it was black and white - the first couple of version of a nifty submarine and when I found this was coming out - I can't miss this. I fell in love with the whole concept of life like that under water.

Ted: Alright! Yeah! Sea Quest has its fans. Thank you for the compliment. At the time it was the most expensive show made. In 1993, of course by today's standards it would be nothing but in 1993 our budget was 1.3 million dollars an episode which now is nothing. It is nothing for an hour of television - I think now they are making them for 3 and 4 - top rated sci-fi shows. But in those days that was a tremendous amount of money. Interestingly our ratings weren't bad - they weren't phenomenal on the third season but they weren't bad - they were very respectable. But the problem is that it was too much money for NBC to pony up so they had to drop her.

Ron: Another thing I have to ask you. is how could you have walked away from being the Bra King of Michigan! -I mean seriously, Ted, tell me how?

Ted: (laughs)The lingerie business is a good business and no one knows how to run it as well as my mother and father do. It was very tempting. I enjoyed the lingerie business. It doesn't change season to season as far as clothing and stock but in the end I wanted to be an actor more than I wanted to go into retail. But if I had gone into retail that would have been great - I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Ron: Well, I for one am glad that you chose the later.

Ted: Me too (laughs).

Ron: I am curious and have a list of questions we have gotten from the fans. You have had quite a few successful fantasy roles and certainly some that perhaps you weren't terribly fond of - Fountain Clowns!

Ted: There are a lot of weird things. About 95% of everything on my MVP page is accurate but there is always that 5% people will throw stuff up there and I have no idea of what they are and how they got up there.

Ron: Are there any roles that you are looking or edging toward or would like to play or haven't played yet?

Ted: No, I don't really think in terms of my favorite kind of parts - I sort of let acting world present itself to me as it goes on. I certainly think there is a quality of parts that I look for but I don't really look for a certain size parts or types of parts really - that is less interesting to me. It depends on how well it is written.

Ron: Anything you are passionate about?

Ted: Of course. I love - right now, what I really want to do is make television shows - more than anything else. I love to act but it is really right on par with producing for television. Right now I am pitching stuff around town - trying to get my show made which I am very passionate about right now. It is a teen drama that I wrote, that I love and I am trying to get that out now.

Ron: That is? Ted: You know (chuckles), I can't talk about it. It is a little mum's the word at the moment. Don't want to talk about it - don't want to taint the cake when it is happening.

Ron: No worries, I understand. May I ask you a couple of questions about growing up Raimi? Do you miss Michigan?

Ted: I miss Michigan terribly. All things being equal I am not a Hollywood kid. I miss Detroit, I miss Michigan - I wish the whole business was back there. I am doing everything I can to get jobs back there and set up shop in Detroit.

Ron: You know as a sidebar, Michigan has passed a new law giving up to 40% tax breaks to film companies. We have had some great success in the Holland area with several films, not to forget to mention Tic Tock Studios doing some films. It has some tremendous capabilities - like we have seen in different parts of the country can all be found right here in Michigan. I for one would love to see you come back to Michigan.

Ted: Me too. I love it there. I love all the people there in Michigan. I am a big fan. Everyone is kind of normal and nice - it is a vibe I have always liked a lot. You cannot beat Michigan falls and Michigan springs - there is nothing in the world like that. I am in California to work but now that I am getting to a point in my career where I can be anywhere to make my movies I am going to go back to Michigan as often as I can because that is the place I want to be.

Ron: That is awesome. Tell me what was it like at Halloween among the Raimi brothers? Ted: It was fun - we would always dress up as zombies and dead people and stuff. For me, anyway, Halloween is not always that interesting of a holiday and that is because like a lot of actors all year long our job is to get dressed up and play other people, wear make-up and put on costumes and things like that. And so if there is a holiday about it, it is really not much more than another day of work for us. What is fun is watching other people do it. People who do not normally get to put on costumes - it is great to watch those people because they go so crazy because it is the one night of the year that they can get out of their own selves. Actors it is much more dull experience to put on costumes. To tell you the truth during Halloween is just people watching.

Ron: We had some curiosity about if your parents had their hands full while you guys were growing up with the obvious horror and fantasy mind set with all three of the brothers.

Ted: No I don't think they really did. It was something that we wound up enjoying on our own. In Detroit back when I was a kid, all over the country before cable made its mark on sort of generalizing television, every single city at least mid and large ones had their own horror hosts on Saturday - sometimes they were Saturday night or Saturday afternoon but every local TV station in America had their own. Some of them were Zany Zombie or whatever they happened to be and ours in Detroit we had two in Detroit but one was called Sir Graves Ghastly - he was a guy on a local TV show that had the fangs and he was a vampire and he would host Saturday afternoon movies. He had a great voice - he was a local actor but when you are nine it was a huge deal - he would go [I]'turn off the lights, draw the sheets, prepare yourself for horror!'[/I] He was great I will never forget it. It was there that I watched very single classic horror movie ever made, I would never miss it, it was always a double feature. It was from 1:00 to 4:00 every Saturday that is what I would do - homework or no. That made a big impression on me but unfortunately those things are all gone now. Certainly you can watch a million more movies than you could in those days with cable and Netflix and iTunes and anything else you want to download movies on. It was cool because when The Creature from the Black Lagoon was on you had to be home, there was no VCR, you had to be there to watch it at that time.

Ron: Ho-yeah (chuckles) that is right No taping it for later viewing. Do you have any particular fond memories of growing up?

Ted: Other than the usual ones - no, I had a pretty normal actor life, which is I had an absolutely miserable high school experience (laughs).

Ron: With your personality that is hard to believe.

Ted Thank you for saying that it is very kind of you. Ron: I am actually about done, One more question was - what do you feel has been behind your success?

Ted: Good question. What has been behind my success is whenever I would go to see a movie or watch a TV show at some point, unless it is just mind bogglingly great, I would say 'if they would have just done this, if they could only have changed that or if the actor would have just done this I would have liked it a lot more.' Whenever I am acting I think about that and I think now is my chance to make it like I would have liked to have seen it. So, every time I act or think about acting I always think about how I would like to see it because a lot of us people are too. That sort of pushes me along. I guess it is really a spirit of creation of knowing how to change things and see them from an outside view point.

Ron: That is fantastic. Ted, I appreciate your talking time to chat with me and for the fans of Terry Goodkind.

Ted: Thank you for calling me and it is an honor to be on his website and talking to a fellow Michigander.

Ron: One last thing I have to leave you with. Last night as I was reading over some of your material that you have written and so on. I was reading aloud to my five year old son about how you like to get with M&Ms off the Kraft serving table on set before they are all gone! My son told me I have to offer you some M&Ms because you said they were usually gone. Well, last night and he comes downstairs with his loot from Halloween and says "he can have some of my M&Ms daddy..."

Ted: (chuckles) WOW! Tell him I said thanks for giving up the Halloween candy. That is a big deal at that age - that is like taking money out of your bank.

Ron: He doesn't even let me have any of it.

Ted: No, why would he. He earned that!

Ron: I would like to offer up an invite to visit Terry's websites. Do you ever go to the websites or are you smarter than that?

Ted: I surf around a great deal. I do like to go to websites that have some substance to them. So Terry's website, yes, I will certainly look at that one.

Ron: Great, so If you ever come back by Holland Michigan let me know we would love to have you her Come by I would love to take you out to dinner to and treat you to some great Sauerbraten at the Alpen Rose.

Ted: Thanks, I might do that. I drive around there a great deal. I had an old girlfriend that went to Hope College. I'd like to see the place again.

Ron: Ted my friend, it's been a pleasure.

Ted: Ron, good talking to you.
 

 

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