From: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.prisoner
Subject: MCGOOHAN INTERVIEW    3/9
Date: 23 Jan 93 18:27:00 GMT
Reply-To: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Organization: Almac BBS Ltd. +44 (0)324 665371

>>> Continued from previous message

 McGoohan: I'm very gratified because, when it came out originally, in
           England, there were a lot of haters of it. A love/hate
           relationship, whichever way you look at it. Already there
           was a small cult. Now there's a much bigger one over there.
           In fact, when the last episode came out in England, it had
           one of the largest viewing audiences, they tell me, ever
           over there, because everyone wanted to know who No. 1 was,
           because they thought it would be a "James Bond" type of No.
           1. When they did finally see it, there was a near-riot and I
           was going to be lynched. And I had to go into hiding in the
           mountains for two weeks, until things calmed down. That's
           really true!

 Troyer: They were angry?

 McGoohan: Oh, yeah! Walking around the streets, it was dangerous!

 Troyer: Why? Why were they angry?

 McGoohan: Because they thought they'd been cheated. Because it wasn't,
           you know, a "James Bond" No. 1 guy.

 Troyer: It was themselves.

 McGoohan: Yes, well, we'll get into that later, I think. (Knowing
           laughter from Troyer) Come back to that one, that's a very
           important one.

 Troyer: D'ya know what's really interesting, to me, is a number of my
           friends and colleagues who watched the entire series told
           me, after the last show, that they were angry because they
           hadn't found out who No. 1 was. That went by quickly and
           they refused to acknowledge it.

 McGoohan: That was deliberate. I forgot how many frames; I think there
           were 52 frames, or something, of the shot when they pulled
           off the monkey mask. And No. 1's a monkey and then No.1's
           himself. It was deliberate. I mean, I could have held it
           there for a good two minutes and put a subtitle on it
           saying, "It's him," you know. (All laugh.) But I thought I
           wasn't going to pander to a mentality so low that it
           couldn't perceive what I was trying to say, so you had to be
           a little quick to pick it up. That's all.

 Troyer: What is your response to all the analysis and all the
           philosophising and criticism of the series? People have
           tried to make *so* much of it and to find so many levels of
           meaning, to parse it in so many directions.

 McGoohan: I'm astonished! For instance, the beautiful presentation,
           the thing that you prepared for our good friends here, puts
           profounder meaning into many of the stories than I ever
           thought of.

 Troyer: (Chuckling) Or more pompous?

 McGoohan: (Automatically) Yeah. (Troyer chuckles again.) No! Oh, no,
           not at all. No, no. I think it's marvelous; I'm most
           gratified.

 Troyer: Some questions...over here...

 Girl: How did you feel about the response to "The Prisoner" when it
           was first shown in Britain?

 McGoohan: Delighted. I wanted to have controversy, argument, fights,
           discussions, people in anger waving first in my face saying,
           "How dare you? Why don't you do more 'Secret Agents' that we
           can understand?" I was delighted with that reaction. I think
           it's a very good one. That was the intention of the
           exercise.

 Troyer: Did you get any special kind of response from politicians,
           from bureaucrats, people in the kind of corporations we all
           know and hate?

 McGoohan: Not enough. I suppose they steered clear of it. But then, of
           course, they'd be the very ones that wouldn't understand it.

 Troyer: Uh-huh. Was there any one that was more fun for you than the
           other? Was it fun playing a Western?...a western hero for a
           few...(McGoohan: I, ah...) a few scenes?

 McGoohan: I don't know what concepts you good folks have put on that
           one, but the reason for that, I'll tell ya, is because I
           wanted to do a Western. I'd never done one. And they'd never
           made a Western in England, and we were short of a story.
           (All laugh.) So we cooked that one up (McGoohan chortles),
           we wrote it in four days and shot it, ya know...

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