From: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.prisoner
Subject: MCGOOHAN INTERVIEW    1/9
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


 WARNER TROYER INTERVIEWS PATRICK MCGOOHAN FOR THE ONTARIO EDUCATIONAL
                 COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY, MARCH 1977.

 Troyer: I guess the first thing I should tell you is that your guest
           and mine is Patrick McGoohan. Mr. McGoohan, known familiarly
           to his friends as Mo. 6, was the creative force behind, the
           executive producer of, and in several cases the script
           writer of a series called "The Prisoner," which appeared on
           television a number of times, not least notably on this
           network. Mr. McGoohan has come here from Los Angeles to meet
           you and talk to you and to me. And to meet a group of
           Prisoner, ah, club groupies, some of them from Seneca
           College which has been operating a course based on the
           series, some of them from OECA, and some other people, and
           we're going to talk about "The Prisoner" and I suppose the
           obvious first question is: Where the hell did that idea come
           from? How'd you get started?

 McGoohan: Boredom, was how it started.

 Troyer: Just that? With T.V.? With society, or you?

 McGoohan: With T.V. initially. I was doing a series that was called
           "Secret Agent." Was it called that here, or "Danger Man"? It
           had two titles.

 Troyer: "Danger Man."

 McGoohan: And I'd made 54 of those and I thought that was an adequate
           amount. So I went to the gentleman, Lew Grade, who was the
           financier, and said that I'd like to cease making "Secret
           Agent" and do something else. So he didn't like that idea.
           He'd prefer that I'd gone on forever doing it. But anyway, I
           said I was going to quit. So he said, "What's the idea?"
           This is on the telephone initially, so I met him on a
           Saturday morning at 7 o'clock. That was always the time we
           had our discussions, and he said "Alright, what's the idea?"
           and I had a whole format prepared of this "Prisoner" thing
           which initially came to me on one of the locations on
           "Secret Agent" when we went to this place called
           Portmeirion, where a great deal of it was shot, and I
           thought it was an extraordinary place, architecturally and
           atmospherewise, and should be used for something and that
           was two years before the concept came to me. So I prepared
           it and went in to see Lew Grade. I had photographs of the
           Village or whatever and a format and he said, "I don't want
           to read the format," because he says he doesn't read
           formats, he says he can't read apart from accounts, and he
           sort of said, "Well, what's it about? Tell me." So I talked
           for ten minutes and he stopped me and said, "I don't
           understand one word you're talking about, but how much is it
           going to be?" So I had a budget with me, oddly enough, and I
           told him how much and he says, "When can you start?" I said
           Monday, on scripts. And he says, "The money'll be in your
           company's account on Monday morning." Which it was, and
           that's how we started. Behind it, of course, was a certain
           impatience with the numerology of society and the way we're
           being made into ciphers, so there was something else behind
           it.

 Troyer: Was that a personal thing in terms of your reaction to society
           or was it more of an observation? Do you feel you're
           being...

 McGoohan: I think we're progressing too fast. I think that we should
           pull back and consolidate the things that we've discovered.

 Troyer: You didn't initially want to do 17 films?

 McGoohan: No, seven, as a serial as opposed to a series. I thought the
           concept of the thing would sustain for only 7, but then Lew
           Grade wanted to make his sale to CBS, I believe (first ran
           it in the States) and he said he couldn't make a deal unless
           he had more, and he wanted 26, and I couldn't conceive of 26
           stories, because it would be spreading it very thin, but we
           did manage, over a week-end, with my writers, to cook up ten
           more outlines, and eventually we did 17, but it should be 7.

 Troyer: But you did ten in two days? Ten outlines?

 McGoohan: Over a week-end, yes. Outlines, I mean a sort of...7 or 8
           page format. (Troyer chuckles.)

 Troyer: How would you have described or explained the concept of the
           series to those writers, the first time you sat down with
           them, what did you tell them?

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