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

 Troyer: Were they annoyed?

 McGoohan: No.

 Troyer: Did they decide it was untidy?

 McGoohan: No, they used to come along from time to time and say,
           "Who's No. 1?" you see. And I told them , "It's a secret"
           until I actually sat down and wrote it - and it was,
           actually; they didn't know until I handed out the script.

 Troyer: But were they disappointed by that...?

 McGoohan: No, they liked it. They said they always knew it was going
           to be him.

 Troyer: (laughs) Once you told them.

 McGoohan: Few of them did really. Nobody really knew. No.

 Troyer: Why the double mask? Why the monkey face?

 McGoohan: Oh, dear. Yeah, well, we're all supposed to come from these
           things, you know. It's the same with the penny farthing
           symbol bicycle thing. Progress. I don't think we've
           progressed much. But the monkey thing was, according to
           various theories extant today, that we all come from the
           original ape, so I just used that as a symbol, you know. The
           bestial thing and then the other bestial face behind it
           which was laughing, jeering and jabbering like a monkey.

 Eighth Boy: Mr. McGoohan, during the last episode, Fall Out, we see
           the Prisoner. He's smiling and laughing and dancing for the
           first time and yet later on the very last scene is exactly
           the some as the very first scene where he's driving off with
           his familiar stern face. My question is, has the Prisoner
           between the first and the last episode actually changed any?

 McGoohan: Ah, no, I think he's essentially the same. I think he got
           slightly exhilarated by the fact that he got out of this
           mythical place and felt like doing a little skip and a
           dance, and singing a bit, and felt very happy to be going
           home with his little buddy, the Butler, you know. And we
           never did a cut of him when that door opened. We just saw
           the door open and he went in. So, you never knew whether his
           exhilaration was lost when he saw that sinister door that
           was left like an unfinished symphony.

 Ninth Boy: In the final episode, does the Prisoner really consider
           becoming the leader of the Village?

 McGoohan: No. He does not. He just wants to get out and he uses a
           technique which he hadn't used before that, which was
           violence, which is sad, but he does; and that's how he gets
           out and then, of course, in the final episode, he goes back
           to his little apartment place and he has his little valet
           guy with him and the door opens on its own when he goes in
           the car. There you know it's gonna start over again because
           we continue to be Prisoners.

 Ninth Boy: And that leads to my last question, what would the Prisoner
           be likely to do with his newfound freedom?

 McGoohan: He hasn't got it. Which is the whole point. When that door
           opens on its own and there's no one being it, exactly the
           same as all the doors in the Village open, you know that
           somebody's waiting in there to start it all over again. He's
           got no freedom. Freedom is a myth. There's no final
           conclusion to it. Ah, and I was very fortunate to be able to
           do something as audacious as that with no final conclusion
           to it because people do want the word "THE END" put up
           there. Now the final two words for that thing should have
           been "THE BEGINNING".

 Troyer: This is kind of a banal question, I guess, but if you could
           leave one sentence or paragraph in the head of everyone who
           watched the Prisoner series, the whole series, one thing for
           them to carry around for awhile, when it was over, what
           would it be?

 McGoohan: Be seeing you.

 Troyer: Just that?...enigmatic to the end.

 McGoohan: Be seeing you. That means quite a lot.

 Troyer: It does indeed.

 McGoohan: Be seeing you. Yeah.
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