From: mike.dickson@almac.co.uk (Mike Dickson)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.prisoner
Subject: MCGOOHAN INTERVIEW    5/9
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

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 McGoohan: And the style was also clearly laid out and the designs of
           the sets, those were all clearly laid out from the inception
           of it. There was no accident in that area, you know, the
           blazers, and the numbers and all that stuff, and the stupid
           little bicycles and all that.

 Troyer: Was it a series, do you think, which had an appeal, a kind of
           narrow-gauge appeal, chiefly to people in the upper twenty
           percent of the intelligence quotient bracket or whatever?

 McGoohan: Mostly intelligent people...such as we have here?

 Troyer: Yeah, I meant that.

 McGoohan: You see, one of the t'ings that is frustrating about making
           a piece of entertainment is trying to make it appeal to
           everybody. I think this is fatal. I don't think you can do
           that. It's done a great deal, you know. We have our horror
           movies and we have our science-fiction things. The best
           works are those that say...somebody says, "We want to do
           something this way," and do it, not because they're aiming
           at a particular audience. They're doing it because it's a
           story they think is important, and is a statement that they
           want to make. And they do it and then whoever want to watch
           it, that's their privilege. I mean, the painting in an art
           gallery, you know, you have a choice whether you go and look
           at this one or that one or the other one. You have a choice
           not even to go in.

 Second Boy: One analogy that comes up, from literature, is with epic
           poetry, or with an epic. And "The Prisoner" seems to have
           all the qualities that belong to an epic, including the kind
           of structure which you ended up with: the thing that began
           with seven parts and ended with seventeen.

 McGoohan: Yeah.

 Second Boy: There have been a few peculiar epic works which have done
           that sort of thing or been on the way, Spencer's "Faerie
           Queene" for instance, or Tennyson's "Idylls of the Kings"
           ..."Idylls of the King" which became a twelve-part non-epic
           with all the properties and qualities of an epic. I have one
           question based on that perhaps peculiar observation, and
           that is: one of the figures in some of the epics, like the
           "Faerie Queene," is the dwarf who accompanies Una and the
           Redcrosse Knight where the idea for Angelo Muscat come from?

 McGoohan: Oh. I don't know. Where did that come from?

 Second Boy: Is there a literary image...

 McGoohan: No, I certainly never thought of one. There were all sorts
           of interpretations to little Angelo. He's a very sweet man
           and...a very, very sweet man. It's this sort of...there
           should be something also--sinister about him. I mean, there
           was always the possibility that he might be No. 1. See, I
           don't know if anyone...do you pick up that at all? I don't
           know, but that...because he was such a good friend and
           always by the side of No. 6, that there was...should have
           been an implication that perhaps he was a sinister
           character, and particularly in the last episode, when he
           goes...he's the one that goes out with No. 6 and they go
           into the...Maybe he's over No. 1 somewhere...you know they
           have so...they have stars, superstars, and what are they
           gonna call them next? Comets? So what...maybe he's a comet
           or something, little...little Angelo. So there should be
           that remaining sinister thing about it.

 Second Boy: I was just curious, because there were so many images of
           all...of all the figures that are in the series that
           are...that have literary connections, whether of not they're
           deliberate...(McGoohan: Yeah.)...deliberately connected or
           not doesn't really matter, does it? There might be an
           element...

 McGoohan: No, I don't think...I don't think it does.

 Second Boy: No, doesn't matter at all.

 McGoohan: I don't think, in that sort of...I, I use the work
           "surrealistic" about it...thing, that one has to tie up all
           the loose ends. I think there's...that you...options are
           open for the beholder to interpret whichever way he likes.

 Third Boy: Mr. McGoohan, my question deals with religion.

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