Actors Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern continue their deep connection to Samuel Beckett at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; Paula Fairfield uses unusual sources (animal sex!) for the dragon sounds in the fantasy series; the Cannes Film Festival kicks off this week with the usual glamour.
'Game of Thrones' sound designer uses unusual sources for the dragons
The visual effects designers in "Game of Thrones" get all the praise for making the dragons, the white walkers and other mythical creatures come to life. But there’s a factor without which any of those elements would be very believable, and when it’s done right, it goes largely unnoticed: sound design.
Paula Fairfield has been a sound designer on "Game of Thrones" since season three. The Frame's James Kim spoke with Fairfield about the real animals she uses to bring the dragons to life, including her dog and the sound of turtles having sex.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
A brief background on the dragons in "Game of Thrones":
The dragons were given to Khaleesi, who is this awesome queen of the desert. They are her super power. And Drogon, he's the main dragon and the most powerful of the three, but he also has the same name as her husband. She had a very beautiful husband in season one who essentially mythologically morphed into this dragon. So they have a very special relationship that I'm very tuned into because at times, it's not quite sexual in nature, but has the overtones of that.
Why Fairfield uses the sound of turtles having sex to add an intimacy to Drogon:
The first time they had to have an intimate emoting, it was the very first episode of season three where he's flying around and he comes down on the ship and lands, and [Khaleesi] pets him and he purrs. With the purr sounds, I hunted and hunted for just the right sound, and while I was trolling around, I found a sound of two giant tortoises having sex. I'm not kidding, and the moan from the male is what I took as the basis for the purring of young Drogon.
What's funny about it is that I remember watching people watch it and every time that sound would come up, people would giggle. It was just funny, it was just automatic because it has such a primal element still in there. Knowing that, as I proceeded through the seasons, I have actively looked for sounds of larger and larger animals having sex.
Fairfield uses sounds such as nose whistles from her dog.
I have a dog that I train in police dog work, and one of the most beautiful sounds from her is when she comes up and is very tender in my ear and there's a very tiny, barely audible nose whistle. It's one of the most beautiful sounds coming from a very powerful animal. So it's a sound that I started using ... last year. When Drogon shows up, you'll hear these beautiful nose whistles, they're from my dog. That's another sign of tenderness.
The personal connection Fairfield has to "Game of Thrones."
When I create, I have the trajectory of each scene. I find a story that I tell myself and often it is personal. I got called in on this show in the fall of 2012. My father had passed away from cancer at the end of July. At the end of January, my sister had passed away from cancer. They had been sick at the same time, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. It was one of the most difficult times of my life.
When I came back from my sister's memorial, I spent three weeks doing nothing but playing with dragons. I remember [thinking] this was one of the most beautiful jobs that I could have, and the best gift I could have ever been given to heal from such a horrendous thing. Every scene I have something that I inject that gives me something to follow, and that is the gift of "Game of Thrones." I always say that the dragons saved me.
"Game of Thrones" is currently in its sixth season on HBO.
Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern get up close and personal with Samuel Beckett
American actor Alan Mandell and Irish actor Barry McGovern play lead roles in Samuel Beckett's end-of-life drama, “Endgame. Mandell, 88, is also the play's director, and he told The Frame that memorizing "Endgame" is one of the hardest things he's ever done. It's a maze of language — rhythmic and deceptively cued.
The Irish avant-garde playwright Beckett is best known for writing the existentialist “Waiting for Godot” — and it was that play where the actors first worked together, in a 2012 staging at the Mark Taper Forum. But their relationship with Beckett’s work — and in Mandell's case, with Beckett himself — goes back much further.
Mandell was the co-founder of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, which launchedwith a performance of “Waiting for Godot" inside the prison. When Mandell and McGovern visited The Frame, host John Horn started by asking how Mandell’s relationship with one of the San Quentin inmates led to meeting and working with Beckett.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
ALAN MANDELL: It was in 1980 when I received a call from Rick Cluchey, a former inmate at San Quentin. We created the San Quentin Drama Workshop together. Rick called me one day and said that he'd been paroled. He was in Europe and was working with Beckett. I had sort of introduced him to the work of Beckett when we took "Waiting for Godot" to San Quentin. When he got out, he introduced me to Beckett [himself].
The first play I did [with Beckett] was "Endgame." I played Nagg. I was terrified. [Beckett] said, "We'll pull up two chairs. I'll do Nell and you do Nagg. So that was my first experience — like the second day that I'd met Beckett and we did the Nagg-Nell scene together.
And he clearly liked what he saw?
MANDELL: He liked what he heard. He patted me and said, "Oh, you're going to be very good." And I thought, My god, you can send me home now. It doesn't get any better than this.
Samuel Beckett insisted — and would get his lawyers on you if you varied — that his plays be mounted and performed exactly as written. There are exactly 379 pauses written into the script. Where do you find opportunity to interpret and expand upon the printed word?
BARRY McGOVERN: Oh, you find lots. I think there's great freedom in it. Every actor, every writer, every set designer is going to be different. There's an awful lot of nonsense talked about Beckett and Beckett's estate and every single word — Beckett changed things all the time. A lot of the pauses he cut out. The fact that there's 379 pauses — well done, counting! You must have a sad life! [Laughs]
The computer counts them for you!
McGOVERN: Alright, Okay! We're doing the version that [Beckett] did with Alan in 1980. That version that they did with the San Quentin Drama Workshop had a lot of cuts that Beckett made and some additions as well. So, you know, it was always a work in progress with Beckett. It's a bit of a nuisance sometimes because I've done this play a number of times, so I've had to get used to a new way of saying things or a new way of doing things or cutting something I've done before.
I want to go back to this idea that some actors and directors have about mounting Beckett. What is the role of a director when so much is prescribed?
MANDELL: The piece, his work, has a lot to do with music. And of course, he himself was a musician. He played piano and he was a mathematician. He said to me that "Endgame" was a chamber piece in eight movements, and so as far as pauses go — a pause is a musical beat, and silence is a musical rest. So if you understand anything about music then you'll know exactly what this piece is. So, you do the movements, the eight movements, that way.
The dialogue in this play is non linear.
MANDELL: The memorization of "Endgame" is, let me tell you, one of the hardest things I have ever done. I think, if you're under 80, you have a better chance of getting through it. At my age, 88, I want you to know it's really difficult. There are lines that have no connection to what has gone before. Learning it, there are times when I'm on stage and I'm thinking, Didn't I just say that? Did I do that sequence before?
Is the same true for you, Barry?
McGOVERN: No. It's much harder for [Mandell's character] Hamm. Eleven or 12 times during the play I say, "I leave you." Sometimes it's, "I leave you, I have things to do." That's three times. And there's about 10 or 11 times I say, "I leave you." So poor Alan has to know what comes next! It's the same cue, but it's like, Which line do I say now?
It's a mental exertion!
McGOVERN: Oh yes! So I think from my point of view — and every actor is different — when I was first learning this, I had to learn it to a certain extent the way you'd normally learn lines, but to another extent, look at it as poetry or music and see technically, How does this come?
"Endgame" is at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City through May 22.