On location, with the Heroes team,
Jack Coleman, who plays the enigmatic mr. Bennet,
has left behind the home comforts of Odessa, Texas,
for the urban streets of downtown L.A..
Heroes Unmasked takes a closer look at the man behind the glasses.
Transcript: Tonone
Synch: Nems
::Italian Subs Addicted:: [www.italiansubs.net]
Good guy or bad guy? Mr. Bennet is keeping everyone guessing.
Hello.
- We call him H.R.G.. - H.R.G..
One of my favourite characters on the show is H.R.G..
Hey, baby!
You know his family is the Bennets, but you never know his first name.
So we've always known him as H.R.G.,
which stands for Horn Rimmed Glasses.
And so these are his horn rimmed glasses,
and I've got, like, six pairs, then we have a stunt pair,
you know, for his stuntman or his double.
The glasses do half the work,
because there's something about it that's just a little bit sinister.
Just about the look of it that,
you know, just like putting them on you're instantly, you know, mysterious,
that really does half the work of the character.
In the beginning, in the pilot,
the horn rimmed glasses were left behind and so they became a big clue
of who this character was, so the glasses were an important prop
which became an important character piece.
There is nothing particularly identifiable about him, except these glasses.
And the glasses I think were very much sort of
a tip of the hat to Max Von Sydow in "Three days of the Condor",
but also to establish this man as someone anachronistic,
kind of a '50s cold warrior,
someone who nearly doesn't fit in, just by the look of him.
I thought of him from the old movies from the '40,
as this sort of mystery man, because thruthfully,
you know, we're always sort of going back and forth
trying to figure out "Is he good? Is he bad? Is he good? Is he bad?".
He is equal parts horrible...
Hollow him out.
Go deep.
Take everything.
Clean him out.
and equal parts loving father.
Claire Belle!
I love you, Claire.
We wanted to keep the audience very uneasy about that character.
Probably lots of Sureshes where you're from, like Smith... or Anderson.
We wanted to really play with the audience's mind
about what they felt about him at any given point.
You know, I even wanted to meet your biological parents?
- Yeah? - I just got off the phone with them.
Turns out they want to meet you too.
From his point of view, and with the training that he's had with The Company,
he wants to get to a place where Claire stops asking questions.
And rather that not dealing with it, he sets up this whole sharade,
because that's what he's good at and those are the kind of resources he has.
But it's a really creepy thing to do.
I think that went pretty well.
Yeah.
There's anything else you need?
I'll keep you posted.
Nobody's either all good or all bad,
and his is the character where he have seen that the most.
He does some incredible brutal things to save his daughter.
Claire is a very special girl.
It's confusing what's happening to her
and she doesn't need some punk making her life any more difficult.
Do you understand me?
But there's also something twistedly touching about it.
This girl, the one you've painted here, and here, and there... she's my daughter.
We even see mr. Bennet so desperate for Isaac to do a new painting,
'cause he's looking out for the life of her own daughter,
that he actually gives him heroin.
"Here you go, you know, shoot up again: I need something. I need a drawing."
This is my daughter we're talking about. I'm begging you.
And so you feel for him, trying to prevent his daughter's murder
and then you look at the means by which he tries to accomplish it
and it's all that, you know, both sides of the fence,
as he always tries to have it both ways.
He's worked so hard to get clean. You can't ask him to do this.
I'm not going to ask him. You are.
He really doesn't know how to protect her from Sylar.
Oh, my God.
Sylar wants to do that to my Claire.
I will do whatever I have to do to stop him.
So he sets up the whole thing where he grounds Claire
and doesn't let her go to the Homecoming even though she's the Homecoming Queen.
What?! That is so unfair!
- Uh, hon? - I've already made up my mind.
You're being completely unreasonable.
Do you have any idea what it means to me to miss this game?
- You'll survive. - But dad...!
No. Listen and you listen good.
As long as you live under my roof you will do as I say.
You may not agree, but don't think for a moment that that matters.
You are not leaving this house tonight.
And Sandra, his wife, says: "She's gonna hate you for a long time over this one".
Let's hope so.
So, again, there's the dark side of him doing something nasty but the idea you can,
an audience can get behind, is trying to save her daughter.
Find Sylar. Take him out.
Claire!
But Claire can't always count on paternal protection.
And while Sylar lurks in the shadows,
her ability to regenerate helps her keep her head.
Obviously we can't really cave in a young teenager's face,
so we have to do that with animatronic and that's why this one was built.
To do just that.
So we've got a series of cables and pullies,
we actually started out in the negative position where she's totally destroyed,
she turns to camera in this position and you see her face go back to normal Claire.
And the the CG removed the blood and dissolved the wounds fusing back together.
- You're lucky to be alive. - It's not luck, dad.
You can't tell really whether or not he loves her or whether he's just
maintaining this relationship to study her,
to deliver her to The Company, you know, you don't really know,
it's a very creepy, uneasy kind of homelife.
And that homelife is straight out of the american dream.
The model housewife. The hard-working husband.
Their two kids and the family pet.
Living in their perfect suburban home.
The Bennet house was supposed to be kind of just a Mick Mansion,
it was supposed to be false reality.
It always was warm and sunny in the Bennet house.
There was always a bright, sunny light coming through the window,
the lights inside were always on.
It had a nice kind of cool, easy quality to the paint in the house.
It was large. There was room for the entire family to walk around.
And so it was supposed to be that false reality.
You know, deep down we knew that there were things going on we didn't know about H.R.G..
But we didn't want to give it away. In a sense,
it didn't have to be no harsh, it didn't have to be dark,
to match the H.R.G. character.
I based the Bennet house on that Mick Mansion idea of the perfect american family.
They're nice people, they're working hard, they're doing everything right
and their neighbors are exactly the same,
like everyone in the streets is pretty much the same.
And only you have everything so safe and perfect and controlled
and that's what those house are: very, very controlled.
And that's where all the darkness and uneasiness shows itself better, I suppose.
I don't know if this is a typical family,
you know, I guess it depends on your family.
Sandra, his wife, does not ask a lot of question,
is just not pry, she understands this is work,
he does his work, he's a paper salesman, there's a lot of travel involved,
so he has a pretty wide berth
as to how he can operate within the family dynamic.
Can I get anybody anything to drink?
Lemonade? Just made a pitcher from scratch.
We have sodas, ice tea, we have cup cakes, don't we, Claire?
Just made 'em last night, the two of us, sort of a thing we do.
Sandra Bennet started out as a dog loving,
dog showing, obsessed dog owner.
Will you two help me out to the car?
Your dad left on the sprinkler last night
and I don't want to get his paws all soggy.
Any animals that are used go through me,
so that includes Mr. Muggles, the Bennets' dog,
and the producers chose Mr. Muggles and he's a Toy Pomeranian.
Are you gonna interview the dog?
You should do that! He doesn't get near his due.
Dee-dee wants to breed Mr. Muggles with her poodle.
Uhh, a poodle... for God's sake!
They call it a Pom-a-Poo, or a Pooranian.
Mr Muggles doesn't want anything to do with a breed that can ruin his name.
"No, I don't", says it Mr. Muggles.
His real name is Lestat and he weights 4-pounds, he's pretty grave.
Thought Mr. Muggles doesn't love poodles, anyway.
Not after what happened at the dog park.
I thought that big dog would chew your hand off.
Mr. Muggles was doing a movie,
so he couldn't be on Heroes for a week and we had a decoy.
I don't remember the other one's name, anyway,
everybody could tell. Everybody was, like, "He's a fake!".
Mr. Muggles is quite like having a little actor,
he always sits his marks and noses his lines.
Another character that has no trouble remembering his lines
is Mr. Bennet's ever present right-hand man, the silent Haitian.
In the early part, you don't know nothing about the Haitian.
You don't know who he's working for, why he's doing what he's doing
and what direction he's going at all, so he's very interesting,
he's very mysterious.
For mr. Bennet I'm a must, protecting from everybody else,
so the other guys that have powers cannot get to him because I can protect him.
So, I'm absolutely necessary for him.
Trying to hear my thoughts, Matt?
Not with my friend here. He's special, too.
Also, he can erase memories, whether it's one minute of somebody's life
or the whole life, which is very scary.
It's a very useful tool, because you can
experiment on people and they'll never be the wiser.
And Jimmy is brilliant in the role,
'cause he just got one of the roles' greatest faces and
all he has to do is stand there, look at somebody, and he can be really chilling.
That was entirely unnecessary.
You might as well go ahead and shoot, now.
'Cause if I find you, I will kill you.
Not likely, mr. Petrelli.
I've seen your faces.
That, I'm afraid won't be a problem.
With H.R.G. and the Haitian on the hunt for the specials,
Nathan's escape gave the visual effects team a chance to work their magic.
There's only two ways you can fly someone:
hanging from wires or making it with a 3D stunt double, if you will.
And what I mean by that is, it's 3D animation.
We deal with a full cyber scan: they stand there
and basically just (???)
and the computer basically generates a 3D model of the actor.
And then we have Adrian against green-screen run through his motions and jump.
When you're actually filming it you feel kinda foolish,
because you're standing there and, you know, "I'm gonna fly away!".
You jump, but literally, I mean, it's like... you know.
So they cut when you're coming down and carry you on,
but you feel like an idiot when you're actually doing it.
We have to transition between the real Adrian to the 3D Adrian.
We blend over several frames, one to the other, and it works succesfully.
And the special effects boys faced an even bigger challenge
when Nathan came back down to Earth.
To pull that off it's the same deal, just
the fact that Nathan flying coming in is 3D Nathan.
As soon as he touched the ground it was all us.
The effect was, for him, to travel along the ground and then skid to a stop.
What we did was bury a trough in the ground with a subfloor,
so the trolley was actually on a dry surface
and he basically stood on a skateboard with this big air-nosel in front of him,
so that when he travel we kick up the dust.
It was attached to a cable that ran out to the front of this trench,
through a tube, we had some very brutally strong grip guys.
On "Three! Two! One! Go!" they would run
and I just go from a stand still to whatever speed they're gonna reach.
He suggested to me, you know, "Let's go a little faster,
I can surf. It's ok. Let's go for it."
So we rumped it up and, sure enough, he fell off the board.
The skateboard went, but Adrian never went anywhere.
His feet went straight up, he went straight down.
And then finally we got that they started it a little bit slower.
And I remember skidding and saying "Ouch!", you know, "My feet kinda hurt!"
and the director looked at me: "What are you doing? Looks kinda foolish."
And I said: "Well, I don't have super feet".
Marker!
For the cast Heroes is proving an unforgettable experience.
I think all the actors are having an amazing time
watching not only their own storylines, but everybody else's storyline.
And then seeing how the lives begin to intersect and
I've actually never been on a show where the scripts were so anticipated.
I get this.
You will discover a lot more about him.
There's a lot more going on and there are of course other bad guys,
some of whom are badder.
Just stay where you are, I'll be right there.
I love you, Claire. You're gonna be ok.
Ok.
No!
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