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Fencing in "We'll Always Have Paris"

WAMTNG

WAMTNG

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Does anyone have any behind-the-scenes info about Dan Kern's fencing scene with Patrick Stewart at the start of "We'll Always Have Paris"? The screenplay has this scene between Riker and Picard, which suggests that Kern was used because he could fence, while Jonathan Frakes presumably doesn't know a thing about swordplay. Because Stewart was in the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's a sure bet he knows the basics of fencing. My instinct is that they found an actor who could fence (Kern) and ran with it.

I'm working on the WAM for this episode at the moment (hence the questions about the writer's strike previously) but it won't run until much later in the year, so I have plenty of time to do the legwork.

If anyone has heard any scuttlebutt about this scene, please let me know!

PS: If you happen to know who the artist for the rented matte painting of Paris might have been, I would also love to know this!
 
Hmm... I note that Memory Alpha claims Denise Crosby's arm appears in this episode:
latest

I cannot find this shot anywhere in the show. Is this a mistake...?
 
I can't answer your questions, but thanks for asking. I haven't seen this episode for a long time, so I'll pull out the blu-ray. It was one of the better late-first-season episodes. It gave Picard more backstory. The Paris painting was gorgeous.
 
Sword-fighting is frequent in Shakespeare plays. Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and the Scottish Play all feature dueling scenes, and Twelfth Night requires some swordplay as well, if I remember right. Probably quite a few others that I'm not aware of.
 
Oddish said:
Sword-fighting is frequent in Shakespeare plays. Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and the Scottish Play all feature dueling scenes, and Twelfth Night requires some swordplay as well, if I remember right. Probably quite a few others that I'm not aware of.
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So we think every RSC actor by extension must also be a good fencer?

I know from working in the London theatre industry some ten years ago that fencing is not something the RSC requires its' members to learn or be skilled in, nor is it something that they train their members in.

Generally the duelling scenes in a Shakespeare production would be highly stylised, choreographed and rehearsed anyway. As far removed from real fencing or duelling as you can get.
 
Richard S. Ta said:
Why is it a sure bet?
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I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of theatre myself. But going back to Elizabethan times, performers at the Globe Theater including Shakespearean actors were expected to be able to perform stage combat. A number of commentators have written about how they would get Italian fencing masters to provide lessons to the actors. It was the lowbrow popular entertainment of the day; audiences enjoyed violent action scenes and so they were written into a lot of plays. Presumably that would carry on to modern-day Shakespearean stage productions to some degree, at least for the plays with sword fighting scenes, if such scenes are to be presented in a convincing manner.

Stewart once commented that, as the series progressed he tried to lighten the character by getting them to include romance and activities such as horse riding, mountaineering and fencing; presumably those were things that he was personally into.

Kor
 
I don't know what to say. In Elizabethan times plays were performed by candlelight and all the women parts were played by men. I don't see how the way plays were performed centuries ago has any bearing on anything.

What's more, even all that time ago stage-combat was highly stylised. They don't go at it like fighters in a modern-Star Wars light sabre battle. They couldn't (and still can't) because usually any theatre stage would be too enclosed to do so.

I've seen several RSC productions and worked for some time in a managerial capacity with actors who'd been involved in the RSC. No doubt some of them know how to fence. No doubt some of them don't. It's not a requirement of the RSC and it's not something they teach because generally, they don't teach. They are a theatre company, not an acting or stagecraft school.

My point is that it's not a 'sure bet' that an RSC actor knows anything about fencing at all. It's a stereotypical idea based on an assumption that any RSC actor is stage combat-trained because, what? Because Shakespeare somehow (reductively) means swordplay?

Actually very few roles in any given Shakespeare play require stage-combat skills. The RSC is more concerned with hiring people who can convincingly talk in iambic pentameter at length.
 
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Richard S. Ta said:
So we think every RSC actor by extension must also be a good fencer?
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Oh no, just that they are more likely to have picked up a foil than a soap opera actor. :biggrin:

Richard S. Ta said:
I know from working in the London theatre industry some ten years ago that fencing is not something the RSC requires its' members to learn or be skilled in, nor is it something that they train their members in.
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Cool - inside information on the RSC! Thanks. :)

In which case, the next place to investigate is John Boorman's Excalibur (1981), that Patrick Stewart had some fight scenes in... Thanks for the intel!
 
Doug Otte said:
I can't answer your questions, but thanks for asking. I haven't seen this episode for a long time, so I'll pull out the blu-ray. It was one of the better late-first-season episodes. It gave Picard more backstory. The Paris painting was gorgeous.
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I'm very fond of it... it has its issues (it is season one!) but it has Picard backstory, enjoyable sci-fi time hiccup nonsense, and a great matte painting. :)
 
Richard S. Ta said:
Actually very few roles in any given Shakespeare play require stage-combat skills. The RSC is more concerned with hiring people who can convincingly talk in iambic pentameter at length.
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Reading what you wrote here, I can see that you're spot on correct and I was wrong to jump to conclusions. There is the famous scenes in Romeo & Juliet, of course, and a lot of battle scenes in the histories, but the quintessential Shakespearean skill is delivery of the lines.

Thanks again for the assist!
 
Hmmm... so I've looked into William Hobbs, who was the fight co-ordinator for Excalibur, and he was a choreographer primarily, which suggests to me that Patrick Stewart probably didn't learn fencing skills on the set of this movie. Which suggests instead he might actually have fenced in his private life (he certainly rode horses). This might be tricky to investigate further...
 
Is it possible they had to pull Frakes out because he couldn’t physically do it? He had trouble even sitting due to a back injury.
 
Richard S. Ta said:
Is it possible they had to pull Frakes out because he couldn’t physically do it? He had trouble even sitting due to a back injury.
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If you're referring to the way Riker straddles chairs, Frakes debunked that. He didn't do it because of his back, he did it because it was the most hot dog thing he could think of for the character to do. He could sit just fine.
 
Tosk said:
If you're referring to the way Riker straddles chairs, Frakes debunked that. He didn't do it because of his back, he did it because it was the most hot dog thing he could think of for the character to do. He could sit just fine.
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Hot damn! Really? Well that’s a myth busted!

Edited -

https://www.dailystartreknews.com/r...-in-a-star-trek-first-contact-live-commentary

“I step over chairs like Riker if the chair back is below the danger zone. That started in 10 Forward because the chairs are so low. It was such a cocky, cowboy move. And no one stopped me.” - Jonathan Frakes

Frakes. What a legend. The danger zone.

Edit Edited -

But apparently Will Wheaton confirmed on Reddit that Frakes does have a back injury and that's why he sits like that... :shrug:

Apparently Frakes never addressed the issue, but I'm inclined to believe Frakes, cuz Riker does do a fair amount of running and fighting through TNG.
 
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Tosk said:
If you're referring to the way Riker straddles chairs, Frakes debunked that. He didn't do it because of his back, he did it because it was the most hot dog thing he could think of for the character to do. He could sit just fine.
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I'll say this - only a wiener wouldn't do it.

And now, I'm off to go take some proper chair-sitting lessons... :angel:
 
Richard S. Ta said:
Apparently Frakes never addressed the issue, but I'm inclined to believe Frakes, cuz Riker does do a fair amount of running and fighting through TNG.
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One episode later Ward Costello's Admiral Quinn is throwing him around a crew quarters and smashing him into a table. Although if you want to keep the rumour alive, perhaps that's how he threw out his back, as the episodes weren't necessarily shot in sequence! :lol:
 
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