"The thorn bird pays its life... for just one song... but the whole world stills to listen." "What does it mean, Father?" "One of the three or four best things ever done on American television." "Well, I just remember it was a lot of fun." "There's no question that I remember it very fondly." "But the romance of two people, that's forever." "I read The Thorn Birds, and I thought, this has got to be a miniseries." "It just has to be." "The first miniseries came out, Rich Man, Poor Man... and then shortly following it, I thought it was a short one... but then came Roots." "Like the beginning of television, the golden age of television... when everybody was so excited that you could make... wonderful novels into these shows." "And they could be five hours... or they could be 7 hours or they could be 12 hours or 30 hours." "It has to be a best-selling book, has to be of historical value... a sweeping story that people enjoy, spanning many generations." "I think there was huge hype about it, too." "It was a very popular book, so there was great awareness of it." "Colleen McCullough picked a great theme there." "Love that couldn´t be and all that sort of stuff." "We finished the screenplay... we then decided how we´re going to go about casting it." "I thought, "l´ve got to play Father Ralph." "I just have to play this character."" "We had four or five choices." "My wife suggested Richard Chamberlain." "I got the part, and I was totally thrilled." "As I remember in The Thorn Birds, there was a few scenes he did not like." "The director didn´t want to change them." "I was in a certain amount of conflict with the producers and the writer about Ralph." "I thought he was a stronger character than they thought he was." "But he is very crazed about the script being perfect." "A couple of scenes, the scene in the cane field for instance... I felt I didn't have enough ammunition in it." "I felt I wasn't nearly strong enough as Ralph." "So I tried to play Ralph my way by saying their words." "That was my challenge." "He´s the nicest man to work with in the world... but if he finds something he doesn´t like in the script... and you don´t change it, you will know about it." "And then we had to get the next character, which was Meggie." "Casting Meggie." "Very difficult." "I never visualized myself as Meggie." "The network looked at a lot of actresses and couldn´t find what they wanted." "If I was to visualize, I probably saw Sissy Spacek or someone playing Meggie." "We interviewed about 10 major actresses." "I guess I was of the right age, build, sound of voice or whatever... and I was one of the many actresses, I´m sure, that went up for the role." "Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Olivia Newton-John... we actually had interviews with all." "They all were willing to read for us to get the part." "This part was so wanted by actresses in the business." "I wasn´t really interested in doing it." "So we decided to screen test Jane Seymour and Rachel Ward." "We did Jane first, I believe, and she was wonderful." "I went in and I was quite halfhearted about it... and I went in and I did an audition." "Rachel Ward was not even as good at that moment as Jane Seymour... from an acting standpoint." "I obviously delivered a really bad performance." "I remember ringing my agent later and saying, "What do they think?" ""Are they giving me an offer because I´m sure they will."" "He said, "They´re not, they thought you were lousy." ""And they´re absolutely not giving you an offer."" "So I thought, "What do you mean?" "They´d be lucky to have me."" "What you needed for that part... was the most vulnerable person you could possibly find." "No matter how hard Jane Seymour tried, she´s so strong, her personality... that she cannot be that vulnerable." "And then when I did the scene with Rachel... we did seem to have this chemistry." "Rachel Ward looked like she was going to fall apart... the first time we met her in person." "And on the screen she had that same vulnerability." "Fortunately for me, they said, "Yes, okay."" "And so we picked Rachel Ward and she got the part of Meggie." "Jean Simmons played Fee, the mother." "Stan had done a show with Jean Simmons...." "Stan Margulies had done a show." "And Stan recommended Jean Simmons." "He thought she´d be perfect for the part." "I think she sort of felt that she´d been maybe in a position... that I was in many years ago." "For her, that she´d been in Hollywood and been very young... and been very inexperienced...." "l´m sure there was some empathy there... for the huge job that I had to do and the demands of the job." "Jean scared me a little bit when I was acting with her because she was so real." "She was amazingly honest, amazingly real." "And she was also wicked when it came to Bryan... ´cause she thought Bryan was a hot ass." "And she always encouraging me to nab him." "Every time he came into the scene... she would go, "Oh, God, he´s so wonderful." ""You should go for him."" "So she was a very bad influence." "Barbara Stanwyck was everything good you´ve ever heard about her." "We sent her the part, she loved it." "Totally, absolutely professional." "At the first read-through she knew all her lines." "She even knew all her looks." "First day on the set, she reads the part... and she gets furious." "Most of the actors memorize the day before... and then they do their lines." "She had done the whole part and had it all in her mind... and here we go changing 10 lines here and four lines here." "She´d say to the cameraman, "You´ll catch this look, won´t you?"" "This is the first read-through." ""You´ll catch that look."" "She knew everything she was going to do." "Bryan, perfect for the part." "You know, he was the real McCoy, too." "He was the only Australian on the set." "So everybody was like he was the real thing." "The only thing that I was slightly worried about was... I was the only Australian in it." "And the others were all, sort of, either putting on Australian accents... or weren´t even bothering." "I always rather liked Luke´s character." "It was a bit difficult playing that part of Meggie... because I thought he was a bit of all right, really." "He looked very good in his moleskins... and his little hat he had, and shearing his sheep." "I learned to shear sheep on that show." "Hardest thing I´ve ever done in my life." "Actors are not sheepshearers... so we had to have sheepshearers teach the actors how to do it." "It took me about three weeks to learn, going out every day... and within 30 seconds, you´re covered in sweat." "The actors found out it's much more delicate than they think it is." "And all of a sudden, one day, I remember, I´d sheared a sheep... and I had no sweat and I went, "Oh, my God. I know what I´m doing now."" "Sydney Penny was sensational as the young Meggie." "Sydney Penny was a beautiful woman." "She could act like you don´t believe it." "Really good, really convincing, I thought, as the young Meggie." "A lot of the casting, you just put people on a list... you discuss them and cast them." "And you don´t go to any great, long meetings about them." "You know who they are." "You talk about..." "Jean Simmons, Richard Kiley, that´s as solid acting as you can be." "You don´t have to audition them or anything." "Richard is another superb, absolutely superb actor." "He was one of those actors that you improve with... because so much is coming in your direction... that you get better yourself." "Piper Laurie was one of those I just told you about...." "Somebody put the name Piper Laurie on a piece of paper." ""We know the part, we know the actress..." ""that´s it, let´s see if we can get her."" "She was very funny, Piper Laurie, and very gregarious... and very much lifted my spirits... doing scenes with her." "Daryl Duke was a wonderful director." "He is a craggy Canadian." "Wonderful with actors, would give you many more takes... than the producers were happy with if you really felt you needed them." "He did a fantastic job." "Unbelievable." "I had one big beef with him." "He spent too much money." "I nearly fired him halfway through the show." "I think he shot... a somewhat more expensive production than the producers wanted." "He was way over budget." "And I spoke to Stan, "Maybe we ought to fire the son of a gun..." ""´cause he is going to drive us into bankruptcy here."" "And we decided he was doing such a great job, we couldn´t do it." "No way." "I think Daryl Duke as the director certainly had a lot to do... with making the film embraceable by people." "Obviously, we´d be doing it in Australia." "We sent Stan to Australia, he came back, and here´s what we found out." "Number one:" "All the great crews were all being taken over... by the Australian filmmakers." "So what was left crew-wise was so thin... and we needed a very important crew for this show." "Number two:" "Sheep ranches are about 100 miles from any living town." "So we had no place to stay, we had to drive 100 miles a day." "And in addition to that, there were certain rules in order to film in Australia:" "that you could only have two American actors in the picture." "Everybody else has to be Australian." "So with those three regulations, we just couldn´t do it there." "But we did find a place in Simi Valley, California... that looked exactly like it." "We built the entire sheep ranch." "We had the sheep ranch, Drogheda, the home... the shed where they did the sheep, other barns... areas for the horses, the entire thing was built." "The only thing we were missing was kangaroos... so we hired this kangaroo which comes with a trainer... and that day it was, like, 100 degrees out." "It was a real hot day and the kangaroo keeps jumping around, it falls over." "Passes out from the heat." "We have to bring the doctors, spray it with water, and everything." "And finally we had the poor kangaroo up and he´s finally in good shape... a little dehydrated, needed some water." "We had one kangaroo in the show." "One of the most famous scenes in The Thorn Birds... was when they finally, after seven hours... threw it together." "They´d been on an island, and they started the romance." "And having played all the scenes leading up to it... we were very anxious to have this consummation happen." "The famous beach scene, that´s right, when I run down the beach... and he runs after me and then we fall into the sand, and...." "The locations were chosen so beautifully." "This beach, for instance, is...." "l don´t think there´s a prettier beach in the world." "It's quite thrilling to be back here." "And it brings back the memories so freshly." "Especially the scene where Father Ralph chases Meggie on the beach... and she's saying no and he's saying yes." "And finally, they fall onto the sand and have a wonderful love scene." "We knew, of course, Rachel and I, how very important the scene was." "It was, in all senses... the climax of the film." "Rachel and I knew obviously how important this scene was." "Yeah, I remember it was rather cold and windy." "And I remember having to get in the water and I was wet." "It´s hard to have a romantic scene... with lights on you, a speaker mic in the half of your back." "You have to stand in a certain position with your neck in a certain way." "Your arm has to be exactly right and a microphone has to be above your nose." "It was all rather embarrassing as those scenes are, and awkward... and I think we all had wet clothes on and I was probably... as all actresses are, sort of thinking, "l look fat."" "We filmed the love scene and we came back." "I was looking at the rushes." "The network looked at the rushes." "It was awful." "The scene was just awful." "There´s not enough passion in it." "It just didn´t have enough passion." "It was a combination of extreme tension... in the sense that we knew we had to get it right... and the joy of actually doing the scene." "I remember it was all pretty silly, really... and we were sort of trying to make it as real and as passionate as we could." "But I told them, I said, "Richard, it did not work." ""There´s just not enough passion and not enough power in the scene." ""lt´s just a fabulous scene, and you can do it."" "And the next day he shot the scene and it was unbelievable." "It was such a wonderful kind of release to actually play that scene at long last." "I think it was TV Guide that called it... the most romantic love scene in television history." "Yeah, I loved doing that scene." "You know, it was probably as unromantic as it gets, really." "It's the illusion of Hollywood." "I remember the hideous scene that we had in that pond..." "at night and it was really cold." "Freezing cold." "The bloody rotten thing about doing night scenes in water... you´re forever getting in and out and you´re hating it." "You´re hating the fact you got to go back in a minute." "And he hadn´t kissed me yet." "And he was mad about me and I knew he wanted to kiss me... and he just really went for it." "In some of the love scenes, kissing went on a little longer than usual." "And Daryl Duke had to tell him to put his tongue in." "He said, "Cut." "A little too much tongue, Bryan."" "There was, however, one extraordinary experience." "I was playing Father Ralph as he was a little older... and he was ordaining his own son." "And I started in rehearsal to say...." "My son was prostrate on the floor in front of me...." "l can hardly talk about this." "And I started to say the lines... and I was blasted with some kind of energy." "I suddenly forgot the lines, I couldn´t go on... and even though I was a total novice... in terms of this kind of ceremony... the ceremony itself, the vestments, the church... the words had a terrific power intrinsic to them." "I think some of the first week was hell... ´cause I think I actually almost was fired in the first week." "Producers tend not to be very sensitive to actors´ needs." "There wasn´t a scene that someone wasn´t dying... or my brother was thrown in jail, or the house was burning down... or my father was being shot down by lightning, or my heart was being broken." "I think she was thrust into the deep end in some scenes." "The first scene with her was an extremely difficult night shot." "Very emotional." "Very, very difficult scene." "Her very first scene in the show." "I remember knowing that I hadn´t really done the scene very well." "And she had trouble with it." "Being incredibly emotional and available in the rehearsal." "And we had endless rehearsals for some reason." "And then they would shoot it." "By the time I had done the rehearsal, I was wrung out... and I hadn´t learned to really hold back on the rehearsals." "So by the time we came to shoot it I was, like, you know, gone." "The rumor went around that she was hard to work with... that she and I weren´t working well together and things like that." "Hollywood loves stories like that." "I just didn´t, sort of, have control over the technique really, at that point." "I was incredibly green." "Of course she had trouble with it." "How do you just walk in and play this big scene... when you haven't had any preparation at all?" "And there was some rumor going around... that they´d checked out Jane Seymour´s availability... to see if she was available to replace me." "So that story persisted for a while, but it wasn´t at all true." "After she got that scene under her belt... she was just fine and comfortable and wonderful." "I think maybe it´d have been in the early stuff... where she felt awkward or nervous... or didn´t feel she had the experience, but the other stuff worked great." "We had this scene where Father Ralph... comes to the big veranda at Drogheda in a huge rainstorm." "And there's nobody around." "And he's soaking wet and so he strips there on the veranda... thinking there's nobody around." "But I'm standing there totally naked and Stanwyck comes out." "She said a couple of lines and I said a couple of lines and she dried." "And she's never ever had any trouble with her lines ever before." "And there was a shocked pause on everybody´s part... and a moment of silence, and then she said:" ""l´m sorry, it´s just been so long since I´ve stood next to a naked man."" "And I thought that was a really great compliment." "I thought, "Oh, well, I turned her on a little bit." "That´s neat."" "This mate of mine playing one of the brothers on his horse said:" ""Here comes Rachel who´s playing Meggie. I´ll introduce you."" "We were sitting in the barn, the big barn that they made for the shearing... and he says he can read palms." "So I gave him my palm to read... and he looked at my palm and he said, "Really?"" "And I´m going, "What?"" "And he says, "l can see you´re going to have three children."" "I said, "How do you know I´m going to have three children?"" "He said, "´Cause I can see by the lines you have here."" "So turned out he wasn´t bullshitting, for once in his life... ´cause I did have three children." "I remember thinking, "Good-looking girl."" "I think she was really nice and all that... and then I didn't see her again until at a party." "We were knocking around a bit, yeah." "We go in the same car every now and again." "I was a young bloke and she was a good-looking girl on the set." "First job outside of Australia... and it was pretty obvious that I can have a nice romance here." "I don´t recall exactly when I twigged to the fact... that something was going on there." "You could see it in some of the scenes they had between them." "It was fun. I can´t really remember." "Everybody in the crew was aware of the romance... everybody´s living together, so everybody knows about it." "It´s hard to disguise... two magnificent people falling in love... when you're around them all the time." "You´re going to catch on sooner or later." "I basically went to Hollywood to find myself a husband... and I probably reckoned I´d found him." "Early on, I thought, "Let´s get hitched and get out of here."" "When I first met Rachel Ward, we went to the first press conference... she was so nervous and so shy." "She was holding my hand." "Whenever someone asked her a question, I'd feel a squeezing of my hand." "Now she meets Bryan Brown, she marries him." "I hadn´t really met too many Australians before I met Bryan." "So he was a novel fish." "They come back to LA to have a party... at a little restaurant, and I arrive at the party." ""Hey, David." All of a sudden she was like an Australian." "Bryan Brown turned her into an Australian." "The big thing that was the surprise was... that I met a girl that I ended up marrying." "That's the biggest change that can ever happen in your life." "I thought I was on one journey... of being an actor, working on jobs all over the world." "Suddenly that became secondary." "The next number of years would be about where our family life went." "The rest is history really." "I would say the fondest memory I have of filming The Thorn Birds... was the final scene with Barbara Stanwyck." "Stanwyck was so brilliant in that scene." "The Thorn Birds may be the last role she ever played, I´m not sure." "Certainly very near the last." "And to go out on that note of sublime acting... I think was really wonderful." "My favorite moment of The Thorn Birds... when I think of the music that Henry came up with... and I remember hearing it... and saying to Henry:" ""You´re a genius." "How did you think of this?" ""Where did that creative thing come up..." ""with this small instrument that makes..." ""this romantic Meggie´s theme?"" "Which became a big hit." "There´s no question that I remember it very fondly." "It was a very seminal time of my life." "I met Bryan on it, so I´m incredibly grateful that I was part of it... and that my life took the turns that it took as a result." "There´ll be no other film that I´ll ever be involved in... that´s changed my life like The Thorn Birds did." "Simple as that." "The Thorn Birds had enormous staying power." "The Thorn Birds played on the network three times... then it played in syndicated television four times." "Then it played on the network again." "When I saw the final production of The Thorn Birds... I was amazed at how good it was." "I think it´s one of the three or four best things ever done on American television." "Who do I contribute the success of The Thorn Birds?" "I do not believe any one person... makes a motion picture or a television show." "David Wolper, the producer, obviously put the right team around it... and we all probably did our bit." "I believe you have to have a script, somebody has to write it." "Somebody has to photograph it." "Somebody has to read the lines and act." "Somebody has to come up with the costume." "Somebody has to put it all together." "When a picture´s successful it´s the joint effort of a lot of people... that makes it a success." "When fans come up to talk to me, they invariably mention The Thorn Birds." "Because it´s one of the great love stories ever." "Well, I think the themes that it was exploring... are relevant today as they were yesterday." "Unrequited love and forbidden love." "If a great love story consists... of two very attractive people falling madly in love... and then throwing every obstacle you can think of in between them... to keep them apart and they fight to get together, they fight to love each other." "But the life just won´t let it happen." "People just eat that up." "That´s a great love story." "Long ago... I told you a story, a legend about a bird... that sings only when it dies." "The bird with the thorn in its breast." "And as it dies, it sings a song so beautiful... I can´t even say this... that God and the angels stop and listen in a kind of awe." "English"