with Ken Quinn and Tommy Chang

Ken Quinn (K)

Tommy Chang (T)

Question from Moderator/Audience (Q)

Q: How did you get into the business? 

T: I was offered a job. My role was to get shot and fall down stairs. I didn’t realize you needed pads for that and did it without them. It was 1984, so all the stunt work was done really cheaply. I had to pretend I was shot and walk down a live street [with real pedestrians]. 

K: I wanted to be a motorcycle driver, but went into marketing instead. I coordinated stunts, including myself, and was elevated from a regular stunt man to a stunt coordinator. 

Q: How has the industry changed?

K: Color film was big. It’s also much safer now. The tech used is different, we have wires and green screen. 

T: Fights have evolved. In the 1980s it was a lot of Karate Kid, and in the 90s you got a lot more females fighting. Then there was a period of mixed martial arts, and now what’s popular is what feels “real.” 

Q: How did you become involved in Hannibal?

K: I was called in by the production manager. Hannibal was on a tight budget, and some stunt equipment wouldn’t work in the cold. We had to keep bringing it into the tent and warm it up, then do another take. But Mads never complained. 

T: I was hired by Ken, so. Why did you hire me? 

K: We had worked together before. Tommy was brought in for the kitchen fight. The flip over the back was Tommy’s idea. I can do all around stunts, but Tommy’s a fight specialist. He’s done a lot of work in fight choreography. 

T: Ken is one of the most respected stunt coordinators in the world. He takes jobs no one else will. 

K: I once did a stunt where I fell 14 stories off a building, on fire. It took 3 takes. 

Q: What fight took the most time, and who was the best actor to work with?

K: The kitchen fight took the longest. Mads is one of the most athletic actors from his background in dance. 

T: I liked working with both Mads and Lawrence. You really try to bring the script to the real world. I’d break down the fight, block the moves, show Ken, train the doubles, show Bryan Fuller and so on. The actors all trained really hard. Bryan Fuller called me back for the other fight because he liked my work on the kitchen scene. 

K: It was funny, because Bryan would say things to me like “I want an organic knife fight.” So I’d make a knife fight. And then when I showed it to Bryan, he’d say, “this looks too much like a knife fight.” And I’d tell him “that’s what you said!” And Bryan would just go, “okay, let’s not do a knife fight.” 

Q: Jack and Hannibal have very different fight styles. Jack is a boxer. How does the physicality of the actor factor into the fights? 

K: Lawrence Fishburne was just back from a hernia surgery, so that factored in. Both actors had their own ideas about the scene. They would change the styles to fit their character. Slamming the fridge door was Lawrence’s idea. 

T: I’d bring in a template, and the actors would take the choreography and fit it into their characters. 

K: Both actors are gifted and trained. We were lucky. They knew the right fighting distance. Lawrence Fishburne is like a bear of a man, very strong. 

T: Both are in good shape. Other shows might take 3-5 months of training to deliver 1-2 good fight scenes, but the kitchen fight for Hannibal was done in 5 rehearsals. 3 with stunt doubles, 2 with the actors. 

K: Tommy can put a fight together in minutes, but it took a lot to please Bryan Fuller and the network and everyone else. 

Q: Does Hannibal have special abilities, or is he fully human?

K: Just his intelligence. Bryan Fuller was very involved in character development. 

Q: Did Mads’ background [as a dancer] come into play in the Tobias fight? The choreography looks like a dance. 

T: I wasn’t involved in that scene. 

K: The issue with that scene was that there was a lot of distance to cover in the office. Bryan Fuller really wanted the ladder involved, but the ladder didn’t originally move, so we had to edit the ladder to move. But Mads knows how to cover space. Demore was not so good at moving. 

Q: What qualifies as a stunt?

K: A stunt is any physical action. For insurance purposes, it’s required to hire a stunt coordinator to supervise a stunt. This could be for anything from grabbing, tripping, anything physical. Even those little stunts use spine protectors and pads to keep the actors from getting majorly hurt. The police can get involved in stunt accidents. Lots of actors don’t want to do stunts. With Mads, it was the opposite. He wanted to do all the stunts. We had to tone down some of the stunts to make sure he wouldn’t get hurt. 

Q: Demore said he swung the piano wire into his crotch. Were there any stunt accidents or bloopers? 

T: Mads wanted to spin kick Mason in the pig barn scene. That took 15 takes, and he’d hit the stunt man at the same place each time. The stunt guy actually really hurt in the stomach, but to tease him, I kept telling Mads to kick him harder to make it look better. 

K: Fights take so long, I think car chases are much more fun. Fights require much closer choreography and more safety measures. 

Q: For the cliff fall, how did they not hurt each other while falling intertwined like that onto a pad?

K: Luck. Things like that are often messed up. It’s easier to keep them in position with wires. 

Q: In the Tobias fight, we heard that the piano wire kept breaking. How did that impact the scene? 

K: The prop department built that. It was constantly being repaired on set, they had no replacement for it. There was a time restraint, so it wasn’t built properly. 

Q: Was there an actor you wanted to work with but couldn’t? 

T: I wish the show wasn’t cancelled. The actors were all great to work with. We could have done so much. I had a lot of ideas, because I had to keep topping my own work. 

K: Bryan Fuller asked me what I wanted to do, and I said a car chase. I wanted to see more action in Hannibal. We could have had more and different action than on other shows. 

Q: As a stunt coordinator, is there any stunt or fight you just wouldn’t do because of the danger level?

T: Air ram. 

K: An air ram is a piece of equipment that launches people like from a bomb explosion. 

T: I did a scene where I was hit with a dragonball z type strike, and landed wrong. That was the worst experience. People didn’t know the danger of these things and would just build them in their garages. 

K: One scene, Mads was on the bucket? The bucket was built to be stable, but Mads said it wouldn’t be realistic, he wanted it to be unstable. Then he wanted to look like he was straining on the rope. He was on that bucket for 12-14 hours that day, and it was really cold in the studio. He got sick. And his neck was raw from the pressure of the cable for days. 

Q: Anything you remember from the small, intimate fight scenes? 

K: Honestly, I forget a lot. It’s been a while since I worked on Hannibal. I remember the window scene, with Abigail and Alana. We were really far behind then, and had to build part of the house. The director wanted sparkles in the shot, but Bryan didn’t like that, so we had to remove the sparkles in a reshoot. We had a stunt girl for Alana. The window was scored so it would break. We usually used tempered or breakaway glass for scenes like that. We did 2-3 takes. Also, the hand under the bed scene was a disaster. When they built the bed for that scene, they forgot that someone had to fit under the bed. Because the set wasn’t built right, we had to saw the wall out.