Episode "Flashback"
Mark Senff
Hi all,
I've been wondering this for (litterally) 7 years... I saw the
beginning of an episode where Magnum wakes up sometime in the 1930's.
Picks up the phone, gets an operator on the line. Wonders why (when?)
he's there. Now... I never saw the ending of the episode and I'd
really like to know the explanation! Was it just a dream???????????
-----------------------------------
Mark Senff -- sen...@homemail.com
-----------------------------------
Please remove the "x" from my email
address to reply.
-----------------------------------
Gaynell Bates
It was a dream. It was on Mon. on USA. He dreams something that
helps him solve a case.
Gaynell
Baushaus
In article <34b37529...@news.xs4all.nl>, sen...@homemail.com (Mark Senff)
writes:
>I saw the
beginning of an episode where Magnum wakes up sometime in the
>1930's.
Picks up the phone, gets an operator on the line. Wonders why
>(when?)
he's there. Now... I never saw the ending of the episode and
>I'd
really like to know the explanation! Was it just a dream???????????
It was portrayed as a dream, but the twist at the end was the Detroit hat left
over form the 30's dream. How do we explain that?
the Retroman
Marco Smetz
On Wed, 07 Jan 1998 12:38:50 GMT, sen...@homemail.com (Mark Senff)
wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I've been wondering this for (litterally) 7 years... I saw the
>beginning of an episode where Magnum wakes up sometime in the 1930's.
>Picks up the phone, gets an operator on the line. Wonders why (when?)
>he's there. Now... I never saw the ending of the episode and I'd
>really like to know the explanation! Was it just a dream???????????
All of it was a dream. Magnum investigated in a case and he got old
newspapers from Higgins which contained material about the involved
person`s past. After reading it he dreams of the people and they meet
him in his dream. At the end of the ep. his dream "becomes true" and
things happen very like they were in his dream.
Good Joke: At the end Thomas finds an old Tigers-cap he weared in his
dream and looks into the camera with wearing the cap - great picture
:-)
Hope you`ll be able to watch it once completely ... I personally like
the storyline.
--
---Marco Smetz--------------------------------------//--
-[msm...@tkc.de]-[sm...@fh-kr.KR.FH-Niederrhein.DE]//--
-----[http://www.psd-online.com/magnum/index.htm]-//--
Beverly Kai
This is one of the best special effects eps. ever!!! There is the
beautiful cottage at `Kahana Bay" ( not really there at all. . .and you
don't need to fly to it.)
After the dream, when TM goes to the cottage in real life - -it has aged
like a faded beauty. If you slow down or pause your tape, you can see
that the palm trunks in the foreground are painted by hand - -giving the
site a surreal look.
I would guess that TS worked his entry into the cottage in front of a
blue screen. The aged cottage was a photo of the real cottage cleverly
redone by airbrush, and electronically spliced into the frame with TM.
Or else both the new and old versions were sets. . . and I doubt it.
In the real life chase, TM runs out of the cottage and jumps over the
porch rail to run to the bushes. The house looks NEW.
TM's "fall to his death " was so beautifully done that if I didn't live
here I would't have caught it. It involved three different sites.
When TM is backed up to the edge of the cliff by the bad guy, there is
the same old background of the Windward Side. He is at the Makapuu
Lookout, and at the right of the frame you can see part of good old
Rabbit Island. Sea Life Park is just outside the frame to the left.
Very careful setup!!!!
Cross-cut to the Bad Guy With Gun: he is standing in front of the
bushes.
Dear Friends, not only was it not the same site, it didn't even need to
be the same day. There are no bushes at the Makapuu Lookout, (it is
about 20 miles from Kahana Bay, too).
The lookout is nothing but a guardrail at a sheer drop of several
hundred feet, dry grass, and mesquite scrub. No landscaping. Sellck
the actor was talking to th camera, and was truely looking down a small
valley to the oppposite coastline, about two miles away. Between him
and that beach, are about two miles of giant lava boulders tossed inland
by the tsunami of 1946.
We see TM get shot in his dream, and then the beginning of his fall is
viewed
from about twenty feet below the lip of the cliff. This is not possible
at Makapuu. It is about 400 feet down to the first bounce. No place
for a camera. It had to be done somewhere else.
Whatever - -wherever they shot the start of the fall, you can clearly
see John Nordlum, TS's standin-stunt double, push off the lip of the
cliff with one foot, so he has a nice controlled fall to land flat on
his back below the frame.
The long shot not only showed a dummy falling (with that limp,
Recusi-Annie quality) - -but was an excellent geology lessen.
I have written about the discovery of how the cliffs were formed: Half
the island (porous lava) just slummped into the sea. I cited the
Makapuu lookout as the quintessential little valley whose back wall had
just fallen away. Half the island collapsed under its own weight,
leaving the sheer walls.
The beginning of such a slump - -a huge crack in the earth, can be seen
in the Discovery Channel's Raging Planet ep called Tsunami. The crack
is on the Big Island, on the slopes of Kilauea.
It is thought that the Oahu slump caused the biggest tidal wave in
history, leaving debris 1,000 feet up on coastlines all around the
Pacific Rim.
This mystery wasn't solved until the use of side-scan radar to map the
sea bottom. If you have a recent geological map of the islands, it will
show the underwater topology, too - -and you can see the north half of
Oahu sprread out all over the sea bottom, up to 50 miles out. One
twenty-mile block has the name, Mt Tuscaloosa (???????!!!!). This is an
impressive block, in that it is basically a block that sits on the
bottom, 13,000 feet below, and comes to within 1800 feet of the surface.
You can see on the map that this seamount is not even ten percent of
the debris.
Anyway, I wouldn't have wanted to be the person on the production crew
who had to retrive the dummy from the bottom of the cliff. It is all
rocky, and in the surf and surge. - -
And so, dear hearts, Site One was a)the closeup of TM with the view
behind him.
b) the long shot of something shaped like a human, falling down theface
of the cliff. This site is the Makapuu Lookout.
Site Two was the Bad Guy in front of the bushes, aiming his gun.
Site Three was a view from below the lip of the cliff, up to John, in
TM's clothes, with a) his back to the camera. He steps back a little,
towards the edge. We know TM is trapped!!! and b)John pushing off
from the lip of 'the cliff" to fall out of the frame.
Got that???? Oh, yes - -John is really a curley blonde. He dyed his
hair for 8 years. He is also two inches shorter than TS, so when he
stands in for setting up lights and camera angles, he needs special
shoes. They were Adidas with a two-inch wedge built into the sole -
-and he wore them around the set all the time.
John is six-two. If you think THAT is tall - -TS is six-four.
Does anyone know about the period car TM drove in his dream? I thought
that I had seen every odd car on the island at one time or another, but
that was a completely new one on me. Whatever it was, warn't it jus
grand???
Marco Smetz
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998 16:11:43 -1000, bk...@webtv.net (Beverly Kai) wrote:
[... very much interesting stuff cut ...]
>Got that???? Oh, yes - -John is really a curley blonde. He dyed his
>hair for 8 years. He is also two inches shorter than TS, so when he
>stands in for setting up lights and camera angles, he needs special
>shoes. They were Adidas with a two-inch wedge built into the sole -
>-and he wore them around the set all the time.
>John is six-two. If you think THAT is tall - -TS is six-four.
I can only say one word : wow! Absolutely detailed description of
these scenes. I like that - background info is great!
Is Tom`s stunt double still working on the island?
Cheers,
Marco
STODDARD99
>Do you mean Tom Lupo ? I have a set of photo somewhere from the double
>episode with Sharon Stone where Thomas is attacked by killer Rottweilers and
>Tom Lupo was the double in that scene. Same curly hair, same mustache,
>same nice smile but much shorter.
Tom Lupo was Selleck's stunt double, and he did all the really tough stunts.
He is about 5'10", so congrats on spotting that. John Nordlum was Selleck's
(and Jack Lord's) stand-in. He did a few of the milder stunts, but his main
job was to stand where Tom would stand while the lighting guys did their stuff
for every set up. Tom Lupo was back in Hollywood last I heard and John still
lives in Hawaii and is in the paper occasionally because he owns McGarrett's
Mercury from Five-O.
I remember when they shot the scene in the episode, "L.A." when Magnum's car is
blown up at the house where the bad guys are hiding out. Tom did the closeups,
then John did the medium shots and started the leap over the car, and Lupo did
the finish of that and the tumbling down the hill. The scene was shot in
Monrovia, CA, BTW.
Also, Bob Selleck Jr.'s little boy went on the set one day and ran up to John
Nordlum, crying "Uncle Tom, Uncle Tom." Of course, when Nordlum picked him up,
Tom's nephew knew the difference, but from just a few feet away, it WAS hard to
tell, especially on a dark soundstage. Both Nordlum and Lupo are extremely
nice guys.
Bob Selleck Jr, Tom's oldest brother, is 6'6" and gorgeous--and married with
four kids.
Sylvia Stoddard
Beverly Kai
When I arrived here in '85, John Nordlum was doubling for TS.
So this malahini didn't know that another double also worked the series.
Since Nurdlum goes back to doubling for Lord on Five-O, I guess I sorta
thought that he was the only one.
it stands to reasn that John must have had time off once in a while. ..
and, gee, I have never heard of Lupo.
Whoever took that backwards leap did a mighty fine job... . .don't you
think?
STODDARD99
>I know, and he's the family's blonde, according to his mom. Out of the
>three kids, Marty and Tom are dark-haired and Bob' s the fair-haired boy.
Bob Jr. looks like his dad, who's a (very handsome) blonde himself. Marty and
Tom look like their mom and Dan looks like his dad except he has dark hair.
Sylvia
STODDARD99
>Did you work with Magnum in the early 80's ? I think I remember you, if
>you worked in the office and had some interaction with Margaret Doversola. .
>. . .or am I still in the throes of premature senility. . . . .
I worked on Magnum for several years, but at Universal, with only an occasional
trip to Honolulu. Of course, I know Margaret, but was also close friends with
Donna Dockstader, who cast all the principal roles in L.A. Robin and Geri were
the women in the office at the Diamond Head studio. Though the shooting was in
Hawaii, the writing, editing, film development, post-production, music and
effects were all done at Universal. Plus, of course, the cast and crew was
there from March to July every year, so we didn't feel too left out.
Sylvia
STODDARD99
>Whoever took that backwards leap did a mighty fine job... . .don't you
>think?
It was done in one take, too. The whole cast and crew applauded Tom's stunt,
much to the disgust of the house's neighbors, as it was about 2:30 a.m.!
Sylvia
STODDARD99
> Tom had a secretary named Lori Foy,
>right ? And was Don Bellisario's asst named Carol ?
I joined the show in 1985, by which time Don's assistant Carol Gillson was made
producer on Airworlf. His main assistant in L.A. was named Harriet Margulies.
By the time I joined the show, Tom's assistant was Pua McGuire and his
bodyguard was Mike Tyner. I know Geri Char was on the show from the beginning
(she'd been on Five-0) and was Chas. Johnson's asst. Robin Golden was Chris
Abbott's asst., and they were the two women in the main office. But I think
Robin had only been on the show for about a year when I got to know her and
there was probably someone before her. I don't have cast and crew sheets from
before 1984. Maybe David knows.
Sylvia