Nov 22, 2024
Me reading McGoohan articles
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Me reading McGoohan articles
You know shit's about to go down when McGoohan "shows up on time and knows his lines".
Babe, are you ok? You've barely touched your inordinately high standards today.
Can you talk more at all about Mcgoohan and The Prisoner, I followed you for the art but now I want the tea. Admittedly, I know zero about Mcgoohan or his work outside of recognizing him from TCM reruns.
Thank you for the question and for enjoying this blog.
McGoohan was an enigma, and so was The Prisoner. Almost everyone who has ever tried to explain The Prisoner ended up saying more about themselves than about its creator.
Generally, everyone agrees that McGoohan was a rebel, but no one really knows when it started. Probably very early, because his daughter once mentioned he got a scholarship to a prestigious school in England called Ratcliffe (he was from a working class background and grew up on a farm in Ireland) and then immediately said "He hated it, but he went, because he had to." The only good thing about it was that he learned boxing there.
The official story always starts with something like: He worked multiple jobs before becoming a self-taught actor (he was the stage manager and one day the actor was sick) when it should start with his childhood in the countryside. Even though he always seemed like someone who could hold the sky up if it fell down, it's also well-known that he was a hopeless romantic, and his childhood was probably responsible for that.
Anyway fast forward to a rainy night in England, when the Lyric Theatre was dead silent after his performance of Brand because the audience forgot how to breathe, or to clap. He got off stage and told his wife his performance wasn't good enough and she agreed. His co-star later said those two people were the only ones in the world who could see something wrong in such a performance.
He soon moved on to TV. He agreed to do this spy show, even though he disliked the whole James Bond thing. The producer realized that too late. He was already changing scripts on the spot. No womanizing, no kissing, no gun (well, in a few cases there were guns but they hardly did anything). Some big boss from the US flew over to tell him they wanted more sex and violence. He told the guy to fuck off.
That was Danger Man. If I get a dime for everytime a woman fainted over John Drake, I would be a millionaire. At some point during my first watch of it, I started hearing music when he walked. Literally.
John Drake was a spy with a moral standard. It was McGoohan's work. He gave the public a hero in every sense of the word. But he made sure John Drake was always interesting. After all, he happened to be one of the greatest actors ever lived.
Then he got tired of it. Of course that was not good for the network. He was the biggest TV star in the UK.
So he told them he could do another show. And it was The Prisoner.
Oh before that, I must mention that he got married early in his life, was in love with his wife until the day he died, wrote her love notes everyday and occasionally got soft meat thrown at him during their fights.
So he made The Prisoner, basically did almost everything. Was very angry at times, probably slept like 4 hours a day, went through several nervous breakdowns. His co-star Leo McKern didn't go through "Once Upon a Time" unscathed either. According to McGoohan: "He'd truly cracked."
The Prisoner was McGoohan's baby. No one in the crew was allowed to mention the word television. He wanted it to be more than that. He made sure it was of the highest quality. It was his vision that carried the whole show.
It was about an ex-spy called Number Six. No one knows what he did, only that he resigned. People still argue whether or not he is John Drake. To me, no one really knows who John Drake really is, and so Number Six could as well be John Drake. After all, what is the difference beside that Number Six has a past and John Drake doesn't?
Number Six was kidnapped to the Village, where the Village authority (the Number Twos) tried everything to extract information out of him. They wanted to know why he resigned. And he wouldn't tell them that.
And then there's Number One, who gives out order to the Number Twos, hires and fires them at will. No one knows who Number One is. But in order to get out of the Village, Number Six will eventually have to face them.
This show gives you complete freedom from the very start. It will ignite your imagination. It was a marvelous feeling.
It doesn't coax you into liking Number Six, it doesn't even tell you who he is. But when you see the fire burning in his eyes, when you hear the thunder in his voice, when you see him walking up and down his room like a lion in a cage, you will understand why you are here with him.
The Village is a mirror of our modern world. The Prisoner predicted so many things we are seeing now. And yet, it feels so new, so strange, so fresh. It was like seeing the inner workings of McGoohan's mind laid out before our eyes, the beauty of its dreams and the horror of its nightmares.
I think you need to watch it completely open-minded, let it change you, and it will let itself be changed by you.
Its conclusion drove some people mad. They couldn't accept it, they wanted a Bond-like ending. They couldn't handle McGoohan's 'absurd' ending. He went from being the highest paid actor in the UK to someone who hid from the angry public in a place with no telephone.
Fame. Money. Status. All of that gone over night. But we know by now that he wasn't someone who cared about that.
But I think he wanted it to reach its audience, to reach future generations. He wanted to leave something behind for eternity.
He was so ahead of his time. And if he was still alive, he would still be ahead of our time.
I could go on forever but I only slept like 4 hours last night so I'd better stop before I start talking more nonsense. All of my followers know they should take whatever I say about McGoohan with a grain of salt. My only motto is: the only ones I shall make fun of on here are McGoohan and myself.
To be honest, my first lesson as a McGoohan fan was kinda brutal.
Catherine McGoohan on her father.
Source: Secret Agent (aka Danger Man): The Complete Series (DVD) (Timeless Media, 2014)
Peter Jackson really expected to see a beaming ray of sunshine, didn't he?
Source: Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth by Ian Nathan
Catherine McGoohan on her father.
Source: Secret Agent (aka Danger Man): The Complete Series (DVD) (Timeless Media, 2014)