H2O | show | 2004 | Official Featurette
H2O is a Canadian political drama two-part miniseries that first aired on the CBC Television October 31, 2004. It starre | dHNfVnNOTm1tX2pKWVE
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 That first week is usually completely horrific to me,
00:04 of acting, because I have no idea how to play this.
00:07 ♪ Is anybody there? ♪
00:10 ♪ Does anybody care? ♪
00:14 [applause]
00:16 [applause]
00:21 [beep]
00:23 [music]
00:27 [music]
00:30 Twenty-seven years ago, my father articulated a theme
00:41 that would inform his long and eminent public life.
00:44 I'm sorry, uh...
00:53 I have no doubt that these words are heartfelt,
00:56 but the truth is I didn't write them, and...
00:59 A prime minister dies in a horrible pewing accident,
01:02 I play his son, and I return home from The Hague,
01:05 where I serve as a prosecutor at the World Court.
01:07 I deliver a eulogy at a state funeral that is, you know,
01:10 maybe reminiscent of somebody's.
01:12 To be quite honest, I have no idea
01:15 why my father entered politics.
01:18 Whatever his initial reasons, I know that they changed, however,
01:22 and I know this because I was there to see them change.
01:27 It's sufficiently galvanizing so that the people
01:29 in the back rooms of power say, "Why don't you, uh,
01:32 "you should think about standing for the leadership of the party,"
01:35 which I am reluctant to do, but I do.
01:37 I get elected, uh, and I'm installed as prime minister.
01:41 Why don't we have security in front?
01:43 Okay.
01:44 Okay.
01:47 And I will switch, uh...
01:49 I set about on a whole variety of legislative measures
01:53 that are seemingly unrelated, but my foe,
01:56 who is the, from Quebec and is the deputy prime minister,
02:00 starts to see some pattern inside these legislative moves,
02:03 and he realizes that what I'm actually setting up to do
02:06 is to sell water in bulk to the United States.
02:09 Mark, Steve.
02:11 I think it's a very complicated, weird character,
02:14 but finally, I mean, as a, as an author,
02:17 I can look and think that because he is an ideologue,
02:20 he's dangerous, and so ultimately he's probably a bad guy.
02:24 If the investigation should prove
02:26 that Officer Michel Duguay's death is linked to terrorism,
02:29 it will only serve to underscore the dangers we live with.
02:33 These... these are perilous times.
02:36 I can write it, and I think, "Oh, you know,
02:38 "obviously I know how to do this."
02:40 That first week is usually completely horrific to me,
02:43 of acting, because I, you know, I have no idea how to play this.
02:46 I have no idea how this guy walks or thinks.
02:48 I usually have to kind of reacquaint myself with him,
02:51 and then there's that sort of process in that first week
02:54 where I throw out whatever it is I thought I was going to do,
02:57 and then actually have to deal with the writing
03:00 as any actor would any role.
03:02 And let me be unequivocal.
03:04 This nation will never lose its resolve.
03:06 This nation will never surrender its democracy
03:09 to the tyranny of a few.
03:12 Shamy.
03:13 I also have to say it was fun to write people
03:16 who were very articulate and extremely bright,
03:19 and whose brains are moving 100 miles an hour.
03:21 I'm not sure where the idea came from, actually,
03:23 and it's kind of, usually you can kind of remember
03:26 exactly how it started.
03:27 The guy I wrote it with, John Krasenick,
03:29 he and I also wrote Men With Brooms,
03:31 and when we would get together to write,
03:33 usually go up to my farm or something,
03:35 we would start out, we'd have an hour's rant
03:37 about whatever the latest indignity
03:39 in the field of politics was, or something going wrong,
03:42 and then we'd get down to work, and I did think,
03:45 you know, we should try and find a more formal situation
03:48 for these rants, so it seemed like a good idea
03:50 to try something in the political realm.
03:53 On this given day, on our rink, with our brooms,
03:58 we shall be victorious.
04:02 I feel a general sense of dread.
04:06 How many times have you been pushed around?
04:10 Is anybody there?
04:13 Does anybody care?
04:17 Men With Brooms was funny because it really wanted
04:22 to be very working class, I guess,
04:25 a very unadorned kind of story.
04:30 This demanded of us a certain level of sophistication
04:33 that obviously Men With Brooms did not demand.
04:36 Levine, Ducote. Any damage?
04:39 We're concerned about our support base.
04:41 The people aren't shown cause, they'll abandon us.
04:44 We were trying always to have the politics not be as simple
04:47 as left, right, us, them, MDP, conservative,
04:50 you know, that we actually really wanted it to be a muddle,
04:53 which I think most of real politics is.
04:56 Clamoring for evidence out there, all the papers are hopping.
04:59 You're saying we have to open the box? It's time.
05:02 Okay, we'll just try to change that. See your line here, then.
05:06 We just wanted it to be morally ambiguous, I suppose,
05:09 and get people arguing about it, cause ultimately in the end,
05:12 it's really the future of the country kind of hangs in the balance,
05:15 and that's, you know, obviously a very heightened, dramatic way
05:18 of kind of talking about where we're at right now as a country.
05:21 I think there's a lot of big questions about where we're headed
05:24 and what we're going to become.
05:26 We're always moving. We are not finished.
05:29 We're not nearly finished.
05:32 We're not set in stone, for even the hardest of stones
05:35 cannot endure, and the only thing that does endure is change.
05:40 [music]