Multidimenzionální Davies

John Rhys-Davies je kádr. Cesta do neznáma, Voskové muzeum, Indiana Jones, Pán prstenů... Ve Sliders je jeho prof. Maximillian P. Arturo prototypem do svého oboru zaníceného vědce, který se ovšem rád dává na odiv publiku a ve své pompéznosti je někdy až groteskní. Zkrátka výtečná a barvitá postava.

 

Když jsem tak připravoval svůj projev o "Mostu Einsteina, Rosena a Podalskyho", čerpal jsem z Arturova ztvárnění, využil doslova vybrané pasáže z epizody druhé série "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" a úspěšně přesvědčil univerzitní posluchače o své nepřekonatelné erudovanosti a nadřazenosti v oboru kosmologie a ontologie (o kterém jinak vím zbla). Avšak z aktuálního rozhovoru vyplývá, že zájem o vědu a paralelní vesmíry samotné není u Daviese pouze součástí bravurní herecké práce:

Is it important to you to play admirable characters? You’ve said that your aim with the Professor Arturo on Sliders was to glorify intellectual pursuit.

 

What I was trying to do in Sliders was to say, look, of all the passions that you can experience in life, do not neglect the one that we seem to be most shy about: intellectual passion. And it cripples our children if they do not see that some people are so delighted with ideas, are so delighted in trying to find the truth that they can advance an argument and be delighted when the counter-argument is better than theirs!

Which explains that copy of New Scientist sat on the table in front of you.

 

I’ve read New Scientist virtually since it first came out, I think in 56 or 57 when I was a little boy. I can’t say I’ve read every issue, because I travel around the world so much that sometimes I miss subscriptions but I get it wherever and whenever I can.

 

It’s an interesting combination, the high fantasy films and TV you’ve been a part of, and the scientific mind. Science led to destruction in The Shannara Chronicles, it’s been replaced by magic. What do you make of the collision between those two elements?

 

I count myself a rationalist and a sceptic—and yet I’m pilloried for having voiced a documentary on Creationism. The first thing I would say is that an actor’s job is to do the work that he offers and accepts. Last year, I had the privilege of working with the Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra, this does not make me a classical musician. I had the opportunity to work with a marvellous heavy metal band called Metal Acapella, this [voice rising] does not make me a rock and roll musician.

You don’t espouse the views of the roles you take, you’re saying?

 

Of course you don’t, but what I do espouse is a willingness to look at the universe in a different way. I’m innumerate and my degree is not in the sciences, but it seems to be that there is a real irreconcilability between the Einsteinian macro universe and the quantum universe. There’s a dissatisfaction bubbling there that people like Max Tegmark and Roger Penrose and David Deutsch and a number of others are trying to address. They would be horrified to hear me put their views in this way, and I’m not, but the sense of what I’m getting is ‘look, the way we’re looking at the universe is wrong’.

 

We live in what, an eleven to twenty-five or twenty-six dimensional universe, we perceive four of those dimensions. We live in a universe where, in our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are between one hundred and four hundred billion stars. There are between one hundred and four hundred billion galaxies in our universe. The number of universes, if we accept the multi-universe concept, used to be one to the five hundredth power, that’s a number bigger than all the atoms in our universe. The new number of possible alternative universes seems to be something of the order of one to the thousandth to the ten thousandth power. Once you get into big numbers like that, not only is anything possible, actually, it’s probable!

 

 

I can see now why you had difficulty on Sliders!

 

[Laughs. Heartily]

 

It’s seems obvious talking to you, why the wasted potential of a series like that and the direction it was taken in didn’t sit right.

 

[Sighs] When you’ve got three neutron stars entering the solar system, you have to say, ‘You do understand what a neutron star is? It is immensely dense.’ ‘Yeah, but you could have clusters, we’ve checked with the scientists’, ‘Yes [voice rising] when they’re talking about a cluster, they’re saying that within a hundred million lightyear range, there might be three of them! They’re not saying you can get them in the same… DO YOU UNDERSTAND just what even a slightly massive object would be entering our solar system? End of it all.
  

I have to ask. Indiana Jones 5 is coming, I understand that you turned down a Sallah cameo in Indiana Jones 4?

 

Yes, there wasn’t enough to do. They were going to green-screen it, I was going to walk in, sit down, clap, and they were going to cut it into the wedding scene. I think the character is worth more than that. He’s a great character. Every time I see Spielberg, I say to him, ‘Steven – the really successful films are the first and the third, but there seems to be something missing from two and four… I wonder what it is?’ And he laughs! Of course, I would like to do another one – he’s a great character – but I’d have him do something meaningful.

 

As an actor, do you feel the trend for reboots and bringing franchises back was a good thing because it meant more work from jobs you might have thought were over?

 

What it is is a general failure of the creative imagination. The desire to make a remake of something that was successful is a cheap way of going about things. It’s almost borrowed valour, in its own way. I’ve worked with real creative people, and the difference between hacks who just want to try and remake the same old thing and real inventive filmmakers and writers is the difference between working with zombies and working with real people. I hate it, but my job’s to survive.

Read more: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/john-rhys-davies/39057/john-rhys-davies-interview-the-shannara-chronicles#ixzz44Ta9GRTg