HIGHLANDER show runner David Abramowitz
© Hancye for HLWW

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HIGHLANDER WORLDWIDE (HIGHLANDER DOWN UNDER) L.A. WORKSHOP

When is a convention not a convention? The HIGHLANDER Worldwide (formerly known as Highlander Down Under) L.A. Workshop, held at the LAX Hilton in 2004, addressed that issue. It resembled a convention in many ways it had a lot of guests from the TV series in question, it had many Q&A panels, it had a Saturday night cabaret and it had enthusiastic fans flying in from all over the world to discuss HIGHLANDER: THE SERIES, a show they are still passionate about six years after its six seasons stopped airing in first run. With Season Six newly released on DVD HIGHLANDER puts out some of the most comprehensive DVD sets available anywhere, with loads of alternate takes, commentaries, interviews and rehearsal footage it seems a good moment to revisit the happy gathering.

Where the Workshop diverges from typical conventions is that it has no photograph or autograph sessions with the guests. Rather than engendering disappointment or kamikaze tilts at the actors and writers, this departure has a remarkably relaxing effect on everyone present. The HIGHLANDER: THE SERIES personnel who are present, having not spent hours greeting several hundred people for seconds at a time, turn up on the panels bouncy and refreshed, while the fans don't have to choose between hearing speakers or standing in autograph lines.

Carmel MacPherson, who organized the event with fellow Australians Annie Christie and Highlander Down Under founder Sonja Van Den Ende, describes the philosophy behind the HIGHLANDER Workshop: "Sonja and I had always talked about wanting this type of event, a far more, if you like, 'cerebral' event where we could really get into the craft of production. That's what attracted us to the show in the first place. So this was always billed as something that was not a convention and, 'Only come to this if you're interested in having this type of discussion.' Not letting photos be taken throughout the entire thing changes the whole dynamic. The guests don't have to feel like they're 'on' and everyone can get into the discussion, which is what we really wanted."

The Workshop gets off to a strong start Saturday morning, with HIGHLANDER showrunner David Abramowitz doing a solo Q&A panel (executive producer Bill Panzer was supposed to share the stage with him, but is unavoidably absent this weekend) entitled "Keeping It Going." Abramowitz came aboard partway through the first season. The work was so intense that he says his first assistant quit "because she didn't want to see me buried."

Abramowitz gives an example of some of the dilemmas facing him. In the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA-esque "The Beast Below," Abramowitz says, "I wanted the bad person to be this attractive young virginal person who's like the bad seed." He was astonished to get a call from production informing him, "Congratulations, we've got Dee Dee Bridgewater!" Bridgewater, while a formidable singer with a powerful presence, was about 40 at the time and didn't fit with Abramowitz's concept of the character so the script had to be altered at the last minute to accommodate the new guest star. "That's why they went through six showrunners in [the first] seven shows," Abramowitz observes wryly.

Famous for not taking credit and spreading the kudos around, Abramowitz has some sage advice for anyone entering show business: "If you deflect credit, the people below you and the people above you don't want to kill you and you can get [the work] done." The actual HIGHLANDER writing staff was fairly small: "One of the ways they saved money was, there were only two or three of us."

One of the reasons Abramowitz thinks series hero Duncan MacLeod has proved so memorable is, "This was one of the few shows where the hero was allowed to not be heroic. Some people would see the show and think, 'What a sanctimonious asshole.' " But Abramowitz feels it's not as simple as that, because it's not clear that Duncan is right all the time. He contrasts the attitude of Duncan with that of the Immortal's likewise long-lived but much more pragmatic friend Methos. "You've got Duncan: 'I'm responsible for these things I'm responsible for everything!' And you've got Methos walking in and saying, 'Shit happens, shit happens.'"

Of his collaboration with executive producer Bill Panzer (other executive producer Peter Davis was creatively involved, but primarily tended to the business side of the series), Abramowitz says, "We would fight all the time, but it was a good kind of fighting."

An attendee asks a question about canon: what would happen if an Immortal did kill on Holy Ground? "I have characters ask exactly that question," Abramowitz replies. "I think whatever we think the order of the universe is, it would be shaken. Is it a moral question, is it an outside force? I believe something terrible would happen the earth would open. But like Duncan MacLeod," he laughs, "that's only how I feel today."

How much input did the actors have on the scripts? "The amount of change an actor can do to a script depends on how important he or she is to the series," Abramowitz points out. "Adrian [Paul, who plays HIGHLANDER lead Duncan MacLeod] could call me at any time ... I will make any changes that don't hurt the material."

What makes a good HIGHLANDER episode? "I think the good episodes where the ones that had a Talmudic question," Abramowitz replies.

As for the future of HIGHLANDER, Abramowitz reveals, "I've written please God it will be made a new HIGHLANDER miniseries ... [The main character] will be Mackenzie, not MacLeod. That's because of the buyers, not because of me. In the miniseries, people are talking about whether redemption is possible."

To be continued...