Chapter Ten - Counterstrike and Secret Service

Two great series that I worked on reached an international audience. The first, Counterstrike starring Christopher Plumber, Simon McCorkindale and James McNaughton, was a Canada-France coproduction and the female lead was actually from France.
I worked on the pilot episode and several others in the season playing a detective, a commando and of course a police officer. It was a well run and finely produced series. There were really authentic looking sets of Plumber’s Paris office and his private plane, residing on the sound stages at the old mental hospital on the Lakeshore where they filmed Top Cops.
The shooting schedules could be brutal. On one episode that had a plot resembling the incident at Oka where native Canadians blocked access to a highway, I portrayed a Provincial Policeman manning the barricades. It was notable for a few reasons, the first being that about fifty native Canadians had been bused in from the Joseph Brant Indian Reservation in Brantford, Ontario. While most of them were very quiet but nice, the mere fact that we had to separate into ‘us versus them’ with barricades and weapons and scripted taunts really created a palpable tension.
In the pilot episode of Counterstrike, we filmed in Oshawa at the McLaughlin Mansion. This rambling estate is only two stories but features fantastic architecture, great oak paneled rooms and a marble ballroom. There is even a secret passage way in the billiard room and it has an indoor bowling lane.
When Christopher Plumber walked on the set, his presence was so great that everyone simply stopped to look and it is clear why he has been such an exceptional presence on stage and on film for so many years.
Many of the scenes and episodes that I participated in were just like playing commando or cops and robbers as a child. Most had action scenes with running and chasing and shooting and they were all great fun.
On one night shot, several scenes were being done before my scene and so at midnight, we were told that they probably wouldn’t get to us until just before sunup. There was nothing to do but find a comfortable spot in our temporary quarters and the whole platoon of ‘extra’ commandos found comfortable spots to sleep. I always thought that this was truly a dream job. As we were well into overtime at this point we were being paid a fortune not only to play war games and have fun but to sleep as well. Counterstrike was a great show to be on and I did some really good work. Just recently I noticed that it was being replayed on one of the cable stations and maybe generating a whole new group of younger fans.

Secret Service was another very slick production that was a US, Canadian coproduction with a big budget and superb direction and great writing.
When I was called to Union Station to work on the pilot episode, I was introduced to Henry Czerny as the lead and Tony Lobianco as the host of the series.
The concept was that Tony would set up the story as the show's moderator and he would provide background and information as the scenes were played out.
After playing our scene where we captured and hauled off a culprit who had threatened President Gerald Ford, we gathered for publicity shots. There was Henry, Tony and two or three of us in our wardrobe. I had on a sharp looking leather jacket and was holding a mean looking Glock handgun. There was also the obligatory woman secret service agent and she was a knockout.
This was just great as Union station provided a fantastic backdrop for the shots. I was certain they were going to be used for all the publicity of the show and might even make their way into TV guide.
When the show screened some months later there had been major changes. Instead of using Tony Lobianco, he had been replaced by Gerald Ford’s actor son, Steven as the host and narrator. He did a fantastic job and because the subject was about those people who had protected his father and the pilot episode was actually about a real life event that involved his father, the show resonated with truth and integrity.
I was really disappointed that those pictures would never be used and I asked my agent Anne Marie to see if she could get me a copy of one of them but they had been destroyed.
One of my very favorite roles was on an episode of Secret Service, directed by the outstanding Mario Azzopardi. It a recreation of the assassination attempt of Ronald Regan and I was cast as his press agent James Brady.
Azzopardi brilliantly edited existing newsreel footage with the scenes that he shot in a hotel lobby and on a fabulous sound stage that was made to look exactly like the entrance to the hotel where Regan and Brady were shot.
I was wardrobed in the exact outfit that Brady wore. As the assailant shot I fell to the ground onto a large pad to break my fall and then there were more scenes shot showing me be attended to on the ground.
If you ever get to see this fantastic piece of work, you may have a hard time telling that it is me. Azzopardi is so skilled that even I have a hard time telling where the real and the acted segments occur.
In another episode, I am an undercover police officer posing as a ‘wise guy’ who wants to ‘sting’ an exotic car importer who smuggles drugs in the door panels of the vehicles. My boss is played by Nicholas Campbell and in one scene another extra and I bracket Lawrence Bayne, the car dealer and put pressure on him to provide the drugs to us. I was wearing a shiny silver sports coat and one of the wardrobe people suggested that I role the sleeves up on my arms. The affect is quite dramatic and when I saunter towards the car dealership my facial expression and body language embody the ‘wise guy’, I think as well as anyone.
It was the middle of the summer and the temperature was very hot. We were all sweating buckets in the limo where we were crammed along with cameras and sound equipment. Lawrence who had just played a key role in the Brian Moore film Black Robe as a native assassin was hilarious and he had us laughing so hard between takes that the director told us we had to get serious or we wouldn’t be able to get the mood of the scene right.
We would do a take and the makeup artists would immediately start patting us dry and reapplying the foundation powder that we all wore. I did not like to use the generic jars of makeup artist’s powder and after seeking advice as to what shade I should use, bought medium beige and carried that with me on every set. The makeup artists were very respectful when any of us wanted to use our own makeup and would gladly assist us to apply it evenly.
Secret Service was a great show and lots of fun to work on and I did some of my very best work on this show.