Sean Patrick Flanery got lost in space. Flanery, the handsome young star of the big-screen drama Powder and TV's Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, was initially pegged to portray Major Don West in the recent mega-production of Lost in Space. He did not, of course, and the fact that Matt LeBlanc assumed the role just days before production commenced whipped up a frenzy of controversy, questions and head scratching.
What actually happened? According to everyone involved with the film, it came down to a matter of size--nothing more, nothing less. Director Stephen Hopkins simply felt that William Hurt, as John Robinson, would have towered over Flanery in those pivotal scenes in which Robinson and West butt heads, and that audiences would not buy Flanery as a formidable enough presence "I screen tested three or four times," explains Flanery. "I don't believe it was an acting question. I can't believe that. When I showed up {at the studio in England}, I had never met William Hurt. I'm slight. I'm slim. That's my physique. I've changed my shape for films before. I'm not going to take steroids or anything like that. I got there and Hurt is 6-foot-3. We both had the same color hair. They said, 'We'll dye your hair black. We don't want you guys to look anything alike. We'll send you to the gym'. They didn't believe I was a convincing enough adversary for him.".
Suddenly, a decision was made and Flanery was out. This was before he had shot so much as a single scene for Lost in Space, but after he had flown to England several times--leaving behind the filming of the black comedy The Suicide Kings during production breaks--for costume fittings. It all made no sense to Flanery. Didn't the filmmakers notice the size contrast beforehand? Flanery, though, refused to obsess over the situation, "It was like, 'Whatever, OK,' he says. Hollywood industry types, however, take notice of such incidents, and Flanery's dismissal impacted greatly on him. "Nobody understand what really went on," he argues. "All people hear is that Sean Patrick Flanery got fired. Immediately, people think that I'm difficult on a set or something, and it had nothing to do with that. Just that people are asking the question ("What happened to Lost in Space?"), there are doubts. It's that little doubt that lets people believe (he's a problem actor). I've done seven films. I'm on a first-name basis and exchanged phone numbers with everybody involved on those films, down to the accounts person. This is one of those things that just taints your reputation."
Flanery received an undisclosed portion of his Lost in Space salary and departed. He surely would rather have received nothing and never, ever have been associated with the project at all. "The money's just not worth it, you know? I would give it back in a heartbeat just to remove that filament of a doubt," he says. "People will make me an offer, but the first thing out of a director's mouth is, 'Tell me about that Lost in Space thing. What happened?' You can tell that this director is thinking, 'God, is this guy difficult?' I've worked way too hard, man, and I've been too nice to people to have my reputation even slightly tainted. Obviously, Lost in Space is a film I would love to have done. It's a huge film. That's the kind of film you do where, whether you're good or bad in it, you're going to get other offers, period. You're in an $80 million movie."
Flanery sighs. "Whatever," he says again, closing the matter of Lost in Space.
A far better, though apparently less-than-perfect, experience was Flanery's high-profile stint as a youthful Indy in George Lucas' pet endeavor, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Flanery played the heroic adventurer from ages 16 to 20, while Corey Carrier handled ages nine and 10, and George Hall portrayed Indy at 93. The show filmed all across the globe for more than a year before its 1992 debut on ABC. The network, faced with disappointing rating for much of its run, despite even a heavily promoted cameo by Harrison Ford as Indy at 50, aired Young Indy intermittently before finally dropping the series. The Family Channel aired the remaining episodes and several TV movies.
"The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was an amazing experience. It really was," Flanery enthuses. " I went to 33 different countries. We shot five weeks per hour episode. I worked with guys like Simon Wincer (the episodes "Germany, 1916" and "Congo, 1917") Mike Newell ("Florence, 1908"), Billy August ("Northern Italy, June 1918")---real directors that I would kill to work with in an environment where there were not parameters you have to stay in. George Lucas could call me and say, 'I want you to do a Fruit Loops commercial,' and I would say OK. He opened every door that's open for me right now. Every door."
Bottom line: Did Flanery like the episodes produced?
"The shows were so diverse," he responds, hedging a bit at first. "We had so many different directors. Terry Jones, the Monty Python guy, directed one ("Barcelona, 1917"), and he wanted me to do pratfalls. Mike (Donnie Brasco) Newell directed one that was a big heavy drama with big dark shadows, that was really eerie. Some of the shows I really loved and some of them I thought were nonsense. The audience varied from week to week because of that. One episode would plug into 13-year-old boys, then another would get 60-year-old women writing me letters.
"I loved the Albert Schweitzer episode. I loved working with the German actor who played Schweitzer, Friedrich von Thon. Some of them were just different altogether. They had the same main character, Indiana Jones, but some directors had me do completely different line readings. I would be like, 'That's not the character. That's this absurd farce.' We had producers on the set who had to rein in the directors, because each director had their own specific ideas. That producer was usually Rick McCallum, who's a great producer, a really good cat. He's doing the new Star Wars movie. Even the directors whose episodes I didn't love, I would want to work with outside the show, in their world. Rene Manzor did the Verdun episode, one of my favorites, and I would love to work with him on something where we can really get together and do something. He's so visual. I loved what he did with Indy in that show, and again, you couldn't do too much.
"Some of the directors just resigned themselves to setting up a scene. 'OK, we have 40 feet of track, let's track in out of focus, then go in focus. OK, bring in the actors and have them say their things.' They didn't even know what the dialogue was. Mike Newell is an actors' director. He says things like, 'Thespians, gather around.' We would all do this huddle. It was like theater. That was great. So I worked with some amazing people. It all gave me a taste of working with people I would love to work with in their own environment. These guys could only lend so much of their sensibility to the show."
In the end, though, Flanery---who will soon be seen in the independent features Best Men and Pale Saints, and who recently shot the romantic comedy Vanilla Fog with Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar---looks back fondly on his days making The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. "It was six years out of my life, and I had a ball," Sean Patrick Flanery notes. "It was six years of film school, a priceless experience."
Special thanks to Michelle Passante for providing this article.
