Thursday, October 26, 2006

Ronald D. Moore on Battlestar Galactica - ComingSoon.net:

Q: Who is the worst person you've ever worked for?

Moore
: I worked for a crazy man once. The late great Toby Halicki. There once was a man named Toby Halicki who did two films. He did the original "Gone in 60 Seconds" and he later did a film called "The Junkman." Essentially Toby was a car thief and he told us. He stole cars like in the early 70's and then made a film about it called "Gone in 60 Seconds." He was stealing cars to finance his film. He was a guerrilla filmmaker. Toby would shut down the freeway and just shoot a stunt without asking anyone's permission. He was truly a guerrilla filmmaker. He made a mint off the original "Gone in 60 Seconds." Many years later he decided to make a sequel…Toby was looking for someone to writer the sequel to "Gone in 60 Seconds" so I went and I helped write it and Toby said "sure you can come write it and you can also come manage my toy business." Toby was sort of insane. I mean he was very litigious. He sued people at the drop of a hat and he was a madman. He ran around screaming at the office all the time. He had this compound down in Gardena where you drove up to this big wooden fence that screened it from the road and you pressed a button and you went in and Toby had constructed a full western back lot for himself and he had never shot a western before in his entire life. Then he had this gigantic airplane hanger filled with toys from top to bottom and these exotic cars. It was a crazy crazy experience. Ultimately what happened was Toby and I went to upstate New York to scout locations for this movie. We were at this big industrial park and there was this big water tower. Toby wanted to bring the water tower down for a stunt. We had this screaming match. Toby was going to bring this water tower down with his buddies at the welding shop and I was upset about this. We had a screaming match about how insane this was and subsequently Toby fired me. I went back to Los Angeles and Toby went on his merry way. I got my "Star Trek" gig. It turns out Toby went on to shoot this film in upstate New York and Toby's brother called me said "I've got some bad news. Toby is dead."