Gerry Lopez: "Food for Wolves" or Conan's Best Friend?
Randy JenningsWhile fans are celebrating this week's news of a first draft of a completed Legend of Conan script, I thought I bring you a Crom-worthy interview! Gerry Lopez, who played Subotai in Conan the Barbarian, spoke to TheArnoldFans and gave me several great Ahnuld stories and Conan tales of high adventure!
It’s not just the fans who appreciate the Austrian Oak’s signature sense of humor and charisma. Most of his co-stars will also tell you he’s a pleasure to work with and is always lifting spirits on the set when he’s not busy playing practical jokes on the cast and crew.
Gerry informed me of the day Sandahl Bergman was having a small Christian Bale angry moment, and it took a barbarian to make her see the error of her ways.
Gerry Lopez: Sandahl probably didn’t remember, but one morning she was pretty upset because they put her on the call sheet when she thought she was going to get that day off,” said Gerry. “But early in the morning, someone told her that they’d made a mistake and that she’d have to come into work. Arnold and I are sitting there in makeup and she came storming in, and she’s really pissed and takes it up with one of the A.D.s. So Arnold is looking at me while she’s ripping this guy. So the guy goes, ‘Okay, okay,’ and he turns to leave. Arnold goes, ‘Ah, just a moment, I have something [to add] too. This morning I ordered café con leche, but it came without leche and I want to make sure that tomorrow on the call sheet that when I order con leche, it comes with leche. Now Gerry, do you have something to add?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, this morning I wanted to go surfing but there weren’t any waves, so can you make sure on the call sheet there are waves tomorrow?’ Sandahl, sitting there is now smiling, and afterwards everything was cool. But that was typical Arnold. He was really good at diffusing situations and making a joke. He was quite a jokester.
TheArnoldFans: Were you able to keep any costumes of props from Conan?
Gerry Lopez: Well, I'm looking at my sword right now. It's sitting there in the corner by the fireplace with it's belt and scabbard. It was something that John insisted on with the props department from the very beginning. He likes that. He likes to have "antlers". I also managed to have one of Thulsa Doom's daggers in the garage. It's got the intertwined snake handle. It's really quite beautiful. I went to the props guys at the very end and we had already talked about taking some things and someone had already took the bow, which was really cool, but actually it was just a bare bow wrapped up in leather and made to look really cool, but it was gone. So they gave me the sword. I was real friendly with most of the crew and all the different departments because there's a lot of free time. I mean, shit, we were over there for 6 months doing the filming so I became friends with everybody; we al liked each other. The prop guy goes, "Why don't you take this (Thulsa Doom dagger) one too." And wardrobe also gave me most of my costumes but I lived on Maui and they all got moldy (*sounding very depressed). One of my neighbors thought they were really cool, one was a wolf skin and there was some really cool stuff and I think he ended up with it. Yeah, that pointy hat too. I wish I still had that hat. I did take a few pictures on the sets and when we were in production. Looking back, you wish you took a zillion pictures. I know they are around somewhere.
TheArnoldFans: What did you think of the new Conan remake? Did you see it?
Gerry Lopez: No I haven't seen that yet. I heard that guy was from Hawaii too. That's where he was born. But, You know...if John didn't do it...
TheArnoldFans: Some of the best movie posters are those 1980s Conan ones.
Gerry Lopez: I really remiss now not getting any of these. There's that one great one with me, Arnold and Sandahl all with our swords. A Frazetta style. A reprinting of that would be really great. You never think at the time...and then afterwards you really wish you had it. I remember John had it and liked it. We did a bunch of still shoots in costume that John set up and was there posing us going, "All right guys, get your swords. Yeah, that's great!"
TheArnoldFans: What do you recall as the worst part about your Conan experience?
Gerry Lopez: Geez, nothing. It was all good right from the very beginning. You know, when John wrote the part for me, the production start date keep getting delayed. I think we were supposed to start in early summer and we never got going until almost January and that whole time I got to stay with John most of the time. He was married to Cilia then and Arnold and I hung out quite a bit. He, Sandahl and I worked out quite a bit with sword skills. We did all kinds of stuff and time together before we even went to Spain. Then, when we got to Spain, it was like a dream. That was pretty fabulous.
TheArnoldFans: I spoke with Sandahl and she reminded me of one thing she could not stand was the scene where you both had to fight off the red demons in the sand and that there were all these sand fleas bitting her.
Gerry Lopez: Oh yeah, It was cold and it was really late at night and it was really windy. I don't remember any sand fleas but the sand was getting blown all over in our eyes.
Another great exclusive that Gerry Lopez shared with me was the time they caused some damage around a golf course while in Spain, during their time working on Conan the Barbarian.
Gerry Lopez: I think one of the funniest things is when we were down in El Maria and we were staying on a really nice golf course,” said Gerry. “No one every really played there; it was empty the whole time. Of course it was like April and still a little cool but it was nice, and Arnold goes, ‘Gerry, you want to play golf?’ and I said I don’t know how. And he goes, ‘What, and you think I do?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ So we went and got a driving range and got a lot of balls, because we knew we were going to lose balls. We just went out there and played golf, and we were just terrible! Ah man, we were teeing off and he slices one and it goes right through this guy’s big window! He looks at me and I go, ‘Should we run?’ and he goes, ‘Yeaaah!’ So that was it; that was the last hole. We just took off. That was pretty major. It went through a large window of a house overlooking the freeway. The ball just took it out!”
Thank you, Gerry. Since I was 11 years old, CONAN the Barbarian has remained my favorite Arnold movie so it's such a pleasure to meet my on-screen heroes. We shall see if I'll ever have a NEW favorite Schwarzenegger film once 2015's The Legend of Conan comes out! If you missed our earlier review with Gerry, click HERE! Now surf on over to gerrylopezsurfboards.com!
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