AN ARTICLE BY: MATHEW TSCHIRGI
READ MORE OF MY MOVIE REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS AT: WWW.MOVIEWATCHERS.20M.COM

          I entered the waiting room with trepidation. I was going to participate in a round table interview with Paul Hogan: basically four interviewers VS. Paul Hogan in a free-for-all grudge match of questions. There was no "winner" per se, but the more questions you ask (while being fair to the other interviewers) and the longer, more detailed answers you get, the better.
What the hell was I doing here?
           It all began with an e-mail stating an opening for a Paul Hogan interview for the GSU Signal. Fortunately, with only two published book reviews under my belt (for Geeks and Casual Rex, both book reviews for the GSU SIGNAL), as well as over 100 movie reviews for my website at moviewatchers.20m.com, I was chosen to be the interviewer.
           Although all four interviewers involved asked questions, I am publishing only the questions I asked and the responses I got. They are quoted verbatim because I recorded the interview with my new Sony M-535V Micro-cassette-corder. I chose to do this because I feel to say an article is by me, the questions should only be my questions and nobody else's. I don't want to claim anyone else's work as my own.
           By now, you are probably bored of reading this, So onto the interview!

SIGNAL: With Crocodile Dundee I and II, you were credited as a screenwriter, but with Crocodile Dundee in L.A., I noticed you were credited as "Based on characters created by: Paul Hogan," but you weren't credited at all as the screenwriter. Were you involved with the script at all for Crocodile Dundee in LA, like, did you write a draft of it?

PAUL HOGAN: I wrote the screenplay.

SIGNAL: OK.

PAUL HOGAN: And the rest of it was a dispute with the writer's guild.

SIGNAL: OK.

PAUL HOGAN: If you saw I or II, you know I wrote III.

SIGNAL: During the shoot of Crocodile Dundee in L.A., did you have any problems any of the animals on the set? You know, like the monkey, like, misbehaving on the set?

PAUL HOGAN: No… (A brief chuckle) Actors are more of a problem than the monkeys. If the monkey is trying, and the monkey comes to smell you and gets used to you and doesn't sense hostility there or… And then they're pretty good, really. Lions are a different pail of fish. Lions appear to ignore you, most of the time. 'Till you get relaxed and they come to look at you, and then your legs turn to ice water.
SIGNAL: Was there a big rehearsal process for Crocodile Dundee in L.A.?

PAUL HOGAN: We don't rehearse. You get so many takes from so many different angles, it's… In a comedy, it starts to get mechanical.

SIGNAL: How did you originally come up with the idea for the character of Crocodile Dundee? Like, before you made…

PAUL HOGAN: Oh, in the first place!

SIGNAL: Yeah…

PAUL HOGAN: In New York, our first trip to New York. I found it a bit dazzling, as anyone who's never been to New York will-it's just too many people moving too fast, it's too big and noisy, so everyone goes frantic and gets on and hustles… You start to feel like yourself gets destroyed, you know. I started from there and I wrote… I started to write it as more like the character I played on television, and then I made him more woodsy, more "outbacky"-eventually became Crocodile Dundee. It was… It was also set out to make it more of a romance between the two extremes of civilization: a sophisticated New Yorker, and an Aussie outback character.

SIGNAL: Was the character based on anybody you knew, yourself…?

PAUL HOGAN: Uh, no it wasn't based on anyone new. His background was from a few people, but basically my outlook, my sense of humor. Actually, one of the people that influenced me a bit was in this movie-- that's the Jacko Jackson character. He was the first croc hunter I ever met, back in the 70's: his name was Jacko. He had the black hat with the teeth in it and the sleeveless vest, but he was also filthy, tattooed, and sort of toothless. He had all the charm of a cobra, you know, he was a croc hunter. I sorta got the outfit from him, but the other guy in the movie is Alec Wilson, and he's a part-time actor, occasionally-he's been in 3 or 4 movies, but he's a cattle rancher. His cattle station is in South Australia, his property's a couple thousand acres. He's a real Australian outback character and you can't seem to fight that-it's in the film.
[Editor's Note: click here to learn the fate of Paul Hogan's inspiration for Dundee.]

SIGNAL: Have you considered making a cartoon series based off of Crocodile Dundee, like a spin-off, or an animated series, or a sitcom, or something like that?

PAUL HOGAN: No, but about four big animation companies have. Probably that they were all coming around the same time the last couple of years, which indicated to me they must have thought there must have been some interest out there with kids to do an animated Dundee, but none of them came up with any sort of a concrete format or anything, so it never went anywhere, or I don't want it to go anywhere. But if it did, I wouldn't be against it-I don't know how you'd do it, what you could do every Saturday morning or strip.