Hawaii Five-0: Fight Scene Perfection

More from Mike Gordon on how two perfectionists manage to nail a spectacular fight sequence on the fly in episode 2.22 “Ua Hopu”!

Alex O’Loughlin and Mark Dacascos only had an hour to prep their breath-stealing scene the day before it was shot. It took two and a half hours to film, according to director Larry Teng, with changes being introduced at the last minute.

It’s a testament to the professionalism of our actors and their stunt doubles for making a staged tussle look so easy and, above all, realistic.

Outtakes Online: Wo Fat, McG rumble in the jungle

By Mike Gordon | Honolulu Pulse
That rumble in the jungle between Wo Fat and Steve McGarrett on Monday’s episode of “Hawaii Five-0” was even more amazing when you consider the lack of rehearsal time involved.

According to Mark Dacascos, who plays the evil Wo Fat, he and Alex O’Loughlin — McGarrett — only had an hour the day before they shot.

Dacascos arrived from Los Angeles on a Sunday afternoon, went from the airport to a wardrobe fitting, stopped by his favorite vegetarian grocery for something to eat, hit his hotel room to wash his face and brush his teeth and then was back on the set to rehearse the fight with O’Loughlin and the show’s stunt team. Monday morning his ride to the set arrived at 5:12.

“So we shoot that whole day and with no fight rehearsal between Alex and I because he has scenes and I have scenes,” Dacascos told me. “And then on Tuesday, we do all this dialog stuff and then 20 minutes before the sun goes down, after all that, then we shoot the fight scene.”

But the stunt team wanted to change a few things, even as the light started to fade, he said. No matter. O’Loughlin stepped up.

“Alex didn’t have any rehearsal with the new moves,” Dacascos said. “He did it on camera. “You know, for me being a perfectionist and being a martial artist, that stuff used to drive me crazy. Now I just say, you know what I am going to do my best and they are going to do what they can with it. Almost every show is like that.”

AS A LIFELONG martial artist, the 48-year-old Dacascos can pretty much handle any fight. He is supremely fit, agile and flexible. Still, he likes to know what he’s getting into when it’s time to throw a few kicks, punchs, elbow jabs, flying take-downs and the like.

“Is it fun to do the action sequences?” he said. “Absolutely. Is it frustrating that you feel like you don’t have enough time? Absolutely. But maybe that helps give you that energy — all that baggage you bring into a fight. It could possibly help. It gives you an edge if you are pissed off about a lot of things.”

The 35-year-old O’Loughlin looked fit in his first episode back after temporarily leaving the show in March. He had to take a break to seek supervised treatment for his use of prescription pain medication due to a shoulder injury.

The Monday episode was greeted with enthusiasm by fans but the action wasn’t enough to lift the show to ratings supremacy, according to Nielsen numbers released by CBS.

“Five-0” drew 9.39 million viewers. The ABC show “Castle” won the hour with 12.36 million viewers. NBC’s “Smash” drew 5.73 million.
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Mike Gordon covers film and television in Hawaii for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Email him at mgordon@staradvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter. Read his weekly “Outtakes” column Sundays in the Star-Advertiser.

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Hawaii Five-0: Mark Dacascos Gives Wo Fat His Best

With just hours to go until CBS airs Steve McGarrett’s epic showdown with archenemy Wo Fat, Mike Gordon gives us the opportunity to get to know the man we love to hate a little better!

View the scans in the gallery

Fighting spirit

Mark Dacascos brings a lifetime of martial arts training to his “Hawaii Five-0″ fight sequences

By Mike Gordon | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

When it comes to expressing himself, actor Mark Dacascos can get the point across with his feet. The martial arts expert has used them with dramatic effect since he was a boy, but never with as large a following as he has now, playing the ruthless terrorist Wo Fat in “Hawaii Five-0.”

Wo Fat at his worst is Dacascos at his best.

In this season’s most intense fight scene so far, Dacascos delivered some serious hurt on the character played by Terry O’Quinn. The action in the October episode — “Ka Hakaka Maika‘i” (“The Good Fight”) — lasted more than a minute as Wo Fat kicked O’Quinn’s Lt. Cmdr. Joe White five times, including a roundhouse smack that sent the Navy SEAL crashing through a table.

Then it was almost lights out for White as Wo Fat strangled him with a phone cord. At the last moment, White escaped by hitting the terrorist in the face with a wooden knife block.

Crafting believable violence like that takes hard work and planning. But Dacascos, who was born in Hawaii and raised in a martial arts family, is a master of the fight scene. When his Wo Fat gets down and dirty — as he does in tonight’s new episode of “Five-0″ — rest assured it’s Dacascos raining the blows and taking them as well.

“For the most part, when it comes to fighting, I like doing it myself,” said Dacascos, sitting at a picnic table in Kapiolani Park. “Kicking, punching and all that stuff, I don’t have any problem doing. I don’t mind taking punches.”

The fight between Dacascos and O’Quinn, which took about four hours to shoot, was not without risk. Typically, the more complicated the fight, the more risk involved, Dacascos said.

“To make a fight look real, you want to come as close as you safely can to each other with your strikes,” he said. “So any time you do a fight, every single take, there is more of a chance of getting hit. Terry definitely risked getting hurt himself and definitely risked getting me hurt.”

To prepare, every move was choreographed during a two-hour rehearsal as the actors tried to imagine the action from each character’s point of view.

“You start playing with moves until things have a certain rhythm and a feel that you are happy with,” Dacascos said.

“Kicks, punches, knees, elbows. You try everything. What works, what is safe, what looks good. Then when you have everything blocked out, A to Z, you try to figure out if we are going to remember it and will we have enough time to shoot it.”

The finished fight was punishing and perfect, said “Five-0″ executive producer Peter Lenkov, who was there during filming.

“It was an all-out brawl,” he said. “The end result, despite our actors and stunt folks walking away bruised, was an epic, raw and very real fight, one we use as the bar now when planning any upcoming fight sequences.”

DESPITE his murderous alter ego, the 48-year-old Dacascos is an easygoing family man. He wears a necklace with photos of his three children, all of whom were born at Wahiawa General Hospital.

He started martial arts when he was 4, taught and inspired by his parents. Dacascos lived in Hawaii until he was 6, attending Ala Wai Elementary School before moving to the mainland.

His first tournament was at age 7. When he was 9, he won the peewee division at an international tournament in Long Beach by using a roundhouse kick to his opponent’s ribs. It was a seminal moment for Dacascos.

“He cried because he was hurt,” he said. “I cried because I hurt him.”

Growing up, Dacascos focused on wun hop kuen do, a style of martial arts developed by his father, Al Dacascos, that incorporates kung fu, aikido, judo, jujitsu and forms of karate. The younger Dacascos would train six days a week, sometimes for as much eight hours at a time.

“For me it wasn’t about winning trophies,” he said. “I didn’t save one martial arts trophy, and I had hundreds. I was just happy to train.”

He retired from competition at 18 but never stopped training. Even now he works out three times a week, mostly doing muay Thai routines. It has left Dacascos as flexible as a high school cheerleader, strong as a gymnast and as ripped as a bodybuilder.

“I train not just for my acting, but for myself,” he said.

He discovered acting at Portland State University, where he majored in Chinese and drama.

After starting out in 1986 with a part on the daytime soap “General Hospital,” Dacascos built his film and TV career with action parts that tapped his martial arts skills: “Only the Strong,” “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven,” “Brotherhood of the Wolf,” “Crying Freeman” and “Cradle 2 the Grave.”

But that’s changed in recent years. He’s become known for TV shows that have nothing to do with martial arts, starring as the Chairman on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” cooking competition, and as a celebrity contestant on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” which drew up to 20 million viewers a week.

In fact, at the time “Five-0″ sought him for the show’s inaugural season, Dacascos had not thrown a punch or kick on camera in several years, he said.

Lenkov, who oversees every facet of “Five-0,” had worked with Dacascos when the executive producer wrote scripts for “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven.” He never considered anyone else for the part of Wo Fat. He liked everything about Dacascos, even the way he wore a suit.

“He doesn’t need to say much to get his point across,” Lenkov said. “He is actually a very difficult character to write because you don’t want to overwrite his dialogue, but give him just enough to be the most powerful man in the room.”

WHEN Dacascos brings his villain to life tonight, he’ll square off with Steve McGarrett — played by Alex O’Loughlin — in a battle the show’s stunt coordinator, Jeff Cadiente, called “epic.” The crew used four cameras to capture the fight.

“It’s our biggest yet,” Cadiente said.

No one will even hint at the action involved except to note that Wo Fat is taking aim at McGarrett’s head.

And that Dacascos asked his stunt double to do the kicking. The moves he was being asked to do reminded him of a scene he had shot a few years ago in China while working on a TV series about the late Bruce Lee.

The director there wanted Dacascos to get closer with his kick and hit harder. So he did. One take and it was over.

Dacascos had knocked the guy unconscious.

Devon Nekoba: Local Actor Shares Five-0 Set Experience

Wendie Burbridge puts another local thespian in the spotlights on her entertaining Five-0 Redux blog!

This week we meet Devon Nekoba, who plays the TSA agent McGarrett and Danny meet at the airport after Mary is arrested for diamond smuggling in episode 2.19. The amiable actor and radio DJ landed his first TV show gig on Hawaii Five-0 after six casting calls and his story proves that although good things come to those who wait, great things come to those who work hard to make it happen.

Nekoba shares his Five-0 set experience enthusiastically with Wendie and the following excerpt is about working with Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan:

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, but he definitely felt the pressure to do well and represent Hawaii on set. He said the cast and crew were the “nicest people—top notch,” and he was amazed by the simple things — having his own trailer, his character name on the door, having his own chair (marked “Cast,” but he was seated right next to Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan, so he wasn’t going to complain!), and a full craft service table for his three hours on set. He met all of the cast — even members he was not in scenes with, like Grace Park and Taryn Manning, as well as O’Loughlin and Caan.

Said Nekoba, “I had a hard time trying to balance myself — to be professional and to do well, all the while I’m thinking ‘Oh, my God, I’m on Hawaii Five-0!’”

Filming the two minute scene with O’Loughlin and Caan was interesting, he said. It was very fast, and no matter how long he had spent preparing his lines, envisioning what he would do, and how he would act, in his mind, it was completely nervewracking when Nekoba actually executed it in front of the cameras with McGarrett and Danno.

“I was practically running after Alex (in the scene) because he walks so fast,” he said. But after a few takes, Nekoba started to feel more comfortable — or at least that is what I saw when I watched him on television. He said O’Loughlin and Caan had a “nice rapport together” and that Caan’s dog, Dot, was “always with him.” He said there was little tension on the set, besides having to get the job done.

When I asked him what was the most interesting thing about his day, Nekoba told me about encountering Alex O’Loughlin for the first time. When he was about to head toward the set, he saw O’Loughlin waiting by a van and thought, “I’m going to ride with Alex?” When Devon got closer, O’Loughlin put out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Alex.”

“I kept my cool, and said ‘Hi, I’m Devon,’ but I was thinking ‘Um, DOH, of course you are Alex,” he said. It was that kind of open attitude that helped him stay cool most of the day. Once they were in the van, Alex asked him “Hey, do you want to run lines?” and so they spent the van ride to the airport, where the set was, preparing for their scene together.

It might amuse Devon to know that Alex experienced the same “Oh, my God” response when he found himself working on The Shield and on Criminal Minds:giggle:

Fun fact: from stories shared by people lucky enough to have met him, it appears our Aussie always introduces himself by saying, quite simply, “Hi, I’m Alex.”

The good fortune for Devon doesn’t end with episode 2.19. TSA Agent Myers gets to return in the crossover event and it sounds like it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!

Read the full article and check out more photos at “Five-0 Redux: No Longer Anonymous

Alex O’Loughlin is “Doing Great” and Will Be Back for Episode 2.22!

There’s light at the end of the tunnel! TV Guide confirms some things we already know and some things we suspected: Steve does make a quick appearance in episode 2.20 (airs April 9), and we will unfortunately have to miss him for the crossover (April 30, May 1).

However, our Super SEAL will be back — hopefully in fighting-fit form — for the last two episodes of the season (2.22 airs May 7 and 2.23 airs May 14). Director Larry Teng confirmed on Twitter just recently that he starts shooting 2.22 next week, so that means we should be seeing our Alex — who is “doing great” — back soon!

I’ve put some spoilers in tags in case you don’t want too many episode details revealed just yet.

:happy:

How many episodes of Hawaii Five-0 is Alex O’Loughlin going to miss because of his stint in rehab? —Kelly, Birmingham, Alabama

Good news. Just one full episode will be McGarrett-less. When Alex went to rehab in March, citing dependency on prescription pain medication due to a shoulder injury, the Hawaii Five-0 team did have to do some last-minute scrambling. But according to executive producer Peter Lenkov, Alex’s absence fit in well with the story arc he’d already mapped out. “Things happen; that’s the business,” shrugs Peter. “We rewrote it.”

Spoiler Alert! Show

Alex also appears in the action-packed May 14 season finale, which begins with the death of a familiar face and also sees the returns of Terry O’Quinn, Tom Sizemore and William Baldwin. And for the record, Peter assures me Alex is “doing great.” Good to hear. What’s 5-0 without McGarrett?

Five-0 just wouldn’t be the same without McGarrett! On that note, check out the broadcast schedule for the remainder of the season!