Greatest American Hero, I really dug that as a kid, because it had an alienation to it, where he was given a gift and didn't know why, and yet he was forced to do something with it and he was very much an out-of-place character who was trying to cope with his own surroundings, and I can kind of relate to that guy.
Rhys DarbyI'm quite a good reader of people; I like to meet people, and I can tell if they're lying or not, and I've certainly had interviews with people in this radio show I've done that swear they've seen things or have had bizarre experiences with creatures, and so I think they're telling the truth.
Rhys DarbyI've always been a big fan of the Yeti, simply because I have an affiliation to Everest - who was the New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, the guy that conquered it.
Rhys DarbyBarry Crump wrote a lot of books and they were really special. They were kind of the quintessential, mild for the most part, kind of southern man, kind of the true heart of what it meant to be a Kiwi kind of farmer; very kind of outdoor man living off the land. That kind of thing, you don't see so much anymore these days with everyone being metrosexual and lattes and laptops.
Rhys DarbyI have a 10 year old boy and a 6 year old boy and the stuff that they watch, it's always... I mean, it could be because we're a funny family, but they love the humor and combining humor with space action, I mean, you know, there's a winner right there.
Rhys DarbyYou've got to have a likeability factor, I think, in your comedy characters. If the guy's really, really funny but you just don't like him or her, then you're never going to root for them.
Rhys DarbyIn New Zealand we had this colossal squid, which was discovered just off the shores of New Zealand, between New Zealand and Antarctica back in 2003. It's the biggest squid ever found, and I know that there's things living down in the depths of the ocean that do explain the Kraken - you know, these giant things that people saw back in the day, that could take ships down - and so I know that there's stuff out there, and I like the idea that we haven't solved everything yet.
Rhys Darby