Moby Dick

Director: Franc Roddam Franc Roddam

Overview

Director Franc Roddam and co-scripter Anton Diether adapted Herman Melville's 1851 classic for this four-hour TV miniseries sea adventure. Ishmael (Henry Thomas) ignores the warnings of dockside prophet Elijah (Bruce Spence) and joins the crew of the whaling ship Pequod. Ismael befriends Polynesian harpooner Queequeg (Maori actor Piripi Waretini), hears a sermon by Father Mapple (Gregory Peck, star of the 1956 Moby Dick), and meets the obsessed Captain Ahab (Patrick Stewart), who lost his leg to the great white whale Moby Dick and now seeks vengeance on the looming leviathan. For effects, Roddam used a three-sectioned Moby Dick, added computer graphics, and shot Pequod footage in a tank at an Australian military base. TV Guide described Stewart's performance as "mesmerizing and passionate." The $20 million production aired March 15-16, 1998 on the USA Network.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/01/2020
UPC:	0683904547897
Original Release:	1998
Rating:	PG
Source:	Sonar
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	3:05:00
Sales rank:	20,589

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Patrick Stewart	Ahab
Henry Thomas	Ishmael
Ted Levine	Starbuck
Gregory Peck	Father Mapple
Piripi Waretini	Queequeg
Hugh Keays-Byrne	Mr. Stubb
Shane Feeney Connor	Mr. Flask
Michael Edward-Stevens	Dagoo
Norman D. Golden II	Pip
Matthew Montoya	Tashtego
Kee Chan	Fedellah
Norman Yemm	Carpenter
Bill Hunter	Actor
Bruce Spence	Actor
Dominic Purcell	Actor
Robin Cumming	Actor
Vivianne Benton	Actor
Peter Sumner	Actor
Michael Jackson	Shantyman
Warren Owens	Actor
Harold Hopkins	Actor
John Lee	Actor
Gerald Chris A. Graham	Actor
Apriana Taylor	Actor
Janet Andrewartha	Actor
Christopher Gordon	Composer

Technical Credits

Franc Roddam

Anton Diether

Franc Roddam	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Francis Ford Coppola	Executive Producer
Fred Fuchs	Executive Producer
Robert Halmi Sr.	Executive Producer
Kris Noble	Producer
Steve McGlothen	Producer
Robert Halmi, Sr.	Executive Producer
Maura Fay	Casting
Vanessa Pereira	Casting
Anton Diether	Screenwriter
Lynn Kressel	Casting
Paul Clark	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Captain Ahab roams the seas again in this 1998 TV miniseries. Like the 1956 film version, it leaves the main theme of the novel (Ahab's relentless pursuit of the Great Unknown, symbolized by the whale) essentially intact. Patrick Stewart plays a wildly emotional Ahab in this newest version. From start to finish, Stewart's Ahab fulminates with zealotry, whether soliloquizing about the great leviathan that took his leg or exhorting his crew to hunt him down. Scars emboss his face, his eyes burn with revenge, and his Medusa hair strikes out in all directions. He is a man possessed; he means to pierce the whale to its core, until it spouts black blood. Taking his cue from Stewart, Piripi Waretini animates his performance as harpooner Queequeg with good-natured horseplay and war whoops: no stoic savage, he. Stewart's and Waretini's performances contrast sharply with the performances of Gregory Peck (Ahab) and Frederick Ledebur (Queequeg) in director John Huston's 1956 film. In that adaptation, Huston restrains his actors. They are men of stone, unsmiling, their hearts beating to the rhythm of an unfriendly universe. Which version is better, the 1956 or 1998, is arguable. But Huston more skillfully exposes the brooding gloom and reverential fear that arrests the Pequod's crew in its pursuit of the whale. A bright spot in the 1998 version is Henry Thomas' portrayal of Ishmael, the narrator. Thomas plays Ishmael as vulnerable, naïve, and awestruck: a young man who goes to sea for the joy of it. And the whale? Huston's was far more realistic, as well as quite sinister and foreboding. In the 1998 adaptation, Moby Dick rarely shows more than a flapping tail -- and when it does breach the waters, it has "special effect" written all over it.