Battlestar Galactica actor Michael Hogan might never walk again, but a new documentary project produced by local filmmaker Norm Coyne will help him step back in the limelight.
Coyne, the founder of Northern FanCon, built a relationship with Hogan and his wife Susan to produce the film Good To Be Seen, currently in development and shooting into 2025. The film is one of five projects selected to be part of the Whistler Film Festival’s documentary lab program this week.
The now disabled actor, who had prominent roles in dozens of well-known movies and TV series in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, stands to reap a renewed recognition when the documentary gets picked up on the festival circuit. With support from some big-name Hollywood stars, Coyne’s film is creating a buzz that’s already created a groundswell of interest.
“The star power that’s behind this thing, it’s mental,” said Coyne, who grew up in Prince George and now lives in Kelowna.
“I’m going to walk away from this project and I’ll be like, I did something that really helped people here.”
Best known for his role in the Battlestar Galactica TV series for his role as the eyepatch-wearing colonel, Saul Tigh, Hogan visited Prince George in 2015 when he shared the bill with William Shatner as a featured guest for the inaugural Northern FanCon. Hogan’s gregarious personality made him a hit with FanCon attendees, who found him extremely friendly and genuinely curious.
“He’s a really different guy, very engaged with fans, and he would end up asking people more questions than they were asking him,” said Coyne. “He’s just very interested in people.”
“We did an online poll to bring one of our past guests back to FanCon and he ended up getting more votes than William Shatner.”
Coyne stayed in contact with Hogan and developed a character in a screenplay for a western short, Drawn, with Hogan in mind. They were set to meet at FAN EXPO in Vancouver in February 2020 to discuss that role when Hogan had a life-changing accident when he fell that evening and hit his head.
He went to bed that night not realizing that his fall had caused a massive brain bleed. He could not be roused from his sleep the next morning and was taken to Vancouver General Hospital and emergency surgery was performed. It took 57 staples to close the part of his skull that was removed to reach the damage.
“He had to learn how to swallow again, how to talk again, and he wasn’t allowed visitors when COVID hit,” said Coyne.
A crowd-funding campaign raised $450,000 for Hogan and his wife Susan, who had to pause her career as an actor to become a more full-time caregiver, but the money soon dwindled during the time he was living in a care facility in Vancouver and the couple were forced to sell their home.
Coyne did his part as well. He obtained a helicopter frame donated to him from Brent Marshall of Tempest Aviation and arranged to have Lost In Space prop builder Aaron Harrison come to Prince George to turn the chopper shell into a replica Battlestar Raptor gunship, to be auctioned online with all proceeds going to Hogan. Unfortunately, the online auction during the 2022 Northern FanCon was never launched due to an internal miscommunication on the team.
Marshall asked Coyne how much he had hoped to raise in the campaign and when Coyne told him the amount he said he would buy the gunship himself and paid Coyne the money, which was then donated to the family.
That’s when the idea to produce a documentary on Hogan was born.
The first phase of the film focuses on Hogan’s acting career before his accident and that sets the stage for the radical changes that came with being wheelchair-bound with a visually imparity.
“Since the accident he’s permanently in a wheelchair, he’s partially blind in one eye, which is weirdly prophetic because that happens to his character in Battlestar Galactica,” said Coyne.
The film then focuses on the next phase of Hogan’s acting career as he pursues his dream of performing a one-man show on a live stage.
“It’s the perfect third act,” said Coyne. “Because this story becomes not just who he is and who he was, but where he’s going next. He wants to return to an audience. He’s an actor, it’s in his bones.”
Hogan, 75, was born in Kirkland Lake, Ont., and made his film debut on the Peter Fonda movie High Ballin’ and Hogan and wife Susan were part of the popular Canadian TV series Vanderberg. He also starred in The Peanut Butter Solution, had a recurring role in Teen Wolf as Gerard Argent, the werewolf-hunting grandfather, and played Otto Gerhardt in Fargo. His 69-episode run with Battlestar Galactica lasted from 2004-09.
Hogan’s brain injury affected his memory so he can’t recall lines as an actor would, but he’s still a great storyteller and his friend in Vancouver, John Cooper, made the arrangements to set up Hogan’s ‘parlour show,’ which Coyne describes as a classic solo stage performance.
“He is still working on his one man show, putting stories together from his theatre work, his film work, and his “life’s” work, and there are many,” said Susan Hogan, in a March 24 post on the online GoFundMe page, which has raised $520,000 of a $600,000 goal.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/michael-hogan-fund
“It’s going to be brilliant. It’s his frame of mind, his attitude, that always astounds me …. the glass is always half full! He talks about his “lucky stroke” because it has given him all this time to put together his show. He refers to himself as ‘the luckiest man in Canada.’
Coyne has teamed up on the project with acclaimed filmmaker Kate Kroll and he contacted Emmy/Golden Globe award-winning Battlestar actor Edward John Olmos, a guest of the 2019 Northern FanCon, who offered to help with the production.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Mary McDonnell, best known for her leading role in the Kevin Costner movie Dances With Wolves, attended this year’s Northern FanCon in Prince George in May. McDonnell also starred in Battlestar Galactica and told Coyne about plans for a 20th anniversary reunion of the cast in Chicago in October and suggested Coyne should attend to conduct interviews.
The Hogans heard about the reunion through Michael's convention agent who told them the cast wanted him to be there, if it was possible for him to travel in his condition.
“Susan phoned me and asked if she thought this could happen and I said it could, but it would be very complex and difficult,” said Coyne. “But I think it would be something that would lift him up and be very good for his soul. He’d also have a chance to get back to work and earn some money.”
“At this point, Hogan had never been out of his care facility for more than four hours since the accident, and we accompanied him to Chicago for five days and at the reunion he was the crown jewel. The entire cast was there except for one person and he was the belle of the ball. It was a lovefest.”
All the cast and crew who attended brought Battlestar memorabilia and they auctioned it to raise $46,000 for Hogan and his wife.
The title of the film stems from the time Coyne and Hogan saw each other for the first time since his accident when Coyne met with him and Susan while on a side trip from the Whistler Film Festival in 2022.
“He was in and out a bit but he knew exactly who I was, and at the end of our meeting I said, “Hogan, it’s so good to see you, my friend,” and he got really rigid and his voice got gravelly and he said, “It’s good to be seen.” Then he started laughing and I started laughing.”
Coyne returned to the film festival and relayed that story to his film partner Kroll and a photographer overheard their conversation and told Coyne that Battlestar Galactica was his all-time favourite TV series and that his favorite scene was when Hogan’s character, Col. Saul Tigh, returned for duty wearing an eyepatch after he’d been tortured when captured by Cylon military robots while leading an army of insurgents.
“They pulled out his eye while he was being tortured and from then on, in the series, he had an eyepatch,” said Coyne. “Hogan's character, Saul Tigh, as soon as he’s released (from detention) he goes to the insurgents’ secret headquarters and he walks in and Chief (played by Aaron Douglas), says to him, ‘Colonel, it’s good to see you.
“And he turns and gets all grisly and says, ‘It’s good to be seen.’ That’s why it’s called Good To Be Seen.”
