I think when we consider the relative morality of Ortiz and Ramirez using 'roids for the Red Sox vs. the Yankees working as Satan's embodiment of evil on earth, we certainly know who's in the wrong here.
Which allows me to link to the excellent (although I disagree) article at LG&M, quoting a very fine Bill James piece. Worth punching through the link at LG&M for that download.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Question Post for LEVERAGE #203 "The Order 23 Job"
As usual, post here once you've finished watching, and I'll toss out some answers mixed with snark.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
LEVERAGE #202 "The Tap out Job" Post-game
Man, our friends from Oklahoma told us Nebraskans were too thin-skinned to risk setting an episode there, but we didn't listen ...
I kid, I kid.
Right, this was about as straightforward a show genesis as you can imagine. A lot of times we look at classic con tropes, from movies and real life, and try to imagine the modern day equivalent -- the horse's bloodline/Lost Heir variant from "The Two Horse Job", for example.
Downey came into the year wanting to do our version of a boxing movie. Boxing cons have a long and distinguished history in con culture. The natural update is mixed-martial arts fighting. The writer, Albert Kim, used to be a sportswriter, some folks at Electric Entertainment had actually developed an MMA movie and we were able to go out and get real MMA athletes. It all came together, for once, about as smoothly as an episode of television can. The fun bit of research, actually, was finding out how remote PPV concerts work.
Third one shot, second one aired. We didn't mind this, actually, as the second episode shot, airing tomorrow, is off-template, and we wanted the new summer viewers to get a better sense of how the show generally progressed.
As far as character choices, well, it was a natural that if we were going to have Eliot fight, we'd discuss his relationship with violence. I hope what we were trying to do came across -- Eliot isn't a violent man. He's someone who understands his capacity for violence (and viewers of an old busted pilot of mine will start to see recurring themes). He also put on something like twenty pounds for the show. Coincidentally, so did I, I just haven't taken it off yet. He probably also didn't do it in the Guiness/Black Bush plan I utilized.
The idea that Parker would genuinely adore being in Nebraska amused us. She's comfortable there. Anyone looking at flashbacks would probably get a good sense why. Gina did a fine job of handling the opposing view (I think it was Sen. John McCain who called MMA "cockfighting" first) and being a little bit too precious and spoiled when it comes to her lifestyle.
Let's see what questions we have in the mailbag:
@Nicole: ... Eliot mentions in his conversation with Sophie that he learned a long time ago he can't control the violence. Do you guys plan to divulge any of that sort of background for him this season? Or do you plan to leave us hanging on the mystery, like you've mentioned wanting to do with Parker?
He can't control the violence around him, "around him" meaning anything from his criminal lifestyle to ... well, you guys always do a better job at these things. Take it as you will, you'll probably never get more details about it. Worst thing you can do with Wolverine is show him in that poncy bathrobe running into the woods. Bah.
@elcucuyfeo: So just how did Eliot learn to fight so well and who taught him??
We've always thought that a particular unit in the Army put a fine shine on the skills of his youth, and then he went out and collected techniques in his travels.
@Emily: This was the ep where he got cut because he did his own stunts right? How much of the fighting was actually Christian?
Nope, he got cut doing the elevator fight in #206. He did get dinged up good and hard in this one, though, as that's all Kane, all the time, fighting. Giving me a goddam heart attack. The ring collapsed, too. Fun shoot.
@slarti: Was the build-up to Eliot snapping and beating the other guy down supposed to have a "Bill Bixby is about to have a Hulk-out" vibe? I expected that dramatic chord to sound as soon as his eyes bugged out.
Yes, although we went back and forth -- it was tricky becuase we were both overselling the con to the bad guy and also trying to hit the right level for the audience without going over the top. YMMV (thats for @ashley, too. Gina did a nice job of selling the con)
@Feelred: How was the atmosphere on set when Beth had Aldis in that grapple?
They laughed their asses off. Aldis really does have a ridiculously good sense of humor about his character's physical awkwardness. Considering he could snap my neck one-handed.
@Becky: My question doesn't really have to do with the episode. I was just wondering why they don't show the preview/clip for the next episode of Leverage until after Dark Blue. Wouldn't it make more sense to show it after the Leverage credits?
Or, have the Leverage fans stick around for the first ten minutes of Dark Blue, and try to hook them. Those marketing humans are cunning.
@Ed Dravecky: ... Oh, and I know you'll hear this a million times but... chicken-fried steak in Nebraska? Seriously?
Oh, we'll get to you in a bit, sonny boy.
@Coren: One small quibble - Hardison seemed to get the short end this episode - between hacking a hick and not having the financials in order til episode's end, it just felt very un-Hardison.
We were trying to make a point -- they're not perfect, and if taken out of their comfort zones, they can get rattled. We need them to be a little less the all-powerful super-team, or at the current rate of escalation the season ender would involve conning Galactus. ("The Slightly More Ultimate Nullifier Job.")
@karenmiller: The car Nate revved off in after dumping the producer. Did I miss something? Was that a set-up plant so he'd have a way to bugger off?
You mean the fine Hyundai sports coupe? You missed a LOT. I would, in fact, recommend going to your local dealer and getting a test drive.
No, Eliot picked him up, if I remember, but we may have cut the shot.
@Save-Vs-DM: As a writer, have you ever pulled out experiences from running a game as a DM to inform just how cons might go wrong? We all know that players don't do what you expect most of the time, so was that good trying when it comes to writing a twist?
Breaking a story is a bit like role-playing, but I can't get the writers to use the damn dice. Actually, cons are a weird bird, game-wise. Everyone wants to play a good con game, but the nature of the revealed narrative makes them almost impossible to run.
@marga: any possibility you might serve up cameos from other "experts" in other fields? we got matt lindland tonight... maybe we get a renowned scientist? or software creator? actor? artist? chef? medical doctor? astronaut? magician?
Always tricky with cameos -- you don't want to pull people out of the story. I think Wil Wheaton as a famous geek may be the closest we have.
@Alexandra: Are the episodes airing in the order they're produced this season? ... Also, how do you pick who becomes the emotional center of each episode in its order? I mean, Eliot is the obvious choice for a fight story, but what makes you say, let's focus on Eliot specifically in the 2nd episode of this season?
Because of the split summer season, they'll run in the order shot, with maybe one substitution. We don't peg character beats to episode order, but to the specific context of the story. As noted, last year's "Stork Job" started as Nate & Sophie story, and morphed into Parker. There are two overall character arcs to this season, but they're not super continuity driven.
@Marley: My question - did I see a saxophone in the Trunk Full o' Guns at the end?
Yep. That was the thing Parker bought on a whim at the pawn shop.
@puu: are we working toward an end game with eliot and sophie?
We're currently working on an ending to bloody #213. Anything past that is madness.
@Nato: 1) That WAS a virgin Bloody Mary Nate showed up on the golf course with, right? 2) Was "Triana" a Venture Brothers shout-out?
1.) Yes. For now. 2.) Do you know how many one-name pop princess names we tried to clear? And all of them were taken. Finally, in desperation, we threw in Triana from VB. It cleared.
@Phil Hendricks: I was wondering why all the computer screens in your show emit weird futuristic space sounds, like you're in a cockpit. Computers don't really do this, of course, and it's the only thing about the show that made me want to turn it off.
I feel your pain. You know, we try to be a little hipper with that stuff -- you'll note in the pilot Hardison ran his entire hack off a thumb drive -- but it's one of those TV quirks that people don't seem to cue in on "on screen on screen" info without the sound. Whether that's something in human nature or based on years of TV doing it wrong, and therefore programming audiences for certain cues, I have no idea.
@Robert: Also, I hate to see in the media the casual abuse as demonstrated by Parker on Hardison demo'ing the MMA techniques. ... Why we continue to excuse female-on-male violence as pure laugh-riot material I will never know.
Rob, I feel ya. But listen: my hacker's a hip person of color, my sex symbol isn't an anorexic in her 20's, and my badass uber-thief is a blonde we put in a dress precisely once a season. Even I, on the vanguard of the socialist Hollywood liberal homosexualist agenda, can only punch so many holes on my liberal cred ticket per season.
@Amy: Question: is the doctor's recommendation for Eliot to get a CT scan just good advice (which it is) OR are you foreshadowing future medical issues? Please tell me he's going to be okay and I'm just over-thinking!
We're not really a soapy show. Eliot's got a frequent-flyer card at his local CT clinic, and he's always come back fine.
@NJM: As a Nebraska native, though, I did have to throw a minor fit - not due to any offense, but for the sloppy research. Lincoln a dying agri-industrial center? Umm, it's the state capitol with one of the best-funded state universities in the country. The villain escapes southbound on I76 and dashes across the state line? That's quite a trick, since Iowa is 60-odd miles east... on I80... Yeah, you guys could have spent 10 minutes on Wikipedia and fixed a lot of tiny mistakes. Basic errors like that undermine the good work you guys do.
What is this Wikipedia you speak of?
@Denita: Almost but not quite-which brings me to my question. Did the team just excuse Sophie's lame attempts at an apology (for last season) and forgive her or what?
As fellow emotional cripples, they accepted that as the best apology they were going to get.
@Jason: As satisfying as it was for the team to pull out the con in the end this week, it now makes me want to see an episode where they don't pull it off/settle for a tie kind of situation. Something to rattle their confidence a little. Or, could be the long arm of the Sterling at work... Man, I love this world!
Sterling's arm is indeed long. He will be back. And as we've seen, Sterling never, ever loses ...
@dremiel: Was that the first time we've had an overhead 'scatter' shot where they didn't scatter but followed each other? Yeah, a little more than a team.
First time. Nice of Albert and Roskin to pick that up and use it with a twist.
@Chaz: Here's my question, though it doesn't quite have much to do with the actual show. There has been a long standing rumor that Christian has tattoos on one or both of his legs but you don't see any sign of that in the episode ...
I asked Christian if I could see his legs. That did not go as well as one might hope.
@Nicole: Are you thinking of doing an episode focused on Hardison any time soon? Even though it seems like his background is pretty simple I feel like were missing something and I'd be sweet to see more of Aldis. :)
Not a background-centric ep, but the Winter season opener ought to make you pretty happy.
@Cuy: Is there any chance you guys could work with British screenwriter Steven Moffat on an episode of Leverage? Would be fun to have an ep. set in England with Gina around...
Actually waylaid Moffat at last year's LA Dr. Who con. He is, of course, running DOCTOR GODDAM WHO this year, and if anything I'm the one who's going to be hitting him up for a freelance, not the other way round. Though he did tell me how he got Gina naked that one time.
@Bates: But I like the turn it took instead, that the gang can sometimes get caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Exploring that theme of control -- them having it, not having it, regaining it, and so on. Not all cons run smoothly, and your leet skilz may not always work.*
Why, my friend, you seemed to have stumbled on the theme of this year. Nicely done.
@Mitchy: I forgot to say that, judging by the double rainbow shot we saw, the weather when you were filming the golf scene was extremely wet. Did it hold up shooting?
It was actually raining behind Hardison, if you look closely enough. But the lads soldiered on. I'd be tempted to say "Hey, it's Portland, what do you expect?" Of course, it's now 104 degrees in Portland, and I've learned to assume nothing.
@briddle: two things I've noticed after watching again. First, the con has the same formula as the other one that went wrong (Bank Job), in that they just planned to scoop up the money and leave without taking down the mark in any other way. Was this a conscious decision on your part?
Hmm, I don't think so. it may just be the nature of expanding short cons out to long. Nice catch, though.
@Michael the G: How are the injured parties (in this weeks ep, the local boy done wrong and his daddy) contacting the Leverage crew?
This is one of those things we intentionally don't explain. We know how, and we actually shot the scene where they explained it, but we like to leave it up to the viewers to have their own satisfying theory of how Leverage might enter their life, and right their wrongs.
@Sam: I hope we're going to see some more of Nate being a bit of a bastard, after all, he did say he was worse when he was sober, right?
Oh, he's just warming up.
@Rich Baldwin: The chicken fried steak bit was fun (chicken fried chicken would have been even funnier) - but maybe you could be a bit more accurate about the Midwest - if one could argue there's a single Midwest, since there are actually several, from the industrial midwest to the Ozark region to Appalacia etc. It's nice you all tried to set things in a flyover state, but it would be nicer if you did so in a way that's more representative of the actual where places you're setting your scenes.
... killing me. You people are killing me ...
@EmilyBlake: One observation. When all those dudes approached Elliot to test his mettle outside the ring, I thought -ooooh time to see Elliot's krav maga skills. But then he took the guys on one at a time.
Intentional on their part, as it was a gauntlet, not a beat-down. You'll see multi-opponent fights soon, although we tend to find the one-on-ones offer nicer spots for choreography. As in last season's wisk-fu.
@Jason: If we watch the show on Netflix a day or two after it airs, does that "count" as a viewer in any way that does you any good?
Nope, no ads. (Although, hey, watch it any way you want) It only counts if you watch it Live or on your Tivo within 24 hours. Everything else is nice info but not useful.
Right then, on to the wrap-up. For the Nebraska humans ...
It's a fair cop --Lincoln was a bad choice. This is how we wound up there: we originally set the story in a small town in a flatter, more economically desperate state. Then, looking at the location scout, we said "Okay, no way Oregon, from ANY angle, doubles for that." So -- and this is all happening during the single week of pre-production, among a thousand other meetings -- we cast around for other states with strong wrestling backgrounds, places where MMA does very well (checking with our MMA guys), and wound up with Nebraska as a good choice. It is, however, why the computerized map graphic went the wrong way -- it was built before we settled on a city, if I remember properly.
Now, where we screwed the pooch -- by which I mean I screwed the pooch -- was settling on Lincoln as opposed to using a fictional county or town like we did all first season. Honest truth, 600 pages of script later, I have not a goddam clue why I did that. However, I accept your rage: mea culpa, mea culp, mea maxima culpa.
But this is the great thing about writing for television. You learn so many things. For example, I had no idea until I opened my e-mail account this week, that Lincoln was the Paris -- nay , the Lothlorien of the Midwest, a place where there are LOTS of black people, and no one eats chicken-fried steak. Never. Ever. Ever. It is UNHEARD OF.
Heh. Sorry.
But this is the perfect example of why it's difficult to do shows set anywhere except LA and New York. This is how the cultural conversation basically goes:
TV writers: "You know what might be amusing? Sophie gets an order from the hotel menu, and she doesn't like it, because she's a bit of a princess. Chicken-fried steak is one of those meals that always baffles foreigners. It also has a funny name. Let's have that be the item she ordered off the menu, from among the many things she could have ordered."
TV audience: "You're saying we're all hicks who eat chicken fried steak!"
TV writers: " ... shit. Really? Um, what about the fact that out of all the villains in the show, the team is almost brought down, for the first time, because they got cocky and underestimated the fine Midwestern -- "
TV audience: "Screw you with your flannel-wearing stereotype Red State hate."
TV writers: "Wow, this is not going well. Errr, you know, Parker really like Nebraska --"
TV audience: "Unlike the rest of America, we never mistake one athletic black man for another!"
TV writers: "... Tyrone, you want to handle this one?"
Tyrone: "Not now. I'm busy signing autographs for Clippers fans.*"
Etc, etc.
This is not to say "lighten up" or "we sometimes get it wrong." No, the real thing here is that we always get it wrong. Always. We will always get it wrong in the future.
And not "always get it wrong about the Midwest because we're in Los Angeles and New York." That's "always get it wrong even when it's about Los Angeles and New York."
At the intersection of "all people's individual experience of a place is universalized out as their definition of the place" and "there are only so many hours in a day" lies the fact that all culture deals in shorthand. Last time I checked, the American middle-class was getting hammered by this economy. I've BEEN in those towns where Main Street's gone to hell. We want to to talk about those towns (rather than set another story in LA), we toss it in with a story about the MMA that tangentially links to Nebraska, bam, it's soup.
But the same thing happens for every city, including the ones we writers live in. For example, I live in Los Angeles. We have a lower murder rate than Phoenix, Arizona. A lower murder rate than Indianapolis, Indiana. A lower murder rate than Wichita frikkin' Kansas.
But if you watch television -- made by people who live in LA, shot in the city of LA -- do you ever see The Closer: Minneapolis Hellhole?
No. According to network television, Los Angeles is Murderville, capitol city of Rapesylvannia.
Angelenos and New Yorkers, however, have just learned not to give a shit and enjoy SVU hunting down this week's subway sodomizer. It may be perhaps because we're busy destroying culture, but it's just something we're used to.
All this to say, we're glad you're watching the show, and assume if we come to your town and get something wrong, it's an honest mistake born of scheduling and chaos rather than laziness and willful condescension.
Unless it's about Rhode Island. You people and your stinking "plantations." Yeah, you. We're coming for you.
*NOTE: I have been with him when he has done this. Not as bad as his time in China when he signed his name Kobe Bryant for a week, but still ...
I kid, I kid.
Right, this was about as straightforward a show genesis as you can imagine. A lot of times we look at classic con tropes, from movies and real life, and try to imagine the modern day equivalent -- the horse's bloodline/Lost Heir variant from "The Two Horse Job", for example.
Downey came into the year wanting to do our version of a boxing movie. Boxing cons have a long and distinguished history in con culture. The natural update is mixed-martial arts fighting. The writer, Albert Kim, used to be a sportswriter, some folks at Electric Entertainment had actually developed an MMA movie and we were able to go out and get real MMA athletes. It all came together, for once, about as smoothly as an episode of television can. The fun bit of research, actually, was finding out how remote PPV concerts work.
Third one shot, second one aired. We didn't mind this, actually, as the second episode shot, airing tomorrow, is off-template, and we wanted the new summer viewers to get a better sense of how the show generally progressed.
As far as character choices, well, it was a natural that if we were going to have Eliot fight, we'd discuss his relationship with violence. I hope what we were trying to do came across -- Eliot isn't a violent man. He's someone who understands his capacity for violence (and viewers of an old busted pilot of mine will start to see recurring themes). He also put on something like twenty pounds for the show. Coincidentally, so did I, I just haven't taken it off yet. He probably also didn't do it in the Guiness/Black Bush plan I utilized.
The idea that Parker would genuinely adore being in Nebraska amused us. She's comfortable there. Anyone looking at flashbacks would probably get a good sense why. Gina did a fine job of handling the opposing view (I think it was Sen. John McCain who called MMA "cockfighting" first) and being a little bit too precious and spoiled when it comes to her lifestyle.
Let's see what questions we have in the mailbag:
@Nicole: ... Eliot mentions in his conversation with Sophie that he learned a long time ago he can't control the violence. Do you guys plan to divulge any of that sort of background for him this season? Or do you plan to leave us hanging on the mystery, like you've mentioned wanting to do with Parker?
He can't control the violence around him, "around him" meaning anything from his criminal lifestyle to ... well, you guys always do a better job at these things. Take it as you will, you'll probably never get more details about it. Worst thing you can do with Wolverine is show him in that poncy bathrobe running into the woods. Bah.
@elcucuyfeo: So just how did Eliot learn to fight so well and who taught him??
We've always thought that a particular unit in the Army put a fine shine on the skills of his youth, and then he went out and collected techniques in his travels.
@Emily: This was the ep where he got cut because he did his own stunts right? How much of the fighting was actually Christian?
Nope, he got cut doing the elevator fight in #206. He did get dinged up good and hard in this one, though, as that's all Kane, all the time, fighting. Giving me a goddam heart attack. The ring collapsed, too. Fun shoot.
@slarti: Was the build-up to Eliot snapping and beating the other guy down supposed to have a "Bill Bixby is about to have a Hulk-out" vibe? I expected that dramatic chord to sound as soon as his eyes bugged out.
Yes, although we went back and forth -- it was tricky becuase we were both overselling the con to the bad guy and also trying to hit the right level for the audience without going over the top. YMMV (thats for @ashley, too. Gina did a nice job of selling the con)
@Feelred: How was the atmosphere on set when Beth had Aldis in that grapple?
They laughed their asses off. Aldis really does have a ridiculously good sense of humor about his character's physical awkwardness. Considering he could snap my neck one-handed.
@Becky: My question doesn't really have to do with the episode. I was just wondering why they don't show the preview/clip for the next episode of Leverage until after Dark Blue. Wouldn't it make more sense to show it after the Leverage credits?
Or, have the Leverage fans stick around for the first ten minutes of Dark Blue, and try to hook them. Those marketing humans are cunning.
@Ed Dravecky: ... Oh, and I know you'll hear this a million times but... chicken-fried steak in Nebraska? Seriously?
Oh, we'll get to you in a bit, sonny boy.
@Coren: One small quibble - Hardison seemed to get the short end this episode - between hacking a hick and not having the financials in order til episode's end, it just felt very un-Hardison.
We were trying to make a point -- they're not perfect, and if taken out of their comfort zones, they can get rattled. We need them to be a little less the all-powerful super-team, or at the current rate of escalation the season ender would involve conning Galactus. ("The Slightly More Ultimate Nullifier Job.")
@karenmiller: The car Nate revved off in after dumping the producer. Did I miss something? Was that a set-up plant so he'd have a way to bugger off?
You mean the fine Hyundai sports coupe? You missed a LOT. I would, in fact, recommend going to your local dealer and getting a test drive.
No, Eliot picked him up, if I remember, but we may have cut the shot.
@Save-Vs-DM: As a writer, have you ever pulled out experiences from running a game as a DM to inform just how cons might go wrong? We all know that players don't do what you expect most of the time, so was that good trying when it comes to writing a twist?
Breaking a story is a bit like role-playing, but I can't get the writers to use the damn dice. Actually, cons are a weird bird, game-wise. Everyone wants to play a good con game, but the nature of the revealed narrative makes them almost impossible to run.
@marga: any possibility you might serve up cameos from other "experts" in other fields? we got matt lindland tonight... maybe we get a renowned scientist? or software creator? actor? artist? chef? medical doctor? astronaut? magician?
Always tricky with cameos -- you don't want to pull people out of the story. I think Wil Wheaton as a famous geek may be the closest we have.
@Alexandra: Are the episodes airing in the order they're produced this season? ... Also, how do you pick who becomes the emotional center of each episode in its order? I mean, Eliot is the obvious choice for a fight story, but what makes you say, let's focus on Eliot specifically in the 2nd episode of this season?
Because of the split summer season, they'll run in the order shot, with maybe one substitution. We don't peg character beats to episode order, but to the specific context of the story. As noted, last year's "Stork Job" started as Nate & Sophie story, and morphed into Parker. There are two overall character arcs to this season, but they're not super continuity driven.
@Marley: My question - did I see a saxophone in the Trunk Full o' Guns at the end?
Yep. That was the thing Parker bought on a whim at the pawn shop.
@puu: are we working toward an end game with eliot and sophie?
We're currently working on an ending to bloody #213. Anything past that is madness.
@Nato: 1) That WAS a virgin Bloody Mary Nate showed up on the golf course with, right? 2) Was "Triana" a Venture Brothers shout-out?
1.) Yes. For now. 2.) Do you know how many one-name pop princess names we tried to clear? And all of them were taken. Finally, in desperation, we threw in Triana from VB. It cleared.
@Phil Hendricks: I was wondering why all the computer screens in your show emit weird futuristic space sounds, like you're in a cockpit. Computers don't really do this, of course, and it's the only thing about the show that made me want to turn it off.
I feel your pain. You know, we try to be a little hipper with that stuff -- you'll note in the pilot Hardison ran his entire hack off a thumb drive -- but it's one of those TV quirks that people don't seem to cue in on "on screen on screen" info without the sound. Whether that's something in human nature or based on years of TV doing it wrong, and therefore programming audiences for certain cues, I have no idea.
@Robert: Also, I hate to see in the media the casual abuse as demonstrated by Parker on Hardison demo'ing the MMA techniques. ... Why we continue to excuse female-on-male violence as pure laugh-riot material I will never know.
Rob, I feel ya. But listen: my hacker's a hip person of color, my sex symbol isn't an anorexic in her 20's, and my badass uber-thief is a blonde we put in a dress precisely once a season. Even I, on the vanguard of the socialist Hollywood liberal homosexualist agenda, can only punch so many holes on my liberal cred ticket per season.
@Amy: Question: is the doctor's recommendation for Eliot to get a CT scan just good advice (which it is) OR are you foreshadowing future medical issues? Please tell me he's going to be okay and I'm just over-thinking!
We're not really a soapy show. Eliot's got a frequent-flyer card at his local CT clinic, and he's always come back fine.
@NJM: As a Nebraska native, though, I did have to throw a minor fit - not due to any offense, but for the sloppy research. Lincoln a dying agri-industrial center? Umm, it's the state capitol with one of the best-funded state universities in the country. The villain escapes southbound on I76 and dashes across the state line? That's quite a trick, since Iowa is 60-odd miles east... on I80... Yeah, you guys could have spent 10 minutes on Wikipedia and fixed a lot of tiny mistakes. Basic errors like that undermine the good work you guys do.
What is this Wikipedia you speak of?
@Denita: Almost but not quite-which brings me to my question. Did the team just excuse Sophie's lame attempts at an apology (for last season) and forgive her or what?
As fellow emotional cripples, they accepted that as the best apology they were going to get.
@Jason: As satisfying as it was for the team to pull out the con in the end this week, it now makes me want to see an episode where they don't pull it off/settle for a tie kind of situation. Something to rattle their confidence a little. Or, could be the long arm of the Sterling at work... Man, I love this world!
Sterling's arm is indeed long. He will be back. And as we've seen, Sterling never, ever loses ...
@dremiel: Was that the first time we've had an overhead 'scatter' shot where they didn't scatter but followed each other? Yeah, a little more than a team.
First time. Nice of Albert and Roskin to pick that up and use it with a twist.
@Chaz: Here's my question, though it doesn't quite have much to do with the actual show. There has been a long standing rumor that Christian has tattoos on one or both of his legs but you don't see any sign of that in the episode ...
I asked Christian if I could see his legs. That did not go as well as one might hope.
@Nicole: Are you thinking of doing an episode focused on Hardison any time soon? Even though it seems like his background is pretty simple I feel like were missing something and I'd be sweet to see more of Aldis. :)
Not a background-centric ep, but the Winter season opener ought to make you pretty happy.
@Cuy: Is there any chance you guys could work with British screenwriter Steven Moffat on an episode of Leverage? Would be fun to have an ep. set in England with Gina around...
Actually waylaid Moffat at last year's LA Dr. Who con. He is, of course, running DOCTOR GODDAM WHO this year, and if anything I'm the one who's going to be hitting him up for a freelance, not the other way round. Though he did tell me how he got Gina naked that one time.
@Bates: But I like the turn it took instead, that the gang can sometimes get caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Exploring that theme of control -- them having it, not having it, regaining it, and so on. Not all cons run smoothly, and your leet skilz may not always work.*
Why, my friend, you seemed to have stumbled on the theme of this year. Nicely done.
@Mitchy: I forgot to say that, judging by the double rainbow shot we saw, the weather when you were filming the golf scene was extremely wet. Did it hold up shooting?
It was actually raining behind Hardison, if you look closely enough. But the lads soldiered on. I'd be tempted to say "Hey, it's Portland, what do you expect?" Of course, it's now 104 degrees in Portland, and I've learned to assume nothing.
@briddle: two things I've noticed after watching again. First, the con has the same formula as the other one that went wrong (Bank Job), in that they just planned to scoop up the money and leave without taking down the mark in any other way. Was this a conscious decision on your part?
Hmm, I don't think so. it may just be the nature of expanding short cons out to long. Nice catch, though.
@Michael the G: How are the injured parties (in this weeks ep, the local boy done wrong and his daddy) contacting the Leverage crew?
This is one of those things we intentionally don't explain. We know how, and we actually shot the scene where they explained it, but we like to leave it up to the viewers to have their own satisfying theory of how Leverage might enter their life, and right their wrongs.
@Sam: I hope we're going to see some more of Nate being a bit of a bastard, after all, he did say he was worse when he was sober, right?
Oh, he's just warming up.
@Rich Baldwin: The chicken fried steak bit was fun (chicken fried chicken would have been even funnier) - but maybe you could be a bit more accurate about the Midwest - if one could argue there's a single Midwest, since there are actually several, from the industrial midwest to the Ozark region to Appalacia etc. It's nice you all tried to set things in a flyover state, but it would be nicer if you did so in a way that's more representative of the actual where places you're setting your scenes.
... killing me. You people are killing me ...
@EmilyBlake: One observation. When all those dudes approached Elliot to test his mettle outside the ring, I thought -ooooh time to see Elliot's krav maga skills. But then he took the guys on one at a time.
Intentional on their part, as it was a gauntlet, not a beat-down. You'll see multi-opponent fights soon, although we tend to find the one-on-ones offer nicer spots for choreography. As in last season's wisk-fu.
@Jason: If we watch the show on Netflix a day or two after it airs, does that "count" as a viewer in any way that does you any good?
Nope, no ads. (Although, hey, watch it any way you want) It only counts if you watch it Live or on your Tivo within 24 hours. Everything else is nice info but not useful.
Right then, on to the wrap-up. For the Nebraska humans ...
It's a fair cop --Lincoln was a bad choice. This is how we wound up there: we originally set the story in a small town in a flatter, more economically desperate state. Then, looking at the location scout, we said "Okay, no way Oregon, from ANY angle, doubles for that." So -- and this is all happening during the single week of pre-production, among a thousand other meetings -- we cast around for other states with strong wrestling backgrounds, places where MMA does very well (checking with our MMA guys), and wound up with Nebraska as a good choice. It is, however, why the computerized map graphic went the wrong way -- it was built before we settled on a city, if I remember properly.
Now, where we screwed the pooch -- by which I mean I screwed the pooch -- was settling on Lincoln as opposed to using a fictional county or town like we did all first season. Honest truth, 600 pages of script later, I have not a goddam clue why I did that. However, I accept your rage: mea culpa, mea culp, mea maxima culpa.
But this is the great thing about writing for television. You learn so many things. For example, I had no idea until I opened my e-mail account this week, that Lincoln was the Paris -- nay , the Lothlorien of the Midwest, a place where there are LOTS of black people, and no one eats chicken-fried steak. Never. Ever. Ever. It is UNHEARD OF.
Heh. Sorry.
But this is the perfect example of why it's difficult to do shows set anywhere except LA and New York. This is how the cultural conversation basically goes:
TV writers: "You know what might be amusing? Sophie gets an order from the hotel menu, and she doesn't like it, because she's a bit of a princess. Chicken-fried steak is one of those meals that always baffles foreigners. It also has a funny name. Let's have that be the item she ordered off the menu, from among the many things she could have ordered."
TV audience: "You're saying we're all hicks who eat chicken fried steak!"
TV writers: " ... shit. Really? Um, what about the fact that out of all the villains in the show, the team is almost brought down, for the first time, because they got cocky and underestimated the fine Midwestern -- "
TV audience: "Screw you with your flannel-wearing stereotype Red State hate."
TV writers: "Wow, this is not going well. Errr, you know, Parker really like Nebraska --"
TV audience: "Unlike the rest of America, we never mistake one athletic black man for another!"
TV writers: "... Tyrone, you want to handle this one?"
Tyrone: "Not now. I'm busy signing autographs for Clippers fans.*"
Etc, etc.
This is not to say "lighten up" or "we sometimes get it wrong." No, the real thing here is that we always get it wrong. Always. We will always get it wrong in the future.
And not "always get it wrong about the Midwest because we're in Los Angeles and New York." That's "always get it wrong even when it's about Los Angeles and New York."
At the intersection of "all people's individual experience of a place is universalized out as their definition of the place" and "there are only so many hours in a day" lies the fact that all culture deals in shorthand. Last time I checked, the American middle-class was getting hammered by this economy. I've BEEN in those towns where Main Street's gone to hell. We want to to talk about those towns (rather than set another story in LA), we toss it in with a story about the MMA that tangentially links to Nebraska, bam, it's soup.
But the same thing happens for every city, including the ones we writers live in. For example, I live in Los Angeles. We have a lower murder rate than Phoenix, Arizona. A lower murder rate than Indianapolis, Indiana. A lower murder rate than Wichita frikkin' Kansas.
But if you watch television -- made by people who live in LA, shot in the city of LA -- do you ever see The Closer: Minneapolis Hellhole?
No. According to network television, Los Angeles is Murderville, capitol city of Rapesylvannia.
Angelenos and New Yorkers, however, have just learned not to give a shit and enjoy SVU hunting down this week's subway sodomizer. It may be perhaps because we're busy destroying culture, but it's just something we're used to.
All this to say, we're glad you're watching the show, and assume if we come to your town and get something wrong, it's an honest mistake born of scheduling and chaos rather than laziness and willful condescension.
Unless it's about Rhode Island. You people and your stinking "plantations." Yeah, you. We're coming for you.
*NOTE: I have been with him when he has done this. Not as bad as his time in China when he signed his name Kobe Bryant for a week, but still ...
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Question Post for LEVERAGE #202 "The Tap out Job"
Post your questions here, I'll get to them in a day or so.
A little behind, as we're in the home stretch and Felix's bag of tricks is getting a bit skint. I'm basically living off 3 hour naps, breakfast bars and Guiness at this point ...
A little behind, as we're in the home stretch and Felix's bag of tricks is getting a bit skint. I'm basically living off 3 hour naps, breakfast bars and Guiness at this point ...
Thursday, July 16, 2009
LEVERAGE 201 "The Beantown Bailout Job" Post-game
Hey, you all showed up, and you brought some friends. Thanks.
Right, I won't lie -- this one was a bitch. I mean, we were ecstatic, but we'd been picked up for the summer -- which was an honor, a real vote of confidence from the network -- with little prep time. We'd literally written ourselves out of a show premise. You see, we' sworn to ourselves we'd tell a complete story in Season 1, in case we never made an other episode of Leverage again. No cliffhanger endings for our story!
Well then, too clever by half.
So we started wrestling with how to bring the team back together. The natural reunion is a "help, I'm in trouble" call. It gets you in hot, it immediately covers any motivations, it solves a multitude of writing problems ... and so, perversely, we dug in against it.
Besides, we were basically writing a "second pilot" for all the new summer season sample viewers. A "help I'm in trouble" episode almost always is about one of the characters or a loved one. But the point of Leverage is that they help ordinary people, people who've stumbled into the giant machine of finance and corruption and power. For a "second pilot", we should use a traditional victim.
Not only that, these are characters who are not touchy-feely. Were we going to cheat and say the end of Season 1 really meant "And they never saw each other again ... except for weekends and holidays..." No, they broke up. For reals, as the kids would Tweet. It had to be accidental and awkward. Simultaneous heists? Well, we were saving that for something else ...
Downey joked that he'd like to find a way to get the team back together again during the opening credits. I'd laugh ... and then wistfully sigh. What we arrived at was the accidental reunion of damaged friends, none of whom could summon up the emotional maturity to just come out and admit they needed each other. Instead, once given permission to be together by fate, they could hack away awkwardly, fall into their old family relationship and pretend that hey, it was just a good way to work out the altruism kinks, until the jones passed again.
All except Nate Ford, of course. Nate closed his arc in Season 1. Done. He got his vengeance agasint the men who he felt were responsible for the death of his child. He was forgiven by his ex-wife. Didn't need to drink anymore, conquered his demons ...
Bullshit.
Nate Ford ... well, we know Nate Ford a little, by now. Add a line Downey and Berg wrote in "The 12 Step Job":"Maybe I'm a bigger bastard when I'm sober? Did you think about that?" and you begin to understand that it takes a certain kind of person to baste his grief and rage in a furnace of booze and come out the other side as an obsessive, vengeful guardian angel. And that sort of person doesn't go away when the booze does. Hell, the boze was what was keeping the edge off. What happens to a brilliant, obsessive control freak when you take vengeance away from him? Those gears don't just spin down ...
Nate Ford has a very definite idea of who he is and where he belongs in the world. He is, of course, wrong.
Season Zero was about what happens when a nice, stand-up guy with a very black-and-white identity and worldview collides headlong with reality, and reality wins. Season 1 was about that man crawling out of the gutter using what was left of his skills. Season 2 is about Nate Ford realizing that he isn't that nice, stand-up guy anymore. He's changed. Or, maybe, he's just not so good at lying about who -- or what -- he really is.
At the same time, Sophie's coming to a realization herself. How Nate and Sophie each react to their new sense of identity form the first and second "season" arcs of Season 2.
And along the way, we'll watch Eliot, Hardison and Parker deal with "identity" in their own ways.
This season, as you probably know, shoots in Portland, which has turned into a fantastic experience for us. The city is shoot-friendly, looks gorgeous, and the people of Portland have really taken us into their hearts. The show is going to shoot on location quite a bit more than we did last year, and I think it opens us up visually, gives us a little more scope.
The plot of this episode came about because, well, we were just too steeped in crime, after a year, to look at anything in a non-cynical way. Basically, as we were developing the 2nd Season, the government announced the $700 billion dollar bailout deal. We looked at each other and said: "There is no way that you're going to turn $700 billion loose into the world and not have somebody try to grift a piece of it. " Soon after we started filming, the government began prosecuting the first of the bailout fraud cases. Not prescience -- a simple faith in the gravity of corruption.
Bank fraud's a ... little dry, to say the least. I was casting around for a crime story to glue onto the idea (Downey was breaking what would become #203, Berg working on what would become #207) while going over my notes about moving the show to Boston. "Remember The Departed" was scrawled in my notebook, a reminder to use State Police in a story, since audiences would already have a mental shorthand for those sorts of characters. The bleak, joyless existence of the modern mob juxtaposed agasint the luxurious lifestyles of "honest citizens" like Madoff and Sanford pretty much fell together, all of a piece, in an afternoon. Once you know who you want to talk about, the crime stuff comes a lot easier.
Of course, as soon as the actors showed up, it all fell into place. We really are kind of in the business of dropping these characters into trouble, and then getting the hell out of their way.
For the record, first shot of the second season was Kevin Chapman -- who'd been a doorman at Nick's Comedy Club in Boston when I was doing stand-up -- settign up the meeting with Nate Ford over his cell phone. And my favorite line is "... but we usually use a razor blade." Annie Kroy may be my favorite Gina character yet. I could write 12 episodes for that voice alone.
Right, onto the questions.
@scott: It's great that the Season 1 DVD is out, but what about Blu-Ray?? when can we expect the first season in Blue-Ray format???
Don't know. The DVD's are distributed by Paramount, and I think we're hacking out a Blue-Ray option now. It is a shame, as we shoot digital, but I think it still looks pretty amazing, at least for human eyes.
@Stefan Jones: The Oregonian says the new season is supposed to be taking place in Boston. No love for Stumptown?
We always said Nate Ford was from Boston, and it's the home-base culture for both Tim and I. If Nate Ford was going to go anywhere to try to re-assert his old identity, it was home. We will see, however, that he probably didn't really think that out ...
@Robert M: Any idea whether we might see Leverage streaming on Netflix soon? I prefer life without cable, and iTunes has some serious drawbacks as a delivery method for TV.
It's up now on Netflix streaming, although there are a few Season 1 eps missing that are currently streaming on TNT. I assume they'll become available very soon. I do love the Netflix. I keep every ep of Rockford on my Play Instantly queue at all times, just in case the whim strikes me.
Personally, I'd go with the DVD, because then you get all our drunken, ranting commentary.
@Darkrose: Will S2 be available on iTunes, and if so, any idea what the turnaround time will be?
It's up, and looks like it'll be a 1 day turnaround.
@Jenni: Here in Sunny Florida, in Miami there is a big problem with Medicare fraud, maybe Nate and the team could come in and clean that up for us!!! Eliot can kick their ass for people selling their social security cards and companies taking the money and run and not helping anyone.
Is he kicking the asses of the elderly? I think Kane might have an issue with that. Although we haven't done a proper wheelchair fight yet. I think we just shot the meat cvleaver fight last week ...
@Michelle: I had to laugh when Elliot made the new door way. Does this mean that they are all moving into the building? (like a big frat house?)
God, no. Although Nate's not exactly sure where the hell Hardison is sleeping, because he always seems to be in Nate's loft. Always.
@Matt: Did you really need to beat us over the head with the briefcase thing at the end, though?
You know, we're never sure. Testing indicates -- and I'm not kidding -- that about 30% of our audience never understands the con at all. Doesn't stop them from enjoying the show, but particularly for a "second pilot", better safe than sorry.
@Becky: Are we going to get to see what everyone was up to for the 6 months, or was the brief mention in tonight's episode it?
You'll get glimpses, but we're kind of saving those months for something special. We did have a series of flashbacks -- again, not kidding -- picking up the story of Eliot's mysterious monkey. But that's for another day.
@Karie: guess the big reason why everyone split up to begin with is left on the fun train? That's okay, I like the fun train. Will we see more Sterling again this season? Mark Sheppard is a fantastic actor and I love seeing him get work.
I think I covered why the split above, but hey, love to see people embrace the fun train. You can be damn sure Sterling is coming back. After all, he never loses ...
@Calla: I have a question: one of Christian Kane's songs played in an S1 episode - will he get another song in S2 AND might we get to see Eliot sing at some point?
Probably have another song, but both Chris and the writers don't want to push Eliot singing. Does Eliot look like he sings? I don't know. I think he is an artist, and violence is his instrument ...
@Kai: So, it's a very minor quibble that I have, but I'm kind of hoping the little intro credits were a one time deal, sort of a 15-second "you are here" for all the first-time viewers...they weren't terrible, understand, and they were quick, but I have to admit that I liked how season one just went with a quick title and got straight to business.
You will see the intro for a while, but it will probably shift soon. Maybe. At the very least, we're going to play with where it lands.
@Cameron Hughes: How was Nate able to land a job at an insurance company after the events of last year? Also, is Leverage World a year ahead of us the way its been jumping 6 months?
Hardison covered their tracks pretty perfectly. Leverage World is about 3 months ahead of us, but will be normalied to Standard Non-Fiction Time by the end of the Season.
@Mitchy: As an aside, I have to say if I were Nate, having people barging in and trashing my place would drive me straight back to drink. Looking forward to seeing how he continues to cope with the not drinking thing, especially working with this crew!
Nate's grand strategy to stop drinking is basically pitting his own iron will against the booze. In a BAR. Literally staring it down. Yeah, this is going to go well ...
@Shelley: Split seasons, 'eh? Hmmmm. Will this become a habit for future seasons (what, there will be future seasons!) or is this a one-time thing to deal with the quicker turnaround?
If we're granted a third season by the TV Gods, then I believe we'll stay on the split schedule.
@Nato: All in all, big fun TV. You could coast all season on the strength of your lead ensemble, and I'd quite happily tune in. But I'd really like to see you add some nuance and complexity to your villains.
Dude, Bernie Madoff stole FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS. In a PONZI SCHEME. Which is the criminal equivalent of convincing people you are going to fly to the moon in a refridgerator box. The single, unpleasant truth is that most people, particularly criminals, are NOT complex. They are shallow, greedy sons of bitches to whom we attribute genius planning or complex motivations in order to preserve a false sense of order in our universe.
That said, all our bad guys operat ein a world where they are the heroes. You'll hear several different versions of "the evil speech of evil", as we call it, over the next year.
@Micah Seymour: Ok I watched the first episode of S2 last night 'cause you've got a guest star called W.W. coming up sometime. That gets one free viewing, but what I saw last night will at least make me check it out next week.
Wil Wheaton is in, er, I don't remember which episode. Better watch them all. He could be anywhere!
@VideoBeagle: Production question: The CGI car crash. Lots of places, entertainment folk talk about how expenseive CGI is and how long it takes etc...Is it something that's getting to the point that it is though cheaper to make a car flip digitally than to get a car and have a stunt man flip it or are there other considerations that lead to it's use?
Honestly, we just thought it woud be insane to go to Portland and, first day there, flip and blow up a car on a major thoroughfare. Turns out they're pretty cool about it.
Also, we've discovered that old-school miniatures explosions, gussied up with CG, look the best and are the cheapest way to go. You'll see more of those. Although our CG humans did yeoman;s work, I think if we were to do it again, we would have gone practical on the car flip.
@Richard Jensen: (Sidebar: I'm really glad to see Charles Martin Smith still kicking around. I've been a fan since he was hanging out in the tundra in "Never Cry Wolf".)
Sidebar -- Charles Martin Smith is the father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By which I mean, he directed the original, unaired premise pilot. Cool, eh?
@Eitan: When will TNT follow pretty much all the major, and some minor, networks and support the Mac OS?
They're actually upgrading this year, and things will be snappy for Mac users such as myself in just a few more weeks, if not days.
@Trent C: The monologue from the banker seems amazingly prescient, given the news story about Goldman Sachs posting record profits after being bailed out by the U.S. government. Reminds me of the senator from The Homecoming job echoing the fall of Ron Blagojevich.
Research is your friend, and greed is universal.
@CindyD1000: Why is Nate wearing a pajama top with a towel?
You know, I'm not sure. I'll ask Tim why he chose to do that. Probably to hide the tattoos.
@JackAttack: Question: When Sophie surprised the guy attacking Nate, why did she adopt a persona (couldn't catch the whole thing but ended with "Stitch this!"). She referenced it to make the con work later on, but it seemed convenient that she went "Irish" ahead of time.
I'm sorry, you think Sophie's voice is that character's real accent? Heh.
@scooter: McRory's is a lot tiddier than any Boston Irish bar I've been in. Maybe you can scruff it up a bit?
I'm drinking and vomiting in the corners as fast as I can, man!
@Rachel: And now I have a question: So when the team meet at the play, we're given the impression none of them have been in touch. Later Hardison tells us he looked for Parker for the whole six months the team has been apart and didn't find her. And yet Sophie managed to contact everyone to invite them to her performance? Is she just that good? Or did Parker maintain contact with Sophie, while avoiding Hardison? I'm confused!
You should be confused. Each one of them has a different relationship with the others. Sophie ... kept tabs on people. Hardison tried to, although he went about it, well, wrong.
Hope that was useful. Now, let's leave with a sneak peek of next week's episode. I actually giggled while watching this the first time; I'd never heard the final sound mix, and Aldis' desperate pleas for help ... just turn your volume way up.
Right, I won't lie -- this one was a bitch. I mean, we were ecstatic, but we'd been picked up for the summer -- which was an honor, a real vote of confidence from the network -- with little prep time. We'd literally written ourselves out of a show premise. You see, we' sworn to ourselves we'd tell a complete story in Season 1, in case we never made an other episode of Leverage again. No cliffhanger endings for our story!
Well then, too clever by half.
So we started wrestling with how to bring the team back together. The natural reunion is a "help, I'm in trouble" call. It gets you in hot, it immediately covers any motivations, it solves a multitude of writing problems ... and so, perversely, we dug in against it.
Besides, we were basically writing a "second pilot" for all the new summer season sample viewers. A "help I'm in trouble" episode almost always is about one of the characters or a loved one. But the point of Leverage is that they help ordinary people, people who've stumbled into the giant machine of finance and corruption and power. For a "second pilot", we should use a traditional victim.
Not only that, these are characters who are not touchy-feely. Were we going to cheat and say the end of Season 1 really meant "And they never saw each other again ... except for weekends and holidays..." No, they broke up. For reals, as the kids would Tweet. It had to be accidental and awkward. Simultaneous heists? Well, we were saving that for something else ...
Downey joked that he'd like to find a way to get the team back together again during the opening credits. I'd laugh ... and then wistfully sigh. What we arrived at was the accidental reunion of damaged friends, none of whom could summon up the emotional maturity to just come out and admit they needed each other. Instead, once given permission to be together by fate, they could hack away awkwardly, fall into their old family relationship and pretend that hey, it was just a good way to work out the altruism kinks, until the jones passed again.
All except Nate Ford, of course. Nate closed his arc in Season 1. Done. He got his vengeance agasint the men who he felt were responsible for the death of his child. He was forgiven by his ex-wife. Didn't need to drink anymore, conquered his demons ...
Bullshit.
Nate Ford ... well, we know Nate Ford a little, by now. Add a line Downey and Berg wrote in "The 12 Step Job":"Maybe I'm a bigger bastard when I'm sober? Did you think about that?" and you begin to understand that it takes a certain kind of person to baste his grief and rage in a furnace of booze and come out the other side as an obsessive, vengeful guardian angel. And that sort of person doesn't go away when the booze does. Hell, the boze was what was keeping the edge off. What happens to a brilliant, obsessive control freak when you take vengeance away from him? Those gears don't just spin down ...
Nate Ford has a very definite idea of who he is and where he belongs in the world. He is, of course, wrong.
Season Zero was about what happens when a nice, stand-up guy with a very black-and-white identity and worldview collides headlong with reality, and reality wins. Season 1 was about that man crawling out of the gutter using what was left of his skills. Season 2 is about Nate Ford realizing that he isn't that nice, stand-up guy anymore. He's changed. Or, maybe, he's just not so good at lying about who -- or what -- he really is.
At the same time, Sophie's coming to a realization herself. How Nate and Sophie each react to their new sense of identity form the first and second "season" arcs of Season 2.
And along the way, we'll watch Eliot, Hardison and Parker deal with "identity" in their own ways.
This season, as you probably know, shoots in Portland, which has turned into a fantastic experience for us. The city is shoot-friendly, looks gorgeous, and the people of Portland have really taken us into their hearts. The show is going to shoot on location quite a bit more than we did last year, and I think it opens us up visually, gives us a little more scope.
The plot of this episode came about because, well, we were just too steeped in crime, after a year, to look at anything in a non-cynical way. Basically, as we were developing the 2nd Season, the government announced the $700 billion dollar bailout deal. We looked at each other and said: "There is no way that you're going to turn $700 billion loose into the world and not have somebody try to grift a piece of it. " Soon after we started filming, the government began prosecuting the first of the bailout fraud cases. Not prescience -- a simple faith in the gravity of corruption.
Bank fraud's a ... little dry, to say the least. I was casting around for a crime story to glue onto the idea (Downey was breaking what would become #203, Berg working on what would become #207) while going over my notes about moving the show to Boston. "Remember The Departed" was scrawled in my notebook, a reminder to use State Police in a story, since audiences would already have a mental shorthand for those sorts of characters. The bleak, joyless existence of the modern mob juxtaposed agasint the luxurious lifestyles of "honest citizens" like Madoff and Sanford pretty much fell together, all of a piece, in an afternoon. Once you know who you want to talk about, the crime stuff comes a lot easier.
Of course, as soon as the actors showed up, it all fell into place. We really are kind of in the business of dropping these characters into trouble, and then getting the hell out of their way.
For the record, first shot of the second season was Kevin Chapman -- who'd been a doorman at Nick's Comedy Club in Boston when I was doing stand-up -- settign up the meeting with Nate Ford over his cell phone. And my favorite line is "... but we usually use a razor blade." Annie Kroy may be my favorite Gina character yet. I could write 12 episodes for that voice alone.
Right, onto the questions.
@scott: It's great that the Season 1 DVD is out, but what about Blu-Ray?? when can we expect the first season in Blue-Ray format???
Don't know. The DVD's are distributed by Paramount, and I think we're hacking out a Blue-Ray option now. It is a shame, as we shoot digital, but I think it still looks pretty amazing, at least for human eyes.
@Stefan Jones: The Oregonian says the new season is supposed to be taking place in Boston. No love for Stumptown?
We always said Nate Ford was from Boston, and it's the home-base culture for both Tim and I. If Nate Ford was going to go anywhere to try to re-assert his old identity, it was home. We will see, however, that he probably didn't really think that out ...
@Robert M: Any idea whether we might see Leverage streaming on Netflix soon? I prefer life without cable, and iTunes has some serious drawbacks as a delivery method for TV.
It's up now on Netflix streaming, although there are a few Season 1 eps missing that are currently streaming on TNT. I assume they'll become available very soon. I do love the Netflix. I keep every ep of Rockford on my Play Instantly queue at all times, just in case the whim strikes me.
Personally, I'd go with the DVD, because then you get all our drunken, ranting commentary.
@Darkrose: Will S2 be available on iTunes, and if so, any idea what the turnaround time will be?
It's up, and looks like it'll be a 1 day turnaround.
@Jenni: Here in Sunny Florida, in Miami there is a big problem with Medicare fraud, maybe Nate and the team could come in and clean that up for us!!! Eliot can kick their ass for people selling their social security cards and companies taking the money and run and not helping anyone.
Is he kicking the asses of the elderly? I think Kane might have an issue with that. Although we haven't done a proper wheelchair fight yet. I think we just shot the meat cvleaver fight last week ...
@Michelle: I had to laugh when Elliot made the new door way. Does this mean that they are all moving into the building? (like a big frat house?)
God, no. Although Nate's not exactly sure where the hell Hardison is sleeping, because he always seems to be in Nate's loft. Always.
@Matt: Did you really need to beat us over the head with the briefcase thing at the end, though?
You know, we're never sure. Testing indicates -- and I'm not kidding -- that about 30% of our audience never understands the con at all. Doesn't stop them from enjoying the show, but particularly for a "second pilot", better safe than sorry.
@Becky: Are we going to get to see what everyone was up to for the 6 months, or was the brief mention in tonight's episode it?
You'll get glimpses, but we're kind of saving those months for something special. We did have a series of flashbacks -- again, not kidding -- picking up the story of Eliot's mysterious monkey. But that's for another day.
@Karie: guess the big reason why everyone split up to begin with is left on the fun train? That's okay, I like the fun train. Will we see more Sterling again this season? Mark Sheppard is a fantastic actor and I love seeing him get work.
I think I covered why the split above, but hey, love to see people embrace the fun train. You can be damn sure Sterling is coming back. After all, he never loses ...
@Calla: I have a question: one of Christian Kane's songs played in an S1 episode - will he get another song in S2 AND might we get to see Eliot sing at some point?
Probably have another song, but both Chris and the writers don't want to push Eliot singing. Does Eliot look like he sings? I don't know. I think he is an artist, and violence is his instrument ...
@Kai: So, it's a very minor quibble that I have, but I'm kind of hoping the little intro credits were a one time deal, sort of a 15-second "you are here" for all the first-time viewers...they weren't terrible, understand, and they were quick, but I have to admit that I liked how season one just went with a quick title and got straight to business.
You will see the intro for a while, but it will probably shift soon. Maybe. At the very least, we're going to play with where it lands.
@Cameron Hughes: How was Nate able to land a job at an insurance company after the events of last year? Also, is Leverage World a year ahead of us the way its been jumping 6 months?
Hardison covered their tracks pretty perfectly. Leverage World is about 3 months ahead of us, but will be normalied to Standard Non-Fiction Time by the end of the Season.
@Mitchy: As an aside, I have to say if I were Nate, having people barging in and trashing my place would drive me straight back to drink. Looking forward to seeing how he continues to cope with the not drinking thing, especially working with this crew!
Nate's grand strategy to stop drinking is basically pitting his own iron will against the booze. In a BAR. Literally staring it down. Yeah, this is going to go well ...
@Shelley: Split seasons, 'eh? Hmmmm. Will this become a habit for future seasons (what, there will be future seasons!) or is this a one-time thing to deal with the quicker turnaround?
If we're granted a third season by the TV Gods, then I believe we'll stay on the split schedule.
@Nato: All in all, big fun TV. You could coast all season on the strength of your lead ensemble, and I'd quite happily tune in. But I'd really like to see you add some nuance and complexity to your villains.
Dude, Bernie Madoff stole FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS. In a PONZI SCHEME. Which is the criminal equivalent of convincing people you are going to fly to the moon in a refridgerator box. The single, unpleasant truth is that most people, particularly criminals, are NOT complex. They are shallow, greedy sons of bitches to whom we attribute genius planning or complex motivations in order to preserve a false sense of order in our universe.
That said, all our bad guys operat ein a world where they are the heroes. You'll hear several different versions of "the evil speech of evil", as we call it, over the next year.
@Micah Seymour: Ok I watched the first episode of S2 last night 'cause you've got a guest star called W.W. coming up sometime. That gets one free viewing, but what I saw last night will at least make me check it out next week.
Wil Wheaton is in, er, I don't remember which episode. Better watch them all. He could be anywhere!
@VideoBeagle: Production question: The CGI car crash. Lots of places, entertainment folk talk about how expenseive CGI is and how long it takes etc...Is it something that's getting to the point that it is though cheaper to make a car flip digitally than to get a car and have a stunt man flip it or are there other considerations that lead to it's use?
Honestly, we just thought it woud be insane to go to Portland and, first day there, flip and blow up a car on a major thoroughfare. Turns out they're pretty cool about it.
Also, we've discovered that old-school miniatures explosions, gussied up with CG, look the best and are the cheapest way to go. You'll see more of those. Although our CG humans did yeoman;s work, I think if we were to do it again, we would have gone practical on the car flip.
@Richard Jensen: (Sidebar: I'm really glad to see Charles Martin Smith still kicking around. I've been a fan since he was hanging out in the tundra in "Never Cry Wolf".)
Sidebar -- Charles Martin Smith is the father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By which I mean, he directed the original, unaired premise pilot. Cool, eh?
@Eitan: When will TNT follow pretty much all the major, and some minor, networks and support the Mac OS?
They're actually upgrading this year, and things will be snappy for Mac users such as myself in just a few more weeks, if not days.
@Trent C: The monologue from the banker seems amazingly prescient, given the news story about Goldman Sachs posting record profits after being bailed out by the U.S. government. Reminds me of the senator from The Homecoming job echoing the fall of Ron Blagojevich.
Research is your friend, and greed is universal.
@CindyD1000: Why is Nate wearing a pajama top with a towel?
You know, I'm not sure. I'll ask Tim why he chose to do that. Probably to hide the tattoos.
@JackAttack: Question: When Sophie surprised the guy attacking Nate, why did she adopt a persona (couldn't catch the whole thing but ended with "Stitch this!"). She referenced it to make the con work later on, but it seemed convenient that she went "Irish" ahead of time.
I'm sorry, you think Sophie's voice is that character's real accent? Heh.
@scooter: McRory's is a lot tiddier than any Boston Irish bar I've been in. Maybe you can scruff it up a bit?
I'm drinking and vomiting in the corners as fast as I can, man!
@Rachel: And now I have a question: So when the team meet at the play, we're given the impression none of them have been in touch. Later Hardison tells us he looked for Parker for the whole six months the team has been apart and didn't find her. And yet Sophie managed to contact everyone to invite them to her performance? Is she just that good? Or did Parker maintain contact with Sophie, while avoiding Hardison? I'm confused!
You should be confused. Each one of them has a different relationship with the others. Sophie ... kept tabs on people. Hardison tried to, although he went about it, well, wrong.
Hope that was useful. Now, let's leave with a sneak peek of next week's episode. I actually giggled while watching this the first time; I'd never heard the final sound mix, and Aldis' desperate pleas for help ... just turn your volume way up.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
LEVERAGE SEASON 1 on AMAZON
Because I was chewed out by suited humans ...
See if you can guess which episode was the four-Guiness commentary ...
See if you can guess which episode was the four-Guiness commentary ...
The Ony Heist Show with the Bank Bailout, Explosions, and Gunplay ...
... all in one place returns tonight on TNT. Or so I've heard.
Post questions here after the episode, I'll answer them, with the usual post-mortem, tomorrow. In the meantime, some Leverage links.
Season One Recap
Season Two Sneak Peak
Character recaps
Nate:
Sophie:
Eliot:
Hardison:
Parker:
And, for what it's worth, those shots at the beginning of the promos are all from shooting #207, "The Two Live Crew Job."
They got Chris and I drunk, and got us talking in Part 1 and Part 2.
Hope you enjoy it, thanks for spreading the word, and being fans and getting us our Season Two.
Post questions here after the episode, I'll answer them, with the usual post-mortem, tomorrow. In the meantime, some Leverage links.
Season One Recap
Season Two Sneak Peak
Character recaps
Nate:
Sophie:
Eliot:
Hardison:
Parker:
And, for what it's worth, those shots at the beginning of the promos are all from shooting #207, "The Two Live Crew Job."
They got Chris and I drunk, and got us talking in Part 1 and Part 2.
Hope you enjoy it, thanks for spreading the word, and being fans and getting us our Season Two.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
#netflixfkdup
For those of you not on Twitter, you can play too! Bad Netflix recommendations!
"If you liked TOOTSIE, you'll love BOYS DON'T CRY." - @wordwill
"If you liked MY GIRL, you'll love LET THE RIGHT ONE IN." - @bergopolis
"If you liked NATIONAL LAMPOON'S EUROPEAN VACATION, you'll love HOSTEL." - @raven1967
"If you liked THE INCREDIBLES, you'll love THE WOODSMAN." - @dan_hill
"If you liked HOWARD'S END, you'll love FUNNY GAMES."" - @KitMoxie
Have at it in Comments.
"If you liked TOOTSIE, you'll love BOYS DON'T CRY." - @wordwill
"If you liked MY GIRL, you'll love LET THE RIGHT ONE IN." - @bergopolis
"If you liked NATIONAL LAMPOON'S EUROPEAN VACATION, you'll love HOSTEL." - @raven1967
"If you liked THE INCREDIBLES, you'll love THE WOODSMAN." - @dan_hill
"If you liked HOWARD'S END, you'll love FUNNY GAMES."" - @KitMoxie
Have at it in Comments.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Ephemera 2009 (10) - Make
-- from Bill Cunningham, an article about shooting a movie on the Sony EX-1. We use that camera all the time, and I have seen some pretty damn stunning stuff done with it.
-- My former writer's assistant, Megan J, is creating her own web content about superheroes with substance abuse issues. My God, I enjoyed typing that. Go here for The Sanctum.
-- The SyFy trailer looks like the bastard spawn of the CW sodomizing Neil Gaiman.
-- Lee Goldberg's blogging about releasing his work on the Kindle. Although fair and thorough, I think that there's a flaw in his analysis, but we'll discuss that in the upcoming Kindle post.
-- novelist Michael Stackpole writes about digital distribution, and how it'll re-invigorate the short fiction market. Personally I like how 2,500 words fits the "chapter a post" paradigm.
-- friend of blog Michael Patrick Sullivan has a play opening this weekend. Supervillainy abounds.
-- I really have no idea why EA hasn't tweaked Sims 3 to work with a free camera mode and basic path movement.
-- Paul Duffield takes you through the art process on Warren Ellis' Freakangels. I particularly like the note about using 3D Max (I imagine Poser would work just as well) to get perspective dead on in certain situations.
-- Lacking Poser, Daz 3D is impressive as hell and works on a freemium model.
-- That's all for now. Go out and make something.
-- My former writer's assistant, Megan J, is creating her own web content about superheroes with substance abuse issues. My God, I enjoyed typing that. Go here for The Sanctum.
-- The SyFy trailer looks like the bastard spawn of the CW sodomizing Neil Gaiman.
-- Lee Goldberg's blogging about releasing his work on the Kindle. Although fair and thorough, I think that there's a flaw in his analysis, but we'll discuss that in the upcoming Kindle post.
-- novelist Michael Stackpole writes about digital distribution, and how it'll re-invigorate the short fiction market. Personally I like how 2,500 words fits the "chapter a post" paradigm.
-- friend of blog Michael Patrick Sullivan has a play opening this weekend. Supervillainy abounds.
-- I really have no idea why EA hasn't tweaked Sims 3 to work with a free camera mode and basic path movement.
-- Paul Duffield takes you through the art process on Warren Ellis' Freakangels. I particularly like the note about using 3D Max (I imagine Poser would work just as well) to get perspective dead on in certain situations.
-- Lacking Poser, Daz 3D is impressive as hell and works on a freemium model.
-- That's all for now. Go out and make something.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Four Colleges in Five Years
Commenter Jon H for the win on Palin:
"She's going to transfer to the governor's office of a couple other states, and eventually rack up enough credits to complete the term."
"She's going to transfer to the governor's office of a couple other states, and eventually rack up enough credits to complete the term."
Wow. That Album Really DID open THE GATE
Sarah Palin is resigning in an incoherent mess and Al Franken is a US Senator. Even as a progressive, I am kind of freaked out at the strong evidence that someone, somewhere, cut a deal with Satan.
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