What sets The Fixer apart from other Vampire stories is that rather than being ‘undead’, vampires are a separately evolving species, secretly co-existing with humans for thousands of years. Lawson, the main character of the show, is a  cynical, jaded, anti-hero”. His job is to protect civilization from rogue vampires who threaten the status quo.

I had the chance to interview Jon about the process and what he’s come up against as he’s tried to create and market his Indie production.

Most Indie budgets are small and usually shot subpar to production standards. What motivates you to create The Fixer with production quality standards?

From the start, our intention at New Ronin is to produce a “real” television series that can be brought into networks ready-to-go.  That means that we need to replicate the production standards, union agreements, etc. in
order to sell to that networks.  They’re obviously obligated to use productions that comply with industry standards.  Imagine if we showed up and said, “hey, buy our stuff, it’s ready to go, but by the way, we didn’t use union people or adhere to the same production standards.” They’d laugh us out the door.  At best, they want to reshoot the entire
thing.  Our goal is to walk in, hand them the episodes, and say, “Have fun.”

What do you think is the biggest roadblock to getting the financing  needed to produce an Indie series with the vision you have?

Our location is one hurdle we’ve had to overcome.  If we were in California, we’d be able to find plenty of wealthy people who have made money investing in the entertainment industry.  But we wanted to find people locally (since The Fixer is based in New England) who would invest.  That’s tough.  People in New England don’t make their money
from movies or TV, so they need to be educated on the potential that exists for excellent returns.  Each pitch meeting we’ve gone to has involved, on some level, a very elementary breakdown of how movies and TV shows make their money.

Have you considered shooting lower quality to build audience  following to  attract the bigger dollars you need to do the things you really want, sort of like a vanity press for the web? What stops you from doing this?

 We’ve shot some very basic footage that enabled us to present our ideas better to potential investors.  It was sort of an idea of saying, ”this is what we’ve accomplished with no money – imagine how good it will look when we have your money backing us.”  Everyone involved on The Fixer  from the start has come on-board for the simple love of the
project.  Vampires have been done to death in so many ways, but they’re all the same in that they’re undead.  But The Fixer  isn’t like that. Living, evolving vampires are something new, and combined with the espionage angle, it’s a fresh look at the mythos that has people really excited.

 What program length are you looking at when creating The Fixer?

Our four sales channels focus on domestic broadcast rights, international broadcast rights, DVD,
and digital downloads.  As such, each episode will be approximately 44 minutes long to accommodate commercials, etc. that the networks will need to position in order to earn money.  That said, we are definitely investigating web outlets and digital downloads as an important component of our overall sales structure. 

What’s the biggest lesson to date you’ve learned through the entire process of bringing The Fixer to the web? What are your biggest fears?

One of the biggest things we’ve had to overcome is the inordinate amount of people who swear up-and-down they want to get involved.  They love the project, they want to sink some money into it, they really love it, they’re telling all of their friends about it, etc. etc.  Then when we put the paperwork in front of them, they balk and we never hear from
them again.  People talk a great game, but when it comes time to committing, they bail.  It’s rather a sad commentary on our society, I think.  People are conditioned into accepted norms and paths through their lives and they lose that courage to try something new or to take a chance.

As for my biggest fears, I suppose it’s what any creator fears most:  that the public won’t gobble it up and ask for more, more, more!  What  helps is that The Fixer is part of a multimedia/multiplatform  entertainment vehicle.  The Lawson Vampire novels are coming back into print along with the long-awaited 5th book and three more besides.  We’ve got a great web-based video game debuting over the summer.  And much more to boot.  The goal is to extend the production across a wide swath of market segments, hopefully getting more and more of an audience.  Only time will tell if we’re successful.  But I think we will be.  Very much so.

So, essentially then, you are looking to have the product in hand and get networks to buy what you’ve already produced? What sort of hurdle do you expect/have you planned for in getting networks to buy into it? Do you have a network picked out? A dream network?

Yes, that’s it exactly.  It’s obviously a bit different from how shows are normally produced here in the US, but we feel the time is coming when this will be more the norm.  There’s no reason why independent production houses can’t create television shows of comparable or better quality than networks.  This already happens with indie films, so why not TV? 

Our sales team is comprised of veterans who know how to get us into the networks.  But even our worst-case scenarios have a built-in profit model.  As far as hurdles go, this entire process has been one big hurdle.  There is always opposition to anything that threatens the status quo.  Our job is to show those who oppose us how this can work out for them from every angle.  Once they see that, the reception should warm.

As far as a dream network, I like what is being shown on FX.  They push the envelope and their shows reflect that.  Rescue Me is one of the best-written shows on TV.  Sons of Anarchy is a lot of fun.  Who knows, The Fixer might be a good fit for it.

Tomorrow night’s episode of Leverage, “The Juror #6 Job”, was directed by TV veteran Jonathan Frakes and reunites him with Star Trek alums Brent Spiner, Armin Shimerman, and Kitty Swink. I had a chance to talk with Frakes about his experience on this episode and with the Leverage team in general (he’s directed two episodes so far.) We also talked a bit about the present and future of television.

Your first directing job was a Star Trek episode, but when did you know that was something you wanted to do? Was the first time a lark, you wanted to try it out, or did you already know you were interested?

No, it took me years to get my friend Rick Berman to actually give me an episode to direct. No, I knew from early on in the series that there was an opportunity there just by virtue of being on the set every day with a television series to learn from some of the wonderful TV directors that we had and to shadow them and trail them and then I was lucky enough to get time in the editing room to figure out what that part of it was about. Eventually, after it being clear to Rick that I wasn’t going to stop pursuing it, he relented.

Well, it’s good that you kept pursuing that. Do you have a preference between being in front of the camera or behind the camera?

I don’t have a preference, but I’ve certainly been busier behind the camera lately. I think Star Trek has been a double-edged sword for actors in terms of recognizability. Some places it’s helpful to have been the guy from Star Trek and some places it’s just the opposite. So I’m very thankful to have another craft that I can do.

What was it like when you took on your first non-Star Trek directing job? How were the pressures different for you?

Well you lose some of the shorthand that you have with a cast when you go to a new show. I mean, eventually you gain it because actors, I think, respond well to directors who are also  actors. I think there’s a certain shorthand that we know what it feels like. But the privilege of doing…I mean we did 182 episodes and four movies together as the Next Generation cast, so that provides for real shorthand. So you try to create some version of that wherever you go.

I must say the Leverage company functions not unlike Next Generation. They work as a team and as a family and I could see it turning into…I mean it’s a great place to work for that very reason.

On his blog, John Rogers has talked a lot about how Electric Entertainment is a very different entity too. The consolidated production, in-house FX, everything. How is that from your perspective?

That’s Dean [Devlin]. Dean is a visionary who also happens to have real balls. He’s put his money where his mouth is, he’s bought this incredible facility which was an Art Deco animal hospital in Hollywood where I’m sitting at the moment and he has created a mini-studio. I just saw the writers when I came in, I’m sitting in one of the editing suites, the visual FX guys I passed on the way upstairs. Dean and the other offices are up in the other wing. I’m in the large animal wing; they’re over in the dog and cat wing.

I think it’s the future. He’s eliminating the middleman. He owns a lot of his own equipment, he keeps a visual effects house going, he’s a very, very smart producer, Dean.

You’ve worked with Dean quite a bit before. How did that relationship start?

Years ago we were trying to develop a project together, a movie that never got off the ground for writer reasons. And I actually guested on a television series that Dean was a regular on called Hard Copy many years ago, so I’ve known Dean for a long, long time. And we have very similar sensibilities in the types of movies we like and the types of shows we want to make, and we work similarly, so it’s a good team.

I want to get back a little to Dean, and his vision being the future of television. What do you think about the changes that the Internet is bringing about? Do you think that ordinary people producing content is a good thing, a bad thing? Do you think that’s going to start to take off and gain some following?

I think it already has. Certainly you look at the hits that both good and bad things on YouTube get. But I think the well produced, clever, intelligently written, well acted television show is not going to be threatened by an amateur. Not that some of these streaming videos aren’t entertaining, but the legs that a show like Leverage now has – with the pickup and the future – I think it’s really apples and oranges to be frank. I think the Internet is a great tool for selling good television. I don’t see at least this year and next year, shows made directly for the Internet as a particular threat to shows as well produced as the TNT shows.

Do you have any plans to direct any episodes next season?

Yeah. I hope to be back for quite a few next year.

If you’re coming back behind the camera, do you have any interest in going in front of the camera on the show? Other than your little cameo there a couple of weeks back?¹

Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that happens.

Here’s where I got a little silly. Forgive my indulgence, but hey, I got Number 1 to laugh. That’s something.

I have this great idea. I think the team needs to lose one. I think maybe a charming pair of con artists come in. A tall guy with a beard, maybe his lovely blond wife, they rip the team off.

I like it. I may go downstairs and pitch it when I get off the phone!

I think you might even know a good blond to play that role.

I certainly do!²

Getting to the aspects of directing this particular episode, what was the most rewarding moment for you?

It was great to be back to work with Brent [Spiner] and Armin [Shimerman] and Kitty [Swink] and having them in the same room and nobody had on any prosthetics, nobody was wearing goldflake makeup. That alone was worth the price of admission!

I think my favorite slick moment of the episode is the phone lift. How tough was the setup on that?³

Well that’s again a perfect example of good planning. You have the visual effects guys, and I said to them, can’t we just throw nothing and you put the phone in? Because the idea of trying to do that practically, we’d still be shooting it. It’s a CG phone that goes through the air.

That’s Dean’s team. That’s the visual effects house that works down here at Electric. We threw the phone, then we threw nothing. Then she caught a phone, or she had a phone and pulled it down, then she caught nothing. And then we sew the pieces together, comp the pieces together, and the shot works and people buy that it actually happened.

Don’t forget to watch Tuesday’s episode of Leverage. Parker has to interact with *regular* people.

1. If you missed it, go back and rewatch “The Snow Job”. Frakes is the man looking oddly at Nate while he talks on his comms.
2. If you, like me, grew up in the era of Luke and Laura, you should know damn well who Jonathan Frakes and I are discussing here. His lovely, talented wife, Genie Francis.
3. Seriously guys, watch this close. It is one of the best lifts in the show’s short history.

This fall has not been a great season for TV. New shows have been painful letdowns, old shows have come up short, and the few standouts have either been canceled – Pushing Daisies – or ended their runs in heart stopping fashion like The Shield. So even when something’s been great, we won’t be seeing it any longer.¹

Into that vast wasteland comes a breath of fresh, stylish air on TNT. Leverage marks the return of the superstar thief to the airwaves to fight back the onslaught of reality programming and forensic procedurals. You can read my preview here. It’s a tight, snappy show with a stellar cast having a lot of fun with what they’re doing. Which makes it a great change of pace from a lot of the somber and downright glum people littering the dial.

I was able to ask the creators a few questions about the show. I hope you enjoy their answers as much as I did.

John Rogers: Showrunner, Creator

DreamLoom: How did the Leverage pilot come about? Did you and Chris have the idea and pitch it to Dean Devlin, or did he have the premise?

John Rogers: It was a weird bit of synchronicity, actually. While Dean was developing the latest installment of his Librarian franchise for TNT, they asked him for a series. He said he always wanted to do a heist show. They said “sold!” — but Dean didn’t really have more than that.

At the same time, Chris and I were having beers one night, and discussing how most of the recent TV heist and con shows had failed because they were too serialized and gritty. It seems like we want to see the magic trick in our con shows, get the payoff every week. Basically, what happened to The Rockford Files, and It Takes a Thief, and Switch and Mission: Impossible? We started tossing around ideas for such a show…

…and the very next day, Dean and I had lunch. Total coincidence. We joined forces and moved forward together from that point on as partners.

DL: TV or movies? You’ve got a mix on your resume and I’m sure your accountant is happy the WGA’s awarded you a credit on Catwoman and Transformers, but in your ideal world, which would be your preference?

JR: I wouldn’t be so sure I’m happy about the WGA awarding me the credit on Catwoman…

It’s a tough call. With film you have much larger budgets, a manageable story space – but you spend a lot of time in development. You spend more time talking about doing your job than actually doing your job. So I have to say TV eases ahead. The writer has more power, you actually shoot the script instead of sending it off for two years of rewrites – and in particular, TNT has been an amazing creative partner. Almost no interference. So TV in general, and this relationship in particular takes first place.

DL: This is a long, meandering question. Sorry.

I would assume your background as a standup has helped you learn to hone dialog for greatest impact, but do you feel your background in physics helps at all?

Let me clarify. The two writer-bloggers whose writing on writing I most appreciate are you and Alex Epstein. You have your degree in physics, Alex has his in CS. I dropped out of my physics program in my final semester and ended up getting a degree in CS instead. It seems likely my affinity for the two of you is a product of a more analytical worldview and embrace of process. Do you think your education leads you to write and run a writers’ room in a certain way?

JR: I’ll let my writers, who stare in horror at my colored pens, index cards, and structural fractals answer that question.

Oh yeah. I always attack a script from a very problem-solving approach. A hero has a problem. We want a certain solution. What are the reasonable – or creatively unreasonable – approaches the hero might take? Do they lead, inexorably, to a different solution than the one we anticipated? A TV story in particular is a complex beast, with act structure, budget and shooting schedule added into the mix.

DL: I’ve gathered you guys are using a mix of locations and sets. As the EP, how cognizant are you of the costs involved, and how much does that impact the way your scripts are written? From the first two episodes, it looks like you’re willing to go where the story takes you, and I know you did a good deal of location shooting in Chicago for the pilot. Are you are using standing sets much, or sticking a couple bottle shows in the mix to save money?

JR: Well, the problem with a con/heist show is, we can’t really bring people to our offices to con them. We have to go into their world. Plus, exploring those “worlds” is part of the appeal of a wish-fulfillment show like ours. For example, in “The Two Horse Job”, we go to Kentucky and get hip-deep in the bloodstock agent business, the business of tracking the bloodlines of racehorses, as they do with royal families. Finding out cool details about that unseen side of the sport is part of the fun.

That said, you have to remember there’s no studio here. Dean is financing the show himself through his production company. So hell yeah I’m cognizant of the costs – if we go over, I’m not sticking it to some faceless corporation, I’m risking a very good friend’s frikkin’ house. We definitely balanced out some of the bigger shows with some more bottle-y eps. For example, we had an old courtroom set from another show stored in our soundstage. That led to a “counter-heist the jury” episode “The Juror Number Six Job.” Which turned out to be great.

DL: Who’s crazier: the guy who created the Goa’uld, or Warren Ellis?

JR: Warren is insane, not crazy. There’s a difference. Dean, however, just shot an entire season of television basically on spec. He is fucking crazy.

DL: Who wins in a fight: Eliot Spencer or Angel?

JR: Chris Kane says Eliot could kick Lindsey’s ass, Lindsey nearly beat Angel, so I’ll go with Eliot.

DL: Totally off-topic, but quick: do you think Jaime is going to stick, or do you think DC will give into fanboy pressure and eventually re-resurrect Ted Kord?²

JR: They’ll bring back Ted, but that doesn’t mean Jaime won’t stick. He’s in the cartoon, in other books – they’ll just reboot the legacy with both of them present, I think.

DL: Finally, since I brought up comics, here’s a question I often ask when interviewing software engineers. Who wins in a fight: Hulk or Superman? How?³

JR: Superman. Brains always beats brawn, and they define “win” differently in that fight. I anticipate sub-orbital punching.

Chris Downey: EP, Creator

DL: Your first writing credit is for an episode of Cosby. How did that come about? Were you an assistant on staff, or was that a freelance script?

Chris Downey: I was actually working as a criminal defense attorney in New York when I was hired as a staff writer on Cosby. I was writing screenplays at night and wrote a few spec sitcom scripts as well. Around this time, Norman Steinberg, an old family friend, was hired to take over Cosby and knew I was trying to become a TV or feature writer. Norman (also a former lawyer) liked my specs and hired me. It was very much a case of right place, right time. And I didn’t even have to move to LA because Bill Cosby insisted the show tape in New York!

DL: How long were you working in the trenches before you made your first sale? And how many specs had you written and tossed before that point?

CD: Oh boy. Before I was hired on Cosby I wrote three full-length features with another lawyer friend. I also wrote three spec sitcoms scripts on my own – a Mad About You, a Friends and a NewsRadio. (This was 1995 back when NBC had lots of successful sitcoms on the air). I would say that the Friends was terrible, the NewsRadio was okay and the Mad About You was pretty good. So, to answer your question, it was probably four years before I actually started getting paid.

DL: Your writing and producing background is, even more so than John’s, focused on sitcoms. What challenges do you find in an hour-long show that didn’t occur to you before you started working on it?

CD: There are lots. Too many to mention here. But the biggest challenge is that the pre-production is much, much more involved in a one hour than a sitcom. There is a solid week of meetings and location scouts that have to happen before you shoot a frame of a one hour. A sitcom could pretty much be written over the weekend and then shot on a Thursday or Friday without missing a beat. That is because sitcoms take place primarily on existing sets on a soundstage and rarely go on location (I am talking about a multi-camera sitcom here. Single camera shows, like 30 Rock, have more in common with a one hour.) Of course, the re-writing process in sitcoms is much more extensive than a one hour. After a Monday table read the entire script could be re-written over the course of the next four days with one all-nighter after another. A one hour the script is pretty much written in stone by the time you start shooting.

DL: Please describe your writers’ room and the process there. I’ve read John’s blogs on it, but I’m curious to hear about it from another perspective.

CD: I don’t know how much more I could add to John’s exhaustive blogging on the subject but I will say we have a terrific room. Everyone comes prepared. We are all on the same page about what the show is. And having a relatively inexperienced staff (we have four staff writers — the entry level position) everyone is really enthusiastic. You can’t say our room is jaded.

DL: How much have the actors changed your impressions of the characters you created? What has the evolution of the characters been like?

CD: I think that John and I thought the character of Nate (Timothy Hutton) was going to be the master planner, calling the shots from the HQ like Peter Graves in Mission: Impossible. But Tim really took to actively playing parts in the cons so his character evolved accordingly. Christian Kane’s character of Eliot was conceived as a very precise, Zen-like tough guy. But Christian showed such a flair for the comedy we wrote to that. But Beth’s character of Parker probably went through the biggest evolution. She was conceived as someone with a social disorder, very uncomfortable around people, not giving eye contact. Beth was fantastic playing that. But the actress happens to be incredibly charming and winning and it was really impossible to keep that out of the show. My personal feeling is that in television, eventually every actor ends up playing themselves. It’s best not to fight it.

DL: In addition to a stellar cast, you’ve had some great guest stars. How much fun has it been writing for people like Saul Rubinek and Robert Pine and Mark Sheppard?

CD: We were incredibly lucky with all our guest casts. Saul is an old friend of Tim’s and really elevated the pilot. The biggest risk you have with villains is that they have no personality. And that is one problem Saul does not have. Mark Sheppard is a complete pro. In “The 12-Step Job,” one of our last episodes, he contributed a ton of ideas to a really tricky scene he was in. But I think we really hit a home run with the guest cast in an episode I wrote, “The Wedding Job.” Getting Dan Lauria and Nicole Sullivan as our quasi-Tony and Carmela Soprano was really a dream cast.

DL: I’m asking John and Dean, so you get this one too. Who wins in a fight: Hulk or Superman? How?

CD: The Hulk. Is this even a question anymore?

Dean Devlin: EP, Director, CEO of Electric Entertainment

DL: This is your new company’s first series. Were you at all worried that jumping in as a first-time director on the pilot was increasing the level of difficulty too much?

Dean Devlin: I try not to think about all the foolish things I get myself into. I think if I did, I’d never get half of what we’ve accomplished done. It was daunting but exhilarating. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a year as challenging as this last one. I think that’s why it’s been so rewarding.

DL: You did a great job with it, by the way. Stylish and crisp. Besides Roland Emmerich, who are your influences behind the camera?

DD: Obviously I mentored under Roland Emmerich for 12 years, so he’s clearly been a big influence. But on this particular project, I think I was mostly influenced by the direction of some of the television programs coming out of England. Steven Moffat’s mini-series Jekyll was a huge influence on me visually and staging. I also fell madly in love with the British version of Life on Mars. I was watching both religiously shortly before I took on directing the pilot for Leverage, so they set a very high bar for me and influenced the visual direction of the show.

DL: There’s a lot of money ending up on the screen. What are you doing differently from other producers and small studios that lets you be that efficient?

DD: Since we’re financing the deficit of the show ourselves (no studio involved) we’re able embrace a lot of cutting edge techniques that would have been shut down at the mere suggestion if we were in a more conventional situation. As a small company, and with so few voices influencing the direction of the show, we’re able to create a lot of efficiencies. But probably the biggest advantage is the fact that we’re a completely digital show. We shot the pilot with the GENESIS camera, and we’ve shot the entire series on the RED ONE camera and the Sony EX1. These cameras record to hard disks that are brought over to our facility and downloaded onto our master servers. From there, every department in our building accesses the material from the same source drives. That included editorial, sound FX, sound editing, visual FX, color correction, looping, ADR and the final sound mix. This streamlined workflow really allows us to put as much money as possible up on the screen.

DL: You already had a relationship established with TNT through the Librarian movies. Did you come to them with Leverage, or did they ask for something in the light-adventure realm?

DD: We’ve been making a series of movies for TNT called The Librarian. It’s been a widely successful partnership, both in the ratings of the shows as well as an incredibly successful creative partnership with the network. We absolutely love working together. After the second Librarian movie was finished, Michael Wright at TNT asked me, “when are we getting a series from you?” I quickly replied, “Ok, what do you think about the idea of a group of high tech thieves working together as modern day Robin Hoods?” Just as quickly he said, “Sold!”.

Coincidentally, John Rogers and Chris Downey were working on an idea to bring back the great heist shows of the 60’s and 70’s back to life. The next day John Rogers and I had lunch. I was so thrilled that this was an arena he was already excited about. So we joined forces and John and Chris wrote this fantastic script. As soon as I read it, I quickly decided that I just had to direct it.

DL: Writing, producing, acting, or directing: which gives you the most satisfaction as a creator?

DD: It’s really a project by project thing. If the material is personal to me, then I really enjoy writing it. If I’m working with a director who really inspires me, then Producing is an absolute joy. And now that I’ve been directing a show with such incredible scripts, that’s been fantastic. Acting…well, that I’m glad I’ve left behind me.

DL: There aren’t many jobs left you haven’t tackled in Hollywood. Is there any job left you’d really like to try? Maybe scoring a show?

DD: I’m really enjoying telling stories. Whether that’s on television, the movie theater, the Internet or in a game, it doesn’t really matter. Whether I’m the director, writer or producer doesn’t matter either. It’s the process of telling stories that excite me that turns me on. I’m just very grateful that we’re in a position where we can continue to tell the stories we love and to work with other artists and craftsmen who inspire me.

DL: You’re in a strange position on this show, being a hyphenate with both purse string and day-to-day responsibilities depending on the episode. How do you balance the competing pressures to do it all as cheaply as possible with doing it all?

DD: Yeah, I get into a lot of arguments with myself. The bad news is I lose every argument. But the good news is that I win every argument as well. Seriously, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. I know the limitations we have as far as time and money, so the entire focus for me and for our entire team is “how do we make the best possible show given the cards we’ve been dealt.”

DL: I’m asking this one of John and Chris as well, so please bear with me. Who wins in a fight: Hulk or Superman? How?

DD: My answer is Superman. Not for any real thought out reasoning. It’s just that Bryan Singer is a good friend of mine, so I gotta back the horse he rode.⁴

1. Yes, I know there’s still Friday Night Lights. And, um…what else?
2. Sorry to the non-comics readers out there. This one’s just for us nerds.
3. Seriously. I ask about half my candidates this question. There is a reason.
4. No software engineering candidate has ever answered with that rationale!

Sometimes cool stuff happens when you’re not even looking for it. Like how Mike and Jason were looking for writers to expand the roster here on Pop Critics just a couple weeks before one of my favorite shows was premiering. And how even though Sci Fi saw fit to bury Charlie Jade after two episodes, we’ve managed to keep a nice little group of fans coming back each week to talk about the show.

A couple weeks back, Mike forwarded me an email he’d gotten from someone who’d worked on the show and wanted to thank us for taking an interest in it: Michael Filipowich.

We weren’t actively looking for another interview, but if we had been, he would have been top of my list. His take on 01 Boxer is…well…crazy. But after exchanging a series of emails with him, I’ll tell you this is about the most carefully crafted, well-planned crazy I’ve seen in a long time. He knew exactly what 01 was doing, why he was doing it, and what his endgame was. He took a character who had initially been written as a one-dimensional psycho and fleshed him out into the crazy, funny, scary dimension hopper we know and love.

He was kind enough to answer a few questions for me, taking the time to provide some really thoughtful responses. His take on his character and the show are quite different from everyone else’s and very interesting. One of the great things about film and television is its collaborative nature. It’s that collaborative nature that lets great ideas about characters filter up from the actor to the creators.

Read the interview twice. Trust me. The first time through, you’re probably going to think he’s just crazy. But like 01 Boxer, Michael Filipowich knows exactly what he’s doing and saying.

Pop Critics: I get the feeling from watching your performance, and even your brief note earlier, that you have a very studied approach to acting. I’m assuming you had some pretty formal training. What’s your background?

Michael Filipowich: I come from a long line of criminals and madmen…theater and philosophy in university…before that I was always doing plays and was raised by television…my parents were pretty much non-existent…I now hate both TV and my parents.

Basically my background is in Meisner but I am always taking classes. I have this very estranged relationship with acting – almost toxic – I just can’t leave it but it is a source for endless disappointment, frustration, and angst…actually just today I am teetering on I never want to do this (acting) again.

It’s a dirty business kids please don’t try it at home…don’t stay in school either…just start revolutions en masse!

PC: Continuing along that line, what’s your process like?

MF: My process is always different depending on the project and character and how much I am moved internally. I like to do work with body type and posture and experiment with breathing…where you breathe from dictates your reality. I choose things that I want and go after them as honestly as I can in the relationship with whomever I am playing with.

Clothes are important and look…also depending on how much time I have to prep and how much freedom I am granted – more often than not I claim all rights for myself and the rest is negotiation between me and them. I do what interests me…it is an expensive experiment where others are paying…I don’t care if it’s good or even if it works…I am there to stretch and bring as much presence and energy I can and the rest I leave alone…acting is kind of a battle for me, with myself.

Did I mention revolution?

PC: When production was starting up, how much did Robert Wertheimer and Chris Roland tell you about where they hoped the show would go, and specifically 01 Boxer’s journey? Did you start out thinking you’d been cast as a whacked out sociopath, or did you know he was intended to have a lot of layers?

MF: Bob and Chris were both very good to me but they did not have a clue about things…the show was all over the place and they did not know what was going on.

Sensing this I just started bringing stuff, directing myself and fighting for my guy…the situation and circumstances were roughed in but he was totally one dimensional…I wanted his journey to be as strong as Charlie’s even though he had no real stories written for him and had about 1/10th of the screen time. I had to invent relationships with Essa and Julius because they didn’t exist…I took some cues from the writing but that was changing daily, often right before takes…can you say guerrilla style.

I know a lot of people find the show confusing but I am amazed at its relative coherency. Viva la revolution!

PC: Following up on that, the first time we see 01 in Gammaverse is episode three, “You Are Here”, which you also narrated. 01 seemed pretty together, if maybe a bit devious, dealing with the Vexcor chairman in Gamma and starting to move all the pieces around on the chessboard. Was it your decision or the creators’ to vary 01’s personality so much between the verses?

MF: In the beginning and all the way through 01 always had a mission…for me that was different from the actual, literal plot…he is absolutely Machiavellian…he also had a great deal of trickster energy and some real longings.

The other thing was how to deal with his mutations from jumping universes and he had done it sooooo many times whereas Charlie had only done it a few and Reena only once…and he was originally doing it with a prototype that he ripped off of his dad – kicking it old school. I started to play with a version of MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder] where 01 had different vibrational patterns that were set for him to slip into. He also used drugs, sex and violence.

I remember shooting that scene in episode 3 – it was actually the first thing I shot – the guy playing the chairman turned to me after a take and tried to set me in the direction of respecting him more that I was to kind of be subservient – I just gave him an 01 look – his face got so red…it was awesome.

01 is always playing except when he is not…and you can catch him being real here and there.

PC: When I spoke with Alex Epstein (ed: PC Inteview), he said he didn’t think there was any magical reason you were different from verse to verse, just that you were happy in Gamma because it was far from your father and a much saner world. My gut tells me that’s not how you saw things. Thoughts?

MF: Happy in Gamma…poor Alex Epstein…knowing full well that Gamma is the future 01 is what he needs to be there.

There was so much going on in Gamma that you didn’t see…in Freudian terms higher self – Gamma; lower self – Alpha; mask – Beta. It’s like when a man goes out to an S&M club, gets loaded, things get out of hand, but has self awareness and a mission, and a longing…days later he stumbles home…his clean wife his adoring obedient children.

Gamma 01 is who he is – alpha and beta are his exorcisms.

PC: 01’s personality varied a lot; did his motivations vary as well, or were they pretty consistent from verse to verse? What *were* his motivations, in your eyes?

MF: 01 pushes for truth…he cannot stand bullshit…he is wounded and needs to heal…he is all powerful but impotent…he needs to father and mother himself and bridge the darkness and rage in himself to make a different choice…even though he was filled with hate there was still a kernel that wanted to protect, to save.

He was the classically abused child…never seen, never touched, to me he was Pinocchio always trying to turn into a real boy…looking for a boundary…ultimately facing fears in the hopes of breaking through to realization.

PC: You mentioned that you looked at the show differently from the producers. Could you elaborate on that?

MF: To me the show is very religious – a man stripped of everything and thrown into a hostile environment, wandering in the desert. Charlie goes looking for 01…man’s search for truth…the balance of the Tao…the eternal recurrence…the Tibetan Bardo…the nature of consciousness…free will, mind control…reality.

Bob and Chris wanted to make a show about a detective. Anything else you read into it is divine intervention.

PC: About the dumbest thing I think the writers did is keep you and Jeffrey Pierce separated as long as they did. That first time you two shared the screen was electrifying. Did you know ahead of time how good that was going to be? Did you push to get Charlie and 01 together sooner and more often?

MF: They were always worried about putting Jeff and I together…I swear they said this – “we don’t want to blow our load too early” – wow. I always thought they needed to come together early and that the opening episodes were weak – not enough electricity to grab.

Jeff actually pitched the idea to start with episode 13 and then go back which would have worked better. Too many non-creative people making decisions hurt the show

PC: An actor you did get a lot of screen time with was Danny Keogh. Just now I was trying to think of a comparable dichotomy of performance styles on screen and East of Eden popped into my head with the way Dean visibly discomfited Raymond Massey. Were you trying to push buttons like that, or was Keogh playing along the whole time?

MF: Danny was my favorite…he was awesome…we never spoke really off camera…I thought he hated me…then when the show wrapped he came up to me and was all gushing about the great time he had with me.

Danny is a tough dude, he is for real…yes I was pushing buttons but unlike the Gamma guy he just came right back…I loved him.

PC: So I know you’ve seen my comparison of you to Daffy Duck (ed: “Devotion” recap). Here’s the whole insane quote:

Filipowich is a short fuse, a real-life Daffy Duck. His silences are more frequently broken by unexpected mania than a wry smile while his tightly coiled muscles bear the threat of sudden violence or passion. The closest comparable actor I can think of is Joe Pesci, though Katee Sackhoff shares similar traits of unpredictability.

Two questions on that. First, how close or far off is that to your own view of yourself as an actor? Second, rabbit season or duck season?

MF: Interesting you choose Daffy because Looney Tunes were a big inspiration for 01. In episode 14 when I sneak up on Julius I improv the line – “come into my shop let me cut your mop, it’s free”, Looney Tunes Barber of Seville…wow man you got it. So I don’t think that you were seeing the actor but definitely the character…Daffy was a template. In episode 10 maybe where I beat a dude down…I put a lot of cartoonish moves in which were mostly cut out…but there is this like weird little step thing that I do. (ed: It was actually ep 11, “Thicker Than Water”)

Also that one scene where I paint a road on the side of a cliff and walk right through but then fall, but as I’m falling I pull out my cell and order a huge umbrella from acme which gets delivered to me while I am still in the air and I open it and safely float to the ground but then a Vexcor anvil falls on my head and my teeth become piano keys.

Duck hunting season but I keep my feathers numbered.

PC: What projects do you have coming out that you’d like us to keep an eye out for?

MF: If you don’t mind going blind from watching stupidity I have some delicious straight to DVD action films coming out, starring washed up action stars…I am involved in producing a couple of shows, one is a reality show and the other is called My Mom’s a Bookie…and I’ll be making a grande nonfat to your specifications somewhere in the San Fernando valley.

This one’s for Nathan.

It’s no mystery that I’m a huge Charlie Jade fan. I don’t write those insanely long and detailed recaps on a show relegated to the 2am time slot for fame and fortune, that’s for sure. What is a little surprising is how I came to know and love the show.

Like many others, I’m an aspiring screenwriter. In some ways it’s harder to break in today because there are more competitors for the few available slots; however, we have resources that weren’t available even five or ten years ago. There are dozens of accomplished writers blogging about their experiences as staff writers, writers’ assistants, and show runners. Some write from decades of experience and some give us play-by-play as they learn on the job. One of the longest-blogging writers out there is Alex Epstein, who keeps an ongoing conversation with fans, newbie writers, and others at Complications Ensue. I’ve been reading Alex’s blog for at least two years now and also own his book “Crafty TV Writing”. If you want to write for television, I highly recommend it.

Once I started reading Alex on craft, I realized this was a guy who not only could teach me a lot, but who had similar sensibilities to mine. Odds were high that stuff he did, I’d like. And having seen a decent-sized chunk of his work now, I can tell you my instinct was right. Alex frequently discusses Charlie Jade, even using it to demonstrate how to break and beat a story in “Crafty TV Writing”. I’ve got to tell you, when I read about Charlie hopping dimensions, I knew this was a show for me.

If you’ve been watching and following my recaps, you know that the first eight episodes took a while to get up to speed. There was an awful lot of world building going on, particularly in episodes three and four, and a lot of it felt like the writers were spinning their wheels just a little bit. Some conflicts between the show’s creator, Robert Wertheimer, and the writing staff led to a separation. Starting with episode nine, “Betrayal”, which will air next Tuesday morning at 2am on Sci Fi, a brand new writing staff took the reins, led by Alex.

Alex was nice enough to answer a few questions for us about the switchover and the show. There are a few spoilers in here for upcoming episodes; I’ll do my best to indicate them for those who want to remain pure.

Also, Alex is going to be doing a couple of the episode Podcasts coming up, so if any of you have any questions you’d like to ask in general or about specific episodes, you can contact Alex through his blog, or write them up in comments here and I’ll pass them along. If you want to check out the episode Podcasts, you can find those over at Charlie Jade Verse.

Pop Critics: So how did it happen that you got this job? Did you get a call from Robert Wertheimer one day and end up on a plane the next, or was there more to it?

Alex Epstein: I’d chatted with Bob maybe a year before Charlie Jade started shooting, but he was still developing the series conceptually. After that I was working on the comic drama I created, Naked Josh. I’d pretty much forgotten about CJ when I got a call from the late Robin Spry. He had optioned a fantasy series of mine, and I’d developed a robot series for him.

“How would you like to go to work in Cape Town for four months?” asked Robin.

“Sounds interesting, Robin. When?”

“How about Tuesday?”

“I can’t do Tuesday, Robin, I have a meeting. How about Wednesday?”

Apparently there had been a bit of a falling out between the writing staff on the one hand, and Bob Wertheimer and Diane Boehme on the other, and the staff had been sent on their merry way, or quit, or a bit of both. So we parachuted in during the production with no time to prep.

The show was in a bad situation – behind schedule, over budget, with the storyline wandering, and no real template. Ironically, that meant that we couldn’t screw it up. All we could do is help Bob bring the show back on track. If we succeeded, we’d be heroes. If we didn’t, it wouldn’t be our fault. I think I probably had more fun than anyone else on that show. Bob had to figure out how to juggle the budget and the financing. I just had to sit in a swell conference room above one of the best restaurants in Cape Town drinking coffee shakes with Denis and Sean, and talking science fiction stories.

PC: Did you put the team together back in Canada and fly it out as a group – I know Denis McGrath joined at the same time as you – or did you fill it out with local South African writers? How big was the writing team and what was its breakdown of Canadian to SA writers?

AE: The writing staff was Denis McGrath, Sean Carley and I. We had independently “auditioned” for Bob and Diane, our exec for CHUM, and given our “take” on the show. I met Sean on the plane; I met Denis the next day.

We were originally working with an assortment of South African free lancers, but we weren’t at all happy with the results. Still we had a co-production requirement that roughly half of the scripts had to be South African. So we auditioned some new freelancers and brought on the best of them. That was Dennis Venter.

PC: How did the composition of your team compare to the original team? More Canadians, or was it about the same?

AE: We replaced three Canadians.

The following question has spoilers about next week’s episode

PC: You and your writing team took over the show at episode #9, “Betrayal”, where a lot happens to move character and story forward:

• Karl’s betrayal of Charlie
• Meeting 01’s family and discovering he’s sane in Gamma
• Learning that Alpha either doesn’t have the Greek myths or they are not widely known
• Reena losing her first and only friend in Beta
• Charlie going underground

How many of those beats were in place from the prior writing staff? Was there an existing outline, or did you guys come in with nothing but the notes and thoughts of Wertheimer?

AE: There was an existing script, but no one was happy with it. In fact originally the plan was we were going to start on episode 12. But episode 9 was so worrisome that we told Bob we wanted to rewrite it in the 24 hours we had before we needed to start prepping it, and that’s what we did. We broke a completely new outline in the morning, and then divided up the acts.

The previous writing team hadn’t left any document for how they intended to go forward. I have the impression they and Bob fundamentally disagreed about that, which had led to their hopping a plane back to Canada. It’s probably just as well. It was probably simpler and cleaner to just look at the episodes and try to figure out ab initio what the show was, and where it wanted to go. That meant bringing certain things into the foreground that had lapsed into background.

For example, an earlier episode (was it 3?) had shown that the Link was going to blow up our universe. We felt that had to be the center threat of the whole show. Yet episodes 6-8 had very little to do with that. We also felt Charlie had to take on Vexcor, and that meant he had to go underground. It was all a massive “retcon,” where we tried to make sense of what had gone before.

Then we had to explain to Bob what we were trying to do. It was his universe and his tone and his characters – which he had worked out with Bob Sawyer and Chris Roland and Diane Boehme and the original writing team. He was pretty pleased about most of what we came up with. We never did convince him about Reena’s “programmed personality” or the secret of the Men in Grey Suits.

PC: Following on that theme, was there much of a bible in place, or did you need to build one up yourself? I ask, because obviously some things changed significantly when your team came on, most notably the presence of the blue stones…

AE: People don’t really write bibles once production starts. The room is the bible.

There was a bible, but it was full of backstory that hadn’t manifested in the series – which meant we could take it or leave it – and not so full of plans for a way forward with the story. Too many details about the world, not enough story elements to play with. The story elements were really in the episodes.

PC: I remember reading elsewhere that you dropped the blue stones because you didn’t know what the original writers had intended with them. Have you found out since? Did they even know?

AE: I figured they were like the radioactive glass you find at atomic blast sites.

What we dropped was the “special water.” (That third pipe in the shower.) That just seemed precious. And it would have required a lot of plot mechanics for O1 and Charlie to get it. Simpler to say: you need water to go between the worlds. But you also have to have the ability to go between the worlds.

(Emphasis mine. Because, uh, watching on my computer I never noticed the third pipe before Alex mentioned it.)

PC: It’s pretty clear early in the run that 01’s behavior is closely tied to the verse he finds himself in. Your team obviously carried that forward, as well as showing some growth to his character even in Beta and Alpha. Why does no one else seem effected by the different verses? Did you know, or was Wertheimer keeping that close to the vest?

AE: I don’t think we meant that he was magically affected by the world he was in. Gamma’s just a much saner world; and much further from Brion, his father. I think he was saner because he was happy there.

PC: Did Reena’s arc play out the way it was always intended, or did you just make the best of a bad situation? Slowly rewatching the show now for the third time, I’m struck by the abuse the writers heaped on Reena from the beginning through episode eight, “Devotion”. Even then her brief peace is shattered when she has to kill her one friend in Beta. Did you and your team specifically try to make things easier on Patricia McKenzie, or was the timing coincidental?

Alex’s answer contains spoilers

AE: We were wondering where to go from “Raping Reena.” We wanted all that abuse to mean something – to give her something positive. So we decided that it was intended to create the “programmed personality.” That way she could go from being a victim to a death-dealing agent, while still keeping her conscience.

Bob never really liked the “programmed personality.” He felt strongly, for example, that Reena would never be able to destroy Alpha just to save her own world. We thought she would. (“I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”) It’s Bob’s show, of course, and Reena is his character, so it’s his right to decide what she would and wouldn’t do!

PC: So, what makes Paula/Jasmine so special? Why were there never any doppelgangers? Or was her presence in both verses merely a dramatic conceit as an obstacle for Charlie?

AE: We didn’t see what connection there might be between Paula and Jasmine. I remember early on in the writing room, writing “Paula is Ross’s Monkey” on the whiteboard. In the first season of Friends, Ross has a monkey. It probably seemed like a good idea in the formulation of the show, but it turned out not to be necessary, or all that intriguing. Marie-Julie hadn’t been playing the two characters much differently. So we got rid of Paula.

There actually was another doppelganger. In episode 16, when Charlie learns how to see, and then walk, from world to world, he sees other Charlies. In one world, he’s a gangster. In another, he’s a happy family man. In the last one, he’s a fascist rebel who’s destroyed the Vexcor of his world at the price of massacring everyone Cape City. The finale had a huge dramatic confrontation between Charlie of Alpha and Charlie of Epsilon, all about sin and redemption and fate and pain.

You may have noticed that’s missing from episode 16. Acts 3 and 4 have no A plot. The story had a number of things going against it. The director hated having to shoot multiple Charlies. In fact he claimed it wasn’t possible to do on budget, notwithstanding that every science fiction show does the Two Kirks episode sooner or later. Second, I don’t think Jeff Pierce really dug the idea of playing multiple Charlies, many of them evil. But much more importantly, Bob was really trying to avoid Big Sci Fi. I think his vision of Charlie Jade was much more of a drama. It was about What Is It Like to Be Charlie. He wanted the show to be Sopranos, not Battlestar Galactica. Episode 16 was very far from that vision. We knew that early on, and had offered to chuck it and write a new completely new episode, but the decision was made to move forward in order to avoid hanging up the whole script pipeline. In our defense, we broke down episodes 12-16 in more or less our first week on the show. Episode 17 is the first episode we wrote where we were really able to deliver what I think Bob was hoping for. In every show you have some episodes that come out better than others. I’m really pleased with how 17 came out.

Of course, Bob was kind enough to let me put the fourth act of my ep. 16 script into the back of my book “Crafty TV Writing”, so if you want to check it out, you can read it there.

This question and answer contain mild spoilers

PC: About the Norns: should we conclude that 01 is Loki? I’m kidding, of course. Unless he is, in which case I’m being incredibly insightful.

• More seriously, are they truly symbolic, or just a nod to mythology nerds and Walt Simonson fans?
• Were there nine verses, of which we generally see just the three, and do the those map to Norse myth? Alpha to Nilfhelm, Beta to Midgard, Gamma to Asgard, perhaps? Or is such a literal reading a mistake?

AE: It started as a nod to mythology nerds like myself. I mean, there are three of them, right? And they hold the fate of the universe in their hands.

But they might have wound up attaining Norn-like powers in a second season. You throw things like that out there and then decide later whether to pick them up.

I do miss the scene we had where the Three are using a sort of Link scanner to tape record science fiction movies from other universes. You know, the stuff that didn’t get greenlit in their world. I would totally abuse the equipment to do that. It had no bearing on the story so we had to cut it. Oh well.

PC: Has Wertheimer ever mentioned to you any ideas about continuing the story in a different medium? Novels, comics, or an Internet-based series, perhaps? Would you be interested in trying your hand at one of those, or are you too busy right now?

AE: I’m developing my own pay cable series about a fallen angel in Montreal. And in my free time, I blog. And fight crime. Yep, I’m too busy.

Also, none of us is a novelist. (Okay, technically I have a novel about the childhood of Morgan le Fay in the works at Tradewinds — look for “The Circle Cast” in 2010). And none of us can afford to write comics.

I’m sure Bob will do another show that incorporates some of the themes of Charlie Jade. It’s more likely you’ll see avatars of 01 and Charlie in a new Bob series than you’ll see the originals in another medium.

PC: Anything you can tell us about your new series? Any likelihood of seeing it down here in the States? I hear SciFi has an opening Wednesday mornings at 2:30. Maybe they could make space for another Epstein Joint. Kidding again, obviously. They need that time slot for midget wrestling.

AE: God forbid.

I’m still developing the show for The Movie Network and Movie Central. We aren’t even looking for American or foreign partners yet. So I can’t tell you much about it yet. But you can follow my development efforts in my blog, Complications Ensue. I don’t talk about the story details because those are a secret. But I talk about the process whenever interesting things happen.

CJ was a fun show to write. I’m truly grateful to Bob and Diane and Robin Spry for bringing Denis and Sean and me on board. We had a blast. I hope you have even a tenth as much fun watching it.

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.