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leverage-commentary · 6 years ago

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Leverage Season 1, Episode 10, The Juror #6 Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Chris: I’m Chris Downey, Executive Producer.

John: I'm John Rodgers, Executive Producer.

Rebecca: I’m Becky Kirsch, Writer.

Jonathan: Jonathan Frakes, Director.

John: And welcome to The Juror Number 6 Job of Leverage which was filmed late in the season, is meant to be broadcast late in the season, and is really one of our favorite episodes for the entire series. It’s interesting--

Jonathan: Watch the homage to Rear Window!

Rebecca: [Laughs]

John: Is it a Rear Window homage?

Johnathan: Watch this!

John: I’ve noticed--you know what? We’ve done two--this is our second commentary and I’ve noticed how often you use the word ‘homage.’

John and Chris: [laugh]

Jonathan: I was--I started by saying watch the ste- watch the rip off.

John: [laughs]

Jonathan: Here’s the steam. Right?

John: Yeah. Nice.

Rebecca: “Homage’ sounds [much] better.

Jonathan: And then there’s the steaming tea--heat. He goes down.

Rebecca: Oh oh oh oh!

Jonathan: Something bad’s happened to him from taking the drug we just saw him take.

John: Yep.

Jonathan: Scream.

John: Scream. Horror. Remember the--

Jonathan: And Hitchcock cuts to what? [imitating the sound of a tea kettle steaming] Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

Chris: There it is.

John: There you go.

Rebecca: Oh beautiful.

Jonathan: Total rip off.

John: Beautiful.

Chris: Beautiful special effects there.

[Rebecca laughs]

John: It’s lovely. And then the hot in. Which we don’t often see the team coming back from something.

Jonathan: No. I was under strict orders and I used it well, I think.

John: For what?

Jonathan: “Keep them moving.” John Rogers.

John: Keep them moving. Keep them up. Keep them moving--

Jonathan: I said it - then I called the office and said, you know, any of the problem with them talking and walking during all these scenes. As much as you can keep them out of the chairs, be my guest.

John: Absolutely. You know the Walk and Talk, as it’s known in television, is your friend. It really, you know, you need to keep them moving around in this set. Cause the problem is when actors sit, they emotionally sit.

Jonathan: Boy, so true-

Chris: Well also-

Jonathan: [Unintelligible]

Chris: We spent a lot of time in this conference room. And I think, by this time in the season, we were literally, creatively, getting antsy.

John: Yes!

Chris: And that’s why we gave that ‘Keep moving! Just move the camera around--’

Jonathan: Plus the actors like it ,too.

Chris and John: Yeah..

Jonathan: And it gives you a chance at a oner which is always a plus - it helps to make your day, the energy is better.

John: Yeah, it’s always better. Alright, uh, Kirsch!

Rebecca: Sir!

John: Filthy assistant--

Rebecca: [Chuckles]

John: --How did this episode come about?

Jonathan: [Also laughing]

John: That’s her nickname!

Rebecca: You ready for this one? It is! And I, And I ta- I wear it with pride. This episode came about in the room with our seven fabulous writers and we-- I think that, Chris, was this your original idea--?

Chris: Yes, it was.

Rebecca: --In order to have a jury? In which--

John: This was one of the ones that started with an ending and rolled backwards.

Chris: This is, yeah-

Rebecca: I think you are right! It did!

Chris: We didn’t do this very often but I--yeah, I had an ending for this and we worked backwards.

John: And so how did you develop--how did you do the research?

Jonathan: There’s your name, did you see your name on the screen?

Rebecca: I did, I did, it was very exciting.

John: There we go, written by Rebecca Kirsch!

Rebecca: Actually, Chris was a really great help, because I unfortunately don’t know a great deal about the legal system. So I purchased a book called Law 101 and I did some homework over the weekend, which was a really basic way to start things. And then Chris was really good to answer a lot of my questions about the technicalities of the order--

Jonathan: Brent Spiner!

Rebecca: [Laughing]

John: Yeah, Brent Spiner, ladies and gentlemen.

Jonathan: Star Trek.

John: This is the beginning of the Star Trek reunion.

Rebecca: Exactly.

John: And might we add, by the way, that the reason he knows about this. Chris actually used to defend the bad guys on Leverage.

Chris: Yes, yes. In my previous career I was a white-collar criminal defense attorney. So this is kind of bringing it all home for me.

Jonathan: Is that true?

Chris and John: Yes, yes.

Chris: It’s actually true.

John: That’s why I hate him.

Rebecca: Did you not know that?

John: That’s why my deep and abiding hatred of him-

Jonathan: Does he still have the suits?

John: [Laughing]

Rebecca: [Laughing]

Chris: Oh I got the suits.

John: Oh jeez, he got the brown shoes, he got the-

Jonathan: Are you kidding me?

Rebecca: [Laughing]

Chris: I’ve got suspenders, my friend, I’ll wear ‘em, I’m gonna wear it on the set this year.

Jonathan: That is really good information,

Jonathan: Kitty Swink, Deep Space Nine.

Chris: Kitty Swink.

John: Uh, and so, I remember we wound up actually sitting around the table and breaking down the phases of the trial so we could arc the episode -

Rebecca: I think we did, yep.

John: through the phases of the trial actually, and that’s why Aldis at one point says “All I’ve got is my cross-examination,” because at that point in the story we had locked into that.

Rebecca: Absolutely. Who goes first, and what happens first, as well as which role Parker is playing specifically.

Jonathan: The beautiful and talented Lauren Holly. Dumb and Dumber.

Chris: And also Lauren Holly, if you folks remember, acted with Timothy Hutton in Beautiful Girls. And uh-

John: Yes, that’s right.

Jonathan: Yeah, six degrees of separation. She looks great.

Rebecca: And NCIS of course.

John: And our only female bad guy, this season, I believe.

Jonathan: Picket Fences. She’s a great shark. She was great. And this poor guy!

Rebecca: Jeremy. Little Jeremy.

Jonathan: We finally put him in a show.

Rebecca: Jeremy auditioned--

Jonathan: He was in at least two shows that I worked on-

Rebecca: At least two.

Jonathan: --and finally got a role.

Rebecca: And he did a good job. [Laughing]

Chris: He was fantastic.

Jonathan: Beth can handle a close-up, can’t she?

John: [laughing] Yes. And this is one of the times again that we establish that the guys, at least, have formed this kind of proto-brother/father/brother relationship.

Jonathan: And more eating!

Rebecca: [Laughing]

John: More eating-

Chris: They do eat a lot, don’t they?

Jonathan: They do eat a lot.

John: Well, it’s one of the ways that you establish this is their home. I mean it helps bring the emotional resonance of what we do to it at the end of the season - kind of lands.

Rebecca: And how comfortable they are with each other by now,.

John: This by the way, is a nice piece of technical wizardry, because we originally had another type of footage behind Beth Riesgraf in the shot.

Jonathan: No, we were given the NFL footage, but we were not given the feed.

John: Yep.

Jonathan: And then someone wisely staged the actress in front so the actress could have an obstacle - it’s always good to have an obstacle. It’s like, if you can’t have an independant activity, give them an obstacle.

John: [Laughing] Yep.

Rebecca: [Laughing]

Jonathan: And now they have both.

John: So-

Jonathan: They can eat and try to get out of the way.

John: So, there you go, when you come into the scene and you’re like, ‘how will I force the guys to have to deal with her?’ So you put her between them and the object of their desire.

Jonathan: Exactly. And it becomes something else that helps the scene move along. Get the exposition, and the comedy.

Rebecca: And a little bit of football.

John: And snarky British comments from Gina.

Rebecca: Love it.

Jonathan: I love this line actually, about the rugby. I think it’s great. Who wrote that?

Rebecca: She did a good job.

Chris: I think it was…

John: I think that was me, yeah. I went to school in McGill in Montreal and I remember getting my ass handed to me my first rugby game

Jonathan and Rebecca: [Laughing]

John: I wanted to play rugby until I met somebody who wanted to play rugby more.

Jonathan: More, yes. That’s a good line.

John: And this is- this is great. This is one of the- Gina kinda settling into her role on this one, which is really, again, reinforcing the idea that Nate’s not a nice guy.

Chris: No.

John: He’s really very selfish, very perfectionist, very obsessive. Our lead of our show has to be reminded by the thieves he associates with to be a better man on a regular occasion.

Jonathan: Yeah. And setting up the father/son stuff here. This is where Aldis reveals a little more of his hand.

Chris: And it’s a nice dynamic we have where- I guess you kinda get a sense of what Nate’s character would be like as a father because he’s always putting Hardison in the most outrageous position he could be in. Most incredible challenge. You get the sense that he’s the guy that would throw his kid into the deep end of the water.

Rebecca: Cause it’ll teach him character.

Chris: Yeah.

Rebecca: Gotcha.

Jonathan: Do you think that’s conscious or subconscious?

Chris: Definitely subconscious, yeah, yes.

Jonathan: That’s what I think as well.

John: Absolutely. He can’t help but adopt him into that role. Yeah, and this is sort of the payoff to the fact that they’re now feeling obligated to each other. And here’s the thing, earlier in the season, Eliot wouldn’t have gone. You know, he would’ve refused to do this. And with even as much bitching and moaning, he’s still gonna do it because he understands that she’s in trouble. And she’s helped him out- she helped him out on the Two-Horse Job.

Jonathan: He’s gonna take his beer.

Chris: And more drinking.

John: And more drinking.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

John: Nate’s a drunk.

[Laughter]

Rebecca: This was actually the first shot we filmed of the episode, if I remember correctly.

Jonathan: You are so right.

Rebecca: Oh. It was a beautiful day.

Chris: And can we just say that Brent Spiner’s character was originally conceived as nefarious hippie?

Rebecca: Yes he was. Birkenstock wearing nefarious hippie. Granola.

Chris: Nefarious hippie. And uh-

Jonathan: It was supposed to be Jimmy Buffett meets Bill Gates.

[Laughter]

Chris: Yes, exactly.

John: An unholy matrimony if there ever was one.

Rebecca: Exactly.

John: Yeah, the light tables.

Chris: That’s a great- these are great shots here, establishing all the space

Jonathan: This was- we had the crane outside so we just snuck it inside and stole some stuff with it.

Rebecca: Looked good.

John: And the-

Jonathan: This was the well-produced Leverage episode that followed the orphanage, so we overlapped-

John: This is the orphanage!

Rebecca: It’s actually next to the orphanage.

John: It’s next to the orphanage. But this is the same- this orphanage- this evil warehouse. The Den of Evil, we called it.

Rebecca: Den of Evil.

Jonathan: Evil Den of Evil.

John: Evil Den of Evil is actually just over from the tragic orphanage in Belgrade.

Rebecca: Exactly, which we visited during out lunch break and were suitably depressed by the children in their filthy squalor.

John: Yeah, and then you went back and had fun high tech stuff with Frakes and everything like that.

Rebecca: Exactly.

John: And this is a beautiful little bit of set design and production design by Lauren Crasco to establish the Evil Den of Evil. I also love the fact- this kind of influenced the season finale. Seeing the stuff up on the bulletin boards here? It really- we wound up going low tech in the season finale, and there’s something about- video screens are nice, you know, but the clutter...

Jonathan: They look- exactly. Video screens keep- that’s always been the problem now that TV shows and movies use video screens. There’s no sound. There’s no tact- [sounding it out] tactility?

Chris: Yes. And it’s cold. Yeah.

John: It’s very cold.

Jonathan: This also has an homage to the set design from Runaway Jury.

John: Sure.

Chris: Yes.

Rebecca: That’s true.

[All laugh]

John: No, no. I think that’s outright theft, right there.

Jonathan: That’s what I meant.

Chris: Let’s get that out on the table.

John: Let’s slap that out.

Chris: That’s the elephant in the room, here, folks.

Jonathan: If we don’t say it someone else will!

[Laughter]

John: And we’ll talk about chess bit in a minute, but Kirsch, why did we set this in a courtroom?

Rebecca: Why specifically in a courtroom?

John: Yes. Do you remember?

Jonathan: Trick question.

Rebecca: I’m not actually sure.

John: Because we had a courtroom set. This actually-

Rebecca: We did! You’re right we had this from Boston Legal, I believe.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: [laughing] That’s right we did.

Rebecca: We had a big, wonderful set.

John: This is the splendor of your big Hollywood life

Jonathan: Is this how those decisions are made?

Rebecca: No, you’re absolutely right I forgot about that. We had the- I think it was a New Orleans courtroom from Boston Legal?

John: Yup.

Rebecca: I think we used the walls and…?

John: We redressed it.

Rebecca: We kinda scrapped it.

John: We wallpapered it really. No we ended up keeping most of it, she just wallpapered the walls.

Rebecca: That’s Lauren Crasco.

Chris: Jonathan, what’s your strategy here? Just keeping the camera moving?

Jonathan: Yeah. This is sort of the half version of the 360s that’s used a lot in Leverage. And if you shoot it enough times you end up with your coverage.

John: Yeah. But there’s a tiny amount of room between you and those screens, how did you…?

Jonathan: Oh man, Dave Connell. He gets his props yet again.

Rebecca: And Gary Camp.

Jonathan: And Gary Camp.

John: Here’s where we establish- this is really where we’ve fallen into the pattern in this show, where we’d figured out how much information the audience needs; how to establish the bad guys very clearly, very cleanly; and to make sure the audience knows at least what agenda A is moving forward in the show.

Jonathan: And we know what they look like, and what they’ve done.

John: Yes. There are definitely times earlier in the season where we are a little too clever by half, and really we were-

Jonathan: And this is the right time in the story to tell it. Right here at the end of act one is-

Rebecca: And this one is actually rather complicated as far as who your bad guy is. The fact that you have two, but one is worse than the other, who’s your man in. I think that it- I think visually it helps show the audience, okay this is who we’re going to first, but we’re really trying to go for Lauren Holly.

Jonathan: It also had an interesting in that she, Beth’s character, was reporting to jury duty in order to continue to fool other people with her alias that was- one of her aliases that was actually given jury duty.

Chris: Yes.

Jonathan: while she went to serve jury duty reluctantly, she found out that the jury that she happened to be on, was in fact corrupt, and that there was a bigger story there that Leverage could help out.

John: Very Rockford Files.

[All laugh]

John: Rockford Files- I love- Rockford Files, season 4 or 5-

Jonathan: Steal from the best, isn’t that what they always say?

Rebecca: The very best.

John: Honestly you cannot overstate the influence Rockford Files had on this show and Chris and I as writers. By season 4- there’s an episode in season 4-

Jonathan: [laughs] by season 4 they’ll be living in a trailer by the beach.

John: In season 4 of Rockford Files, there’s an episode where Rocky- his dad is literally getting mob money in the mail by accident.

[All laugh]

John: Like, WOW, man. And so we really felt like the crossover here is not bad. This is interesting because- if you look at Homecoming Job, which was shot sixth, and wound up being shown second. It’s part-

Jonathan: These are the bad guys! [Laughs]

John: That’s sort of the technique when we really started diagramming and illustrating better, but yeah. This is where we- one of the times we use the technique of we’re not going to tell you what we’re going to do and then do it. We’re going to tell you, show it, tell you, show it, tell you, show it.

Jonathan: I like that.

Rebecca: That’s great.

John: We intercut each sequence and establish-

Jonathan: This girl we loved. Remember?

Rebecca: Lisa Schurga and Norma...

John: Lisa, we celebrated her birthday on our set.

Rebecca: We did. I remember that.

Chris: Norma Michaels who I’ve used many times on King of Queens.

Rebecca: Norma Michaels - that’s what it was.

John: And this is also the first time we realized that really, splitting the screens into threes. Instead of using a bunch of stuff on the different six screens. Set each lengthwise set of screens up as your goal and you can move him left to right through objectives and you can formulate the story through temporally left to right. It helps track it.

Chris: There are these guys. I mean, c’mon, the two of them going through garbage? What’s better than that?

John: There’s nothing better than that.

Jonathan: This is one of the classic two-handers of these two.

John: They’re really great together. And at this point, it really is just roll the camera and get out of their way. At this point in the season.

Jonathan: Make sure you’re shooting in the right direction and let them go.

John: Yeah. It’s- [laughs] bang! It’s such a great bit. ‘Heads up!’

[Laughter]

Jonathan: And you know what? Never been done before.

John: Yeah, that actually is original! The- I do want to give a shout out to-

Jonathan: You know what else is great? The length of that scene.

John: [Laughs] Yes.

Chris: Yes.

John: It’s just precisely long enough to do a bit, yup. I wanna give a shout out to my dad, the speech he gave at the beginning of this scene - how- what chess is? Is word for word my dad teaching me to play chess. And really when we were trying to find a spine for this it was, well, it’s really a chess game, it’s really moves. Apollo had been talking a lot about how each con had very distinct stages. And that came up, that’s my dad-

Chris: It came in late into the episode, too.

Rebecca: It did and it really affected the pace in a great way, I think.

Jonathan: Arguably Gina’s best roleplaying con.

Rebecca: I think she did a great job.

John: Interestingly enough the one she was most worried about. Because she’s British and Indian culture is very big in England right now, and she was very, very worried about doing this wrong and was- she researches all her stuff, but she was-

Chris: I love this scene, too.

John: I love this scene, I love the text.

Chris: The darkness here, I mean the way you use light in it, I mean really gave it such a great- I mean what- Jonathan was that-

Jonathan: I mean it’s simple- it’s a very simple scene again and to Lauren’s credit, we moved everything into the middle of the room so we could actually shoot it.

John: Yup. And this is the hardest working business- office in show business. This is every bad guy’s office in the show.

Rebecca: Yes it is. Absolutely.

John: Move out the lamps, move in the lamps.

Rebecca: Change the decor.

John: And the zen garden- it’s interesting the zen garden - the tiny zen garden on his desk, is one of the LA bugaboos that drives us insane, and so wound up in the episode and allowed us to do the writing in the sand. And she does a great bit of sort of throwing it away.

Jonathan: Yeah.

John: And it’s interesting- it’s cool too. It’s interesting watching a lot of shows- a lot of old shows we cite as references, that are bound by America’s cultural understandings at the time. Where because of globalization and everything that’s in the news, we’re able to expand the scope of our cons. To where an Indian in Mumbai- everyone knows oh outsourcing to India that’s in the news, we get that.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

John: It gives you another tool in the toolbox. And also- there’s Dean right there on the left.

Rebecca: Dean Devlin.

John: But it also allows-

Jonathan: We tried to talk him into playing a part in this episode.

John: Yeah, he lied to me. He tricked me into doing mine in Homecoming and then refused to do his.

Rebecca: Maybe season two.

John: Yeah, maybe season two.

Jonathan: What is he, a producer?

John: Yeah.

Rebecca: He’s a very busy man.

John: He is very busy. Very busy getting people to drink the Kool Aid that you can make an independently produced TV show out of an old dog hospital.

[Laughter]

John: And stunningly occasionally pulling it off. Yeah, and this is my favorite scene in the episode.

Rebecca: It was so much fun.

Chris: It’s great, too.

John: It really is.

Jonathan: Now who’s idea was this? This is a wonderful three hander, it’s a very interesting-

Rebecca: I love the board.

John: This came out of the room, we always wanted Sophie teaching Parker. I think the-

Jonathan: Sophie teaching Parker behavioral things.

John: I think the orange bit-

Jonathan: But the add of Chris- of Christian is a great color to this. Because he can’t bear her.

John: Yeah it’s a trio you don’t usually see. He really just wants to punch her in the-

Chris: He plays irritation so well.

John: This is his attempt to be- [laughs] he is not a good dad. Eliot? Not a good dad in any way shape or form.

Chris: Not patient at all.

John: But this is- if you actually track the Parker acting ark through the series, this is the third beat. The first one is she can’t do it, the second is she can do it as long as she’s in a certain type of character, the third one is Sophie has finally taught her how to do it. She actually moves through a learning experience through the entire season.

Chris: One of the appeals of this episode was putting Parker through jury duty where being around regular people would scare her, and test her social abilities.

Jonathan: So does Parker have Asperger's syndrome?

John: It’s Asperger-y like. I mean really what we’re saying is, that the trauma of her childhood sort of froze a lot of her emotional development. As will happen. Froze a lot of her emotional development at that time. But it’s much more- she’s never lived anything approaching a normal life. And that- so she’s utterly unable to- hey I know high functioning geeks who work in the software industry who are worse off than her, as far as interacting with normal humans. So, I think as long as you’re in a specialized lifestyle, it sort of cripples your ability to act in sort of general groups. You know, hell, one of the reasons I did stand up was to find other crazy people like myself. Lovely bit here with the mustard squeeze. I remember we were trying to gimmick that like mad and were like ‘no, no just have her spray him.’

Jonathan: No just have her spray him.

Rebecca: Just have her squeeze it, yeah.

John: And this is one of those Apollo ones where we were gonna show all of the lifts, but by this point in the season, you know what she’s going.

Chris: Yeah, I mean if you’re going to do the choreography of the lift, you want to make a big show of it. And here it’s just-

John: We know what she does.

Rebecca: And she is so good at it. Beth is so good at this.

John: Yeah. She is very great. Victimizing old women. That’s our heroine. It’s a very mixed bag of moral high ground on our team here. But, actually, talking about what Chris was saying - putting Parker in this situation, one of the things, on every episode, that we try to do, and we don’t always manage to put it off but, the episode really has to have a moment- some anchor to one of the characters. That it’s not just a con that for whatever reason, either the parameters or the con, have some sort of challenge that either challenges one of the relationships on the team or a team member.

Chris: I love that shot too, I love the shot of them all raising their glasses and her framed in it.

Rebecca: They’ve accepted her.

Jonathan: Well it’s her- her character arc, for lack of a better term, is- or her character is developed by virtue of being put into the position where she has to behave in a certain way and has to deliver.

Rebecca: And she rises to the occasion.

John: And that’s the kind of-

Jonathan: That’s John Storey -

John: No it’s - that’s John Storey? Or David? Shaw?

Rebecca: No David Shatraw is in one of the-

Jonathan: No, that’s John Storey. He’s in the Dean Devlin Renaissance - rep company.

Rebecca and John: [Laughing]

John: And that’s also one of those horribly complicated bits of writing where it’s like,’OK, how do we get rid of the other lawyer? You know what? Just call him and offer him a bunch of money!’

Chris: Yep.

John: We don’t really have time for anything else.

Jonathan: Yeah, we gotta get him out of the picture.

Rebecca: We had a scene where Eliot intimidated him out of it. Remember that?

John: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

John: It was actually taken from a different-

Jonathan: This is great, where she teases the character she’s about to go into.

John: You actually see her start to get into character a bit for a moment there which is not something we usually show. And this is- this is the hats.

Chris: Yeah here we are- this is our- on our soundstage.

John: Yup. and what’s ironic is ,of course you look at this old courtroom set that we have, cause you try to do a show that saves you a little money with an established set, and it’s like ‘oh god we have to really dress it up to sell it’-

Rebecca: Ah, there it is.

Jonathan: Great entrance.

John: -ironically- fantastic entrance. And nice coming up from the shoes, by the way.

Jonathan: Yeah, it was in the script.

[Laughter]

John: yeah, it was in the script. Jesus. Well, thanks for listening to us.

Chris: Most directors don’t! [Laughs]

John: Yeah, well I appreciate it. But, you know, it’s interesting that a bunch of us were on jury duty right after this got called.

Rebecca: That’s true, absolutely

John: We all went to LA municipal courts, and they were all far worse looking than this thing that we were worried about looking too cheesy.

Jonathan: Yeah.

John: They are basements. I also love the quick glad-hand here of just, you know ‘do you trust your government?’ Most people do, ‘all right then you buy me.’ What’s his alias in this one?

Rebecca: Oh- it was from… [Pelican Brief]

Chris: No it’s from Philadelphia-

John: No Philadelphia, Joseph Miller.

Rebecca: Yes, Philadelphia, thank you.

John: Joseph Miller, in continuing the tradition that Aldis- Hardison has an unconscious, or possibly conscious, habit of faking his ID’s to amuse himself, to give himself famous movie names. And there’s almost always, in most of the IDs, they’re linked somehow to famous people. Except that- I don’t think- they make text of it, but he tends to give Nate the names of actors that have played Doctor Who. Which amuses me to no end.

Rebecca: And the fans as well. I’ve seen a lot of people being very excited about that.

John: Yeah. Now this is interesting because I don’t know much about the law, I know a little about statute of limitations on art theft because I had to research it, but that’s it. I’m constantly amazed. And so going to Chris, and there’s so much stuff in this episode that seems insane, but you can actually do it in a court of law.

Chris: Well I- look-

Jonathan: Don’t you violate the sense of truth a little bit here?

Chris: A little bit. But, I have to say, I did speak to an old friend of mine - a colleague - who’s a litigator and who’s been doing it for 12 years, and I ran a lot of the stuff by him and he was- he was on board.

John: Yeah.

Rebecca: Absolutely, we had a great conversation with him.

John: So this is the one- this is one of the ones that’s great, actually, cause you called that buddy who’s in the US Attorney's office and you gave that five second pause and went, ‘holy shit that would work’.

[All laugh]

Jonathan: You could get away with it.

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly.

John: ‘Don’t- don’t tell anyone about this!’ It’s always gratifying when you hear from somebody- like when we faked the MRI. Who was like ‘Oh yeah, that’s actually a good tumor. Nicely done.’

Rebecca: ‘You could absolutely do that.’ Yeah. [Laughs]

John: And this is the little- this little friend beat with Peggy.

Jonathan: This is the vegan meat scene. This is a very nice scene.

Rebecca: This is the tofu scene.

John: Yes. And she’s wonderful- and this is why it’s so crucial to get those daily players that are great, because-

Rebecca: She did a wonderful job.

Jonathan: Oh, we loved her.

John: -you want them to be friends.

Jonathan: Yeah you love them as friends, you buy them as friends.

John: Yeah, Peggy’s coming back.

Rebecca: Oh god, I hope so.

John: Yeah her sidekick- yeah we’re absolutely- well not just for your character payment but also.

Rebecca: Oh do I get one of those? That’s fun.

John: We’re actually thinking about- when I did Jackie Chan adventures the animated show, we eventually wound up using a bunch of the side characters in their own episodes.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And I’m thinking at some point we get all the- like Hurley, Peggy, all the side characters and do like two next year where it’s just them forming a second Leverage team.

Rebecca: Lisa earned she did a great job.

John: She did a great job.

Chris: Now Johnathan, a lot of this episode is us watching people watch other people, how did you-

Jonathan: Yeah, that was part of the prepping, to make sure I understood who-

Chris: How did you keep that all straight?

Jonathan: Who watches the watchers?

Chris: Right.

Rebecca: Exactly.

Chris: I mean it’s all very clear…

Jonathan: Well it’s clear because it was- we discussed it during prep. You know, we all- you know, it was what we talked about a few minutes ago, the idea of a tone meeting. So that you’re sure, who’s on the screen in this scene, who knows what’s being said, who hears what’s being said, and who can’t.

Chris: Right, right.

Jonathan: Probably more importantly, who can’t see or who can’t hear and get this information.

Chris: And you also made good use of using the screens as transitions. So you would go from the actual scene, then you would cut to the screen, then pull back.

Jonathan: Yeah well it begs for it a little bit. And helps avoid establishing shots like that.

[All laugh]

John: What?

Chris: Oh good establishing shot is-

John: C’mon man there’s no crime in that, that’s television, it lets you know where you are. That’s actually- talking to Dean about directing, he says that’s the big mistake young directors make, they don’t let you know where you are. You know it’s an important thing, I would rather use a shot like that-

Jonathan: Some reason that Aaron Spelling had a few shows on in the 80’s and 90’s is he made them use establishing shots and start scenes that way.

John: Yeah, exactly and you knew where the hell you were. And that’s a great transition, punch into the screen.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a great transition.

Rebecca: That’s beautiful; very nice.

John: And it’s interesting, like Kirsch said- I call her Kirsch. I always call her Kirsch.

Rebecca: And if you ever stop I’ll know something’s wrong. I know I’m being fired.

John: You’re being fired at the end of the day, yeah.

Jonathan: These two have great rhythm together. These two-

John: They do.

Jonathan: Over the week we worked together developed a great rhythm. He of course knew everything Gina had done, so he had her entire credits, and…

John: No they’re- It’s interesting because she’s doing a bad guy here, which we don’t usually have. We’re doing that in the season premiere of the second season, actually it’s a little- it’s kind of a cool con we’re working on.

Chris: Yeah.

Rebecca: We wanted her to amp up the evil. We said show Sophie, you know, how ruthless she can be.

Jonathan: She looks beautiful with her hair pulled up.

Chris: Oh boy, she looked great.

John: But that was fun being able to use just enough of what Americans know about Indian outsourcing and everything and kind of, you know-

Jonathan: It’s so nice to see Brent without gold paint on his face.

John: I know.

[All laugh]

John: I don’t- you know what he was great in? He was great in the Dorothy Dandridge story. I really liked that

Jonathan: He’s a wonderful actor.

Chris: Oh, he’s terrific.

Jonathan: You know he’s playing Don Quixote now.

John: Oh yeah, there you are.

Rebecca: I did not know that.

Jonathan: The reprise he’s playing in Man of La Mancha.

John: What’s interesting here is there’s not- the temptation to do a lot of fancy camera crap when two people are talking is overwhelming, but you just parked it on them and- the scenes great, it’s chilling, it’s creepy. That comes from two good actors talking.

Jonathan: That only comes from years of directing, is to learn that you don’t have to do too much.

John: Yeah. Sometimes just let good actors talk.

Jonathan: And it’s great. And the same thing in the editing room. You don’t have to cut around yet, I’m still interested in what they’re saying.

John: Yeah. That’s a big problem you get- when you’re moving the camera, it’s always- the kinda general rule I always use is, it’s movement or performance. If somebody’s talking- if somebody’s working it just sit on it, it’s all right. The audience is [unintelligible].

Jonathan: And also our cameras are moving even when we appear to do close-ups.

John: We do these little slides and stuff, yeah. This was also- the incredibly boring slideshow, this is sort of off of your-

Chris: Yes. I think people accept that in a court case there would be an incredibly boring presentation of evidence, and you buy that.

Rebecca: Absolutely

Jonathan: Quincy! Worked on Quincy for years!

Chris: Sure! Absolutely.

John: Quincy, exactly. 168 slides, I love Kitty- I love Kitty in that shot by the way. She’s so great.

Rebecca: Yeah, she’s so good.

John: And even that was great, because we had brought in- we got Armin first, right?

Jonathan: No I called- I asked during casting I said wouldn’t Armin be great for this corrupt juror? And I said wait a minute, ‘Armin’s married to Kitty’. And we wound up- obviously we wanted up with a female judge to mix it up a little bit, let’s offer it to Kitty too. And it was like a family package.

John: That was great.

Jonathan: Then it became the Star Trek connection. This guy was funny as hell, too.

Rebecca: Excellent job.

Chris: Yeah, he was great.

John: And speaking real Hindi there, which is-

Jonathan: And Gina pretending she understood him, which is…

[All laugh]

John: Yeah she was really great. No, yeah this is one of the few times we bring a mark back to the office.

Chris: Yeah.

John: We dressed it up a little bit, but yeah.

Chris: By the end of the season we’re getting pretty-

Jonathan: This was a good setup too, I was always wondering if the audience would understand- oh no, this isn’t- yeah we we’re gonna reveal the green screen here.

Chris: Yeah, we were gonna reveal it right after this.

John: Yeah. But yeah it was interesting because I had just gone to the CAA where they had the big new teleconferencing wall, it really was- I will believe anything that’s on the other side of that camera, you know? And we do so much set replacement on this show that it would make sense that they have that technology.

Chris: Oh I love that- I love that zoom around.

Rebecca: He did such a great job.

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s that six frames business.

John: And finding that- this guy did a great job.

Jonathan: This guy was great!

Rebecca: He was wonderful, yeah

John: Doing the Scottish accent on the way out was really- it was really great.

Jonathan: That was shameless. Whose idea was that?

Rebecca: It was originally Irish. That was your idea, John, I think.

Jonathan: Just shameless.

John: Yeah. He’s very good, the walkaway. And what’s great is they’re also- Eliot’s running the computer there. It’s one of those little things where we’ve arced his ability to use the computer at Hardison’s- you know.

Chris: Yes.

John: We didn’t do a bit - which would’ve complicated it - which was where Hardison left a bunch of sticky notes on his computer which I loved. But at this point- it’s interesting because this episode started so clean and wound up being so complicated, you know?

Jonathan: We are moving, moving, moving.

Chris: It’s great- great movement. Picking them up on the run, and the camera finally stops right there.

Jonathan: I think- driven by the idea that we think a courtroom drama is gonna be staid, that we had to- all of us were very conscious of trying to make sure everything moved, literally and figuratively, and it paid off.

John: And this is one of the times that they’re too good at their jobs. Which we don’t use all that often.

Rebecca: Exactly

Chris: Oh yeah, I love this twist.

[All laugh]

John: And the smile, and just sign the goddamn papers.

Rebecca: Oh these two guys had so much fun.

Jonathan: ‘Sign on the line before anything changes!’

John: Really great.

Jonathan: This is the part we wanted Dean to play!

Rebecca: Yes it was, yeah.

John: Yes, exactly. But the idea, that if you use real world companies, that it will come back to bite you in the ass is infinitely amusing. And again something we’re going to use a bit more in season 2. You know the little details of the cons- you always wonder how much process does the audience want? And I think that that’s- a lot of it is what you sign up for. That’s why CSI was a big hit, people want to see people get fingerprinted and stuff.

Jonathan: I want to see the stuff, yeah.

John: And for us it’s how do we commit these crimes?

Jonathan: And I think the audience loves that.

Chris: More movement again, you panned across to the-

Jonathan: I lined them up in the order that they spoke. [Laughs] Always a good trick.

[All laugh]

Chris: Then you ended on-

Jonathan: Nate. He gets up.

Chris: Nate as he gets up and you follow him out.

Jonathan: Thank you.

[All laugh]

John: We should bring you back.

Rebecca: Honestly.

John: I was really not gonna bring you back but watching this episode again, I gotta say, yeah.

Chris: It’s a good scene.

Rebecca: We give some screen time to our infrequently used kitchen. Very well stocked with orange soda.

Jonathan: I’m a big fan of the kitchen.

Rebecca: We had a good time filming it.

Chris: Yeah we did.

John: We started using it a lot. It was- it really was- it’s not something that’s kind of in our writers heads, just cause we didn’t- it was a late addition to the set, but it’s a nice intimate-

Rebecca: There were some intimate moments, yeah.

Jonathan: It’s the office version of the water cooler. It’s where stuff can happen.

Chris: And here’s where we are challenging our two- Hardison and Parker, to really bring it home. We have our pep talks.

John: It’s a parallel scene, parallel structure, yeah. Parallel pep talks. And they’re two distinctly different relationships too, you know?

Chris: Yeah.

Jonathan: That’s a good point, the father/son relationship between Nate and Aldis is an entirely different one from the peer relationship that these two are trying to set up.

Chris: Yes.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

John: This is really- and this is something we held back for the season finale. Where the way she locks it in, in the original version of the script, is she confesses Sophie Deveraux is not her real name.

Rebecca: Yeah.

John: And then that’s sort of something we held back for the finale. Assuming you’ve watched all the episodes in a row and now are going back for the commentary, with a Guiness in hand, as you should.

[Laughter]

John: Yeah this is a- we don’t do this a lot.

Chris: No.

John: Sophie, Parker we don’t do a lot and they have a nice rhythm.

Rebecca: They have a really nice dynamic.

Jonathan: That’s the nice thing about these- this cast. There are so many formations or- what’s the word I’m looking for? Not combinations, but in that same- apples and oranges-

John: Permutations.

Jonathan: Permutations, yeah. Where Christian’s in a scene with the two girls - the chemistry’s different.

Chris: [Laughs] I love sending the kids to school. This is great.

Rebecca: The sack lunch.

John: The sack lunch. ‘You’re gonna knock it’; ‘No, no, you’re not gonna-’; ‘You - you’re gonna get hit by a car’.

[All laugh]

Rebecca: Good luck with that.

John: Big guy, you’re gonna get hit by a car. Sorry man, that’s your morning. Boom.

Jonathan: Okay end of scene.

Chris: Oh, beautiful transition.

John: Yeah, the door and then the door. It’s like you think these things through.

Jonathan: Dean’s electric car getting used, so we got a freebie.

Rebecca: One of the few remaining. Oh this was great.

John: Boom. And by the way, one of the great things about Christian Kane is he’ll do his own stunts.

Jonathan: Does his own stunts!

Rebecca: Everything.

John: The bad thing about Chris Kane is when you watch the dailies-

Jonathan: Does his own stunts!

John: And you go ‘oh my god!’

[All laugh]

John: Good fight in this one, by the way.

Rebecca: Yeah

John: Nice. Nice double take down.

Jonathan: Yeah, this is Charlie Brewer. He stages them quick and tight.

John: Which is really the only way to do it. You start doing big and slow-mo stuff and it just-

Rebecca: I just love when he throws him over his back. [Laughs]

John: Yeah.

Jonathan: Nobody sees me right? Nobody sees me with this guy on my shoulders?

Chris: In broad daylight?

John: In broad daylight.

Rebecca: Very early.

John: And we are done.

Jonathan: Okay, those guys are taken care of and I didn’t have to do my hair in the trailer this morning.

[All laugh]

Jonathan: I went for the stocking cap- went for the Jeff cap and I got to the set on time.

John: There you go. It’s actually interesting- the thing you said earlier is, when you develop TV shows, a lot of the times you’ll have a really good idea for the pilot, and you’ll write the pilot, then you’ll have a TV show and you’ll have no idea how to get to episode 100. I will say that it’s our own anal developmental process, Chris and I, is like alright, five characters any one of which can lead an episode, and how many combinations of each of these two or three characters work. If you don’t do that, you just spin your wheels, you’re just a plot machine. And, end of day, the audience really doesn’t give a crap about story. I mean they like a good story, but they’re here for this scene. You know, they’re here to see Aldis do To Kill a Mockingbird. They’re here to see Tim in the funny hats.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

John: They’re really invested in the characters

Jonathan: Ed Begley Jr.!

John: He’s Ed Begley Jr. He’s doing Ed Begley Jr. here. Closing the internal combustion to digestive combustion.

Jonathan: This is when we couldn’t get the...

Rebecca: The smoke to work, yeah. We had many different methods-

Jonathan: Lunch was creeping up on us.

Rebecca: I was. It was a hot day outside.

Jonathan: I said, “We’ll sell it with sound.”

[Laughter]

Rebecca: I think it was an electric car, yeah.

Chris: Now what exactly is around his forehead? What is that?

Jonathan: It looks like the same piece of [word that sounds like druh-fellen] that she wore in the…

[All laugh]

John: That Parker had in The Wedding Job?

Chris: That’s a special effect folks. That’s a virtual-

Jonathan: I had more people- in the interviews I did the other day, they loved that visual effect.

Chris: Isn’t that great?

Jonathan: They think it’s real.

John: Well it’s one of the few times we cheat.

Jonathan: There’s Quark, from Deep Space Nine. And… who did he play in Beauty and the Beast? One of our wonderful underused character actors.

John: Yeah? Beauty and the Beast I’m trying to remember…

Johnathan: I think he was the third [unintelligible] and that’s his wife, Kitty

John: I also love- I love this moment. I love when, even accidentally - because he gives a shit about this case =- that he’s a better lawyer, you know?

Chris: Yeah.

John: And she’s again, April Webster casting. She’s a great day player; it’s a lovely moment.

Chris: We don’t spend a lot of time with her, our victim, so it was really kind of important at this point in the show to connect with her.

John: Yeah. And to show also, cause this is late in the season, that their relationships with the victims are changing.

Chris: And also we’ve seen Hardison have doubt, that ‘I can’t do this’, and here’s a moment where he kinda realized that he can do this, you know I’ve been doing it all along.

John: Or I have to do it.

Rebecca: And her faith gave him energy to move forward with something that was pretty difficult.

Johnathan: And it was a classic case of art imitating life, too, because this was a wonderful breakthrough for Aldis, who people feel does light comedy and they feel he does this physical stuff-

John: Honestly, after this episode, I’d put him in a courtroom show in a heartbeat. He sells the hell out of this. Particularly the closing speech, by the way, you wrote this. It was great. Chris wrote the closing argument that he’s always wanted to do, like, on his big case.

[Laughter]

John: Like this! This is the one! Does every lawyer really- every lawyer’s got To Kill a Mockingbird in his head, every lawyer…

Chris: Well, yeah, uh, yeah.

John: That was my dad. My dad became a lawyer in his 60’s and he busted his ass for like 5 years to he could get a jury trial, just so he could finally do this speech.

Johnathan: God, Armin’s good value.

John: Yeah. This is great.

Johnathan: The casting is so important when you cast these day players this way.

John: And he’s funny- he’s both funny and grounding.

Johnathan: AND, he’s making the choice to hold onto his story as long as he possibly can, and then try to defend it.

John: Yes. As one would. And that’s the other lawyer freaking out. It’s amazing. It’s very important that everyone stays present in this scene; a lot of times day players will just tend to wander off when they’re not on camera, and you never know when you’re grabbing coverage and that’ll make the moment.

Rebecca: And that was kind of difficult with 12 jurors. I mean, we had to make sure they were all focused as well as

Johnathan: When we were casting the jury, I remember we gave the jurors, each of them, a backstory.

John: Yes.

Rebecca: I remember that.

Johnathan: So that when we cast our extras we would…

Rebecca: I forgot about that

John: So each one of those characters actually lines up the characters that Sophie says when she- the tells that she read.

Rebecca: Absolutely

John: And Kitty, by the way, does a really nice job there being amused and impressed at the same time. That role could’ve easily been harpy-ish. And instead was this, kind of like she was fairly pleased by what he was pulling off. This was a rare hidden fourth act. When we do stuff, we usually let the audience know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. This is one of the few times we give them a little piece and then walk away. And this is your big speech.

Chris: Oh yeah. Well I mean, I think with any closing argument, the greatest ones in the movies - I mean I look at The Verdict or even Presumed Innocent - they’re not about the case, they’re very general.

Johnathan: Yeah, they’re about heart to heart.

Chris: They’re about heart to heart, yeah. They’re all about communicating with the jury.

Johnathan: He was spectacular in this.

Chris: I love this bit.

Johnathan: And he had the support of the cast, he got the support of the writers, it was one of those great days.

John: Look at that, that’s great.

Rebecca: I love that moment between them.

Chris: I love that he ends on ‘some of you are friends’ and you had him end on her, and they had that little moment.

John: It’s nice, pulling that moment out. No, he’s- I love the entire cast, but hiring him at 21? This is a guy with a 40 year career in him.

Johnathan: You won’t regret this, will not regret this.

John: Absolutely. I mean it’s amazing watching this again, because you’re watching without the sound when you do the commentary. And it’s amazing how much of this feels like a fast moving, energetic episode, and so much of it-

Johnathan: We were so concerned that it was going to be too much in court, it’s not too much in-

Chris: We were, yeah.

John: But at the same time in the scenes that were there, we sit for a long time. There’s big speeches in this episode, there’s big talking scenes, and they work, you feel invested in them. It’s interesting how so much of this went from, okay we’ve got a courtroom set-

Johnathan: Wait, let me guess, is Nate drinking?

[Laughter]

John: He’s drinking.

Johnathan: Father/son moment.

John: And as a matter of fact, yes, again, a scene that is parallel to when I did my first stand up that my dad saw me do and he bought me a drink afterwards. It was a big- it was the first time I drank with my father, was that moment. And so really, we’ve turned a horrible brutal addiction into a beautiful sharing moment.

[Laughter]

John: Which is nice.

Chris: Here we go, it’s all on Parker.

Rebecca: Daunting task ahead of her.

John: All on her, yup. It’s interesting how it turns from the- from kind of a constellation show where we have a set standing, and maybe we can limp through this to I think this might be one of my favorite episodes in the season. If you get the right people, and you really commit to it.

Johnathan: Doesn’t it happen like that though?

Chris: Yeah.

Johnathan: Doesn’t it always happen like that?

Rebecca: There was such great emotion in it, there really was.

Chris: Oh look at this!

John: Oh that’s lovely.

Chris: There’s a proud use of that transition where we use that to bridge and show us where we are.

John: She’s starting to tumble to it, it’s starting to feel- and it’s great because really the chess thing did come later. It came like the week before we shot.

Rebecca: It really did and it’s-

Johnathan: Oh really?

Chris: It did it came- I think it came the week we shot. [Laughs]

Rebecca: I think you may be right about that. It was definitely later.

John: I wrote it-

Johnathan: Well everybody wanted to use it too. She wanted to use it in this scene, you’ll see at the end of the show that Nate wanted to use it, it became more than it was intended to be, and as a result I think it bookended it.

John: Well it gave it a spine.

Rebecca: It did.

John: Gave it a nice little spine for the parallel. It’s always hard, because one of the challenges on this show is keeping all five actors alive at all times. And you know you can’t always find five hats.

Johnathan: But this- but you guys have done a good job with that, if you put people in different places, and have them check in, and believe that we can hear them wherever they are. As opposed to- that’s why the scenes in the court- the conference room were so tough. You gotta get out of there, you gotta send them on their mission so you can spread them out.

John: You don’t want to hang out there. You don’t want to hang out there. Yeah and that was the problem to a certain degree in the beginning of the season as we were learning to write the show. Because you’re learning to write- every show you’re learning how to write the first season. You’ve been on a lot of series - you know, the first couple episodes, no matter how clear the vision, getting the working parts up spinning is difficult.

Johnathan: And it’s just as important what works and what doesn’t work.

John: Yeah, yeah. And our whole thing was, ‘Okay, we gotta keep all five of them active so let’s keep them together.’ And it turned out like, no, you gotta split them up.

Rebecca: Split them up, yeah.

John: Two, three, two over there. It really keeps it up.

Chris: Oh here- this is what we call the date with the devil scene.

John: Lauren Holly being delightfully evil here.

Rebecca: Absolutely. She had a lot of fun with it.

John: And really is the crux of the-

Johnathan: This is a good call, Lauren Holly.

John: Yes, she did a really great job on it, she’s a good actor and-

Johnathan: I think this was Dean… yeah. She was good, she was sharp, she was fun to be on set with, and she chewed it up.

John: ‘Oooh that’s a lot of money’ yeah.

Chris: And he plays it so great, too.

John: And what Lauren’s doing here- when you have her, too, which is a little sexy, dangerous, plainly you’re gonna get your hand snapped off you.

Johnathan: That’s her calling card now. That’s her strong suit. It used to be that sort of sweet-

John: Sweet, girl next door, yeah. No, the three- and this is another thing is- constantly on the show we’re constantly struggling with, is okay we’re dealing with obscure financial decisions for a big chunk of the show, how do we visualize it?

Rebecca: How do you do it? How do you make it simple?

Chris: And also how do you make the audience understand, here-

Johnathan: When you can’t have a bucket of money or a big bag. What do you guys like to-?

John: Sack of money! But when we were struggling- I’ll admit-

Chris: And this is our sack of money, the file folders.

John: In Homecoming it’s the envelope switch. The envelope switch- it’s really tricky, I mean you know, and I’ll say we’re breaking second season now, we found out that we’re picked up for a second season, and it’s constantly like what’s our new- what’s our thing? What’s our thing we’re chasing?

Rebecca: Hatbox full of euros.

John: We can’t do a hatbox full of euros every week. We’d love to.

Rebecca: We’d like to, sure, yeah.

John: Yeah, that would be great. But euros are devalued now so they’re not quite as important.

[Laughter]

John: Now, Johnathan I can ask you did you use- did you reference any specific movies or anything? This is a courtroom drama, there’s an awful lot of stuff out there - have you shot this type of thing before?

Johnathan: I have shot- I actually stole from Judgement at Nuremberg, which is- I did a courtroom show on Star Trek and I found that the coverage, the set of moving, pushing, singles, two shots, three shots, that they did in that is the most- that and getting it high and wide. Always.

John: Well that’s the-

Johnathan: Judgement at Nuremberg is a really wonderful courtroom drama and worth stealing from.

[All laugh]

John: Well this is actually where, where the show began is, Chris had the idea to - we’ll steal a verdict.

Chris: Let’s steal a verdict.

John: And what it’s based on, is the wire gimmick from The Sting.

Chris: Right.

John: And that’s the idea that when you announce this stuff, I mean famous trials, particularly when you live in LA, you’re all waiting around the web, and you’re waiting for the verdict to come out, on the web, of what happened.

Chris: Yeah, it was all about our team controlling the early delivery of information, which is the wire scam in The Sting, and how we could use that in the context of the trial.

Jonathan: Oh, so this is what tee’d up the whole show?

Chris: This is the raison d’etre of the show.

Jonathan: Not her being on a jury, but-

Chris: But then we thought how great would it be if she was on the jury.

John: And then the next question immediately was, who would be on the jury? Well Parker would be on the jury, I mean, that’s obvious.

[Laughter]

Johnathan: Right.

Rebecca: Who is least able to work with humans?

John: To con them. Yeah exactly. To work with them.

Chris: [Laughs] His reactions- his reactions are great.

John: He’s so angry. He’s so filled with rage. And this is the ‘zhoom-zhoom’, there’s, like, varieties- we call these the zhoom-zhoom’s by the way, cause you zhoom in and you zhoom out-

Rebecca: Peter Hanson, did a great audition for Jonathan. The Jonathan Frakes song.

John: This day player actually sang a song about you, that’s right. You have to.

Johnathan: For the future. For anybody who’s listening.

[All laugh]

John: Don’t try that, that’s not gonna work.

Johnathan: It doesn’t hurt.

John: What? You’re saying you’d actually take that?

Johnathan: I- I hired the guy!

John Alright.

Johnathan: I asked all of you. I said do I hire this guy who sang a song about me? And you all said yes.

Rebecca: He was passionate.

John: He was passionate.

Rebecca: He had fervor.

Chris: Here we go, here’s our two chess players. Going at it-

Johnathan: Who never meet until this moment.

John: Nope.

Rebecca: And this was Tim’s idea, right here.

John: Boom.

Johnathan: Boom, and… he’s got it.

John: And, by the way, there’s a very subtle thing there. By giving her the white king he’s basically announcing his presence as the black king. It’s kind of one of the little things- the chess metaphors that goes through the season.

Johnathan: Pulled back for the burger.

John: There you go.

Rebecca: Eliot’s got his beer.

Johnathan: It pays off the vegan jokes from earlier.

John: Yeah, it’s like we know what we’re doing.

[Laughter]

John: Also, I like the bad attempt at parenting Nate does here. Aldis is- Hardison’s learned the entirely wrong lesson from this particular thing.

Rebecca: Exactly.

John: Although, I’ve never sure if he learns the wrong lesson or he’s just yanking-

Johnathan: But Hardison comes into this scene thinking that I really can do anything I want to do.

John: But by-

Johnathan: And then Nate’s like, ‘that’s not what I meant!’

[Laughter]

John: He means by stealing and by grifting. He doesn’t-

Johnathan: Yeah, he doesn’t mean by becoming a doctor or a lawyer, nothing honorable. This is a very good scene, actually.

John: Yes. It basically says that no matter how- it’s interesting because this is meant to be - it’s this, to rehab, to the season finale. This is meant to set that, for whatever the journey they’ve gone on, they are now a family. A broken, weird family, but a family. So that’s why we can do really really horrible things to them in the season finale and you feel like you’re tearing apart, at this point, a family that you’ve become invested in.

Johnathan: It’s nice that they held on- for instance, Christians character, holding onto this thing about how he feels about Beth is just great.

Chris: Yeah, it’s great.

Rebecca: Really has value.

John: Yeah. It’s- they- you know this is the part in the credits where you get to say whatever the hell you want so, Kirsch?

Chris: Anything you wanna add?

Johnathan: Congratulations!

John: It’s your first episode. Say hi to your parents?

Rebecca: Thank you. Hi mom and dad, and Paul and Paul [Laughs]. And thank you guys for giving me this opportunity because this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Chris: Thank you.

Johnathan: Oh c’mon, take that one back.

[All laugh]

Rebecca: Oh, come on! I had a great time.

John: Your boyfriend just proposed to you, that’s like horrible!

Rebecca: That’s true! And the episode’s coming out tonight, so it was good timing

John: Well there you go.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 1 #Episode 10 #Season 1 Episode 10 #The Juror No. 6 Job

45 notes · View notes

notesfromthefielddesk · 3 years ago

Text

Episode 6 - Tsing part 1

Episode link; https://open.spotify.com/episode/3x0cMRYDmN5M8lDCZIZxEK?si=07ec23a2d8ac485e

The sound of a temple bell is heard in the cedar forest at dusk,

The autumn aroma drifts on the roads below.

The moving cloud fades away, and I smell the aroma of the mushroom.

Oh Matsutake:

The excitement before finding them.

This episode isn’t about Japan. It’s not about Mushrooms. It’s about living in our own mess, it’s about international relations, it’s about capitalist trading. But the same way we can trace politics through cows, or social relations through cockfights, the art of anthropology is in noticing the small things which might teach us more. In the face of global capitalism a mushroom might seem humble but that is what Anna Tsing would call a problem with scale, because as the most valuable mushroom in the world it couldn’t be further from ‘humble.’

This is notes from the field desk

(Theme)

(Sounding sleepy)

It’s about, ummm quarter to five. I’m in Tsukiji whole-sale market in Tokyo. I’m maybe jet-lagged but that would make it like 9pm to me and actually I feel significantly worse than that. I’m here this early because the auction runs from around 5am to six fifteen. Whilst the market is famous for its tuna auctions, if you’ve seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi then you’ve seen the market and it’s ginormous frozen tuna, but they also sell mushrooms here. This market is in fact so famous they had to ban tourists on several occasions. Thankfully it’s not currently one of those times,i’m sat in the tourist section, i’m in the back because of the desk and well because the guards said I was a disruptive influence.

I’m paraphrasing he actually said “move it, Deku” before shoving my desk to the back. My translation app couldn’t really figure out Deku so if anyone could help me out with the meaning? It doesn’t really matter, seen as almost everyone is here for the Tuna, I have a pretty clear view of the auctioneers arranging matsutake on a trestle table. The staff are wearing, what kind of look like, bowling shirts (kind of questioning) and baseball caps which have a little board on the front which have some kanji which I can’t read. Really someone else should have come on this trip.

This is maybe petty but to be honest now I’m doing this because I have to, i’m not enjoying it as much. Is there something wrong with me? Anyway that’s a discussion for another time.

They are organising the mushrooms by, size, value and origin. These mushrooms have probably been sorted at least twice before by value but origin has a significant impact on their eventual sale price. As one Japanese importer explained to Anna Tsing “Matsutake are like people, American mushrooms are white, because the people are white. Chinese mushrooms are black, because the people are black. Japanese people and mushrooms are nicely in between.” Okay, I recognise that we’ve gotten slightly ahead of ourselves here. How does a mushroom come to cost between 1000 and 2000 dollars per pound?

Matsutake first appears in a poem from 8th century Japan which praises it’s smell which would go on to become synonymous with Autumn in Japan. The mushroom had started popping up around Kyoto and Nara, areas which had been deforested for timber and fuel. In fact, deforestation is the reason why matsutake became common in Japan. This is because these mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with red pine trees. Red pines tend to grow most successfully in mineral rich soil left by deforestation and could grow more easily without the shade from broadleaf trees which had been cut down.

This is the start of Anna Tsing’s interest in these mushrooms, not because she’s just really into foraging, although she is, but because of what they symbolise, think Geertz. In the wake of capitalist ruin, here read deforestation, this mushroom thrived. This is so generally understood about Matsutake that people say the first thing to grow after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima was a Matsutake.

Written in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and with the results of climate change becoming undeniable Tsing wants to find a way that people can pull off the same trick. And she found a parallel in the forests of Oregon, but that is for next week.

So how does a mushroom you literally find in the trash become the most expensive fungus in the world? Well by 1900 in Japan it had become the culturally ubiquitous idea of Autumn. Think lambs in spring or incredibly drunk, sunburnt bald men with a union jack tattoos and British summer. Matsutake were everywhere, in Kyoto, they became the generic term for mushroom. So far, so cheap commodity right? But then in the 50s people stopped using wood as their main fuel, woodland was cut down and paved for suburban development, broadleaf trees grew back and in the shaded forest, Matsutake started to disappear. By the 1970s Japanese Matsutake were incredibly rare. This coincided with rapid Japanese economic development. The culturally significant and now rare mushroom became gifts, bribes and perks for businessmen. Consequently the price skyrocketed.

Huge demand but limited supply in Japan meant the international market suddenly gained importance. And non-Japanese mushroom pickers from around the world flooded into the market.

Oh hold on the auction is starting. I wanna see if I can buy one.

Umm I have no idea what is happening.

Excuse me. Nope ignored.

Umm.

Hello.

13,000 yen!

(Awkward silence. Fade out.)

Okay so umm, I won the auction. Is that how you say it? But I bought one mushroom for 120 dollars and then they asked me to leave. So we’re set up in a cafe outside the market. If you’re wondering, yes, the guy who has been following me is here.

Hi mate. You alright? Cool.

He was in the auction too but I've decided to live and let live. In part because of what i’ve learned from reading Tsing.

I guess uhh lets see what the fuss about this mushroom is about.

Smells mushroom nervously

Yep smells like dirt. Cool. What am I going to do with this now?

Okay smells like dirt. Great. That’s 120 dollars for some dirt. I don’t even like mushrooms what the fuck am I doing. Okay, I guess we should talk about isolation and contamination which is where Tsing starts to get confusing, so, sorry about that. I can really understand why the students don’t get it and I think if the last few weeks have proven anything it’s that the students seem to understand anthropology better than I do. But I’ve done the reading and I've got notes so let’s give it a shot.

Tsing says capitalism is based on a growth and progress model. Wow, we’re off the rails already. In other words, and I'm not an economist so don’t @ me, the health of an individual, company and nation under capitalism are measured by their ability to generate more than they did previously. The aim is for GDP to grow, for company profits to increase, individuals to earn more etc. One way to achieve this end is to focus on scalability. Which is the ability to create more of the same product without changing the product. This is often achieved through isolation.

Yikes this episode is like “dictionary corner.” For isolation think of old Henry Ford and his assembly line. Instead of 5 guys working on every aspect of a car, the assembly line isolates each component and has one person make that part. Now you can make lots of cars quickly. Take this podcast, I write it, record it, edit it, and upload it. If I hired a writer, an editor and a social media person. I could just record the episodes and we could all be working simultaneously, produce more podcasts, get more listeners, then maybe this podcast could generate a profit.

Good news right? More of everything is made more quickly for less money, which means we can all have a car. Or a podcast. But Tsing sees some problems. She takes a different example of scalability. Portugese sugar plantations in Brazil. Sugar cane was grown by splitting a sugar cane and sticking it in the ground. Functionally it was a clone brought from New Guinea and planted in Brazil. As a farming product it couldn’t be more isolated. Unlike a matsutake say, which can’t be scaled because it grows almost by random in relation to the soil and the trees around it, the sugar cane has no relationship to its surroundings.

Now let's talk about the farm workers. Sugar plantation workers were slaves brought from west Africa to Brazil. Like the sugar cane they were isolated with no social relations in Brazil which prevented escape. This is why slave traders split families, social and cultural groups. Their alienation and isolation made them a controllable, standardized workforce. Portugal made huge profits from this and could keep the uncomfortable effects hidden, seen as the whole project took place in west Africa and south America, far away from the Portugese eyes. This is maybe the first example of what academics call “space-time distanciation” I know what the fuck is distanciation other than a great way to be the most hated person at a dinner party or the pub.

Basically it’s just a bullshit way to say doing things from far away but in real time. So like ugh I don’t know, (Rising anger) a kid in America can snipe you on COD and call you a homophobic slur and you experience it as it happens even though he’s thousands of miles away. And however much you threaten him he won’t experience any consequences because he’s far away and you’re thirty and trash at shooters. (awkward pause) Not a real thing that happened to me, just a random example.

So this scalability and distanciation were created and spread around the world by European colonists but it was Japanese markets which modernised the idea. In the 60s to the 80s Japan actually gave American economic dominance a little scare because of its shift to outsourcing. Instead of Japanese companies making products in Japan where labour was expensive they made products abroad where labour was cheap and took advantage of increasingly speedy global supply lines to turn huge profits.

Matsutake picking is an example of this which we’ll talk about more next time but in short, casual workers pick and sell them for a fraction of their market value in America, the middle men then transport it to Japan where it’s market and cultural value is increased and sell it for a huge profit.

Another example would be fast fashion. Everyone remembers the scandals when it came out that gap or nike or primark had their clothes made in terrible conditions. A lot of brands defended themselves by saying they had no idea about the conditions. To an extent this is true, but it was deliberate ignorance. They put their production in the hands of intermediary companies in countries far away from their shareholders, employees and customers creating plausible deniability.

There is another problem which is obvious really. Scale can only go so far, which is until all the resources are gone. Then the project has to move on and do something else. Think of Japan after they had cut down all the trees. Or if you really want to depress yourself, fossil fuels.

Okay, okay what’s the point! Tsing says all this stuff, the distanciation, the scalability, the obsession with more profits, the isolation is the cause of the precarious lives more and more people are experiencing. Think of zero hours contracts, or uber driving or amazon workers pissing in bottles. It’s easy to cut wages, to allow bad working conditions, to strip mine the rainforest when we are distanced from the consequences. So long as it happens somewhere else, to someone else, when we have no relationship with the products we consume, or create. Think of the podcast again. If I hired all these people it would be more efficient but then I wouldn’t have the same relationship with it. I would become alienated from it. That’s how little by little people have less of an understanding of the things around them. That’s how we can separate the petrol we put in our cars from the environmental damage that doing that causes.

Wow. Depressing. Jesus. Remember when this show used to be about cows and magic?

(sigh)

Taking things seriously sucks. Okay but Tsing reckons that by looking at these expensive mushrooms there is hope. Capitalism can make us feel lonely but looking at Matsutake reminds us that even in capitalist ruins like a destroyed forest new things can grow. Those things grow from relationships, the encounter between the mushroom and the pine tree and the soil from deforestation. It’s a reminder that we aren’t actually alone that there aren’t any “challenges we might face without asking for help from others, human or not human.” Through relationships we change and Tsing says “The important stuff of life on earth happens in those transformations.” So you know, join your union, talk to your neighbour, forage for mushrooms. It might just make the world better. And if it doesn’t, well at least you have some friends and mushrooms. Wait did i just say join a union? Am I woke? Must be the jet lag.

Time for the extract;

How does a gathering become a happening, that is, greater than the sum of its parts? One answer is contamination. We are contaminated by our encounters; they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world making projects, mutual worlds - and new directions - may emerge. Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option. One value of keeping precarity in mind is that it makes us remember that changing with circumstances is the stuff of survival.

But what is survival? In popular American fantasies, survival is all about saving oneself by fighting off others. The “survival” featured in U.S. television shows or alien-planet stories is a synonym for conquest and expansion. I will not use the term that way. Please open yourself to another usage. This book argues that staying alive - for every species - requires livable collaborations. Collaboration means working across differences, which leads to contamination. Without collaborations, we all die.

The problem of precarious survival helps us see what is wrong. Precarity is the state of acknowledgement of our vulnerability to others. In order to survive, we need help and help is always the service of another, with or without intent. When I sprain my ankle, a stout stick may help me walk and I enlist its assistance. I am now an encounter in motion, a woman and stick. It is hard for me to think of any challenge I might face without soliciting the assistance of others, human and not human. It is unselfconscious privilege that allows us to fantasize - counter factually - that we survive alone.

How do you conclude something as complicated as this? Okay how about this. Often you’ll hear people talking about capitalist alienation and it’s not really clear what that means. I think what Tsing is saying is that capitalism wants people to be individualised. That way labour can be scaled up, because the products aren’t related to the context that they are made in. So you can make a ford car in a factory in Detroit or Dhaka and the product will be the same. But Tsing is giving us a warning and a reminder that we aren’t individuals. That we have a relationship with everything around us and forgetting this can destroy our surroundings. This means humans and non-humans too! If we’re going to survive late capitalism and climate change we have to re-engage in these relationships.

#anthropology #foraging #mushrooms #matsutake #japan #arts #arts and entertainment #podcast #society #tsing

0 notes

parkersenses · 7 years ago

Note

All of the want to know me asks!

bro,,, i literally said in the tagsfdjkdsjk,, it’s alright let’s do this

1: My name?

Ellie

2: Do I have any nicknames?

technically Ellie is my nickname

3: Zodiac sign?

sagittarius

4: Video game I play to chill, not to win?

spyro: year of the dragon

5: Book/series I reread?

carry on by rainbow rowell

6: Aliens or ghosts?

both??

7: Writer I trust enough to read whatever they write?

rainbow rowell and victoria aveyard

8: Favourite radio station?

depends on my mood

9: Favourite flavour of anything?

strawberry maybe??

10: The word that I use all the time to describe something great?

“wild”

11: Favourite song?

doN’T EVEN ASK

12: The question you ask new friends to get to know them better?

me?? making new friends?? never heard of it

13: Favourite word?

“fucking”

14: The last person who hurt me, did I forgive them?

ehh that’s a complicated question

15: Last song I listened to?

meant to be by bebe rexha/florida georgia line

16: TV show I always recommend?

lost

17: Pirates or ninjas?

ninjas

18: Movie I watch when I’m feeling down?

i don’t really have one??

19: Song that I always start my shuffle with/wake-up song/always-on-a-loop song?

don’t have one eitherdjsj

20: Favourite video games?

SPYRO: YEAR OF THE DRAGON

21: What am I most afraid of?

s o c i a l i n t e r a c t i o n

22: A good quality of mine?

i’m honest

23: A bad quality of mine?

i don’t sugarcoat things (which could also be good but)

24: Cats or dogs?

dogs

25: Actor/actress you trust enough to watch whatever they’re in?

tom holland

26: Favourite season?

winter

27: Am I in a relationship?

nope

28: Something I miss?

not having to worry about my grades

29: My best friend?

i’ve got a few

30: Eye color?

blue

31: Hair color?

brown to dirty blonde-ish ombre

32: Someone I love?

Niall Horan

33: Someone I trust?

Niall Horan

34: Someone I always think about?

Niall Horan

35: Am I excited about anything?

TO SEE BLACK PANTHER ON TUESDAY LETS GO

36: My current obsession?

B L A C K P A N T H E R

37: Favourite TV shows as a child?

House of Anubis was my shit

38: Do I have someone of the opposite sex that I can tell everything to?

Nope

39: Am I superstitious?

Depends for what

40: What do I think about most?

the fact that i don’t want to go to school

41: Do I have any strange phobias?

veins

42: Do I prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?

behind it

43: Favourite hobbies?

writing and reading

44: Last book I read?

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

45: Last film I watched?

it’s been awhile i don’t remember

46: Do I play any instruments?

nope

47: Favourite animal?

dogs??

48: Top 5 blogs on Tumblr that I follow?

@thumper-darling x5

49: Superpower I wish I could have?

to fly

50: How do I destress?

blast music or read a book

51: Do I like confrontation?

hmm it depends on the situation but usually no

52: When do I feel most at peace?

when listening to music while reading

53: What makes me smile?

one direction and marvel

54: Do I sleep with the lights on or off?

off

55: Play any sports?

lmao no

56: What is my song of the week?

it was just released but boss by nct u

57: Favourite drink?

caffeine free diet coke

58: When did I last send a handwritten letter to somebody?

a few years ago,, to santa,,,

59: Afraid of heights?

kind of

60: Pet peeve?

i’ve got so many don’t even

61: What was the last concert I went to see?

Niall Horan

62: Am I vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian?

N O

63: What occupation did I want to do when I was younger?

air traffic controller

64: Have I ever had a friend turn enemy?

yes

65: What fictional universe would I like to be a part of?

MCU

66: Something I worry about?

my grades

67: Scared of the dark?

kind of

68: Who are my best friends?

i’ve got a few

69: What do I admire most about others?

i don’tsdjs

70: Can I sing?

i like to sing but i don’t really have a good voice

71: Something I wish I could do?

s i n g

72: If I won the lottery, what would I do?

donate a lot to charity and help my family, and treat myself a little bit

73: Have I ever skipped school?

yes

74: Favourite place on the planet?

my bedroom

75: Where do I want to live?

New York or Boston

76: Do I have any pets?

nope

77: What is my current desktop picture?

it’s a painting of blue smears

78: Early bird or night owl?

night owl

79: Sunsets or sunrise?

sunsets

80: Can I drive?

nope

81: Story behind my last kiss?

never had one

82: Earphones or headphones?

earphones

83: Have I ever had braces?

yep

84: Story behind one of my scars?

when i was little i kept picking at my mosquito bites

85: Favourite genre of music?

don’t have one

86: Who is my hero?

don’t have one

87: Favourite comic book character?

Peter Parker or Deadpool

88: What makes me really angry?

anything political

89: Kindle or real book?

real book

90: Favourite sporty activity?

don’t have one

91: What is one thing that isn’t tight in schools that should be?

girls’ dress code and encouragement to express your opinions

92: What was my favourite subject at school?

english

93: Siblings?

two of ‘em

94: What was the last thing I bought?

coffee and a croissant

95: How tall am I?

5′ 4″

96: Can I cook?

some things

97: Can I bake?

if it comes from a box then yes

98: 3 things I love?

writing

reading

one direction

99: 3 things I hate?

gun violence

racists

homophobes

100: Do I have more girl friends or boy friends?

girl

101: Who do I get on with better, girls or boys?

girls

102: Where was I born?

in a hospital ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

103: Sexual orientation?

queer

104: Where do I currently live?

on the east coast

105: Last person I texted?

my friend

106: Last time I cried?

when rewatching the finale of lost

107: Guilty pleasure?

oof i can’t think of one

108: Favourite Youtuber?

i don’t really watch youtube anymore

109: A photo of myself.

nope

110: Do I like selfies?

nope

111: Favourite game app?

subway surfers

112: My relationship with my parents?

it’s good i guess

113: Favourite accents?

british and irish and australian and scottish

114: A place I have not been but wish to visit?

new york and london

115: Favourite number?

116: Can I juggle?

nope

117: Am I religious?

yes

118: Do I like space?

y e s

119: Do I like the deep ocean?

120: Am I much of a daredevil?

121: Am I allergic to anything?

i have seasonal allergies and i’m low-key ehh with corn

122: Can I curl my tongue?

yes

123: Can I wiggle my ears?

124: Do I like clowns?

n o

125: The Beatles or Elvis?

neither

126: My current project?

,,,,,,,

127: Am I a bad loser?

totally

128: Do I admit when I wrong?

i’m never wrong

IM JUST KIDDING YES USUALLY

129: Forest or beach?

beach

130: Favourite piece of advice?

hmm idk

131: Am I a good liar?

yes

132: Hogwarts house / Divergent faction / Hunger Games district?

slytherin, erudite i think, and i don’t know about my district

133: Do I talk to myself?

134: Am I very social?

135: Do I like gossip?

kind of,,

136: Do I keep a journal/diary?

yeah but not in a traditional way

137: Have I ever hopelessly failed a test?

yes

138: Do I believe in second chances?

depends

139: If I found a wallet full of cash on the ground, what would I do?

see if there was id inside

140: Do I believe people are capable of change?

maybe

141: Have I ever been underweight?

yeah

142: Am I ticklish?

yes

143: Have I ever been in a submarine?

144: Have I ever been on a plane?

yes

145: In a film about my life, who would I cast as myself, friends and family?

THIS IS SUCH A HARD QUESTION I DONT KNOWDJKDS

146: Have I ever been overweight?

147: Do I have any piercings?

yes my ears

148: Which fictional character do I wish was real?

Peter Parker,,

149: Do I have any tattoos?

nope

150: What is the best decision I have made in life so far?

to kick a boy out of my life tbh

151: Do I believe in Karma?

152: Do I wear glasses or contacts?

glasses

153: What was my first car?

never had my own car

154: Do I want children?

maybe

155: Who is the most intelligent person I know?

myself?? IMDJSKAK

156: My most embarrassing memory?

don’t even make me think of one

157: What makes me nostalgic?

the smell of sweat pea hand sanitizer from bath and body works

158: Have I ever pulled an all-nighter?

yes

159: Which do I value more in others, brains or beauty?

brains i think

160: What colour mostly dominates my wardrobe?

black

161: Have I ever had a paranormal experience?

i don’t think so

162: What do I hate most about myself?

my lazy eye and my double chin

163: What do I love most about myself?

i can read a book quickly

164: Do I like adventure?

ehhh

165: Do I believe in fate?

ehhh

166: Favourite animal?

dog (didn’t we already go over this??)

167: Have I ever been on radio?

168: Have I ever been on TV?

yes

169: How old am I?

170: One of my favourite quotes?

“go confidently in the direction of your dreams”

171: Do I hold grudges?

yes

172: Do I trust easily?

173: Have I learnt from my mistakes?

yes

174: Best gift I’ve ever received?

one direction tickets and autographs

175: Do I dream?

yes

176: Have I ever had a night terror?

yes

177: Do I remember my dreams, and what is one that comes to mind?

yeah there’s a few that stick out

178: An experience that has made me stronger?

the whole of 2017

179: If I were immortal, what would I do?

that’s,,,,

180: Do I like shopping?

yes

181: If I could get away with a crime, what would I choose to do?

rob a bank

182: What does “family” mean to me?

,,,,,

183: What is my spirit animal?

whatever is really lazy

184: How do I want to be remembered?

,,,,,,,

185: If I could master one skill, what would I choose?

writing

186: What is my greatest failure?

a great question

187: What is my greatest achievement?

a g r e a t q u e s t i o n

188: Love or money?

love

189: Love or career?

hmmm depends

190: If I could time travel, where and when would I want to go?

stay in my area and go back to the 90s maybe??

191: What makes me the happiest?

reading

192: What is “home” to me?

my bedroomksddsm

193: What motivates me?

competition

194: If I could choose my last words, what would they be?

“play one direction at my funeral”

195: Would I ever want to encounter aliens?

hm i don’t think so

196: A movie that scared me as a child?

didn’t have one

197: Something I hated as a child that I like now?

moussaka

198: Zombies or vampires?

vampires

199: Live in the city or suburbs?

city

200: Dragons or wizards?

wizards

201: A nightmare that has stayed with me?

oof

202: How do I define love?

never experienced it so i wouldn’t really know

203: Do I judge a book by its cover?

yes

204: Have I ever had my heart broken?

205: Do I like my handwriting?

206: Sweet or savory?

both

207: Worst job I’ve had?

never had a job

208: Do I collect anything?

snow globes and pop figures

209: Item of clothing or jewellery you’ll never see me without?

bracelet and ring

210: What is on my bucket list?

go to london

211: How do I handle anger?

sometimes i start crying or i go on tumblr and blast music

212: Was I named after anyone?

my grandfather

213: Do I use sarcasm a lot?

so much oh my god

214: What TV character am I most like?

Charlie from Lost

215: What is the weirdest talent I have?

don’t have one

216: Favourite fictional character?

Peter Parker,,, you’re the one🎶🎶

#this literally took me an hour to dofdjksd #ask #ellie's answers

2 notes · View notes

nocaptainreuben · 7 years ago

Text

British Books Challenge 2018 - January - The Fandom by Anna Day

The Fandom was one of the proof copies I picked up at YALC last year and just hadn’t got round to reading yet, so it was firmly on my list to be read this year. I knew the author was British, so I could count it towards one of my reading challenges, and when I saw that we would be chatting about it in the first #SundayYA of the year, I decided to make it my first read of 2018 so I could join in. Then Chelley announced that Anna Day was going to be the featured debut author for January in the British Books Challenge, and the stars aligned. So, as soon as I finished The Boy on the Bridge, I dove in and waited to be blown away.

And this is kind of an unpopular opinion, but I’m still waiting. The Fandom was a book that was heavily hyped. It had glowing recommendations from so many prominent voices that I really trust, and the queues for proofs and signings at YALC were mental, so I thought I was in for a book of the year contender already. And I think this may be one of those situations where the hype actually ended up damaging it for me. In my opinion, the book was fine. There was nothing horrendously wrong with it, but nothing overwhelmingly special either, and with those high expectations it’s so easy to judge it extra harshly for not being amazing that you end up thinking it’s not good. I’m trying my best not to do that, and to be fair about it, so what follows is my (hopefully constructive) thoughts on what worked and what didn’t, without too much undue judgement.

The Fandom centres on 17-year-old Violet, an avid fan of book-and-film franchise, ‘The Gallows Dance’, who attends Comic-Con one year, cosplaying as her favourite character Rose, only to find herself sucked into the fictional world of the story and taking Rose’s place as the heroine. It’s got this very meta, inception-y, book-within-a-book thing going on, and it’s actually a really interesting idea but for me it just doesn’t entirely work. I noted from the back of the book that the idea wasn’t Anna Day’s, but came from Angela McCann, via The Big Idea Competition, and after doing a bit of internet hunting, I found out more about the book’s origins from Anna’s blog here. This explains a lot for me, because whilst I was reading the book I just kept thinking ‘this feels like fanfiction, not a proper novel’, and knowing that Day wrote The Gallows Dance first and was then commissioned to write this book for publication instead – she essentially was writing her own fanfiction! That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because with the subject matter being what it is it’s certainly appropriate, and may even have been intentional, but I found certain, more fanfic-related, elements (like the constant use of the word ‘canon’) a little grating at times.

Whilst reading this, I spent quite a while debating with myself whether the writing was on a pretty standard debut-author-level, or if it was expertly done, and upon finishing I still can’t quite decide. The book is incredibly formulaic and annoyingly tropey, but again, considering the subject matter, I’m pretty sure that at least some of that is intentional. There are times throughout the story where the characters call out those typical dystopia tropes – like insta-love and ridiculously named heroes – for how stupid they are, but then both The Gallows Dance and The Fandom include those tropes. When Holly Bourne did this in It Only Happens in the Movies, it worked so well for me because the satire was so obvious and the tropey narrative was clearly used to make a very real point about society. In The Fandom however, it almost feels like the only reason the author is calling out these conventions is to say ‘see, I know they’re annoying and cliched, but I wanna use them anyway so I’ll make a show of being self-aware about it’, and it didn’t really achieve anything other than drawing more attention to them. I felt like it could have been that she is a really clever writer, and me getting annoyed at bits only demonstrated that I’m too dumb for what she was doing with the book; or else I was giving myself a headache by overthinking it, when in reality it just wasn’t all that creative and it was, indeed, a bit annoying.

Although dystopias are generally pretty much the same story rehashed with different names and places (hence why it is such a hard genre to write without just being dismissed as tropey rubbish), the devil is in the details and I actually thought the plot and world-building side of this book was pretty good. Even with it being samey and predictable, I was invested in the story and wanted to follow it through to its conclusion. The Gallows Dance itself felt like a really interesting world, with enough quirks to make it unique, and was believable as being one of those dystopian book-and-movie franchises with a huge fandom, in the likes of The Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Maze Runner. In fact, it’s a real shame it was never published, as I feel using it for this book didn’t do it justice and I kind of wish I could’ve read the original book instead.

A big downside for me was the characters. Usually, the plot and the characters impact on each other and work together to make a book what it is, but I felt like our protagonists in The Fandom could have been replaced by anyone else and it still would have been the exact same story; they just didn’t bring anything to it for me. I didn’t feel any real attachment to them, and I felt that they had all the annoying cliches (the insecure, awkward, clumsy and pretty-but-in-a-plain-kind-of-way MC; the stupidly pretty best friend who makes everyone else feel inferior; the nerdy little brother who ends up being the voice of wisdom, etc, etc) but with no redeeming qualities which made them stand out. The only one that was any different in my opinion was Katie, as she had slightly more personality thanks to the funny swear words and affinity for Shakespeare, but she was completely wasted as a supporting character who we hardly ever saw.

Also, I didn’t find the age of the three girls believable at all. They are supposed to be 17, but come across as closer to 15 or 16. I know that doesn’t sound like much, and probably seems like a petty thing to pick up on, but I find it has a real impact on my enjoyment of a book. Teenagers do so much growing in such a short space of time, that being out on a character’s age by a few months can make a massive difference, and if I don’t believe their age it just keeps bringing me out of the story and stops me connecting with the character.

Ok, I’m winding down now, so the last thing I’m going to whinge about is the ending. I’ll struggle to be able to frame this in any way that is completely spoiler free so if you don’t want to know this then skip to the next paragraph. I sympathise with Day, because I know what kind of backlash you can get for writing a book that ends in ‘it was all a dream’ because you, as a reader, just think ‘well why did I waste my time on it then?’. So I completely understand why she may have wanted to avoid that, and offered up the idea of it being a real, alternate universe instead, but in my opinion it was so unnecessary; I’d spent the entire book assuming it was a dream while Violet was in a coma anyway, and I’d accepted that, so I just thought it didn’t even need bringing up. Vaguely talking about ‘the quantum physics of transdimensional tunnelling’ and the paradox of whether the fandom created the world or the world created the fandom, just felt like it came out of nowhere in the last 30 or so pages, and was rushed through and half-formed, just so that the author could say she’d offered some sort of explanation rather than ‘dream’ or ‘magic’.

I know I said at the start of the review that this would be my ‘thoughts on what worked and what didn’t’, and I’m aware that this has seemed overwhelmingly negative and not actually highlighted much that ‘worked’. However, that doesn’t entirely ring true of my overall opinion. Yes, it was a lot easier for me to pick out elements that I didn’t like, rather than ones I did, but on the whole I did like the book. There’s something about it that defies all the individual niggles I had with it and just made me think ‘yep, this is alright’. I didn’t love it, but you can’t love every book and I certainly don’t feel like I wasted my time on it or anything. And whilst there were a few quirks in the writing that weren’t completely to my taste, I can definitely see potential for the author and would be interested to read something else from her in the future.

As I say every time I do it, I find it so weird writing less than glowing reviews, and it makes me really uncomfortable to put negativity out there, but as this was part of my reading challenge I didn’t feel like I could give it a pass. This was a really hard one for me to write, as I didn’t feel too strongly in either direction, and it’s hard to put that across without sounding like you liked it less than you did, but I think I’ve said as much as I can say now. Hopefully it’s constructive rather than just harsh, but if you do think I’m being unfairly negative, remember it’s only my opinion and it’s fine for yours to be different. One of the beautiful things about reading is that we all respond to books in completely different ways, so even though this won’t be making my books of the year list, I know it will for many others out there, and that’s great. (Also, it’s worth noting that my copy of the book is an uncorrected proof, so take everything I’ve said with a pinch of salt as changes may have been made for the final copy.)

So, that’s my first review for #BritishBooksChallenge18 done! It’s a shame it was such a long, rambling, whingey one, but hopefully the year’s only going to get better from here. Stick around to go on the journey with me, and make sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram for photos, giveaways, book chat and the like. And if reading more British books sounds like something you want to do this year, it’s not too late! You can head here to find out more about the challenge and sign up yourself.

#book #books #book review #book reviewer #book blog #book blogger #booklr #bookstagram #instabook #ya #ya books #ya lit #ukya #british books #british books challenge #britishbookschallenge18 #sundayya #the fandom

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aion-rsa · 8 years ago

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INTERVIEW: Priest & Illidge Forge a New Superhero Universe with Catalyst Prime

A new shared universe will enter the comic book industry this spring, shaped by creators with plenty of experience in that territory. This Free Comic Book Day, Lion Forge Comics is set to launch a new superhero shared universe dubbed “Catalyst Prime” with the “Catalyst Prime: The Event” one-shot, co-written by Christopher Priest (currently of DC Comics’ “Deathstroke” and acclaimed for his work on “Black Panther,” “Quantum and Woody” and more) and Joseph Illidge (Senior Editor of Catalyst Prime, a former editor at DC Comics and Milestone, and well-known to CBR readers as the writer of “The Mission” column), with art by Marco Turini and Jessica Kholinne.

This one-shot will set the stage for a new line of seven superhero books at Lion Forge, all linked to the event that unfolds on the FCBD one-shot and launching approximately once a month for the rest of 2017. Though the details of the titles haven’t yet been revealed, the creators working on them have, including Brandon Thomas, Ken Lashley, Amy Chu, Alex de Campi, David F. Walker, Joe Casey, Damion Scott, Jefte Palo, Pop Mahan and Jan Duursema.

CBR spoke in-depth with Priest and Illidge about collaborating on the Free Comic Book Day one-shot, the importance of a more science-rooted superhero universe, the importance and inevitability of inclusion and diversity, Illidge’s strategy for the line as a whole and what made Priest — who has extensive experience in both Marvel and DC’s shared superhero universe — intrigued to contribute to Catalyst Prime.

CBR: Joe, obviously a new superhero universe is a major endeavor, and I know you well enough that you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t have a very specific idea of how to do things differently. What does Catalyst Prime aim to do that isn’t currently found in the comics market?

Joseph Illidge: For one thing, Catalyst Prime is a superhero universe, but it’s pretty rooted in science. That even goes to the initial premise, which is the suicide mission of the five astronauts that are trying to prevent the end of the world by destroying an asteroid. I don’t think you can really look at any of the other superhero universes that are popular now and find a singular event from which it grew out into a line of books.

A second thing, quite frankly, is that Catalyst Prime is new. I think we’re seeing an attrition of the capacity of fans’ tolerance for change. I think they’re exhausted. I think they’re tired of the reboots of Superman. They’re tired of the reboots of the Marvel Universe. It’s exhausting and it’s confusing. The idea that people can come into the Catalyst Prime line of books and start now, get in on the ground floor of it, I think that’s exciting for people. It’s similar to the people who started watching “Arrow” and saw the DC television universe grow from one show to four. The early viewers were there at the beginning, and didn’t need to have the fan vocabulary of all the other characters, because the larger world was introduced over a period of time.

Priest, what made you want to get involved with Catalyst Prime?

Christopher Priest: Certainly, an approach to superheroes that’s rooted in the real world. I tend to write from a real-world perspective; I think the more grounded and realistic your world is, the better the larger-than-life elements will pop, as opposed to if the entire world itself is a little silly. A lot of this is gone now, but once upon a time, Batman could be walking down the street and people would wave to him because he’s a hero — which is unrealistic, and it’s not grounded in what we do. I think Lion Forge’s approach with Catalyst Prime is something that would make a fairly good prose novel, if not film, because it has a real solid science-fiction background to it, and everybody is doing things for logical reasons, rather than having to try to reverse-engineer a logical reason for Superman to be wearing a cape, or things like that.

That’s what Hollywood has to do — they take our comics and they reverse-engineer to make some sense in the real world, while Lion Forge is starting with the real world and moving from there. It’s intriguing. I’m really impressed with what they’re doing.

Illidge: When I was putting this together, and I chose Priest and the different writers to come on board as the Catalyst Prime writers’ room, the first thing I had to do was have a creative summit. Get everyone in the same room, so we could collaborate and just vibe off of each other’s neuron insanity, and bring a superhero universe to life. The Catalyst Prime Universe, the nucleus of it, was created by David Steward II, Managing Member and CEO of Lion Forge; Carl Reed, Chief Creative Officer of Lion Forge; and a group of people. I had to assemble the right people to raise and nurture this newborn child into a full-blown universe.

We had the retreat after San Diego Comic-Con last year. That’s when things really started flying, and Priest’s diabolical mind came into play. Everyone added ideas to the mix. That was the beginning of it. Once the writers’ room and I fleshed out the world, I brought in the artists, letterers and colorists. It was necessary and important to get the right people for the right books.

“Catalyst Prime: The Event” cover by Marco Turini and Jessica Kholinne .

Which creators were at that retreat?

Illidge: It was Priest, David Walker, Sheena C. Howard, Brandon Thomas, Joe Casey, Amy Chu and Ramón Govea, who’s the creator of one of the titles that Joe Casey is writing. Ramón is the creator, and he’s a story consultant on that series. Alex de Campi was the final piece of the puzzle.

Let’s talk about the Catalyst Prime: The Event Free Comic Book Day one-shot that everything spins out from, that the two of you wrote together. What it was like for you to collaborate on that, given that you are literally setting the tone for a whole new line of books?

Priest: We knew where things had to go, because of the writing summit. What I really did was suggest a structure, in terms of how to introduce these concepts in a single issue, in as efficient a way as possible, because you only have so many pages. You’re also dealing with short attention spans from the readers, who are confronted with so many choices thrown at them. How do we break through that noise, and how do we set up the Catalyst Prime Universe in this open window that we have? That was my main contribution — pacing and being more like a creative consultant than someone who was bolted down into the group. I could be more of an observer and go, “Alright, here are these ideas, here’s a suggestion for how they all coalesce.”

What we needed to do was create an overture — it has a little bit of everything in it. Keep it fast paced, keep the pages turning. Don’t overwhelm the readers, but at the same time, put just enough seasoning and flavoring in there to give them an idea of what we’re trying to do — and hopefully also hit them with a few surprises.

Priest, are you involved beyond the initial one-shot?

Priest: Stay tuned.

Illidge: Yep. Watch this space.

Priest: “Deathstroke” publishes twice a month, so I’m juggling the chainsaws here. [Laughs]

Illidge: We’re working on cloning Priest.

For me, collaborating with Priest was great, because I’ve been an admirer of his work for years, and he strikes me as one of the writers with the most science-grounded, real-world approaches to stories. One of my favorite books that he wrote, and also co-created, was “Xero.” When I thought about, “Who’s the right person to bring on board for this story?” I knew it was him.

There was something thematically poetic about this, because Priest is one of the co-founders of Milestone, and Milestone is where I got my start in comics. Dwayne McDuffie was one of my mentors and a friend. As the Senior Editor of Catalyst Prime, I am doing what he and Priest and the other founders did when they gave birth to the Milestone Universe.

The Catalyst Prime bible is a growing behemoth that is almost 75 pages in length.

Priest: What’s interesting about Catalyst Prime is how integrated everything is. All of these pieces fit together in a sort of clockwork. Even though the Catalyst Prime titles have individual creative directions, all avenues lead back to this event, and play off of this event in one way or another, and it’s all hooked into each other in a way that is different.

“Catalyst Prime: The Event” page by Marco Turini and Jessica Kholinne .

What can you share about the characters who readers will meet in this initial Catalyst Prime one-shot?

Illidge: The overture that [Priest] was talking about is going to be teaser introductions of some of the heroes that will be seen in the upcoming seven books. As a matter of fact, the scenes you see in the one-shot, you’re going to see in the various books. Basically, they’re glimpses of the characters, but they’re also glimpses of the future. After that, we go to the main mission of the five astronauts who accepted the mission to save the world.

You have David Powell, African-American male, married man; Alistair Meath, a Major for the British Air Force; you have Jamilla Parks, African-American woman; Evan Chess, American Caucasian male; and Dr. Valentina Reznick-Baker, a Jewish woman and the payload specialist.

The mission is sponsored by a private corporation called the Foresight Corporation. The Foresight Corporation provided the teaser memo everyone saw right before New York Comic Con. Foresight is one of the significant companies in the architecture of the Catalyst Prime Universe. The company is run by a Mexican woman named Lorena Payan. She actually took the company that her father built, and she moved it from the United States to Mexico, the land of her birth. They deal with a lot of aeronautics and fringe sciences, public services, pharmaceuticals, and more. By moving the company, she actually changed the landscape of Mexico as we know it. So in the Mexico of the Catalyst Prime Universe, there are a ton of employment opportunities — a lot fewer Mexicans are running for the border to come to the United States, because there are a ton of good jobs right at home.

The Foresight Corporation is the one that arranged for and sponsored the mission to destroy the asteroid. They were the first to detect it, because of their advanced technology.

Priest: Albert, I just want to caution — this sounds an awful lot like the film “Armageddon.” It ain’t. We can’t tell you why it’s not “Armageddon” without giving away plot points of the story we don’t want to give up right now. From a general description, you go, “Well, that’s ‘Armageddon.'” No, it’s completely different here.

Illidge: The last four pages flip the whole thing on its butt, and you have to read the whole story to appreciate it.

I really feel like fans are going to get a fully packed story in these 28 pages. “Catalyst Prime: The Event” is going to premiere on Free Comic Book Day, and Lion Forge felt that it would be great if for the start of a new superhero universe, you don’t have to pay. You can start this journey, and you don’t have to pay one red cent. Fans are going to get a good, packed story that will propel them forward into the entire line of books.

“Catalyst Prime: The Event” page by Marco Turini and Jessica Kholinne .

And in terms of what’s coming next, there have been seven different creative teams announced for seven different books. That’s an ambitious launch. How quickly will we see these books roll out after the Free Comic Book Day issue?

Illidge: The rollout is going to happen from the months of May to December. For almost every month, a new #1 will premiere. By the end of the year, all seven titles will have premiered, and that will give you something of a sense of who, if anyone, survives the mission, because some of the titles have more of a direct connection than others, although they’re all a part of the same superhero universe.

The creative teams announced are some impressive names — it’s a diverse list, and also includes some writers and artists who may have been undervalued at times at other publishers. Joe, what was your philosophy when recruiting creative talent for Catalyst Prime?

Illidge: There are a couple of things. One is that Lion Forge Comics, as a company, and Catalyst Prime by extension, believe in bringing together veteran talent and newer talent; or talent that the system may not consider A-level talent, but their talents are definitely A-level. That was something I thought about — bringing together different generations of people. That really went over well when we had the writers’ room.

In terms of inclusion, I do find the Catalyst Prime Universe to be very diverse and inclusive, but the reason is because our world is that. And our industry is that. Unless I tried very hard, how in God’s green’s Earth could I put together creative teams that did not reflect the variety of our comic book community? It was really easy in that way.

Another factor is, I wanted to bring together good, talented people. As a former Batman editor, I still keep up with the Batman books from time to time, and having read Amy Chu’s “Poison Ivy” miniseries, I said, “OK, I want her on board with this.” That was easy. “I want Amy Chu on board. I want David Walker on board. I want Brandon Thomas on board.” Joe Casey has had a relationship with Lion Forge for some time, so having him as a member of the Catalyst Prime Universe made perfect sense. I’ve been a fan of Joe Casey’s writing since “Wildcats Volume 2” and “Wildcats 3.0,” which I still think are some of the best quasi-superhero comic books written in the last 20 years.

In terms of the different artists, Damion Scott and I worked together in the Batman days, when he co-created the Cassandra Cain Batgirl during “No Man’s Land.” Jefte Palo, I’ve been a fan of his work since he did the “Secret Invasion” storyline in “Black Panther.” Jan Duursema is one of the authoritative artists on the Star Wars library of comic books. Todd Klein is probably the best letterer in comics today.

Priest: I was wondering how you got him! Not being facetious. He’s really busy.

Catalyst Prime astronaut sketch by Marco Turini.

Illidge: The specific book that he’s doing, written by Joe Casey and illustrated by Jefte Palo, it’s so off-beat that I feel like it’s possibly the closest thing to a Vertigo book we have. I think he responded to that.

In terms of the colorists, I love Kelly Fitzpatrick’s work. Greg Pak told me about Jessica Kholinne. Jessica’s coloring the one-shot, and then she’s coloring one of our ongoing series illustrated by Pop Mhan. I loved his work on “Masters of the Universe,” and “Injustice” for DC.

For me, it was bringing people from different backgrounds and sensibilities together, but also people that I want to work with, or that I have worked with that and like as people. One thing about being an editor — there are just so many moving parts, that it really helps if you’re working with people you like. It’ll just make the Herculean task easier.

Social graces is this little thing that the industry could use a lot more of, across the board. It’s the editors, it’s the creators, it’s on both sides of the table. We need to be nicer and more respectful and more understanding of one another — that’s how you’re going to get better comics.

The “Catalyst Prime: The Event” one-shot will be available at participating comic book stores on Free Comic Book Day, May 6.

The post INTERVIEW: Priest & Illidge Forge a New Superhero Universe with Catalyst Prime appeared first on CBR.com.

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