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gra-sonas · 3 years ago

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CW viewers first met Nathan Dean as Jackson on the hit "Vampire Diaries" spinoff "The Originals." However, his werewolf stint on the series wasn't his first foray on TV. The actor starred in over 300 episodes of "General Hospital," later scoring roles on shows like "Bunheads," "True Blood," and "Once Upon a Time." Between his notable TV appearances, Dean appeared in movies such as "Teeth," "The Roommate," and "Pet."

Luckily for CW followers, the network frequently features actors from past projects in new endeavors, providing fans with plentiful reunions. After a successful run on the vampire show, Dean scored a leading role as Max in "Roswell, New Mexico." Sticking true to his supernatural roots, Dean plays an alien deputy (the outer space kind, of course). Early in Season 3, the CW greenlit a Season 4, with filming on the horizon.

Looper spoke to Nathan Dean in an exclusive interview, during which he dished on Season 3 of "Roswell, New Mexico," what he really thinks about UFOs, and what it was like working on "The Originals," "Once Upon a Time," and "True Blood."

Do you have a favorite moment with the cast on or off set?

I mean, I think this past year was probably just our first day back, being everyone was so locked down in the pandemic and just the fact that we were able to come back in October. I remember the first [day] we were trying out all these new COVID protocols. We had to wear masks. We had to do the thing, but just to see our crew again here.

I mean, the crew we have here in New Mexico is such a family to us. And being able to be on set, we had a day zero, and a day double zero, and test days. And the first day back was just the crew and me. And it was just so wonderful to see everyone again and realize it wasn't necessarily the apocalypse, the end of the world like we all thought, and we're back. We're back, and everyone was good, and everyone was very conscious of being healthy and staying in the bubble that we had, and just to see their faces again was fantastic.

The series recently changed showrunners. How do you feel about the new direction? And can you tease anything that fans might expect from Max's character arc this season?

Yeah. We did. I mean, Chris Hollier is our showrunner now, and he was a producer for us the last couple of years. And when he took over, we tried to move not only Max, but I think every character, into a more adult, mature way of operating. We spent a lot of time in Season 1 in particular, but Season 2 as well, flashing back to high school. And we all had a high school outlook on each other. And moving forward, we've been able to mature the characters, I think. And this year is a great year, I think, for Max in particular, because he has to literally look himself in the eye and become the person that he was meant to be instead of someone he used to be.

Were you a fan of the original "Roswell" before snagging your role on the series?

I had never actually seen it. I mean, I don't watch a whole lot of TV, and I was familiar with the show, and I knew the book series. So yeah, when we decided to reboot this thing, it was really, really cool to see the support that we got from the original show. And we've had some of the people back. Shiri [Appleby] directed episodes for us. Last year we had ... Jason [Behr] was back for a little bit. And it's just great to know that we're in this family. It's not like no one saw us as trying to take it over or rewrite history. We're just embracing the history that's already there and just building on it and spinning it into a modern world. So yeah, their support was wonderful, and we're excited to have more of that going forward.

What direction do you hope Max goes in the future?

Well, Max spends a whole lot of time this season having to look himself in the face — literally questions a lot of things. We've done a lot in the past, the high school flashbacks and this and that, but I think this year, not only for Max but for all the characters, we see this maturation happen where you're no longer looking backward into who they used to be. Now this season, we're finally looking forward to who we want to be. And I think Max and Joan embody that dynamic, but yeah, you see it with Michael, Isabel, Maria, Liz. You see every character really take a step forward this year, and that's a credit to our showrunner and to our writers for trusting us to take that leap and move the show, looking forward instead of looking back.

Are there any particular adult storylines that you're excited to maybe see him tackle or that you'd like to see him tackle?

Well, I think it's his relationship with Liz, really. We ended Season 2 in a pretty bad place. I mean, Liz runs off, Max goes all arsonist on her, it's a little bit of an immature response to something. You just have a temper tantrum and light everything on fire. But I think this year, yeah, we really see Max and Liz move forward in a way that is much more mature and adult and respectful. And they, I mean, obviously the elephant in the room is, "Well hey, you blew up all my stuff." "Yeah, sorry." But how do you come back from that? And I think we see them take a step forward in a big way this year, and I'm excited for people to see that this year because we haven't historically had a very adult relationship, and now we're moving towards that.

Is there anyone you'd love to see appear on the show?

I mean, I would love to have Jason [Behr] back, I would say. I mean, he wasn't with us for long last year, and it was just great to see him and learn from him and watch him work. So I would love to see some more of the 1940s flashback-y kind of stuff, learn some more of that. We have a little bit of that in season three. We have some of that, which is a lot of fun, and yeah, I mean, I'm always in for that.

I love flashbacks, other time periods, different things that shows do. Is there a time period that you'd love to see the show tackle in flashbacks?

Yeah. I mean, we get into it this year, more of the ... Because the crash was what? 1947, I believe. We get into that a little bit more, and that's always fun. I love that time period. I love being able to play in that arena, and hopefully, we get some more of that in Season 3, and hopefully, going forward in Season 4, we'll have some more of that as well.

Have you been able to direct yet?

I have not. I haven't tried. I haven't asked to. Actually Maria, Heather [Hemmens], who plays Maria on our show, she directed this past year. And I know Michael Trevino, who plays Kyle, he wants to get into directing. So hopefully, we'll have him this coming year. And I haven't looked to direct on this show. I would love to direct a short film or something like that, but on this show, I'll leave our show to the professionals. I'll find directing somewhere else.

"Roswell, New Mexico" actually films in New Mexico. How do you think that choice has positively affected the feel of the show?

Oh, it changes everything. I mean, New Mexico, I don't know if you've had a chance to come out here, but New Mexico is such an amazing place. I mean, they call it the Land of Enchantment for a reason. Growing up in Texas, I've driven through New Mexico a million times, but I never stopped. And when I finally got here and just took it in, I mean, the sky is huge out here. The air is different out here. It's everywhere you look: the sunsets are incredible. It informs so much of the show.

And also, having crew from New Mexico, having a local crew out here, you see it on our show, the turquoise, just the style, the whole thing. But we see that every day. That's just the people that we work with, and to be able to film here, I think, informs so much of what it is to crash land in this crazy place. And yeah, I don't think we could pull this off anywhere else. This is such a wonderful place, and yeah, we're very lucky to be here.

Speaking of crash landing, New Mexico has been a hotbed for reported UFO sightings for years. Have you ever seen anything weird yourself, or have you heard stories from other cast members or locals?

I haven't heard any abduction stories, but it's definitely ... we get on set every time there's an airplane or an airline will report that they've seen something weird. We're the first ones to know about it. I mean, the skies here are crazy — there are times when you look up in the clouds, you're like, "Is that something? I don't know." But yeah, I mean, we have all that here. We're very much in it, but yeah, I have not personally been abducted yet, but I'm hoping for it.

Fingers crossed? [Laughs] So in June, the government released a report confirming that they can't explain 143 UFO sightings, which is a wild revelation. Do you think that there's any credence to the idea that these might be actual extraterrestrial events, or do you think there's a simpler explanation to all of that?

I mean, I think it definitely it could be. I'm not writing it off. When you hear, you see videos, you can see video of Air Force pilots, and there's something on their radar that you just can't explain. I don't know if it's aliens. I don't know if it's probes or some sort of drone that someone sent out, I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was true. I mean, I think the universe is too big of a place for us to be all alone here. And if aliens are going to come somewhere, you should come to New Mexico because it's awesome and we're waiting for you.

So would you be team "Leave the aliens alone and let them do their thing," or "Let's initiate contact and see what happens"?

Oh, I would love to initiate contact. I would love to. I would love to go on a spaceship. I would love to go explore that. I think if ... There are all these movies, "War of the Worlds." There's all this stuff that imagines aliens are going to come here and destroy us. If you're going to travel all that distance, you're not looking to destroy anybody. So I think it would be a really interesting conversation. I think we would have a lot to learn from an advanced civilization that traveled all this way. I think we would have a lot to learn.

The series tackles a ton of critical social issues like immigration, ICE, and domestic violence. Have there been any of those subjects that particularly resonate with you and that you're proud of the show for homing in on? And is there something that you'd like to see them do in the future?

Well, for me personally, I mean, I'm a cop on the show. That's been a huge debate over the last couple of years, and this season, we get into the good and the bad of that. We see the good sides of it and what it can be, and then we also can see the bad side.

And for me personally, that's been something that I think we've talked about a little bit that I'm very happy with. And also, I mean, everyone just went through this huge pandemic. We can't ignore that. So that's something, when our character of Kyle, who's a doctor — what he's had to go through — I think that's one of the things that makes our show relatable and makes our show ... we're not shying away from the cop controversy. We're not shying away from the things people had to go through with the pandemic.

We're willing to talk about it. And thankfully, we have such a great platform to do that with this backdrop of aliens and all this stuff. We can really home in on the human aspects of that world, given the fact that we're an alien show. It makes talking about the human stuff much more, I think, palpable. And yeah, that's something that we've always done. And going forward, we'll see what the world has in store for us the next year or two, and we'll talk about that, whatever comes up, we're here for it.

Several other actors from the "Vampire Diaries" universe have also come to "Roswell." What was it like working with Riley Voelkel and Steven Krueger again — and getting a chance to work with other "TVD" alums, like Michael Trevino and Kayla Ewell?

It's great. I mean, CW does a great job of keeping the family together. Working with Trevino is fantastic. He's a great guy, and I've known him for a long time. Same with Jason Krueger and Riley. I've known them for a long time, and just to have those familiar faces around is always nice, but it's fun too then to see these people who, we come from this vampire-werewolf world, and now we're in this alien world. It's fun to see that transition and get to see what else they can bring to the table.

Definitely. So you've been a werewolf, you've been a vampire, you've been an alien, and you've even been a fairytale character. Do you have a favorite? And do you gravitate more toward shows with supernatural undertones, or did it just sort of happen that way?

It just sort of happened. I mean, I would say for me, my favorite is always just being a human. That seems to be the hardest job to get, but no, I mean, it just sort of happened. And it's fun because, like I was saying, having a backdrop of something supernatural highlights the humanity.

I mean, if you have this ... There are aliens, and there's this, and there's that, but then you have these human moments, and those are the ones that you hold precious because sure, you can throw people around and you can jump out of trees, and you can do all this crazy supernatural stuff. But at the end of the day, it's about the human moments. And I think that's what supernatural shows tend to bring out the most.

"Roswell" isn't your first time being on a CW show. You also starred in "The Originals." What was it like working on set with Phoebe Tonkin and Joseph Morgan and the rest of that cast?

Oh, they were great. I mean, we were out in Atlanta, and I mean, geez, that was like five, six, seven years ago now.

Really? That long?

Right? Crazy. But it was great. I mean, every set is going to be different, and we were in Atlanta for "The Originals." And so we had the Atlanta crew there, and we got to know that city a lot. And then moving out here to New Mexico, it's a completely different landscape. It's a completely different setup.

Thankfully it's nice to always have the familiar faces, but yeah, we have a New Mexico crew, and this platform is totally different because we're not talking about supernatural witchcraft and this and that. We're talking about sci-fi. We're talking about aliens. We're talking about all this other stuff. So I mean, they're both different. I mean, I loved Atlanta. I will always love Atlanta, but yeah, I'm just grateful to be out here in New Mexico now.

Is there anything you wish that Jackson did on the show before your storyline ended, and how do you feel about your character's first ending and then getting to meet Hope and Hayley again at the end?

I think that was a really sweet way to go out. Jackson was always a passenger on that ship. The story was about the vampires and about Phoebe's character, and Jackson was always just sort of a bystander. So, to have that kind of closure with Hope at the end and have that moment, it was nice. I think Jackson serves his purpose. The story wasn't about him, but yeah, it was nice that they brought me back, and I was able to have that moment.

To that end, "The Originals" birthed the backdoor pilot for the "Legacies" spinoff. Would you come back for something like a flashback episode if given the opportunity? Or are you happy with where it ended up?

I'm happy where it ended up. I think "Legacies" is on its own journey now. And I know the actress who plays Hope, and I know that they're on their own path. Jackson doesn't really have a place there.

The great thing about the entire "Vampire Diaries" franchise is its deep roots in history, culture, and folklore. Do you have any favorite storylines, time periods, or pieces of folklore that the show tackled throughout its run?

Yeah, I mean, I think when I was doing the vampire/werewolf stuff, it was fascinating to learn so much about where those legends came from. The origin stories of, you have, what was it? Vlad the Impaler was one of the first people thought to be vampires and these horribly dark stories that gave rise to these myths and legends.

And it was really, really fun to just learn about all of that and to learn the history of where these myths come from and why they're so compelling today. I mean, why do we still talk about this stuff? What is it that draws our attention to it? So it was just fun to learn, I mean, from an intellectual standpoint, just get into the mindsets of people that may have thought these bloodthirsty sorts of things. It was kind of wild, and yeah, it was a lot of fun to learn about.

You had a stint as James in the last season of "True Blood." Was it difficult coming on so late into such a beloved show? Were you nervous, or did you feel welcomed right away? And what was your biggest takeaway from that series?

I definitely felt welcomed. I actually knew Deborah Ann Woll, who played my love interest off the top. I knew her from way long ago. We actually go way back. So I was familiar enough with the cast and crew. They welcomed me in. It was weird coming in at the end of a show because they had been together for seven years at that point, that cast.

And stepping in, I got to see a lot of the heartbreak and the sadness of it coming to an end, but I was grateful to be a part of it. And I learned a lot from Stephen [Moyer] and from Anna [Paquin], and it was a great environment. I wish it had gone on longer, but I was grateful for the year that I got there.

You played another classic fairytale character in "Once Upon a Time" as Hansel. What was that experience like? And how do you feel that the show handled its own spin on the Hansel and Gretel fairytale? And do you have any fond memories of that set and that cast?

Well, I love that set. I mean, actually, our current showrunner, Chris Hollier, was one of the writers on that show. And I was in a situation this year similar to the one I was in when I was on "Once Upon a Time" — getting to have this dual life, this secret life. And I like the direction that they went on "Once Upon a Time," it was a lot of fun, but it was a great crew. It was a great cast. And it was fun to play a little darkly twisted version of a fairytale character. You think fairytales, you think happily ever after, but yeah, I didn't have one of those kinds of characters on that show, and it was really fun. It was very fun to play the dark side of all that.

Is there any other franchise that you'd like to break into? "Star Wars"? Marvel? Anything like that?

Oh, any of it, all of it. Yeah, sure. I mean, I would love to, Disney+, they're doing a lot of great stuff with Marvel and with the "Star Wars" franchise. And I mean, I would love to be any part of that because Marvel's just awesome. So, that would just be fun, but "Star Wars" is cool because it's a time period in and of itself. They really have created this out-of-time universe that there are spaceships, but they also have lightsabers, and they're sword fighting, but they're flying through the galaxy. So it's this weird mashup. That would definitely be fun. I mean, I would love to get into any of that.

Would you want to play an alien? A Jedi? Or a Sith?

Ooh.

That's the real question.

Maybe a Sith. I don't know. Yeah. I think that would be fun. Yeah, yeah. You just don't have rules at that point.

I feel like the Jedi don't follow any of their rules either. [Laughs]

That is true. They have a lot of rules, they just don't listen. Yeah.

Is there anything else that's upcoming for you that you want to talk about?

I don't know. I mean, right now, I'm just focused on Season 4. We get started in a couple weeks. I'm curious to see how we springboard off of Season 3, because Season 3 is wild, and I hope people enjoy it as much as we did filming it. So I'm excited to tackle Season 4, and then beyond that, we'll see if we get to Season 5.

We'll be lucky to do that, but yeah, I mean, there are always projects. There's so much happening in the world of TV right now and in film, and there are so many different avenues that you can take. We had actors on our show that were directing their own short films this past year that were doing all this. So there are tons of avenues for it. And I'm just focused on Season 4 right now. I'll be doing that for the next six months, and then beyond that, we'll see. We'll see what comes down the pipe.

Is there anything else about the show or anything else you want to add?

No. I mean, not really. I mean, I think I'm excited to hear feedback and to hear what people think about the different, the Jones, Max difference, this sort of dichotomy that we have in Season 3. I'm excited to see what people think about that and what that reveals going forward. And then, yeah, again, I'm excited to see these characters take a step forward in terms of their maturity with each other and respecting each other and Liz and Max finally figuring it out and finally getting on the same page for the first time. So that'll all be fun. That'll be fun looking forward.

Definitely. Well, congratulations on getting a new season before the current one has even popped off. I love seeing that.

#nathan dean parsons #max evans #rnm cast interviews #rnm spoilers #roswell new mexico s3

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pokeheadcannons97 · 4 years ago

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I'm not sure if requests are open or not but can you possibly write hc's for milo gordie leon and piers about having a s/o who suffers from epilepsy maybe include their reaction to the first seizure they see, and things like how they handle when s/o starts to seize/show warning signs,

I only do 3 characters at a post so I am going to do Leon, Piers, and Milo since I have Pokemon Shield

(and mama Melany)

Also, I’m speaking and writing this from my perspective of helping my aunt who has seizures regularly and will be answering in what I do and other things that I’ve looked up or found that help, please let me know if I can make it better, thank you! <3 Be safe

Leon

Even though he is super directionally challenged, he is so very perceptive. He will be the first to notice when you are about to have a seizure.

The distant look in your eyes and the nonverbal responses when he asks if you are okay are always signs you’re about to go into one.

He’s by your side in an instant, holding the back of your head up steady while rubbing your arm.

“Hey, it’s okay Y/N… you’re okay.” He repeats this all through out it, steady and comforting.

When you blink back after a few moments, eyes bleary but answer softly back to him, he knows you’re okay and out of it.

Will immediately stop what he’s doing, be it in the middle of an interview or sees you go down in the stands, he is next to you to help you through it

Wont hesitate to absolutely eradicate any disrespectfully words or jokes towards you about your seizures

When you first went into one, he had not expected it.

The two of you were out having lunch together after Leon had invited you out for a date to get to know each other more closely. He had been persistent, always engaging you in small talk when you were at work at one of the local shoppes in Wyndon. Would offer to help in carrying heavier things to help you out, and to make your work load lighter.

You had been perfectly fine, sitting across from him eating lunch at a local restaurant that you favored, when you seemed to be staring off into the distance as he was talking.

When Leon saw your Gothita get destressed and practically climbed up on you, he knew something was wrong.

He was scared, and that was putting it lightly.

With Gothita surrounding you in her psychic powers she steadied your body and instructed Leon through her telepathy to hold your head straight to where you wouldn’t choke.

He frantically rubbed your arms, while looking for your distant eyes to come back to the cheery e/c he found so attractive.

When you started to move slowly on your own your eyes peered up at him, the distant look fading quickly.

“Mmm…? Leon?” You asked softly, trying to attempt to remember where you were and what happened.

“Y/N!” He replied a smile forming on his face, full of relief. “You’re okay, my God I was so worried, are you ok?”

“Mmmhmm… thanks to you and Gracey.” You replied with a soft smile, giving your pokemon a thankful expression, to which she cried in happiness as a reply.

“Let’s get you to the hospital, to at least get a look at you. Then I’ll make sure you get home okay.” Leon said as he helped you up with his strong arms, letting your body lean against him. “I never knew you had to deal with these. You’re so much stronger than I could ever be, Y/N.”

Your heart thudded in your chest, your stomach knotting up in that similar way it did when you would see him visit your work on his days off from the league. Most people would be so scared and standoffish, more afraid of you than anything. See you as someone that needed to be fixed, someone that was fragile, and needed to be looked after like a child.

But Leon? He shown genuine kindness, he didn’t make you out to be this weak person who had epileptic seizures. He treated you with respect. As an equal.

You were strong, something that you did not hear often in your life.

You gave a small laugh, and peered up at him, your e/c eyes shining against the streetlights. “Is it too late to ask you for a second date?”

Leon’s cheeks uncharacteristically burned a deeper red and low chuckle came from his throat. “Not at all.”

Piers

There’s not many times he’s serious, but when it comes to you, he is stone cold serious.

Will constantly ask you if you’re okay if you seem more nervous or shakier than usual.

Always holds your hand when you’re feeling more shaky, will go into any quieter space to get you to a safer environment just in case

Even though his shows can be flashy and loud, he really prefers that you stay home or listen to CD’s of the shows of his that are flashier and with more lights. He’s talked to his producers about incorporating more epilepsy friendly aspects into his shows and videos so that more people can enjoy it safely.

On the times that you do watch him, he makes sure that the place is better lit, and no strobing lights.

Will rub the top of your head softly when you go into one, and holds you to where you wont hurt yourself during it.

He knew you had them, but you said that it was less common these days. So he thought that it would most likely be a while before you had one.

The first time you had a seizure in front of him, he was terrified and confused on what to do.

You were sitting beside him, listening to him strum on his guitar as try to work out the sound to his new song.

Your Kirlia sat beside you, listening too.

When he looked up from the strings and papers he had scattered around him, rewriting certain parts he paled.

Your arms were shaking as you began to fall backwards rather quickly. Luckily your Kirlia predicted this and carefully grabbed your shoulders and placed you on your side.

Kirlia’s eyes rose to Piers and she instructed him to gently rub at your arms as she used her abilities to work on the overfiring electrical impulses your brain was having.

Piers scanned your body frantically, your twitching limbs and far off stare causing his heart to race in nervousness. He didn’t know what to do, but hoped that what he was doing helped in some way.

Your Kirlia called softly as your twitching began to stop and your eyes regained their soft e/c hue. You hummed a little as you blinked back the glaze over your eyes.

“Y/N, hey… are you with me?” Piers asked, eyebrows knitted together, refusing to leave your side.

You gave him a confused stare and nodded slowly. “Yes…what…?”

Your Kirlia touched your forehead and you understood.

“Thank you… for helping me, Piers.” You patted your Kirlia’s hand greatfully. “And you too Meena, you did amazing.”

From then on Piers was sure to be more observant and learn about how to be better prepared for the next attack. The zigzagoon brigade are always alert and ready to go into pillow mode to help you not hit your head or hurt yourself.

Milo

The absolute best at making sure that you are taking you meds and taking care of yourself

Always tries to make sure that you have enough time to get enough sleep and goes to bed at the same time as you to help make it easier

He’s used to dealing and helping new gym challengers that have anxiety problems, so he knows how to relax you and help manage your stress

Being as strong as he is, it’s nothing for him to grab you when your legs give out when you go into one, making sure that you are laid down on your side safely

His big hands will make soothing touches and coax you through it, making sure everyone around you is quiet so you’re not overwhelmed with voices around you

If you ever feel bad about having them, he is so quick to reassure you that it is never a problem and he loves you so much

The first time you went into one

You were battling him as your first gym battle, with your Espeon battling against his Glossifleur.

You seemed so strong, easily ordering move after move from your companion, but that changed when you started to wobble on your feet, your Espeon immediately ran to your side to catch you from hitting your head and braced your body against her own and let you fall at a slower rate to the ground safely.

Milo gave a wave to the stadium, with a shout of “Everyone stop!” and made his way over to you. The stadium went into a quick and silent hush. The rotom camera, now focused on you.

Your body jerked involuntarily, your gaze far off and unfocused.

Your partner pokemon gave a cry and rubbed against your body while Milo held your head to where it would be easier for you to breath.

“Hey, Y/N… it’s okay lass. You’re okay.” He said softly, his hat blocking out the harsh sun above you. He gave your cheek a few soft pats, his green eyes searching your face.

It took about a few moments for your hands to stop seizing and jerking. When they did you let out a steady breath. You blinked slowly and gave a low hum as your eyes refocused and fell upon the grass type gym leader above you.

“There you are, are you hurt?” Milo asked you, his voice lower but understandable for your comfort.

You swallowed, and went to slowly sit up, the sun from above now shining painfully on you. You blinked your eyes shut but nodded and turned to him.

“Yeah… just...” you began and suddenly noticed where you were and felt the anxiety well up inside of you.

“Would it be possible to…stop our battle for today? Please?” you finished and picked at a part of your nails, cheeks flushed.

“I’m sorry but I think I need to lay down for a while, I’m just wiped after…” you tried to explain yourself, your Espeon chittered next to you, rubbing against you softly.

Milo held up a hand with a genuine and kind smile. “Say no more, Y/N. Let’s get you to the nurse on call to get a look at you. Make sure you’re okay.” He rose to hit feet and held a hand out to you. “Can you stand?”

You gave a nod and stood up slowly, but wobbled a little, your legs still unsteady.

Milo scooped you up into his arms effortlessly. “Just rest, I’ll get you there safe and sound.”

And he did,

#leon #piers #milo #leon x reader #piers x reader #milo x reader

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reyeslonestar · 4 years ago

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an incomplete list of lone star fics that I love 2/?

this is mainly an opportunity for me to collect my favourite fics into a system that makes more sense to me, and spread a little love to the fabulous writers who create these amazing stories

fics containing explicit smut are marked with an *

Reaching, There Is Nothing Left by @officereyes/tiniestmite

* spoilers for 2x02 "2100°" *

Tim just wanted to go home.

so I remember being kinda hesitant about this concept when I first saw it because I hadn't really connected to Tim in the show but as soon as I read this fic it completely won me over. I think it’s such an interesting story and Jamie writes so well, producing a beautiful tribute to Tim.

lit the spark (that set a fire) by @reyesstrand/stormss

It's Judd who explains it to them; that before the accident and before the station was rebuilt from the ground up, the 126 had a long-standing, friendly rivalry with Ladder 102.

Their golden boy, Carlos Reyes, well—he kind of knocks TK off his feet.

Or, a firefighter!Carlos AU.

okay so this au is genius and I love the way that it rewrites the events of season 1 to fit around firefighter!Carlos. I love the way that competitiveness between firehouses plays into their relationship and how they find their way to each other in this slightly different universe. (btw implied sexual content but its not explicit)

Batting Cages, Tacos and Midnight fun by @bellakitse/Bellakitse *

“Alright,” Carlos says as he comes back with a smile. “You’re good to go, just step in and press the button on the wall when you’re ready for the balls to start flying.”

“I’ll be honest, not the type of balls I thought would be flying tonight,” he murmurs, smirking at Carlos as he stares at him.

When TK can’t sleep, he calls his friend-maybe boyfriend for some midnight fun. He’s surprised at what Carlos has planned for them.

I love this fic for how it develops s1 TK and Carlos and their relationship, filling in the gaps of how their in-between stage might have looked. it also features references to everyone and their mother loving Carlos and doing favours for him which is my favourite trope ever.

the lovers that went wrong by @morganaspendragonss/hollyhobbit101

Maybe TK should feel guilty about how he acted at the market. He doubts he made a good impression on Carlos's parents, but he's not sure if that matters anymore. He just... He couldn't bring himself to pretend. He couldn't walk around acting like they were just friends - acting like he wasn't hurting.

after the incident at the market, tk finds comfort - and more than a little common sense - in a talk with his mom.

tk and gwyn having a conversation omg yes please. i absolutely love this depiction of tk and Gwyn’s relationship and the rationality she brings to his spiral after the farmers market.

forever missing him by @morganaspendragonss/hollyhobbit101

Carlos can feel TK's eyes burning holes into the side of his head, but he refuses to look over. He can't; he's too scared of what he might see. His parents are looking between them, an all-too-knowing look on his mother's face, and all Carlos can think is that this is all so wrong. It isn't supposed to happen like this.

Not here. Not yet.

He's not ready.

yeah im reccing this one here because it’s the follow on to the last fic and both of these make me so happy - this is such a good sequel with Andrea knocking some sense into her son as a perfect mirror to gwyn, Carlos’ internal panic and Reyes family bonding over cooking.

love until your heart breaks (‘cause there are no guarantees) by @lire-casander/Lire_Casander

tk’s being discharged from hospital, but his father can’t take him back home

this is a really sweet one! Carlos caring for tk after he’s discharged from hospital after his gunshot wound. I really like where it puts their relationship, where Carlos and Owen stand at this point and its a very enjoyable fic.

#fic recs by alex #fic rec #tk x carlos #tk strand #carlos reyes #tim rosewater #the reyes fam #gwyneth morgan #owen strand #so I should be able to the third one of these fairly soon #maybe tomorrow #anyway #fic writers are awesome #a lot of my absolute favourites on this one #fic recs by alice #911 lone star fic #911ls fic

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uomo-accattivante · 4 years ago

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This is a great article about how The Card Counter managed to finish principal photography after getting shut down mid-March due to COVID-19.

Also, it includes this interesting description from Paul Schrader about Oscar Isaac’s character, William Tell -- “So now I have a character and he’s in his room, he’s alone. And he has a mask on. And the mask he wears is a professional poker player. And the problem that runs alongside him is that he is a former torturer for the U.S. government. So it’s a mix of the World Series of Poker and Abu Ghraib.”

Having somehow weathered his way from enfant terrible to wizened survivor, Paul Schrader is a filmmaker who is simply not finished yet. Every time it might seem his career is on the wane, he resets, revitalizes and comes back again.

Just a few years after his 2014 film “Dying of the Light” starring Nicolas Cage was taken away from him by financiers — leading Schrader to disavow the movie — he received his first Oscar nomination (for original screenplay) after directing “First Reformed,” which was released in 2018 and starred Ethan Hawke as a troubled small-town minister.

Schrader’s work is marked by emotional intensity, intellectual vitality and an aesthete’s appreciation of style. His filmography is full of unusual corners that are still being discovered. The 1979 film “Old Boyfriends,” directed by Joan Tewkesbury with a screenplay by Schrader and his brother Leonard, was recently rereleased on home video. As was the 1990 film “The Comfort of Strangers,” directed by Schrader from a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

He’s been directing films from his own scripts since 1978’s “Blue Collar” starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. He went on to write and direct such films as “Hardcore,” “American Gigolo,” “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” “Light Sleeper” and “Affliction.” His celebrated work as a screenwriter for director Martin Scorsese includes “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Bringing Out the Dead.”

Never one to shy from controversy onscreen or off, he directed Lindsay Lohan in the 2013 Hollywood-set thriller “The Canyons,” written by Bret Easton Ellis.

In March, Schrader was about three-quarters through the shoot for his next film, “The Card Counter,” in Mississippi — with a cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe — when the production was shut down due to the growing pandemic. In July, Schrader was able to shoot for an additional five days to complete production.

During the break in shooting, “The Card Counter” was picked up for distribution by Focus Features.

Schrader recently got on the phone to talk about the unusual circumstances of the film’s production and completion. A film critic before he became a filmmaker, Schrader not only had startling insights into his work, but also thoughts about what filmmaking and exhibition might be like in a post-COVID world.

Before we start talking about the production on the movie, could you just describe the story? What is “The Card Counter” about?

Well, I don’t want to get too deeply involved in the plot, but what I will say is over the years I’ve kind of developed my own little genre of films. And they usually involve a man alone in a room, wearing a mask, and the mask is his occupation. So it could be a taxi driver, a drug dealer, a gigolo, a reverend, whatever. And I take that character and run it alongside a larger problem, personal or social. It could be debilitating loneliness like in “Taxi Driver.” It could be a midlife crisis like in “Light Sleeper.” It could be an environmental crisis like in “First Reformed.”

So now I have a character and he’s in his room, he’s alone. And he has a mask on. And the mask he wears is a professional poker player. And the problem that runs alongside him is that he is a former torturer for the U.S. government. So it’s a mix of the World Series of Poker and Abu Ghraib.

How did you come to put those two things together?

I’m always looking for that. I’m looking for deep-seated problems, either personal or societal, and some kind of oddball metaphor. The more you get closer, you run these two wires next to each other, the more sparks you see flying across. And it’s in the sparks that the viewer comes alive. If the wires ever touch, there’s nothing left for the viewer to do. But if you keep these two wires really close to each other, the viewer will start to spark from one wire to the other. And that’s the greatest thing you can give a viewer or a reader, an opportunity to be part of the creation.

Let’s talk about the production and everything you’ve been through. Take me back to March. What was it like for you when the production had to shut down?

I have learned in my dotage how to make a quality film on a low budget. So the film I used to make in 40 days I now make in 20. And so “First Reformed” was 20. I had shot in Biloxi 15 days. Now I knew coronavirus was going to be rising, because when I heard that Macau shut down, I said, you know, it’s just a matter of time. Macau is the wealthiest gambling center in the world and I’m here in the gambling center of the Gulf. If Macau shuts down, it’ll reach Vegas, it’ll reach here. And we were doing a scene, a poker tournament with 500 extras. And I remember I said to the A.D., “We can’t put 500 people in a room without one of them being positive.” And sure enough, one of them was. Two days later, we not only closed down, all of the Gulf was closed down.

Fortunately, when I went back, I had shot my big crowd scenes. And also I had shot my sex scenes, which I would have hated to try to do under these restrictions. So all I had left when I went back was a number of scenes in the prisons, and four more scenes in the casinos, some driving scenes. So I was in pretty good shape. But I really wanted to finish the film.

And Oscar Isaac, he was on his way to Hungary to do reshoots for “Dune.” And he wanted to put off this reshoot till after “Dune” — to do it in September because he has a big beard and he didn’t want to shave off his beard. I said to him, “Oscar, there’s a window open right now in Mississippi.” I said, “If we don’t jump into this window while it’s open, this will become one of those famous films that never got finished, and we’ve got to exploit this moment.”

So I talked him off the ledge and he agreed to do it. And we were able to put everybody back together and do our week of prep and five days of shooting. It was very strange, and in a way it was kind of fun, in a summer camp sort of way. But I would hate, hate to make a whole film this way. It was an adventure for five days, it’s a nightmare for five weeks.

In the break from March to July, were you on high alert that you could come back at any moment? Were you editing the footage you already had?

Here’s what happened. I was editing. My editor is in New Jersey and my assistant editor is in Tennessee, so we’re all editing virtually. And I had four major dialogue scenes between my principal characters that I had not shot. Then I was able to screen virtually the film for a number of people I respect, like Scorsese, who is the executive producer, like [filmmaker and programmer] Kent Jones and other people. And what I asked them all is, “I have four more scenes to shoot. I can rewrite them. What am I missing? What do I need to add? How should I write these four scenes?”

And I started getting feedback about what they felt was missing. So I was able to rewrite these scenes and make these relationships much better. And not all productions get to do that. It’s a very expensive reshoot, but it was built-in that three-quarters of the way through, I have an opportunity to rewrite one-quarter of the meaningful character scenes. So I did, I rewrote it. And I realized what was missing. And I wouldn’t have realized that if I was shooting at the top. I would have only realized that in post. And I would have walked around the room kicking myself in the ass, saying, “I wish I had the opportunity to reshoot some scenes.”

How was getting everything back together?

As soon as Mississippi allowed us to come back, we came back. And of course nobody’s working, so everybody’s eager to come back. They are hyper-conscientious because they know they are only being allowed to work by the grace of God. And so the masks and the PPE and the hands and the distancing, you don’t need to tell any of the people this. They’re so happy to be at work. They have no problem with any of that.

You can only have one person within six feet of your actor at a time. That person could be hair, it could be makeup, it could be props, it can be the director, it could be another actor. And you kind of queue up. And a thing that I realized, we had a warehouse. So we did rehearsals for every scene in this warehouse. And I told the actors that when we get to the location, to the casino, the prop people will be in there, the lighting people will be there and then you will walk there with your mask on, and you will take the positions that you took in rehearsal. Then I will roll camera and you will take your masks off and we’ll play the scenes. So that’s how we did it.

Given everything that it takes to get to shooting, once you were back on set with the actors, did you still feel like they could give you the performances that you needed? Was it difficult to get to a place of artistic creation given all the other concerns that everyone has?

Because they had done the rehearsals, they had gone through the permutations of their performances before. So the only thing different for them was that they were in a real space rather than a fake space. As I explained to them, there would be no time for exploration on set. All the exploration you are going to do, we’re going to do here in the warehouse. I don’t want to hear one peep from you about changing anything once we get into this hothouse environment. So however many hours we have to spend in the warehouse, let’s spend it.

How close to finished are you with the movie now, considering you had a lot of it already cut together?

Basically, I’m finished, down to an hour and 49 minutes, which is where I think it should be. Obviously, I have to do the score, there’s the post-prod and the special effects, but the thing is that there’s no pressure to finish the film anymore at this time. I was talking to Focus, and I could give them the film in a month. They don’t want the film in a month because they don’t know what to do with it in a month. They said, you just take whatever time you need, which is the opposite of the way studios usually talk. I also have final cut, so it doesn’t really matter. What I deliver, I deliver.

When you made “The Canyons” you talked a lot about your feelings regarding the theatrical experience, VOD and streaming and contemporary filmmaking. What impact do you think the COVID shutdowns will have on movie theaters?

There’s a certain kind of film like “The Canyons,” which should be made for VOD, which is a kind of exploitation film. And there’s another kind of film like “First Reformed” that has to be mounted by film festivals and art-house cinemas, so that it has an identity prior to VOD. So if you’re on VOD and you see an Ethan Hawke film about a minister, you’re not going to say, “Oh, let’s watch that.” No, what you’re going to say is, “Oh, I heard about that film. I heard it was good.” Well, how did they hear it was good? They heard that from film festival reportage and they heard from their friends who have seen it at theaters. So that sets up VOD.

The opposite case is a film like “First Cow,” a film that was crushed by not having a theatrical window. And everybody is, “Should I watch ‘First Cow’?” They have no context. So what’s important for a film like “The Card Counter” is we have to give it context. We have to go to the festivals and we have to go to the art cinemas to tell people what we have in our hands. Then we can go to VOD, where the real money is. So “First Reformed” went to Telluride, Toronto, Venice and New York. That set the table. I would love to set the table for this one. I can go to all those festivals. That’s not a problem for me anymore. The problem is: Are festivals going to happen?

Do you think theaters are going to come back?

Not in the way they did. There are only four reasons for theaters to exist anymore. And this situation has accelerated these trends. Like symphonies and operas and live theater, concerts, they need a reason to exist. One reason is family cinema, because parents love to see their kids interacting with other kids. Animation films will always have an audience. Another is extraordinary spectacle. IMAX, virtual, whatever they come up with. Something you can’t see at home. The third is date movies for high schoolers, which is horror and rom-coms. Or rather, dirty rom-coms.

And then the fourth is club cinema. Which used to be called art cinema. But with these new institutions that are a combination of social institutions and cinematic institutions. So the Metrograph in New York has one restaurants and two bars. There’s more square footage devoted to eating and drinking than there is to watching movies. And yet it’s always full because people want to be in that environment. So then alcohol’s become the new popcorn. And those club cinemas, which were pioneered by Alamo, they will continue to exist because people want to be part of the club, people want to buy a membership. They want to eat and hang out, and they want to know which films have been approved by the club. Which is something you cannot get from VOD.

When “First Reformed” was coming out, you spoke about how you had made it thinking it could be your last film. And yet you seem so reenergized over the last few years. Do you feel that way? Have you been able to hit the reset button in some way?

Oddly, yes. I’m in the middle of a new script, which is about a horticulturalist. And what has happened in my case, following the disastrous situation I went through with “Dying of the Light,” I said, I would no longer work unless I had final cut. And once I got final cut, I was free. When I began, you didn’t really need final cut. When I was working in the studio system, all those other films, you were working with people who knew movies, who liked movies. Who you can talk to, you could disagree with — things would get changed, sometimes they’d get better, sometimes for worse in your mind, but you were working with people who liked movies, who watched movies. In the last 15 years, I’m dealing mainly with financiers, who not only don’t watch movies, don’t even particularly like them. And how can you have discussions with these people? And that’s what final cut freed me from, because I realized I couldn’t talk to these people. I wasn’t talking to [studio executives like] Barry Diller and Thom Mount and Ned Tanen anymore. I was talking to Joe Schmo from some hedge fund and I couldn’t talk to Joe Schmo. The only way I could talk to him was to have final cut.

I’m certainly excited to see what becomes of “The Card Counter.”

The new one is quite good. Focus told me not to hump it too much because that’s their job down the line. But you can take my word for it, it’s quite good.

###

#paul schrader had to convince oscar isaac to shave off his dune beard 😂#oscar isaac #william tell #the card counter #paul schrader #tye sheridan #willem dafoe #tiffany haddish #covid-19 #coronavirus #focus features #dune #dune 2020 #first reformed #the canyons #taxi driver #interview #los angeles times #la times

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killjoyhistoryarchive · 4 years ago

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“Conventional Weapons” and the Rocky Road to “Danger Days”

In 2009, My Chemical Romance was buzzing with activity. The band performed several shows and festivals (including Summer Sonic in Japan), Gerard and Mikey Way attended San Diego Comic Con, and The Umbrella Academy was named one of Amazon’s top comics of 2009. Ray Toro held a Whopper eating contest on the official MCR website (no joke), while a certain comic series written by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon was announced in August. And at a show at the Roxy in Los Angeles, MCR performed three new songs from their upcoming album.

But while their next album seemed easily slated for an early 2010 release, MCR was about to hit a series of hurdles that would leave them with a scrapped album, a lost drummer, and a totally new outlook on where their music was headed.

On July 31st, 2009, MCR performed a set at the Roxy that included three new songs–“Kiss The Ring,” “The Drugs,” and “Death Before Disco.” Gerard was enthusiastic about the new tracks, even telling Rolling Stone that “Death Before Disco” was “the greatest song we’ve ever written.” Videos of the tracks soon appeared online, where fans eagerly devoured what they thought would be the follow-up to 2006’s The Black Parade.

As the days and weeks went on, the media blitz kicked into high-gear. While Ray Toro posted short studio clips on MCR’s website, the band gave several interviews where they gushed about producer Brendan O'Brien, discussed their new stripped-down style, and claimed that this would be their best record yet. In an interview with MTV, Gerard described the still-untitled album as a “true love letter to rock and roll,” adding:

“There’s something about being an American rock-and-roll band that we’ve kind of grown into and we’re very proud of. And I think that’s what we’re celebrating with this record. There’s no agenda, there’s no mission; it’s just about rock and roll.”

Meanwhile, Gerard Way and close friend Shaun Simon had another surprise in store: a comic series called "Killjoys.” Dark Horse Comics announced the release at San Diego Comic Con. Jeremy Atkins, the Dark Horse Director of Public Relations, described “Killjoys” as “a psychedelic rock-and-roll road trip adventure geared toward both fans of The Umbrella Academy and My Chemical Romance.” But not much else was said about the comic, as MCR’s upcoming album had become Gerard’s top priority.

As the album drew closer to completion, MCR gave fans more glimpses of what lay in store. They shared the titles of various tracks, including “Still Alive,” “Trans Am,” “Hail To The King,” “Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back," “L.A. Heavy,” "The Only Hope For Me Is You,” and “Black Dragon Fighting Society.” They cited a variety of influences, including Queen, Judas Priest, Bruce Springsteen, The Killers, and Blade Runner. By all accounts, this was going to be MCR’s defining album.

In December, MCR previewed seven tracks for SPIN magazine. A month later, in January of 2010, the album–which was still untitled–was rumored to be released on March 30th. As they continued to rework the songs, they realized that the stripped-down sound wasn’t working. As NME reported in January:

Things turned around with a song called “Trans Am,” now renamed "Bullet Proof Heart,” the likely first single. And perversely, they did it by returning to fiction. Broadly, it’s about a boy in New Jersey, dressed in a Judas Priest T-shirt, called Johnny. And a girl called Jenny who might be his girlfriend, but who also (honk the pop fact sirens!) might also be the missing girl from “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” by The Killers.

But in the same interview, Gerard restated that the album would give "the purest, best version of the band you could ever hope for.” And in early February, MCR finally started to wrap up production, telling Big Cheese that the album would probably be released in spring or summer.

“Killjoys” also looked promising–back in January, Scott Allie had reported in a blog post that Shaun Simon and Becky Cloonan were ready to get started. Once Gerard wrapped up the album and finished working on the Umbrella Academy movie screenplay, it seemed like he’d be ready to dive in.

But February was also when the band publicly stumbled for the first time.

Before the Big Cheese interview, MCR had abruptly cancelled their appearance at the Soundwave festival in Australia. In a blog post on MCR’s website, Frank claimed that Gerard was having voice problems (he jokingly implied that it was due to coffee and cigarettes) and required treatment to make a full recovery.

Fans were disappointed, but most understood that it couldn’t be helped. But a month later, the fandom received another shock: MCR’s drummer Bob Bryar had departed the band. In another blog post, Frank told fans:

As of 4 weeks ago, My Chemical Romance and Bob Bryar parted ways. This was a painful decision for all of us to make and was not taken lightly. We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors and expect you all to do the same. We also wanted to give you all a quick heads up on how the record is progressing. We have been writing some very powerful new songs so this week the four of us entered the studio once again, and what has been ending up on tape each night is some of the most exciting and honest work we have ever created.

The fandom was stunned. Clearly, MCR had been experiencing some behind-the-scenes turmoil, suggesting that the process wasn’t going as smoothly as fans had thought. While it wasn’t known at the time, they also parted ways with producer Brendan O'Brien, who had been hired specifically to channel their raw, back-to-basics sound. Where would MCR go from here? And when would fans hear the latest album–which was apparently undergoing rewrites once again?

It wasn’t until late 2010 that fans would finally learn what had happened to this unreleased album.

This moment, says frontman Gerard Way, looking back on what went wrong, “was the hardest part”. Guitarist Ray Toro was “home dealing with some family things”, leaving Way, his bassist brother Mikey, and guitarist Frank Iero alone in the mixing studio. “The sinking feeling was really starting to become loud that it wasn’t right - that the record wasn’t finished, I couldn’t even put them in a track order … "Thinking about it now, it’s kind of upsetting, because I just felt so lost,” Gerard says.

This was discussed in an interview with Herald Sun, where they talked about the process of starting again after the departure of their drummer and producer. Speaking to Music Radar, Ray Toro talked about the struggles the band had with original producer Brendan O'Brien, admitting that it hadn’t gone as well as they once thought:

“He was really trying; he did the best he could with us. He knew things weren’t clicking, and he’d try to rally us. I remember he said, ‘Hey, on some songs, I’d love to hear you do what you did on The Black Parade.’ Because there wasn’t any of the harmonized guitar parts or the stacking that I usually do. He was trying to get us to make one record, and we wanted to make something totally different.

Musically, we wanted to go back to our basement. But just because we wanted to do something different didn’t make it easy. In many ways, we felt as though we were holding ourselves back creatively. We were going through the motions. Some of the songs were good, but we weren’t happy with all of them.”

Needing a break, Gerard took a vacation to the desert that surrounded Los Angeles. There, as he told Terminal 5, he realized “I had started the band after 9/11 when I hated art. Black Parade had been about hiding and punishment. I couldn’t tell the truth so I’d talk about cancer instead. I had to put on a mask to show people who I really was. But now it was time to own it. To be who I was before this band started. And I had something in my back pocket: this song, ‘Na Na Na.’”

Reunited with producer Rob Cavallo, who had worked on The Black Parade, the band kicked things off with “Na Na Na.” Gerard and Shaun Simon’s comic “Killjoys,” once a separate side project that had nothing to do with the band, suddenly became the concept that they formed the album around. Fueled by fresh creative energy, the band wrote and re-wrote tracks, came up with concepts and characters like Dr. Death Defying, and shredded the limitations that had confined them. At one point, Gerard turned to his brother Mikey and said “Danger Days, here we come again!”

Not everything from the previous record was scrapped. “Trans Am” became “Bulletproof Heart”; “Death Before Disco” became “Party Poison.” A few new versions of old tracks appeared on the record, as well as the Mad Gear and Missile Kid EP that came later. But MCR’s fourth album had gone from a rock and roll record that deliberately avoided ambitious storylines, to a vividly realized concept album that invited fans into the world of post-apocalyptic California. In many ways, it was the opposite of what they had originally planned. And it seemed to be exactly what they had been looking for.

During this time, Frank snapped in-studio photos that he sold on MCR’s official website, offering one-of-a-kind peeks into the recording process. In March, Mikey Way stated in a blog post that “One day you will wake up, and nothing will ever be the same again, but it’ll feel like an old friend.” He was talking about upcoming changes to the MCR website, but in a way that statement reflected the band’s process at the time–they had completely reinvented themselves, and yet there was still a certain familiarity in the old tracks they had revamped.

The band completed the album with fresh energy, offering sporadic updates in the coming months. Fans waited with some skepticism to see what MCR had in store. And finally, one day in early September, MCR’s website disappeared and was replaced with a mysterious transmitter. The Danger Days era had begun.

But was the scrapped album hidden away, never to be heard again? Not quite.

In 2012, in a blog post on MCR’s website, Frank talked about the feelings of depression that he had faced after The Black Parade. He felt like MCR had done it all, leaving them with nothing left to accomplish. In November 2008, Gerard called him up to talk about the band. As new ideas took shape, they prepared to start recording the album that would eventually be scrapped after months of work.

Frank pointed out that while the band had limited themselves during the recording of this album, the songs weren’t inherently bad–in fact, some of them were among his favorites that the band had produced. As time passed, he developed a greater appreciation for the tracks. And when the band met up and listened to those songs, they decided to release a selection of tracks to the public–two tracks a month for the next five months, for a total of ten.

After all this time, the album finally had a title: Conventional Weapons. Tracks included “Kiss The Ring,” “The World Is Ugly,” “Surrender The Night,” and the fan-favorite “The Light Behind Your Eyes.” Listening to the tracks, it was clear that MCR had aimed for a rock album with a pure American sound–no ambitious concepts or storylines, just a set of killer tracks. Whether they succeeded is up to the listener to decide, but they provided some insight into what came before Danger Days.

Due to its unconventional release, and the fact that the album was a series of random tracks and not a finished product, Conventional Weapons is not considered an “official” MCR album. But while Danger Days was the final album, Conventional Weapons was the final release before MCR broke up in 2013. Since the split, the release of CW has caused many fans to wonder–will My Chemical Romance’s fifth (and unreleased) album ever be shared in a similar fashion? Or will it be locked away forever, like the other CW tracks that were never released?

Only time will tell. But for now, Conventional Weapons serves as an intriguing part of MCR’s history–a time when the band set out to make one type of album, and ended up making the complete opposite.

(Picture credits: 1 2 3. Other in-studio photos by Frank Iero.)

[Originally published 07.09.2017]

#my chemical romance #mcr #gerard way #mikey way #ray toro #frank iero #conventional weapons #articles #music #behind the scenes #na na na #bulletproof heart #party poison (song)#killjoyhistory #reuploads

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rinharu-purple · 4 years ago

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Mr. Love MC’s Choice: Gavin

We fellow producers all have our favorite LI in the game for whom we save our gems and dates, replay their chapters over and over again, sucking our bank accounts dry during the process. And that’s what makes this game so fun! However in my opinion MC’s personal choice is Gavin. I will try to explain it as thoroughly as possible in this post. Obviously they are only my personal opinions at the end of the day so please don’t freak out if you beg to differ ^_^

There are spoilers ahead and this post is a long one, you were warned!

A big, warm hug and grandious thanks to @smallersocksx for proof reading so fast and sharing her ideas! <3 </p>

Up until now, I’ve always analyzed ships in subtopics, so this time won’t be any different so I will just dive right into it:

Body Language

The law of attraction between two people in a romantic way has some thumb rules, one of them is that when you like someone then you try to touch them at every opportunity. From all of our LI’s Gavin is by far the one with the most body contact to the MC (The main story only atm, I will come to his dates in a minute ;)). I think the anime speaks for itself, in every single Gavin episode and some of other LI’s episodes (ahem…ep 10 but also ep 11…ahem) Gavin and MC are always in an embrace or a meaningful “hands-on” moment…In the game MC and Gavin are quite often touchy with each other, MC seems to not holding her hands back every time she feels like Gavin’s hurt and reflexively touches him, she is also highly concerned about his hair since every time his hair get messed up by the wind, rain or hormones (swh ;)), MC doesn’t waste any second before correcting his hair. Every reunion they have results in MC reaching out her hands towards Gavin and surprisingly never other way around. Even in a perillious moment in chapter 22 when Gavin goes completely wild and unleashes his “beast-self” the first thing MC wants to do is embrace him. In chapter 24, at the very end among all routes, MC only tells Gavin that she’s missed him and hugs him. Chapter 27...again MC wants to check Gavins body for injuries and tends to them the second they are alone in a closed room. They both yearn for each other’s touch all the way, no matter in which narrative.

If I were to start counting Gavin’s touchy touchy moments on the other hand, then we have to prepare a 4 volumes encyclopedia because that male individual is all about touching MC. Another hint for their closeness is that MC makes notes on Gavin’s scent quite often, mostly related to his jacket or his embrace and while doing it, she always uses adjectives like “clean”, “distinct” or “unique”. Again in ch. 15 she knows its Gavin standing behind her even without looking, because she senses his scent: “A scent that I’d recognize anywhere”. Surely there are many scenes, where MC holds hands with another LI or makes a remark of their scent, but they are not at the intensity or frequency level that of Gavin’s.

2. The Setting

All four LI’s are representing a certain archetypes women are usually attracted to:

Kiro is a pop idol (target audience 13-15)

Victor is the young successful businessman with a high dominant demeanour and Mr. Grey-ish attitude (target audience 25 upwards or any 50 shades of Grey reader)

Lucien is a young attractive professor with a mysterious and enigmatic vibe (target audience 20-24)

Gavin is the misunderstood bad boy (high school) and later a righteous police officer (16-19 for the bad boy Gavin and 20 upwards for the righteous police officer, special agent, military commander... a pilot?! anything including a uniform fetish)

So, in the game, Elex could take any of these paths and develop it in a way that the chosen path becomes a true love story. I gotta admit, Victor’s story comes at times very close to being one. However, his never-ending bickering and belittling in his 90% of the time cold demeanour just make him lose major points. Plus, MC mostly goes along with Victor’s tone, even though she is a kind and friendly person, she bickers with Victor not because that’s her personality but because that’s the way she can cope with him. If only he were a little bit less domineering.. Which is why I never feel like MC and Victor would belong together irl.

Seemingly Elex and Mappa take Gavin’s way imo. Because…

In the main story MC loves all of the LIs in a different way and also has romantic feelings to each one of them to a certain degree, but when we look at it closely and read in between the lines of MC’s thoughts Gavin is a little bit more romantically portrayed than the other guys.

a) First of all Gavin had a crush on MC during high school cannonically: Even though Gavin only says that it was a farewell letter, MC says once that she wishes that she could’ve read that “love letter”. I will stop here with Gavin’s feelings because this post focuses on MC.

b) MC, too, was kinda into Gavin during high school because in Episode 18, when she goes to Loveland Hugh during her farewell tour before going with her ultimate sacrifice , she remembers Gavin in intimate things like “watching his athletic body” or “wearing men’s clothes-meaning his-”. Additionally she remembers taking note of his face shining in the sun in the very back of the line during her recital. Even before it all she was specifically interested in him. Her memories with the other LI s are comprised of rather friendly moments like flying kites together but when it comes to Gavin she once again thinks about more intimate elements. Not to mention that the game gives MC a farewell with Gavin. In her final moments she only thinks that for Gavin her grievance would be the hardest. In the End of the Abyss era (ch. 15-18) MC meets all of the LIs after their changes again and reacts to all of them with joy…surely, but only when she sees Gavin hovering above her in the helicopter it is again…drum roll…drama: “The next second I saw a pair of amber eyes…shining like brilliant skies” this girl is always romanticizing Gavin.

“-Can you hear me?

-Can you see me?

-See my heart pounding again at the sight of you?” (so are you saying that your heart wasn’t pounding before? oh ok ;))

Fast forward to CH34 where MC fights Leto for the final time and remembers our guys and again, while she remembers other LIs for their sacrifices and their protection of her, she remembers Gavin's warm arms...

c)The game takes his time and turns the half of a whole chapter into a date in chapter15 Ep 1-9. There is no other chapter in the game where MC spends time with any of the other LI’s in which there is only the two of them, whereas nothing relevant to the main story happens and they share solely many sweet, romantic and almost hot (when MC tries to dry Gavin’s face in her flat and realizes that she stands way too close to him, she then prepares herself to say something, but gets interrupted by the alarm) and again, MC is getting close to Gavin, not the other way around like Lucien pushing MC against the blackboard, that little sneaky Lucien (actually I could write a post with a masterlist of Lucien’s advances to MC:D).

d) MC’s premonitions revolve mostly around Gavin (when they are not about the whole world or the black queen). Her dream about the rooftop rescue, her Room 404 dream, her daydream in the office in 6-13 in which Gavin’s suffering and from which she wakes up crying out his name leading to Willow, Kiki and Anna remark on playfully how unfair it is to dream about Gavin and disregarding the other guys. She also sees his future in episode 15 twice! If I am not mistaken, she only sees Victor’s future once in her dream and a vague vision of him in ch 18 but other than that she has no premonitions about Lucien or Kiro. Besides in the anime MC uses her power unintentionally yet instinctively twice while having Gavin in mind in episodes 5 and 8. The third time, she uses her powers in this way is in episode 11 with Victor but he is not her driving force for this but she is driven by the imminent danger they both are in and she doesn’t particularly think about Victor at this moment. In the game it additionally happens in chapter 22 when Gavin is cornered by the mechanical arms and is in a tight spot, this sight makes MC have a surge of rage and to unleash her powers in a great magnitude. Gavin is Queen’s soft spot i.e. More importantly Gavin is a constant part of MC’s future frame. She has her visions about other LI’s past but when it comes to Gavin it’s only his future. MC doesn’t have visions about Gavin’s past, like, ever. While Kiro, Lucien and Victor are stuck in their pasts with MC, Gavin has made peace with his past, is living in the present and looking forward the future (one of his best qualities imo, not being stuck in the past). Ironically, it’s MC, who’s stuck in the past in Gavin’s case.

e) I will intentionally not delve much into S2 stuff, but one thing has to be in this post…We know that in S2 MC goes back in time and relives the last 17 years. During these 17 years she makes sure to spend her high school years close to Gavin. So given the chance to rewrite her past, she would choose to make good for the lost years that she regretted dearly in S1 (she gushes out about her regrets in S2 Late Autumn Date in detail). We are yet to find out more about the nature of their relationship during high school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a “will they, won’t they” situation. Since the game wouldn’t put any of the guys in an ex-boyfriend role, that would be the most romantic frame possible.

3. How other people see Gavin x MC

f) In CH 36, the one before CH 37, where every LI gets the same intimate moment with MC, only Lucien and Gavin are getting close to kissing her to which MC doesn't show any rejection towards... She is the one accidentally kissing Gavin btw and this is the only time before CH37 that MC either accidentally or willingly kiss any LI on his face or near his lips.

g) In S1, MC only posts two pics with the boys in her moments. One of them is a selfie with Lucien and the second one is with Gavin, hugged from behind. No other LIs ever have a moment with MC. Neither on their accounts, nor on MCs.

It is always a good indicator to look at how other characters perceive a particular ship. For Gavin and MC, it is almost obvious that once they are standing side by side, others see them instantly as a couple. Sure, at the orphanage some children ask Lucien if MC is his girlfriend or that one actress threatens MC to stay away from Victor because he’s hers (btw what happened to her?) With Gavin however, it’s practically a running joke.

As mentioned above, her once daydream in the office with Gavin shoutout in CH 6-13 drew the attention of her co-workers, leading them to mock her for thinking about him too much even though her dream was rather a nightmare. Besides, Gavin is the one showing up the most in MC’s office and he also lift her up to his shoulders once in the Visiting Hours date and Homer took a pic of that hilarious moment.

Every time MC is at STF HQ, respectively, Gavin’s co-workers or subordinates too take note of her presence and in chapter 12 they are even caught red-handed by one of the agents as MC is busy “correcting” Gavin’s hair (because see point 1). Eli seems to be aware of the intimacy between the two and even probably assumes that they’ve done the deed, because in ch 12 he is surprised to hear that MC hasn’t seen Gavin’s wound yet. He presumes that she already saw him naked…oh Eli! Season 2 has even more eminent scenes, we just have to wait and see.

In chapter 15 when they deliver Perry to the hospital, they are mistaken to be his parents by the hospital personnel not once but twice! Needless to say, they don’t find it necessary to correct the misunderstanding. I mean Perry is, what, 6…MC 22, Gavin 24 but they automatically think that they must be the parents?! Sure thats common sense- wink wink nudge nudge ¬‿¬ -

In chapter 22 Shaw makes a comment on MC willing to go to where Gavin is with a “Really, all you do is following him, isn’t it?”. He uses MC to trigger Gavin in Airport date as well.

And of course, there is Minor…The ultimate number one wingman and the most original Gavin-stan! Minor uses everything in his power to bring them together both in the main story and in dates. He even calls her Sis-in-Law in public in CH 35 which MC doesn't reject. This doesn’t even need explanation.

Last but not least:

Their couple chemistry went viral lol.

Visually speaking, when they stand side by side, for me Gavin and MC look the most like a couple (Kiro is too childish and fashion icony compared to MC and Victor is too mature and business attire-ish making him look like her uncle rather than boyfriend, Lucien is the only one besides Gavin who actually suits MC visually). I am not saying that looks are the main indicator btw so don’t lynch me please ^_^

Come to think about it, MCs life is intertwined with that of Gavin's the most. Considering how she knows his father, brother and colleagues and spends so much time in "his world" whether it's at STF or NW. In the main story MC and Gavin have their favorite restaurants (ehm it's never souvenir due to obvious reasons 😉), share the same passion for music, have many common memories from high school and most importantly their world views are very similar. Both are prioritizing others safety over themselves and are compassionate for anyone who is in need. They are both ambitious and hardworking but not to the point of being power driven. Both are humble and finding hapinness in the smallest things. Maybe that's why they say the same things simultaneously or say the things the other would say simultaneously. MC and Gavin are highly compatible and have a harmonious, healthy relationship despite the conspiracy around them.

4. Anime

Okay okay, listen…Yes, the anime wasn’t the best adaptation and many of us were disappointed by the ending (including me), still, the anime makes a part of canon MLQC universe and no Gavin-stan should complain about the anime because the anime put canonically Gavin on a pedestal. In a total of 12 episodes, all guys had 2 episodes each BUT Gavin was actually blessed with 3 episodes and so many romantic moments to count…let’s count them anyways :)

Mappa introduces all guys in episode 1 so MC encounters them all in the first 25 minutes but she first meets Gavin in episode 2 and the two spend almost the entire time of the episode together, not to mention the extremely romantic first-fly scene in the sunset. As I mentioned in point 1, MC and Gavin are always in physical contact in any given episode. Anime made sure to portray every single interaction they have romantically.

They even went so far to mix Gavin scenes in other guys episodes (he offers her a ride to work in ep 3, she has an emotional moment with him after the first shooting misunderstanding while Lucien is standing right next to her in ep 4, Gavin is the one to catch MC mid-air in ep 10, this episode ends with them in their life and death embrace falling down in dawn… and then he falls on her in ep 11).

When it’s a Gavin episode MC has no romantic scenes with any of the other guys, let alone having any scenes at all. Its only about Gavin in Gavin episodes. Also, the storyline is edited in a way that between MC and Gavin a romantic story develops. Their meet cute conspiracy, their misunderstanding with Lucien, followed by the “drop the senpai” offer and finally that 5 seconds long gaze deeply in the eyes in ep 8 while holding hands.

It is really sad that the anime ruined this development in the final episode but taking into consideration that there might be a second season, they probably chose to make the change in Gavin’s character after the NW project remarkable.

Another point in the anime is that they kinda exaggerate Gavin’s Evol a little bit. During his stand-off with Lucien Gavin’s bullet cuts through Lucien’s shield and all in ep 8,11 and 12 there is a significant emphasis on the intensity and destructive power of Gavin’s Evol. I mean, whose Evol is the most upfront one in episode 12? We see Lucien using his Evol only twice, both very briefly, Kiro/Helios/Key and Victor even have to use guns to protect themselves and/or MC. Gavin’s shown using a pistole once at the beginning, after that it’s all turbines and tornadoes and just Gavin unleashed.

I think it’s an exaggeration because in my personal opinion, Lucien is actually the one with the strongest Evol, followed by Victor and then comes Gavin. Lucien’s ability to copy an Evol is simply the strongest trait one could have, sure it comes with the downside that he then doesn’t have enough time and focus to excel in any of those Evols, Victor can literally create black holes are you kidding me?! But because his Evol has its limits it puts him in the second place. But in the anime, Gavin’s Evol is extremely powerful and destructive and they also created some really cool scenes in which Gavin uses his Evol in various styles (accelerating his bullets speed, dodging a bullet, lifting MC in any and every situation, flying- obviously- and sometimes just overpowered destruction).

But in the anime in comparison, Lucien looks like a copy-cat of Evols and Victor like someone who travels through time to find out nothing can change the course of events (on a side note I will never understand why did Mappa toned down Victor so heartlessly, he is a powerful character and has countless sweet, emotional moments with MC).

5. Dates

I left dates to the end because they are highly subjective and don’t belong to the main story. NEVERTHELESS, Gavin’s dates include here and there some hints which may indicate that MC tends to like Gavin maybe just a little bit more. I will just add it as bullet points here since I’m pretty sure that the list will be enriched over time.

Slightly drunken date: Shouting out loud in public “Gavin! I’m crazy for you!”

When the Galaxy Falls Date: “...and in that moment, I make an eternal vow in my heart. To give all the blazing love and the most endless warmth to the person in front of me. Standing on my tiptoes, I carry a heart which is filled with courage to move forward, receiving Gavin.”

2 become 1 date “No matter whether the wedding is real or fake I only want to be your bride.” Here comes the Groom event where MC had a prob wedding with each and every LI but she actually only wanted to be Gavin’s bride (obviously Gavin’s heard her loud and clear since he’s bought a gem/ring right after) and that gem is brought up in…

The Returning from Afar Date - Thank you for silently watching over my mood. Thank you for always returning to my side no matter where you go. The white muslin drifts to and fro. My heart stirs, and I gently touch the muslin in front of me. Sunlight streams in. My fingertips brush the soft white muslin, tracing the word “Gavin” on it. I turn my head to the side, blinking at Gavin a little playfully. “This word - apart from it being your name, it also has another meaning. It’s “courage”. MC getting poetic, but who wouldn’t in that date (thank you @smallersocksx for reminding me and without @cheri-translates we poor Eng-server players would be left in the dark so thank you for translating season 2 for us!!!) but than MC verbally and literally makes her feelings clear in…

Late autumn date (2nd season translation by @cheri-translates) “I close my eyes, holding onto his solid arms. I lift my head to welcome his lips, savouring his unique breath. The person in front of me has shed off the roughness of youth, leaving behind only the purity of youth. He often makes me forget that he once used to be unrestrained like the wind. He has a body that is stronger than everyone else’s, a tough soul, a will that is as firm as steel, and a heart full of tenderness – it is soft beyond compare.

I cling to his waist tightly using my calves, wanting to brand every part of him into my heart.

“I want to bear his everything.”

Gavin: “Do you like it?”

“I like it…I like it very much…I like it so much that I don’t know how to prove how much I like it” “The rest of my life is yours, The years that we’ve missed out on are also yours” (whatever I have, I will give it to you. I will give everything to you, leaving nothing behind)

I rest my case

#mlqc #mlqc gavin #mlqc haku #mlqc bai qi #mlqc baek gi #mr love queen's choice #koi to producer #studio mappa #elex #papergames #mldd #analysis #tag your otp #romance #anime couple

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dat-town · 3 years ago

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rewrite the stars | it starts today

One thing that's constant in your life is music. Ever since your rebellious early teenage years, music has been an escape and a comfort to you. Working part-time at a vinyl store beside university feels just right, just for you. Plus, it's not a busy one despite the recent trend about retro stuff, so you can listen to the kind of music you like while working on assignments or trying to write (more like scrabble) music on a paper sheet when there are no or almost no customers around.

There are a handful of regulars you recognize not just by name and face but by their music taste as well. Usually it's either them or random tourists whom you never see again that stumble upon the shop. That's why it's always exciting to get new visitors, wondering whether they would stick around or leave with the next breeze of air. Your head snaps up when you hear the bell above the door ring and you see a flash of black step inside. It’s a guy, tall and lean, wearing a leather jacket, his dark locks are all tousy as if he has just gotten off his motorbike. You can tell just by his aura that he’s the type mothers warn their daughters about.

The stranger wanders off by the Newest shelf and you look back at the notebook in front of you, writing down another line of lyrics that just came into your mind. It’s quiet besides the music from the speakers, so you can tell that the possible customer isn’t doing much. You get so immersed into the lines under your pencil, you fail to notice him approaching and get startled when he speaks up in his deep voice.

“You don’t have any CDs?” he asks, sounding genuinely confused, so you don’t have the heart to just point at the entrance with the clear vinyl sign above it. He should have seen it coming in. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention.

“We only sell vinyls,” you clarify, which he acknowledges with a hum and takes his phone out to show you its screen with a screenshot.

“Do you have this one?”

It’s a record from a few years back, a sad song, something you would have never thought a guy like him would buy but you don’t make a comment on it and just look it up in your database. Sure, you might know the song but it doesn’t mean you can be sure you have the record in the store.

“Yeah, it’s in the back. I’ll grab it for you,” you offer and walk to the shelves, take it off after struggling with the high shelf a bit and give it to the guy to decide if it’s what he’s looking for.

“It’s a good choice,” you can’t help but add while you glance down at the cover. It shows a starlit sky fitting its title, Starlight, and you remember the tragic story of the singer, Jeong Seyeon. He committed suicide due to rumours around him which turned out to be fake a few years ago, that was also when his agency decided to release this song.

The guy doesn't really react to your words, his face is emotionless, his gaze focused on the vinyl. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, eyebrows furrowed as if something wasn't up to his liking as he was checking the details on the back of the cover.

"Would you like me to ring this up for you?" you inquire, trying to be helpful and a quick staff but as if he was snapped out of his train of thoughts, he looks up at you at that, his feline eyes finding yours.

"No," he says simply and putting the record down the counter, he leaves like smoke, leaving no trace behind as if he wasn't even there in the first place. You put on the song to play, the record player smoothly sliding through the track and while the deep voice of the singer resonates through the store, you cannot help but wonder what this was all about.

Days pass and you almost forget about the strange customer. Or well he wasn't one after all, just a passer-by. Sure, not everybody has to buy something at the shop but there was something off about that guy's visit. Especially since he had the record he wanted in his hands.

Anyways, your shift that day is just like any other, at least until the familiar stranger shows up. It's almost like last time: he's fast like lighting and moves like shadows in his black attire but there's some kind of urgency in his movements as he stumbles into the store. You can only stare as he hides behind a shelf and oh god, is he being chased?

Your face must tell your feelings because the moment the guy catches your wide eyes on him, he raises an annoyingly elegant brow at you as if asking what you are staring at. You blink and quickly look away, trying to act as if you didn't notice his panting nor the running guys outside of the store but the latter soon disappear down the street. You let out a relieved sigh since the last thing you need is a gang fight while you are on clock.

"They're gone," you speak up, seeing how the guy is still in hiding, massaging his temple. "I would appreciate it if you left in case you aren't buying anything because I'm closing up soon."

You don't mean to be mean but you also don't have to be kind to someone who can only bring trouble to your head. The guy doesn't seem to care either way, seeing how he just shrugs, throwing his leather jacket back on to cover his sleeveless tee and accessories dingling around his neck and wrists. But just as he’s standing up, dusting off his ripped jeans, you catch sight of the earlier guys outside of the window and you can only manage hasty hand movements and a cut off "Wait!" before the bell above the door rang, signalling the arrival of your new not-customers.

"Yah, have you seen a guy running around here?" one of that grunts impolitely but you keep your professional facade on as you turn to them

"Uhm about this tall, wearing leather?" you keep gesturing to indicate the height and the college-aged gang of guys seemed excited hearing the news. "Yeah he hid behind the trash bins, ran that way," you lied, pointing towards a little street at the corner opposite to where they came from. Without thanks or anything, the guys leave the store leaving only you and the mysterious victim (?) of their chase. You aren’t sure how to refer to him but whatever he did they should handle it elsewhere. The guy checks whether the thugs are really gone before standing up and he walks up to you ever so casually.

"Need a ride home?" he asks out of the blue. It isn’t a thanks but you would bet that in his dictionary it's something like that. But just because you lied for him, it doesn’t mean you’re best friend.

“I don’t even know you,” you scoff. You aren't the type who would blindly follow just anyone like that.

“I’m Han Seojun. There, now you know me,” the guy with feline, thin lips and sparkling earrings said with so much confidence you knew you wouldn't forget him easily.

But no, you aren’t stupid, so you didn’t let him take you home then. Yet, the more he started hanging out in the record store and the more you got to know about him, the more you trusted him. He told you how he knew Seyeon, about his producer friend Suho, his sister who was the smartest and sassiest person on Earth and you told him about your songwriter dreams and how you would have liked to hear him sing and things like that. You have learned with time that there's so much more than his bad guy image under those leather jackets he seems so fond of.

The night you let him take you home with his motorbike, you cling onto him with eyes shut closed but you trust him and that's the first step to fall. (In love.)

Rewrite the stars masterlist

#stories #series: rewrite the stars #true beauty

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dreamescapeswriting · 4 years ago

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Forget Me Not ~ YJG [Request]

➵➵➵Word count: 2,500

➵➵➵Genre: ermmm thriller??? mystery??? FLUFF

➵➵➵Pairing: Yang Jeongin x reader

➵➵➵A/N: This is my first time writing something with this kind of genre, I hope I did it justice enough for you as I was unsure of how to make it work. I hope it's okay though if not feel free to message me and I will rewrite the entire thing or write you something new. Love You.

The music you produced was like angels singing to Jeongin he adored everything you ever released and spent most of his free time listening to your music or looking up information on your fandom. The Stray Kids vacation was coming up and so was one of your concerts so he was planning on going to watch you live but as he delved deeper into your life and the fandom that surrounded it things started to feel weird. He noticed that the fans, named H.E.A.R.T.S after your stage name H.E.A.R.T seemed to be a little bit off, there was something there that didn't seem quite right. Normally fans were there to support the artist in everything you did but yours seemed to want to stop you from growing, making sure your music stopped at certain limits, stopping certain people from seeing interviews or photographs, everything was under lock and key with you and the company you worked for. Your real name was always hidden from the media and no one saw you unless the company allowed it, you weren't spotted out by paparazzi ever, and you were never seen except for live performances and interviews.

"What are you doing?" Chan asked when he walked in on the youngest member going through something on his laptop, I.N was trying to figure out more information on you but every website he seemed to go onto was blocked without proper passwords or hacking being needed.

"Ah, you're looking for H.E.A.R.T?" Jeongin looked up at the leader nodded and looked back down to the laptop, it was so weird that things around you were the way they were and he wanted to figure out why.

"No one knows the passwords unless they've been given them," Chan stated taking the laptop away and shutting it,

"No one knows who she is though...What's her name? Her age? Where does she come from?!" Jeongin was really interested in finding out everything and anything he could about you, and maybe that was the point in your fandom being so secretive, so that it would drawer more and more people into the investigation that was your life but all he knew was he wanted to know more.

Jeongin had tracked down the company you worked for using JYP's accounts thinking it would work better than a normal email, another company looking to collab with H.E.A.R.T is what he was posing as. Trying to discover anything he could,

Dear Mr J.Y. Park,

We would be delighted to let your singing Mr Yang Jeongin work with our artist H.E.A.R.T as we believe it would be a fantastic opportunity for them both to widen their fanbase however, H.E.A.R.T. is under a very strict time-consuming contract and we would have to have them record things separately, only meeting for one performance. We will arrange a conference call between H.E.A.R.T and Jeongin when the time is right for you, please let us know ASAP what your thoughts on this will be. What kind of song he will want to produce and we will get back to you.

Yours,

Sync Industries

Seoul, South Korea

That was a start, at least now he knew you were located in Seoul somewhere and he could work from there, he felt like one of the detectives he'd always seen on the TV or in mangas. He began replying the email and then going on to do his best to figure out more about you now he knew where you were and the company name that represented you.

He paced back and forth in the hallway of the apartment building he was standing in, he'd managed to find out where your family were living, your last name and he'd been fighting to go and see them for the last three days debating with himself if he would seem like a crazy stalker but there was nothing crazy compared to your fandom. He needed answers and he needed them now. He didn't tell anyone where he was going or what he was doing, he knew Chan would disapprove of this whole thing but he had to know what was going on. Taking a deep breath he walked up to the door and knocked on it, waiting patiently until a small elderly lady came to the door and looked at him,

"Hello," She greeted and he smiled at her, greeting her back.

"Hello, I just came to see if your granddaughter was home?" She ushered him into the house with a sad smile on her face, she sat him on a sofa and went to make tea without saying another word to him and he wondered if he'd gotten the right address.

"Miss Y/l/n?" She looked up at him as she brought a tray of tea into the room pouring him a cup and sitting opposite him on the other sofa.

"You mean our young Y/n? Y/l/n?" That name, he remembered that name as if he knew it but he'd never even heard of you until your music, and he didn't remember you from anything else except that.

"Yes, Y/n." He said your name as if he was trying to memorise it and she sighed getting up from the sofa and going over to a photo album, she brought it back to him and showed him photos of you dating back from your birth until recent ones, but the more he flicked through the more he noticed that you were fading in recent photographs,

"She's fading away." He frowned not understanding what she was trying to tell him, then she pulled out a small box with notes inside.

Don't forget me x Was written in red ink on a piece of screw up paper, more notes with the same words scribbled across them were in the box, some with drawings on and other just plain pieces of paper. Jeongin felt his heart lunge whenever he saw the handwriting on the paper, his heart was racing whenever he turned over another note seeing the same message over and over again getting more and more distressed with each note.

"Will you put those old things away!" Another voice called out, Jeongin looked up from the book to see a woman the spitting image of you only a little older walking into the apartment carrying bags, he rushed up to help her and she thanked him.

"Is she showing you those? She always does this, we didn't have a daughter!" She yelled at the old lady who grumbled something and started packing everything away into boxes yet again.

"She likes to tell people we had a daughter, but I didn't. I can't have children you see," He carried the bags through to the kitchen for the women he thought was your mum but was unsure now she was telling him she'd never had a child before.

"I hope she didn't bore you too much." He laughed it off and collected his things to leave again, he was almost out of the building when the elderly woman came down the stairs clutching in her hands.

"Jeongin!" She called out which shocked him because he hadn't told her his name, she pushed something into his hands and walked back into the building. He waited until he was in the car to see what she'd given him, in his hand was a photo of himself standing next to you but you were fading quickly in the photo. Written across the back was

Jeongin remember me

He took the photo back to the dorms and studied it, trying to remember you. There was something in the back of his mind that he couldn't access through, as if something was blocking him from getting to the memory.

After explaining everything to Chan, Han and Changbin in explicit detail and showing them the photo they agreed to help him get to the bottom of everything that was surrounding you and H.E.A.R.T promising the youngest they would figure it out together which lead to them standing in the middle of Sync's building disguised as janitors.

"We don't even know where she is?! Is this going to work?" Changbin asked as they pushed a cart around the neverending building,

"We don't even know if she's in the building," Han added earning glares from both Jeongin and Chan as they got into another elevator.

"I'll take the top floor, Chanbin will take the lower levels, Han the middle and I.N. can take all the others." They agreed and spread out going to find you. It was midnight so the place was empty except for cleaners and a few guards that were roaming around the halls.

I.N was about to take out his phone and call Han defeated when he heard singing coming from a room, he put his phone down and walked down the hall in the direction of the studio door. He knocked but the singing stopped and the room fell into a dead silence.

"Y/n?" Your headshot up as someone said your name instead of your stage name and you felt your heart begin to pick up at the mere thought of someone knowing you were there.

"Hello!?" You yelled out banging on the table for them to open the door, it was never locked because no one ever bothered to come and see you anymore. The door opened slowly and stood there was your childhood friend Jeongin.

"I.N!" He jumped back a little as he took in your appearance, you were chained up to a desk by your ankle, you were wearing nothing but an old looking hoodie and some leggings.

"Y/n?!" He rushed over to you pulling at the chain to try and see how tight it was but you whimpered as he did so. You'd been trying to get out of them for years it was no use without the keys.

"How did you find me?!" You whispered looking at him and he stared at you, as soon as you stared into his eyes you felt your heart drop.

"You don't remember me do you?" You felt your heart shatter once he shook his head no at you,

"But I'm starting to remember small things, how long have you been here?" You looked at the calendar on your wall and then at him,

"Three years." You whispered knowing there was no way out of here,

"You need to leave before my manager comes and finds you," You whispered looking at him and then over at the door standing there were three boys you'd never seen before.

"We're your rescue team." One of them said in a thick Australian accent holding up a pair of bolt cutters,

"How did you know we'd need those?" The shortest one asked looking at the one with the Australian accent,

"I just assumed we'd need lots of stuff," He opened a bag to reveal a bunch of spy-like equipment, he walked over to you with the bolt cutters and looked at the chain around your ankle.

"Is it attached to anything? Like an alarm?" You shrugged your shoulders, you had no idea what it was attached you. All you knew was there was no way out of them without a key or in this case bolt cutters,

"Changbin, car. Go." Chan said throwing him the keys,

"Text me when it's out front," Jeongin ordered and Changbin ran off down the hall leaving the other one there,

"I'm Han by the way and he's Chan...The leader of your breakout crew."

A giant alarm went off throughout the building as soon as the chain was broken and you were sprinting down a flight of stairs holding Jeongin's hand as you headed for the main exit of the building,

"Faster!" Han yelled pulling you all in the direction of the doors, a shutter was starting to come down but you were out just in time and into the car, Changbin sped off down the high way in the direction of the JYP Building hoping you weren't being followed by whoever it was that had taken you in the first place.

Over the next few weeks, you'd explained in detail what happened to you. How you signed a simple contract without reading the small print and piece by piece your life was being taken away from you until the point that not even your mum remembered who you were,

"I still don't understand how I couldn't remember you," I.N said as he stared at the photography which was fully restored to you both sitting in front of a bonfire with smiles on your face,

"We were close." You whispered looking at the photo and then back up at Jeongin who looked pained that he'd forgotten you, you'd told him a million times that week it was fine and that you were fine now but it still didn't seem to settle his mind about it.

"Jeongin, everyone forgot not just you." You nudged him as you sat on the balcony of his dorm together, he stared at you as you looked out at the view of Seoul. You'd wanted to sit outside all day every day for as long as you could, it had been so long since you'd had fresh air. There was an investigation going down with the police looking into the contract between you and Sync but there were still things that weren't adding up for you,

"It was like a signed my soul away." You mumbled looking at the photograph. Jeongin had gone into extreme detail about the way it looked before, you were hardly there just an outline of your body and facial features.

"Whatever it was, you're safe now." His hands linked with yours and you stared down at them with a small smile across your face.

"Thanks to you." You whispered leaning across and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

"I have no idea how I can ever thank you enough, but I'll do my best every day to remind you just how thankful I am." Your hands stayed locked together, it just felt right for the both of you to stay just like that right there, together with no other distractions except for the sound of traffic and people in the middle of Seoul you could have stayed there your whole life if time would let you.

"I promise to never let anything happen to you again." He whispered to you, rubbing his thumb along your knuckles and then bringing your hand up to his face to kiss it gently.

"I promise." He repeated before looking up at you, you stared back at him before he slowly leaned up to your face and pressed his lips against yours. Pulling away a couple of seconds later to check you were okay, when you kissed him back he was relieved he hadn't just creeped you out to the point where you didn't want to be around him anymore and that you wanted to kiss him again instead of pushing him away for good.

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 7, The Two Live Crew Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I’m Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

Amy: Hi, I’m Amy Berg, Supervising Producer and Writer of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer and Co-Writer of this episode. Hold on. [Opens bee.] There we go.

[Laughter]

Dean: The beer has been opened.

John: The Guiness has been opened. Amy Berg where did this episode come from?

Amy: Well, I mean, when you have a show about a team of con men sort of- one of the first episodes that you think of is-

John: Yeah, it was like one of the first ones we broke- we talked about last season-

Amy: What happens when they go up against another team of con men? And obviously that's not something you really wanna, sort of, pull the trigger on during season one, so we sort of sat on it for a bit.

Dean: But we talked about it a lot in season one.

Amy: We did talk about it.

John: Yeah. But really you have to have your- part of the fun is having your characters and opposition- of people that make a difference, having the opposition of you need to know the characters really well.

Amy: You need to learn who our people are before we can bring in a new set of people.

John: Yeah, so it was a lot of fun putting together the different combinations and different variations on this- the evil team of evil Leverage.

Amy: Loves it.

John: Why the Gustav Klimt?

Amy: The Gustav Klimpt, now you're testing me and it's been a while, I believe this painting was called Higeia and it was technically destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. And it was sort of a choice to pick a painting that wasn't actually in existence, so we weren’t stepping on anybody's toes, saying that this was a stolen painting.

John: The likeless- the equivalent of likeness rights on paintings is an enormous pain in the ass so as a matter of fact, there's a statue of Lincoln in the park that's in the sequence later that we shot and then we had to get the rights to using that statute, even in the background.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Now that's very tricky stuff. Dean tell us about the fun of shooting this.

Dean: Well we wanted to try and keep perpetual motion and show two different attempts. Our team, which tries to do a low tech break in through basically just cutting through a wall through this cheapo office behind the high tech office, and then the daring team that actually chases the bullet head on.

John: Yeah. And there is our villain, Griffin.

Amy: Griffin Dunne.

John: Exactly.

Dean: I've wanted to work with Griffin my whole life. I remember seeing him in An American Werewolf Through London and just falling madly in love with this guy; I just thought he was amazing. And then when we went to do this episode, it was actually Tim Hutton who said, ‘What do you think about my pal Griffin Dunne playing this part?’ And it was just like a gift from heaven.

John: Oh yeah, we are all over that. And this is a lot of fun and we built a fake wall- And that is Tim's assistant, correct?

Amy: That’s that’s Elle, yeah.

John: That's Elle, Tim’s assistant, in her big screen debut with us tormenting her.

Amy: Indeed. And they're playing detectives Marlow and Archer who, as you know, is an homage to both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

John: That's right.

Dean: And there's fun outtakes from that which will be in the gag reel.

Amy: Excellent. This should have a lot of gag reel footage.

John: It's also- to tell you what's weird is, Archer actually-

Amy: Was the name of Tim Spades partner in [mumbles]?

John: That's right. That's what the original reference was. That’s also Ross Mcdonald.

Amy: But Ross Mcdonald was inspired by that character in order.

John: Really?

Amy: Yeah.

John: I didn't know that. There you go.

Dean: Fans of the show In Treatment should know that this actress, Noa Tishby, is actually the Executive Producer of In Treatment on HBO.

John: That's right Noa is an Israli actress, she was in Israel, she saw the original show, she dug in, got the rights herself, brought it to America, and wound up executive producing the American version.

Amy: By the way, that's Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is so awesome. And who cast Will Wheaton in this episode, John Rogers?

John: Well I technically cast him, but I believe you had the idea of hiring Wil Wheaton because I'm the one who actually signed the papers.

Amy: Thank you, I appreciate the credit on that.

John: Yes.

Dean: And I was so happy because Wil Wheaton and I actually used to play on the same hockey team together.

Amy: That's right.

Dean: And this was back when he was on Star Trek. And I was dumb enough to allow him to play goalie at the time and-

[Laughter]

Dean: And [Unintelligible]’s son took a slapshot that cracked his helmet open and gave him 17 stitches across the forehead.

Amy: You helped break Wil Wheaton's face.

Dean: And the producers of Star Trek called me screaming at me and forbidding me to ever allowing him to play on the team again.

Amy: Nice. Dogs Playing Poker, by the way, totally public domain. That’s why we chose that one.

John: There you go, there's a lot of variations of that, too, that’s right. And this is actually our little slam is not a part of the subtle on a lot of the CBS crime shows; just the sort of horrible-

Amy: Yeah, the over the top-

John: When we created Leverage, one of the reasons we did it was because so many shows were chasing serial killers. I think it was Chris Downey who said, ‘You know what? Serial killers are covered. Let’s chase rich white dudes in suits.’

Amy: I think they're done.

John: There's only ever been 10 and they've been caught 100 times. And that was Apollo Robbins. This is a great- this is one of Dean's signature roundy-rounds. And I was saying the other day-

Dean: An amazing steadicam shot.

John: I was saying the other day, we've actually learned in the writers room how to assign dialogue to make this easier.

Amy: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: So rather than rewriting on the fly-

Amy: -we write towards the circle track.

John: Cause you can actually see. It goes- it's like triple play: it goes to Beth to Aldis to Chris to Tim and then back around again.

Amy: I love Parker; there’s always- always something secret going on, whether its secret nazis or-

John: Yeah well, we kind of establish it in The Day of the Hunter Job, Parker’s realm of knowledge outside of stealing is not good.

[Laughter]

John: Like, anything that doesn't involve stealing, she will believe it if the other team members tell her. Oh this is great. I remember we shot this day. Dean, tell us about this bit.

Dean: Well this was one where we actually went full circle because we came in, we rehearsed it one way and it felt really good, but then we started to feel like, ‘Gosh we're not doing enough.’ And so then we reblocked the entire scene so we could all do more and have more happen, and then we all paused and went, ‘You know, the first one was much better.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And that's what we went with.

John: Yup. What I think was part of what was driving that was because I was on set that day, ‘Do not touch the motion sensitive bomb.’

Amy: Thank you.

John: Was the fact that this was gonna be Gina's last episode, full day with the cast- And also, she really dug in on the fact that the character was going to die and it genuinely upset the cast. Like the cast was a little freaked out here; they got way- cause this is a very claustrophobic set, very claustrophobic scene. The way we usually shoot is we shoot longer takes. So we do the whole thing, like we’ve shot entire acts in one take at some point.

Dean: That's true.

Amy: Yeah. By the way, this bit with the pudding, I've known John for two years and this is the only time I've ever turned him on.

[Laughter]

Amy: I wrote this bit, and he read the act and he came in and he burst into my office and was like ’hahaha’.

John: Remember you didn’t use it you; had talked about it and-

Amy: That’s true. That’s true. I brought it up in dialogue, but I didn't actually employ it. They didn’t- Parker didn't actually use it.

John: I actually kicked in the door- the only time I’ve yelled at you-

Amy: Yeah, he yelled at me.

John: I kicked in the door and said, ‘How do you come up with instant pudding in a motion sensitive bomb and not actually use it?’ And so we had- and Parker, we had Parker do it. There's a lot of great acting in here, there's a lot of Gina digging in on, sort of, Sophie's past catching up with her. Hardison-

Amy: But this is a scene where it’s really easy to overwrite it, because your instinct is sort of to write to the emotion of this scene like Sophie could die. But the point is to underwrite and let your actors find the emotion between the lines.

John: That beat right there with Chris and Gina.

Amy: Yes.

John: There's a very nice recurring thing we try to do, which is, whenever it becomes something about killing someone, they go to Eliot because Eliot- because Eliot used to do that. And there's a nice moment there. I was actually there- oh look at that look. I love that look. Where-

Amy: Emotion between the lines.

John: Where basically Eliot signs off on the fact that she's probably gonna die and Gina and Eliot worked that out and it's just a lovely moment. Ahhh this is great, now how did we do this?

Amy: Gina just knocks this out of the park.

Dean: So Gina was very pregnant at the time, so we had to do a double for the wide shots, for the running, and Gina for the closeups.

John: Yeah, and then this is a miniature.

Dean: That's right. Well, the building is the actual building we shot at, but the explosion is a miniature that we shot at our parking lot that we digitally composited on top of it. Now at the time, people didn't know what we were gonna do with Gina's character because Gina was pregnant. So when we did this scene and we aired this episode a lot of people were really upset at this point because they actually thought we had killed her off of the show.

Amy and John: Yeah.

Dean: And early Twitters were very upset.

Amy: Were not favorable.

John: Were very angry.

[Laughter]

Dean: How could you kill her off the show? But then-

Amy: This was originally intended to be the midseason finale, which in that case, the fans would definitely think for sure she was gonna be gone for a while or forever.

John: Yep.

Amy: But we ended up adding two episodes to the end of the midseason run, so we did get to see her again.

Dean: I don't know what it is exactly, but for me, Parker’s performance- or Beth’s performance as Parker in this section here is reminiscent of some of the great comedians.

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: Because it's so subtle what she's doing. And a lot of this came out of Beth herself who said -

Amy: I rewrote this scene based on Beth's notes that you were so kind to give me, and it sort of- it made the scene like 10 times better. I don't even remember what it was originally, but-

John: She's trying to remember what her lines are to say as Parker and her eyes roll up like ‘what am I supposed to say’ and then she gets freaked out at seeing Gina dead and loses it.

John: And then she totally spirals out.

Amy: There's a lot going on in, like, 20 seconds; it's pretty funny.

John: And then Hardison having to go up and bail her out. And again, there's a lot of- there's a lot of stuff going on in the structure this year with Gina leaving, and just for that tempering and having us to accelerate that storyline- There's a lot of Hardison/Parker relationship stuff between the lines on all the shows, we just never made it an A plot, but you can actually see the relationship evolve over the course of the season, when you watch the entire season particularly, the second half. And of course Chris is wearing a bandana under his hat because that's when he had slammed his head onto the set.

Dean: In the previous episode.

John: Exactly.

Amy: Yeah, he’s got a giant scar on his forehead right now.

John: Beautiful cemetery up on a big hill in Portland, nice enough to let us shoot there. Beautiful, gorgeous location. And that's a nice bit of acting, too.

Dean: Yeah, just the little moment of him seeing her and then getting that shock of losing someone that he cares about.

John: Yeah, and just processing.

Amy: So far you've pointed out that your favorite moments are the ones where there's no dialogue, so I'm glad I could contribute to that.

[Laughter]

John: Well you wrote- no no, that’s right, I usually go back and write the stage directions, but you do a lot of the-

Amy: This- and so it begins, when John makes fun of me throughout the commentary.

John: I don't make fun of you, just when you take too much credit.

[Laughter]

Dean: This is the controversy.

Amy: I was taking no credit!

Dean: In this scene, the gravestone says Cathrine Klive, her actor name, and at the end Sophie Deveraux and a lot of people thought that was actually a mistake, but why don't you address that?

John: Well we were really- it comes up in the end. We really wanted- and this is sort of a meta structural thing - she wants to kill Sophie Deaveraux. She realizes Sophie Deveraux as an identity, as a life, is a dead end, and so she changes the tombstone so that she can eventually give up that identity. And it's interesting because what Sophie is- realized is that she's going down a dead end, and in theory she’s the current criminal and Nate is the honest man. Nate is also going down a dead end, but he's way too obsessive and blind to realize it.

Amy: Yeah.

John: And so by the end of the season, you’ll see Sophie is a lot more emotionally evolved than Nate is.

Amy: It's true. This is sort of the beginning of Nate’s spiral where-

John: Yeah, maybe the end of Sophie’s thing.

Amy: His priority shifts and, like, winning becomes more important than servicing the clients.

John: We just sort of tease in 206. Great scene between Griffin and- really that was kind of fun. Once we knew we had Griffin Dunne, a lot of these scenes became, ‘Alright, it's really just gonna be head to head.’

Amy: Yeah, yeah.

John: Yeah. It's just- we’re just gonna have the two of them- And the fact that they're friends was really helpful.

Amy: And this the promise of the premise when you do a crew vs crew episode. What you are promising to the audience is you're gonna have one-on-one faceoffs between the characters and their counterparts.

John: And this is part of the evolution of writing an episode, is when we were breaking this, we had a really hard time getting that up as fast as possible, and that's what you wound up- doing the inner cut break in at the opening. Because even though they weren't facing off at each other, we gave the audience the promise of the premise.

Amy: Yes.

John: And the beautiful Hyundai Genesis. A fine automobile.

Amy: A fine, fine vehicle.

Dean: Beautiful peel out.

John: It was nice. In a cemetery!

[Laughter]

John: There was a moment where I was talking to one of the actors, I looked down and realized I was standing on a civil war veteran’s grave. That was a little disturbing.

Amy: That’s classy Rogers.

Dean: I absolutely love the little makeup and hair choices of Gina in this scene, it's so 40’s noir.

John: Yes.

Amy: Yeah, yeah the hair.

John: The whole episode she's playing 40’s noir. And it was a really interesting look, and not one we can do a lot because of the characters she's played, but this was interesting; she's not playing a character ever in this episode except in the opening.

Dean: Right.

John: I kind of liked her in the cop outfit.

Amy: It's one of my favorite running gags in the entire series of the show. Parker just not entirely buying that Gina’s actually alive.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘I'm not dead!’

John: Some part of her brain understands it, but the emotional center is so screwed up.

Amy: ‘I saw her in a coffin, ergo, she must be, in fact, dead.’

John: This is also great, is digging in on the fact that the whole ex-boyfriend/crew/guy who runs the crew she used to be with. And for a while, for like a minute and a half in the room, remember that character was Sophie's boyfriend for the whole first half of the season and this was gonna be the payoff, but we just never knew if we were gonna get the availability for that actor and we just couldn't risk it. And it also seemed a little dishonest she would hide that, so.

Dean: I love the Hardison line, ‘You saw other teams before us?’

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘No, just another Nate.’

John: ‘Just another Nate.’ That's- yes, this is a big family beat of looks back and forth.

Amy: Lots of looks.

John: Now how did you- I remember you were very, Dean, very big into designing the other team’s headquarters.

Dean: Yeah, well I really wanted to feel like a mirror of our headquarters. But in a believable way in that they don't have permanent space so they’re in a small space. But I was trying to mirror even screen direction-wise that one team is looking left-right the other team is looking right-left so that we can really feel like these are absolute mirror images of each other.

John: Yeah even the looks left-right and right-left match.

Dean: That’s right.

John: Yeah, no it's interesting. And there's Apollo Robbins, who we haven't mentioned yet.

Amy: Apollo Robbins! Yes, he's our technical consultant on the show. He is a master thief. But not anymore, he's a good guy now. I feel like I should point that out.

John: Yes we should. You can't hire him to do crimes.

Amy: When I say consultant, I mean he's not actually a thief anymore.

John: This is also great; this is also the Mona Lisa scam. Why don’t you explain the Mona Lisa scam since you’re a research freak?

Amy: Oh great, now I’m-

John: 1911.

Amy: Yes, 1911 there was a con man, I don't remember his name, but someone says it I think in this scene, where he created six forgeries of the Mona Lisa, stole the original, and then sold the six fakes on the black market to individual buyers as though they were the original and got six times the profit.

John: Some con and heist shows will just do that plot and act like they came up with it. [Coughs] Asshole! [Cough].

[Laughter]

John: Rather than mention the fact that this is something that really happened, that you should honor.

Amy: This is something that really happened, that I actually read about.

John: Also used the Doctor Who's: The City Of Death written by Douglas Adams.

Amy: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

John: There you go. This is something else we did a lot of, which was the process of elimination bit with the screens. Remember we did it in Hunter too? And it's just kind of fun because it’s kind of something from my physics background which is all about probability. And the fact that a series of educated guesses- it's kind of like our version of detective work.

Amy: Yeah.

John: You know, it's like crime detection, it's a lot of fun. And yeah, and now we're really seeing Nate start to spin out of control.

Amy: But this is what I would call dueling competence porn.

John: Yes it is.

Amy: This, and the third act where the teams are doing their jobs and doing them well.

John: Competence porn, by the way, is a term- I forget how it came about, but it's basically-

Amy: It's just a room bit.

John: It’s a room bit. It’s like, you know what? I just like watching people who are good at their jobs doing it, especially if they're entertaining. A lot of it was from 208 was watching Beth Riesgraf- in 208 there was an entire act that's a break in-

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: That’s Beth breaking into a vault. And when you're writing it, you're like, ‘Gosh, that feels thin,’ and then you're watching it and you're like, ‘I'm watching Parker break into a vault for 15 minutes and this is amazing!’

Amy: I could watch it for 40 minutes.

Dean: This is one of my favorite bullet time shots that we’ve done.

John: Yes, now this is- now remember this is all done not digitally- well we do it really. We freeze everyone in the background and the cameraman walks through it and we digitally speed it up. What is this space? This is the-

Dean: This is an actual museum in Portland that we turned into our space.

John: Yup.

Amy: Wasn't there a naked sculpture that you guys put a leaf on?

John: Yes, up in the upper level.

Amy: That's my favorite story.

John: Yeah. And then- yes, this is 4-way; this is not as insane as the one in the season opener.

Amy: But it’s still insane.

John: But this is a 4-way through about 100 extras.

Amy: I don't think Dean understands that we’re making television.

[Laughter]

Dean: Well, you know, honestly you don't even attempt a shot like this without a steadicam operator like Gary Camp.

Amy: Gary Camp is amazing.

Dean: He's a serious feature film guy. I mean, that was all one shot.

John: Yeah. That's stunning. And then you bring it back to Parker- and this is also fun, is the fact that we make fun in the show. And this was- even when we did tap out and some people were like, ‘Oh, you're making fun of Lincoln, Nebraska,’ when we had Sophie make fun of the food. We’re not making fun of the locations, we’re making fun of the fact that Sophie’s a little princess.

Amy: Yeah.

John: She's not someone who does well with things that- and the van, the van, actually, over the course of the second season becomes a character.

Dean: I love that she's says about how it smells a little whiffy.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is a callback in The Future Job as well.

John: Yes, this is hard work, it smells like hard work. Yeah, Hardison's affection for the van.

Amy: Respect the van!

John: Respect the van, yeah.

Dean: Now this is actually the first scene where we’ll see the teams start to go head to head.

John: Yeah. Split up, call out your jobs.

Amy: This is the promise of the premise act, as we call it. And it's the Van Gogh that they're after, the Cafe Terrace At Night, I believe it’s called.

Dean: And this is a very important moment because it really established who Nate and Sophie were to the rest of the team. Nate being the one that makes the plans, but Sophie being the one who keeps them safe. And that had never been exposited before, and by doing that, it really set it up.

John: Boom! And then the parallel structure over to Hardison's opposite number, Chaos, played by Wil Wheaton, just four vans down.

Amy: Nice.

John: That was really inspired. They’re the most twin of the bunch. Oh, and this is amazing. This is amazing because that's all real time. That wallet never came off. This was this whole section we just gave to Apollo.

Amy: Yeah. He's like, what can you do? And he just basically-

John: And he took Beth aside and they came up with a bunch of- it’s like, you know what? We're just gonna run camera, you just do a bunch of you do you, man.

Amy: By the way, there was no one else we had in mind for Apollo. Even when I was like- when I came up with the concept, and then I also did the outline, I also called the character Apollo, hoping at some point we would actually cast him.

John: But was the Wil Wheaton character originally a girl?

Amy: In fact, she was.

John: Yes, that’s right.

[Laughter]

Amy: Yeah, it was- I believe it was a hot Latina-

John: Yes.

Amy: -that he was going up against, and then at some point, you know, in the casting process I turned to you and I was like, ‘You know, we've been talking about Wil Wheaton for something. Is this not the prefect role or not?’

John: And Noa Tishby rocking the dress. Noa was actually in the Israeli army. So that was kinda cool as we were looking at a lot of different actresses and Dean had seen her tape.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And it was like, you know, I wanna try a different ethnicity. I wanna try a different look, and brought her in. And what's great is she looks like she can take a punch, you know, that's a tough chick. And she really did great in the fight scenes and was a really- we got really lucky in this episode.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: You know, we usually have to cast one big role; we cast five.

Dean: Right.

John: And they were all great.

Dean: Now this fight scene was-

John: Ok I'm gonna take credit for this one because nobody else is-

Amy: I wasn't gonna take credit for it.

John: No shadow on this, I had to explain this 9 times.

[Laughter]

Amy: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Dean: And this sequence was actually getting directed by Marc Roskin and you, John.

John: Yes, at two o’clock in the morning. But I will give Mark Franco big props for throwing the old 1970’s film look.

Amy: The film reel stuff.

Dean: I love it.

John: That is so great. The Shaw brothers look is that and this is the whole-

Dean: That's how they see- in their minds that's how they see fights, like the karate movies they grew up watching.

John: Yes. And this is based on two things. 1) a great story about samurais- I love that look that Chris did. Great story about two samurai who faced each other, knew each other’s skills so well they fought the entire fight in their head and walked away. And Warren Ellis’ character the Midnighter from The Authority comic book who has sort of the same thing. He does fights backwards in his head. Ah look at that, oh he's a great physical actor, too, it was really- it was nice, cause we cast Apollo, he's never done acting before, he'd never done TV before. And it's the one gamble on the whole show and he was fantastic.

Dean: And he totally pulled it off.

Amy: But he's just so damn charming, it’s like you, sort of, just believed from the beginning that he could do it.

John: Yeah, he's very dangerous.

[Laughter]

John: It's really- if he ever turned evil, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Amy: Oh my gosh.

Dean: This next sequence, outside, while I had done the storyboards for it, Marc Roskin shot the hell out of it. And what we wanted to do was an homage to the great Western movies, you know, the Spaghetti Western.

John: Well this was the challenge, and we talked about this when we were writing it. It’s like, nobody does hacking in an interesting way. There's no way to do hacking in an interesting way.

Amy: Visually it’s- filming it is not effective.

John: So abandon trying to do it with the computers and just do the metaphor, which is two guys pitting each other’s intellects against each other, and make it text.

Amy: And it's much more interesting, look at each other than looking at screens.

John: Oh and that timing is great, look at this, it’s just fantastic.

Amy: This is so nerdgasmic.

[Laughter]

Dean: He even had that Spaghetti Western whistle.

Amy: Yeah. I remember the first cut it was only in there subtly and you were like, ‘Hey turn that up, man.’

Dean: Listen, I’m-

John: And look at the little holster move, too.

Dean: I'm all for subtly, I just want a lot more of it.

[Laughter]

John: Oh no, Wil knocked it out of the park in this. Did you know that he had been doing a bunch of shows and people have come up and asked him to sign his autograph as this character?

Amy: As Chaos.

Dean: That's great.

John: Somebody came up with the anarchists cookbook and asked him to sign it as Chaos.

Dean: And I love that Sophie can’t use a computer.

[Laughter]

John: Utterly useless.

Dean: She just closes it.

John: Well Hardison’s taught Eliot- and the look to the swords. We had so much fun coming up with different props in the scenes. And this was at 2 o’clock in the morning fight fight fight, you win. Fight fight fight, you win. And just- cause they had to learn the routines and we were banging it out in three sizes at a time, it was great. Then we shot the bird.

Amy: So many looks.

John: And this- you could run the entire Parker/Apollo scene without dialogue and you'd know exactly what's going on.

Amy and Dean: Yeah.

John: Actually-

Dean: She's a little bit the Harpo. You know what I mean.

Amy: She's the Harpo.

John: She's the Harpo, he's Groucho in that scene, it's very subtle.

Amy: Is that Chase? Was that Chase walking towards the camera? It looked a little like Chase.

John: No, no. And this is, again, one of the rules, one of the hard rules of doing these shows. These shows are very hard, is that it can't be a random obstacle. Whatever is your obstacle heading into the third or fourth act must either be a product of the villains plan which you've already set in motion, or something that the team has screwed up or succeeded too well. And not screwed up too often cause that means they suck. So-

Amy: You make it sound like we did something good on purpose. That’s awesome.

John: Yeah, every now and then. And this is just- I want-

Dean: We almost didn’t do this.

John: We almost didn't do, but this is the punchline to the bit, that they're so locked into each other-

Dean: I'm so glad we did it.

John: Yeah. I actually was ready to bail on it, you were like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let's make time.’ And the little look, and he gives them a bunch-

Dean: A bunch of crazy idiots.

John: Yeah, exactly. Now this is great, Nate’s totally lost in the need to win at this point.

Amy: Oh yeah.

Dean: I love Parker saying that, ‘The people in this line of work are unstable; we can use that.’

John: Yes.

Dean: Completely not realizing that she's in that line of work.

John: Tapping the pad look at that and look at the look Chris- that's another thing.

Amy: ‘I'm totally helping.’ That's it.

John: Gina gives a little smile which I missed the first time I saw this show.

Amy: There's a lot of little subtleties.

John: And again, second season, you start pairing up things differently. Chris and Gina found a nice rhythm for Sophie and Eliot this year that wasn't there first year, just in the pairings. And we wound up working; it was nice. And this is- yeah, she killed a guy with a mop.

Dean: I love Hardison's jealousy about Chaos, the whole ‘ugh.’

Amy: ‘Chaos.’

[Laughter]

John: Cause, you know, and it's a great thing of acting on Aldis’ part, you know he's beat him. You know that Chaos has beaten him a couple times. He's really- he’s not a pleasant loser, Hardison. And the nice little fist tap for the Kobayashi Maru.

Amy: Nice little knuckle bump, Parker.

John: Yup. Well that was another one of the little subtle things, that Parker has plainly sat down and watched like all nine Star Trek movies with Hardison because it was just something he did on a Saturday, you know?

[Laughter]

Amy: Well she wants to see, you know, what normal people do.

John: Yeah, Hardison's probably a bad example of that.

Amy: I don't think that's right- the right choice.

John: There's not- you know-

Amy: I gotta say, I love Tim in this scene.

John: Yeah. He’s really mad.

Dean: This one, out of all the cutting back and forth, this was the trickiest because it had to match rhythm, intensity-

Amy: And dialogue.

Dean: -and dialogue.

John: That's right.

Dean: This was really tricky.

John: Line by line. And that was the tricky bit, too. We had to give both of them the entire script for each one so they could know what they were doing to each other. I think- did Griffin come down the first day and watch Tim?

Dean: I actually think this was Griffin’s either first or second day on the show.

John: That's right. Tim came down to watch- yeah, so he would know what he had done physically. There's a parallel structure even with the team. This was a lot of fun. But this is one of those things that looks really elegant, but scripting, it's a little chimpy. It’s like, once you know what you're going to do, this wrote pretty easy.

Amy: Ok, yes, but I'm gonna go on record in saying that this is the best third act we've ever done in the history of Leverage. I just love it so much.

John: Well, you know what? Again, this is something you sorta learn. We- you know what? You learn how to write the show while you write the show. This is when we really where we realize you only need to do one thing an act. We so tried to buff all the people and, ‘Oh look, at the incredible plot twist’ like, you know what? They're fun characters, they're good characters, let them do one thing.

Dean: Yeah, it's fun to watch them do their thing.

John: One thing every act.

Dean: And I love how they all started to get pumped up for it. On both sides, they are gearing up for game day.

John: This is a great act break.

Amy: Nothing about that act I dont like. And I had very little to do with it.

John: This is easily- this is one of my favorite shows of the season. Of both seasons.

Amy: Mine too.

Dean: And beautifully photographed by our great cinematographer, Dave Connell.

John: That's right, because we were shooting parallel; we were shooting inside the museum and outside. You were outside running back and forth.

Dean: Very intense.

John: And this is a lot of fun. All the security guys were great. Portland once again gave us a great, great acting pool.

Amy: Go Portland!

John: And then this was a lot of fun, was setting up the snarky dialogue and Aldis and Wil basically sat and sweated in their vans-

Amy: Yeah.

John: -for 6 hours. Cause Aldis is always going, ‘Nobody knows what it's like to work in the van’. That van is hot. So he was very glad to have a playmate.

Amy: Aldis had like one full day of shooting in the van and nowhere else.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: I love the character Tim came up with here, that was great.

John: And Emily is actually the girl I went to prom with. That's where the name comes from.

Dean: Nice.

John: Yep.

Dean: Poor Emily.

John: Yeah I’m- hey!

[Laughter]

Amy: I said nothing. If you noticed, I stayed quiet and said nothing. I'm learning.

John: And Tim plays drunk, distracting guy an awful lot this season. This- and by the way, the security guard that talks him down is great, he's got a really great comedic beat. This, by the way, is a stunning sequence.

Dean and John: 10 millimeter lens.

Amy: 10 millimeter lens?

John: Down in the basement.

Dean: And look at this steadicam move - down the stairs!

Amy: Running down the stairs.

John: This is a guy walking!

Dean: And then whipping around, that is-

Amy: This is inhuman.

John: It really is.

Dean: For steadicam artists, they will understand how difficult that shot is.

John: By the way, I like the fact that we just locked Beth into the air conditioning system.

[Laughter]

John: ‘Are we gonna build one? No, there's one downstairs! Should we put Beth Riesgraf in moving machinery? If she's up for it.’

Amy: Not sure why we had to put the lock it, but that's ok.

John: It's a good look. And oh yes, it-

Dean: I think this is my favorite of all the air duct scenes, this is my favorite air duct scene.

Amy: This is actually-

John: Well like Two Horse- all of Two Horse where she was bitching while having to do it.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: This is also- we built the most complicated duct system on earth for this.

Dean: Talk about the bird, because you were there for this.

John: Oh yeah, I- we thought the bird would be CG, much like, we thought we’d be on a CG roof the series premiere, instead we wound up in Chicago 40 stories up. Dean went and found a bird-

[Laughter]

John: -a North American Kestrel. He said it would be easier to shoot a real bird that was trained, and so if you go on my blog you see pictures of the bird, but that's the last thing we did that night, so at 2 am we had this bird in a box, which was really beautiful.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And-

Amy: No birds were harmed in the making of this episode.

John: No birds were harmed. It was a really beautiful bird. But yeah, the trainer was hiding right off screen to summon the bird to get it to fly across.

Dean: This was actually one of the most difficult fight scenes we've ever shot, mainly because of the small space they were in.

John: How did you get the camera up there?

Dean: We literally locked it onto the ceiling and just let it run for the whole day. And then hoped we had good material.

John: Oh cool. That everybody would hit their marks.

Amy: She's so intense, I love it.

John: And the- him switching back over to Hebrew, this was a lot of fun. Oh and ‘now I’ve got the lasers.’

Amy: ‘No, now I’ve got the lasers!’

Dean: His arrogance was just awesome.

John: The two of them were fantastic.

Amy: He’s almost too good at it.

John: Big thanks to Derek, yet again, for building a great interface that lets the audience know exactly what’s going on.

Amy: Derek’s our graphics guy, he's amazing.

John: Does all our computer stuff. And our security guards, you know, somewhat oblivious, but good guys.

Dean: That's just the oldest gag in the world that I love.

Amy: It flickers only when they're not looking at it.

John: You know what it is, it’s the Abbott and Costello, it’s the candle on Dracula’s coffin.

[Laughter]

Dean: And I love that.

John: I love that reveal.

Dean: And he comes in dressed as, and named as, Nate Ford. I mean, that is just fabulous.

Amy: He's with the insurance company, what?

John: It is a great little, ‘Fuck you,’ from that character.

Dean: And Tim’s look at him for doing it, it’s just awesome.

John: But this was the fun of the fourth- and this was really hard when we were plotting. It's like ok, in the fourth act they have to be good, but they have to look like they’re losing. And they have to look like they're losing so bad you come into the fifth act not knowing if they won, and then we have to somehow pull it out.

Amy: Yeah. This, by the way, the scene with the two of them talking with the bird cage, was one of the first images that popped into my head when we were breaking this episode. I just love this.

John: But this duct tape- cause here's the thing, we have to shoot this direction and you have to shoot them crawling off these directions. This thing was huge, a human sized hamster trail. Took up an entire ball room for that one shot. Great fight scene, and we had talked about this, and this is a lot steamier and sexier than originally pitched.

Amy: It's literally steamy.

John: Dean was all over- like ‘I'm going to fight. I'm gonna shoot the steamiest fight scene that we've ever had.’

Dean: I thought it would be interesting to do a fight scene as a love scene.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And so the fight is actually foreplay.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And a dance. It’s really like a dance sequence. We used to always say fights are like dances because of the movement and everything, but you know, you took that very literally and everything, which was great.

Dean: Now, by the way, we've done lasers in several episodes before.

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: These are the best lasers we ever did by far.

Amy: It's pretty cool.

John: Yeah, and having them move, that was the key. It's yet another example of something that you think will be really hard, actually turns out to be a little easier and way cooler.

Dean: And way cooler.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And again, kudos to the effects artists. If you look carefully, you can see the lasers reflecting in her pupils.

John: Reflecting in her eyes. I know, that’s sick.

Amy: That's really hot.

John: That was really great. This is a big ‘they are screwed’ act out.

Amy: Oh my god, look at that!

Dean: That is so cool.

Amy: Why did I not notice that before?

John: And wet people fighting.

[Laughter]

John: You know what? We give you everything on Leverage.

Dean: Little sex, little violence.

John: And it’s good.

Dean: And now we were able to take the hat off cause we were able to use the real scar on his forehead finally in the episode!

John: Also kinda cool, Kevin, our stunt coordinator, had them fighting in Israeli military style. That they were both- they had both sort of picked up- we always had Eliot kind of fight in that style, but the fact that that would be her training-

Dean: And I love that these two are standing next to Honest Abe.

[Laughter]

John: And that's a great entrance. She's really got-

Amy: ‘Oohhh.’

John: She's got 3 great entrances this year.

Amy: Yeah, she does.

John: One I'm not gonna talk about.

Amy: Cause you haven't seen it yet.

John: You haven’t seen it yet. But the Annie Croy entrance in the season opener was one of my favorite Gina bits, and then that.

Dean: Fabulous. Gina absolutely brought her A game this season.

John: And yup, this is our double just whipping through this.

Amy: That was me.

John: That was you? I forgot about that.

[Laughter]

Amy: It's a secret skill. I don’t like to talk about it.

John: And that's the thing, that was footage of the gymnast whipping through those maneuvers with Beth popping up. The special effects people had to put the lasers through those moves to coordinate with- you know, ordinarily, you build these shots incredibly carefully. It was like, ‘No, here's the footage. Make it work.’

Dean: I love this old school crank.

John: ‘Can't hack a classic.’

[Laughter]

Amy: More competence porn.

John: More competence porn. Hardison- the staff will tell you the first year we had Christmas together, I got them all wind up radios and flashlights.

Amy: Yes.

John: I'm a big believer in emergency preparedness for the apocalypse.

Amy: He cares! He cares about us.

John: You mock.

Amy: Wants us to live through the world ending.

John: Well, you know. I play a lot of Left 4 Dead. I want to make sure my crew’s ready.

Amy: Alright, cool.

Dean: I love that - Parker not quite good at acting yet.

John: No. This is key, Parker can't do a long con. She can maintain it for maybe 4-5 minutes before her inability to mimic humans breaks down. And there we go.

Amy: By the way, this episode totally screwed my- the way I do story telling now, because I'm thinking as the criminal all the time.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: Like, it's terrible. ‘How would I break into an auction house? Well to control the motion sensors-’

Dean: I love this beat right here.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Like, ‘Ahh, screw the fight.’

[Laughter]

John: Well he knows he's won by this point, so it's just really-

Dean: And she's so turned on by the fact that he did, cause no one else has ever beaten her.

John: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, was the idea that people- it's, again, you respect someone who’s competent. And the hand- yeah the little look after the handcuff-

Amy: Wow.

John: He actually looks a little scared there.

Amy: I know, I know.

John: He's like, ‘I got you! Oh wait, what did I get?’

Amy: ‘Is it over?’

John: This is nice.

Dean: In the original longer version, they originally kissed and then fell out of frame.

John: I missed that! I missed the fact that they banged out a quickie during the middle of the con.

Amy: Uh, no.

John: Alright, fine. By the way, Christian loves the badge on the chain. Anytime he can have the badge on a chain, he’s the happiest man alive. And Hardison-

Dean: A little bit of improv-ing by Aldis Hodge here.

Amy: Indeed.

John: Aldis- and again, this pops up in the next episode, Hardison always goes a little too far. He's never able to quite control the- he’s never able to get out without pushing it too far.

Amy: Are you saying that's going to catch up to him at some point?

John: That will catch up to him. The very next episode matter of fact. And yeah, this was a lot of fun driving police cars around Portland at six o’clock in the morning.

Amy: I'm sure no one was alarmed.

Dean: Now young filmmakers, that little move there is to get on the other side of the line.

Amy: Oh yes.

John: What was that?

Dean: So we- after we established them coming out of the building the camera slowly tracks over to the other shoulder on both sides, so now we're on the opposite side of the line and all of their looks have now reversed from the previous scene.

John: You and your looks.

[Laughter]

Dean: But this allowed us to now do our car gag, because we couldn’t really blow up a car in this location.

John: At two o’clock in the morning.

Dean: So we had to whip-pan off of a look to a parked car, then later we blew up a model car and replaced it.

Amy: We did two miniature explosions.

John: I love this reveal. I love this look. It’s like, ahhh, it's like Christmas.

Dean: Bingo.

John: Yeah.

Amy: Always knew you were evil, Wil Wheaton.

Dean: And now the evil speech of evil.

Amy: The evil speech of evil!

John: The evil speech of evil! A crucial part of the- well, this isn't really an evil speech of evil. The evil speech of evil is usually when they are-

Amy: Yeah, it’s the evil griping of evil.

John: The evil speech of evil is just: define your behavior. He's straight up monologuing here.

Dean: This is a little bit more of the, ‘I would’ve gotten away if it weren’t for you meddling kids.’

John: Yes, exactly.

Amy: Are you saying this is a Scooby Doo?

John: In the original version of this, he pulls off the Wil Wheaton mask only to reveal he's still Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

John: But he wears a Wil Wheaton mask. You know what? We should've called Wil for this.

Amy: Oh my god, why didn’t we do that? Now we gotta record it again.

John: I know. Maybe- You know what? We’ll do one on iTunes with him.

Amy: We'll do a special one.

John: And we may be playing Dungeons and Dragons while we actually do the commentary. This is great now. This is tough. And talk about- we had a couple different endings for this episode in this particular scene.

Amy: Yes.

John: Go ahead.

Amy: I don't remember them, I just remember there were multiple endings. [Laughs]

John: We actually, for a couple different versions of the outline, had him lose. Had Nate and the guys lose.

Amy: Oh, that’s right.

John: And then our team conned them about the painting. And the moral was basically our team kinda sitting around, pissed off they lost, but they were still a family while the other team broke up. And it just didn't feel-

Dean: Wasn't satisfying.

John: It was one of those good writer beats- and that's why Dean’s actually a very valuable producing partner, because he's all heart.

[Laughter]

John: Seriously man, he’s- and he’s, ‘I don't feel it.’

Amy: And we have none.

John: And we have none, because we’re writers and our blackened little hearts are shriveled away.

Amy: And our dark souls.

John: It's very easy when you're writing a con and heist show to get a little too clever for your own good.

Amy: It’s true.

John: And Dean’s a very good barometer on, ‘You know, do I really-? Am I gonna be happy with this?’ And you know, he’s right.

Dean: I like a little fromage.

Amy: Well what were the reasons-?

John: No, not fromage, but just, you know-

Amy: I think one of the reasons we were gonna have them losing was that this was gonna be episode three or four, and then we had the wild thought that we would bring the evil team back for episode seven.

John: Yes.

Amy: And sort of do, you know, ‘We lost the first one, but we won the second one.’

Dean: There's the recall of your Emily story.

John: Yes, that's right, the little go to the dance with. No it's- oh and that's great.

Dean: Again, that was Apollo who came up with that idea.

John: Yeah, that they're picking-

Dean: A lockpicking race.

John: And also Beth tossing the lockpick into the air and catching it? After a week with Apollo, she’d really gotten disgustingly good. I think they're actually picking there.

Amy: Well Apollo has gone on record as saying Beth can actually be a professional pickpocket if she wanted to.

John: She's got soft hands.

Dean: And this is, again, one of those scenes where Christian shows you how good he is at comedy. How subtle he is when he realizes she may be the person who actually shot him.

Amy: Look at that look!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah.

Amy: His eyes widen just like a millimeter, but-

John: Yeah. And that was an improv, I think. ‘Y’all nasty’. He's supposed to just look at it.

Amy: That’s awesome.

John: And Griffin doing the Nate Ford, ‘I'm an honest man’ speech here, incredibly uncomfortably!

Dean: Well, we always want the villain to suffer and this is how he suffers.

John: He’s just sweating it out.

Amy: He's getting more satisfaction out of watching Griffin Dunne lose than he is from getting the painting back to the clients.

John: Which is something wrong.

Amy: Yes, that's not right.

John: Sophie's actually the moral center of this scene.

Amy: This is the episode where they, in a way, sort of switch roles. She becomes the honest thief, and he becomes-

John: They were a lovely couple. God, these actors were nice.

Dean: Just amazing local actors.

John: No, this was a lot of fun. And then, again, giving him just enough rope to hang himself with. And making sure that he's pissed off enough to come back in season three.

Dean: The other part of this scene I like is, it really shows how far Sophie has come, that she’s actually not just doing this, she’s actually, really- she’s drank the kool aid by now. She really believes in what they're doing.

John: To a little bit more than Nate at this point.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Which, you know, and that- we really took the, ‘You killed Sophie Deaveraux.’ And the funeral was a late addition; that wasn't in the first outline.

Dean: Yeah.

Amy: No, it wasn't. That was something that we added later.

John: Yeah it was.

Amy: But that was an element of knowing we were gonna lose Gina and trying to set up an awesome departure.

John: Yup. And that bomb thing wound up being really- Because originally- it was originally a sort of investigatory clue path and then when we lose Gina it's like, alright let's scare the audience a little here.

Dean: How did you come up with this bit of how they tracked-?

John: I think that was some geek bullshit I had in the notebook, I’m fairly sure. Whenever it’s some tiny minutiae of how phones work, it’s you know-

Amy: Good old GPS.

John: Yeah well, you know what? I think at the time there were some protests about the fact that you couldn't turn off the GPS tracking in your phone, and it was- they were talking about a lot in England you being able to do that, so that just kinda stuck.

Amy: Well I imagine all this would-

Dean: There's Chase!

Amy: See, yeah, there's Chase. I knew I saw him at some point.

John: Is this-? Yeah, here we go. All these great local actors.

Dean: And I love the security guard; this woman is fabulous.

Amy: So much personality, only a few lines.

John: And again, this is one of those things where you are trying to come up with a really clever way to screw him and then you suddenly realize, no, it’s just a box full of paintings; there's nothing really subtle about this. You’re just going to jail forever.

Dean: But in a way, this is what makes it work. ‘This is the real one.’

John: We had a couple of different notes, too.

Amy: He lost by winning. Cause what he wanted was the paintings, and we gave him the paintings, but that’s what did him over in the end.

John: Another rule: the villain must be brought down by their own sin.

Dean: Now this, for me, is my favorite scene for a number of reasons.

John: It’s a good scene.

Dean: First of all, just the lighting. We got this at the perfect time of day.

John: Yeah, how'd we get the lighting Dean?

[Laughter]

Dean: We accidentally went over that day and somehow went into-

Amy: Oh accidentally?

John: Oh did the director somehow go over in the morning, so we just happened to be shooting at the magic hour?

Dean: It was odd how that worked out.

Amy: Oh interesting.

Dean: That we just happened to be in magic hour to shoot the romantic scene.

Amy: That is so funny.

John: What I love is the fact that you’d never work again as a director for boning your producer that bad, except you’re the producer?

[Laughter]

John: No, this scene is stunning.

Dean: They both knocked it out of the park on this day. And for me, it's weird to say it because I directed the episode, but this is the best almost-kiss I’d ever seen before. And it's really the way they did it.

John: Yeah. This was another one where it was like, set up the cameras, let the actors work.

Dean: This was also a callback to what happened in the episode at the school, because-

Amy: Fairy Godparents.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Cause in the Fairy Godparents that she had never really been honest.

John: Exactly.

Dean: And here she realizes she doesn't know who she is anymore because she's been so many other people for so long.

Amy: She got dumped because she wasn't being truthful with her boyfriend, and she actually recited all the names of her aliases, and this is sort of the callback to her having to bury them in order to move on.

John: Yeah, she's more attached to fake people than real people and it’s caught up with her. And this is the moment where Sophie Deaveraux becomes a better human being than Nate Ford.

Dean: And that red coat was totally Gina.

John: That was Gina. That's right, she came in with that she and Nadine went hunting for that. This is a great almost kiss.

Dean: Ow! Ow!

John: This was an Italian over. This is- what's that terminology?

Dean: It’s a French over. Rather than being in the front of them, you're over their backs and then this walk away.

Amy: The Italian over is you're drinking wine while you’re doing it.

John: And this walkaway was fantastic with that light right there!

Amy: Through the trees! It's so pretty.

John: You knew what scene was good when we were shooting it because I was watching it on the monitor and I turned around and all the local PA’s were standing behind us watching the scene and two of the girls were crying.

Dean: Yeah. It was awesome.

John: You just really nailed it. And that was going to be the summer season ender, 207, and wound up being still a great send off for that character. And really one of the best episodes of the two years I gotta say.

Amy: Yup, it's one of my favorites for sure.

Dean: For me it's almost like the two part season finale of one, season one, done in one episode.

Amy: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: So thank you for watching.

John: Thank you for watching.

Amy: Thanks everybody!

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Eliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 7 #Season 2 Episode 7 #The Two Live Crew Job

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