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leverage-commentary · 4 years ago

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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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leverage-commentary · 4 years ago

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 6, The Top Hat Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hello I’m Dean Devlin, Executive Producer.

Christine: I’m Christine Boylan, one of the writers.

Peter: Peter O’Fallon, Director.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer.

Scott: Scott Veach, the other writer.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer. And this is the Top Hat Job.

John: See, I was hoping we’d pretend that there were like twelve more people [All Laugh] in this, like, baffling list. Uh, the Top Hat Job was born actually of two things. One, Scott Veach, who’s a name you haven’t heard before on the show, came in as a freelancer to pitch a magician show. And at the same time, Tim Hutton had said that he would like to play a magician.

[Chris and Christine Laugh]

John: And Tim makes very few requests of us, so it seemed like not a bad idea. The question is, of course, well, how would you go about doing this? Um either Christine or Scott, can you tell me where we got the villain from?

Christine: Uh... where did- where did we get the villain from?

John: I think it was-

Christine: Uh, was a-

Scott: Oh, yeah.

Christine: -magazine article. Again, I believe Albert Kim brought that into the room-

John: Yes.

Christine: -a lot of these, this season we all had a hand in everything and I love that. Albert brought in this article about a foods company that was knowingly putting out salmonella-laced meals, frozen meals on the market and we were just really upset.

John: As a matter of fact, the really ridiculous villainous thing we have this guy say, which is, ‘You’re supposed to cook it to this temperature. It’s on the package; that’s why we’re not liable’ is something that company actually said-

Christine: Completely true.

John: Without mentioning the fact that even in their laboratories, they could never get it that hot.

[All Chuckle]

John: So these guys, the real life villains, are far worse than the enormously cartoonish evil guys we have in this show.

Christine: Absolutely.

John: And now, who’s this actress?

Chris: This is, uh, Jennifer, uh… Skyler.

John: Chris always has the cast list, thats-

Chris: Yes, I got my cast list right here. This is Jennifer Skyler, she’s a local Portland actress, and tried out and was fantastic.

Peter: She did a great job.

John: Now Peter, this, y’know, I think this is another one we really cast almost entirely out of Portland, right?

Peter: All but the bad guy. I think the bad guy-

Chris: I think so, yeah. I think-

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

John: What was it like working with, like, the Portland humans, Peter?

Peter: Overall it was pretty good. We had a little bit of uh, well, you know, and it turned out very well, thank you.

[All Laugh]

John: We got a state grant on the line here, Peter, so don’t screw this up for us, man.

Peter: No, she was- she was great, she was uh, she did a really good job. The concept was to try to add as much pressure to her so that you’d have compassion for her, and as you can see right where we are right now, she does a very good job of it.

John: And during the uh, during the... um, horrible credit sequence we all hate.

[Christine Laughs]

John: And I can say that, ‘cause it’s the DVD, they’ve already bought it.

Peter: Saga sell.

[All Laugh]

John: Yeah, it’s the saga sell. That’s actually, you know Pete, it’s the first time somebody’s brought up the phrase ‘saga sell’. Uh, who wants to define the ‘saga sell’ for the nice folks?

Peter: That was uh, I did the show The Riches and that was the bane of our existence, was trying to sell what the show is about, that’s what the saga sell-

John: In thirty seconds you have to remind new viewers what the show is about, and annoy old viewers.

Christine: Wow.

John: And now, why is this scientist drinking? Someone tell me that.

Christine: Because her last name is Jameson.

[All Laugh]

Christine: You’re welcome.

Chris: I believe that was your addition to the- to the character, wasn’t it? I mean-

Christine: I do like naming characters, yes.

Chris: She was initially known as ‘plucky research girl’, I believe?

John: Science girl. Plucky science girl.

Christine: Many variations on that.

Chris: And then a lot of the- there was a big cry out in the development of the story: “more plucky science girl!” And I think Christine, you added the little wrinkle that she likes to— likes to drink a few.

Christine: She does like to drink a few. I’m a big fan of uh—

Peter: Drink a lot.

Christine: Yeah, she does like to drink a lot. Um, I’m a big fan of victims who like to get involved and crusade a little bit and we hadn’t had one in a while, so getting her involved was a lot of fun.

John: It’s always tricky, because the victim, in theory, you don’t want to endanger these innocent people who’ve always been in some sort of danger, but if you don’t check in with them or don’t make them present in the story, they disappear.

Christine: But she’s plucky, has no discernible friends or family, and is a drunk, [All Laugh] so I think it’s okay that we go ahead and, you know, put her in danger.

Peter: And we decided on the set to have her play that— she’s playing really, uh, she really enjoys Tim’s company; would like to be with Tim a lot more than she’s letting on.

John: Well, you know, Tim’s a dreamy guy, right?

Christine: He is.

John: You know, when I use his photo and pretend to be him on the internet, I do very well.

[All Laugh]

Scott: I do that same thing!

John: Yeah, exactly, there’s a lot of guys pretending to be Tim Hutton on the internet, so if you ever get something dirty from Tim Hutton on the internet, it might not be him.

[All Laugh]

Christine: The actual Tim Hutton [unintelligible].

Chris: Interesting thing in his little reaction here. When I was watching this, it really, it took me back to Ordinary People because, remember him playing flustered, in Ordinary People, around the girl?

John: Yeah.

Chris: It’s very much, you see it on his face right here.

Peter: Little nervous.

Chris: It’s kinda right there-

Christine: Yeah, there’s an ‘aw shucks’ quality to it. I love it.

John: And it was interesting because, trying to get the Sophie character, trying to reconcile like what was going on here, was the understanding that they had screwed up whatever they’d kind of had first season. And so this is the phase where, you know, even if Sophie doesn’t necessarily want to see Nate off with somebody else, she knows he has to at least have some sort of human relationship—

Christine: Mhm.

John: — that this isolation that he’s engaged himself in will eventually, you know, isn’t healthy, and it is, as a matter of fact, what eventually destroys him over the course of the second season.

Christine: Mhm. Spoiler. [Laughs]

Peter: And she’s also trying to uh—

John: I think people know it’s not ending well. [Christine Laughs]

Peter: And she’s trying to break his balls a little by leaving him there alone.

John: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s great, that’s— this take goes forever.

Timestamp: [5:00]

Christine: Yeah, he has this nice uncomfortable beat.

John: And still—

[All Laugh]

Scott: Ooooooh…

Peter: Well… so… uh.

Christine: Been on that date.

[All Laugh]

Peter: What about them Yankees? How ‘bout those Yankees? [More Laughter] So, you gonna make a move there, son? [laughter continues]

John: So—

Peter: No, I’m not.

John: No, no. Aaand thank you, sir.

Christine:And, leave the bottle.

John: Another drink.

Chris: One more drink.

[All Laugh]

John: Yeah she’s gonna be very lonely, looking like that, drunk, in a bar in Boston. She’s not gonna do well. Uh, this is actually interesting. Now, Scott, you wrote a big chunk of this sequence, if I remember correctly. This is interesting, this is not something we usually see on the show; uh, why don’t you tell us about it?

Scott: You mean where, where they’re failing?

John: Yes. But Scott—

Scott: They never fail!

John: Scott came in and made the characters you love suck. Now Scott, explain why you did that.

Scott: [Laughs] Uh, yeah. No, but it was, you know, I think it was a, it was a group idea. But it was- the idea was it’d be really fun to see them get overconfident, and to see what happens when, you know; it’s usually, they’re so good at everything that they do, what happens when that sort of falls apart and how do they react? And so we thought it’d be really fun to see what that looks like.

John: How did you— how many takes to get him to balance the damn ball on his forehead?

Peter: We stuck it to his head. [John laughs]

Christine: Aww, that’s adorable.

Scott: There’s some, there’s some tape under there.

Peter: The other one too, is a- the- the bandana on his head is covering a scar—

Christine: Oh, yes, he is.

John: Oh, this was this episode.

Peter: — that was left because, in one of the fights he got caught and got stitches.

Chris: We’ll get to that; that’s a good story there.

Christine: This is the one, yeah.

Peter: So we added the scarf to cover the stitches.

John: Yeah, and it’s also, it’s interesting because it is- it is something they’re doing, and you know, when he says after Tim walks in, you know, there’s no blueprint fairy. The idea is, this scene, all this act here, is what happens in act zero of every other show. Like in every other show, they’re doing this, they’re showing up as pizza guys, they’re getting sketches of buildings and stuff, we just never bother to see it because this time they, they—

Dean: Actually this particular scene here was not actually, was not in the episode—

Scott: Oh, that’s right.

Dean: — when we came in, when we came in short, [All Laugh] we added this scene, and one of the things I’m so proud about is that it seamlessly goes into this scene, which was part of the show—

Chris: That I could not believe.

Dean: And it actually ended up adding a very nice-

John: The other side of the door, that first side of the door was shot how many months after the- this side of the door?

Dean: About a month.

Scott: Probably a month, it was probably about a month. And see if you can track, uh, Gina’s pregnancy there.

[All Laugh]

Scott: It’s an interesting thing.

John: Yeah, it’s really— you’re kind of in a medium-close there. There she’s okay.

Christine: She’s glowing, she’s gorgeous.

John: She is glowing.

Peter: We decided to give Tim a lot of movement here because the concept is, he knows it’s all gonna go bad—

John: Yeah.

Peter: — they don’t.

Scott: He’s convinced it’s gonna go bad; he’s gonna sit down and wait.

John: Well, in the research, it was a little stunning. When we started investigating these food companies, because, you know, in the show it’s always, how do you have a threat? And uh, the scale— the amount of money that these guys throw around, is truly boggling, and the depths to which they will go to cover up their maleficence is uh, it’s… they’re not putting people in shallow graves, but they’re ruining people’s lives.

Peter: Did you notice his name?

John: What’s that?

Peter & Christine: Oleg.

John: Oleg, why?

Peter: I dunno.

[All Laugh]

Christine: Damn sexy name.

Scott: Yeah, I don’t think that was in the script.

John: I like that it’s “Super Hot Pizza”, because you wouldn’t want to buy another kind.

Dean: But I also notice that this- this entire sequence, the camera never stops moving, and it— just love the way you use the camera in this sequence.

Peter: Try to keep the heat going on, the pressure.

John: Now when you’re planning on shooting something that cross cuts between two to three situations, I mean, you know, are you trying to match actual camera left-to-right movement? Or do you just keep it in motion and assume that when you’re cutting it that’s gonna play?

Peter: I try to match it, right-to-left. You know, the idea was that Tim’s static, and he’s just sitting there doing, uh, you know, he’s confident about what’s going on while the rest of them are panicking.

John: He’s Reed Richards back there, he knows.

Scott: It’s like his version of TV, to watch this.

Peter: Exactly.

John: Nice fight, by the way.

Scott: By the way, this was literally maybe twelve hours after he’d gotten stitched up, he did this fight.

Peter: If that, yeah.

Christine: He is a superhero, seriously.

Peter: He takes it very seriously.

John: I always say, shit kicker is genetic.

Dean: And I think that’s our first ‘in the nuts’ shot of the series.

John: I think it is.

Peter: I like to do those nut shots.

Christine: Nice.

John: That was in your contract.

Dean: And I love the whole Parker thing here, this whole Parker exchange here was just inspired.

John: Yes, her idea of witty banter just doesn’t quite cut it.

[All Laugh]

John: But yeah, neither one really gets it.

Christine: Who put Parker in the glasses? A+. She looks great.

John: Thanks for bringing the lesbian vibe tonight, Christine.

Christine: You know, I’m here, you know, I’m representing all kinds of people.

Chris: Here’s another shot.

John: Nice green screen. Have you not seen that nice green screen? Nice green screen shot. Um yeah, there’s a lot of green screen in this one actually, just because there’s a lot of Parker hanging places.

Dean: I love this Aldis ending here, trying to, like, put a good spin on it.

[All Laugh]

Peter: And Aldis was quite at adding little quips here and there, and the fun stuff.

John: Yeah, a lot of— by this point, these actors know these characters well enough that, you know, a lot of times you’re just trying to get out of their way when they’re on pace.

Peter: This was a note that Chris gave me, which I loved, which is that they’re, like, children.

Timestamp: [10:00]

Chris: They’re siblings.

Peter: And Tim’s the father.

Chris: And Dean, you were here for this, I believe—

Dean: I was here for the poking.

Chris: And I think that I gotta give you credit for kinda, getting the whole poking thing. You know, ‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.’

Dean: Yeah, we just wanted to get that vibe of ‘Daaad.’

[All Laugh]

Peter: ‘He’s bugging me, stop it!’

John: The ice thing we actually established early in the season; the idea that they’re constantly raiding Nate’s apartment for the tools- his life has turned upside down, at some point, three AM, he will wake up and they will be in his apartment, like, bandaging themselves up with his stuff.

Christine: Eating cereal.

John: Yes, eating cereal. He has not had ice for a drink in, like, four months; it’s all for Eliot’s bruises.

Scott: ‘She’s poking me!’

[All Laugh]

Peter: ‘Leave me alone, dad.’

Dean: Love it.

John: Now, this whole section where they introduce how we get the information because these guys couldn’t get in, uh, Erik with a ‘k’.

Christine: Always evil.

Peter: I love the reaction with the ‘k’, too, here, that she’s uh, ‘I didn’t know that.’

[All Laugh]

Dean: And she goes, ‘Everyone knows that.’ [All Laugh] And he’s like, ‘What the fuck?‘

Christine: I got a lot of weird Facebook messages after this aired, by the way, from Eriks with ‘k’s.

John: You actually get all three character’s attitudes flawlessly there, which is: Parker just lives in a slightly different world, it’s about ten degrees off of everyone else; and Sophie treats her like its just, oh, I didn’t know it was that way in your world; while Nate, Nate is the only sane man in an insane world.

Chris: Here, look at this, we gotta give credit to Apollo Robbins, here. Apollo gave us [unintelligible].

Dean: I love this camera work, I love this idea of attaching the camera to the packet.

John: What is it? Is it just a button cam, or…?

Peter: Eh, we just attached the camera with a c-stand onto the box itself.

John: Oh cool. Um, that whole trojan horse thing comes from Apollo Robbins.

Chris: Apollo Robbins, our consultant, gives us all kinds of, you know-

Peter: And you will see a short little cameo of him in the back in one of the scenes.

John: Oh cool!

Peter: We’ll point him out.

Chris: We’ll talk more about him later.

[All Laugh]

Peter: Oh that was a great idea. Speedos are always good.

John: But there’s a hacker conference in vegas called DefCon every year, and that year, the trojan bluetooth cellphone happened to be the big thing of that year, so we ganked that. Um, you know, we really should, like McGuyver, leave out one crucial element, because we have taught people to do fairly horrible things on this show, and only later do we realize, oh we…we taught them exactly how to do that.

[All Laugh]

John: We should have rethought that.

Dean: Oops.

John: And then they’re talking about the horrible corporate meeting.

Chris: I think that was- Albert Kim, who worked at Time Warner and their magazines for many years, introduced us to the state of the company meeting, where they often have magicians. That was, kind of, what brought the whole episode together.

John: And remember, I had done a bunch of those, and that’s why as soon as Albert said that, I was like oh god, I actually did one of these shows when they announced layoffs right before I went on.

Christine: That was a great day in their world.

Peter: Well that’s a tough room.

Chris: Because folks, surprisingly, to do a show - a heist/con show involving a magician, is not the easiest thing in the world.

[All Laugh]

John: No, really, oddly enough.

Chris: When that’s your mandate…

John: Yeah, we don’t usually start backwards like that, but you know what, this actually turned out pretty coherent, considering.

Dean: I love this whole magic bit here, I think this was inspired.

Christine: This kid’s great.

John: This guy is so- now why are they dressed like fif- by the way, Parker and Hardison here are either, a) dressed like a fifties’ couple or b) like the couple from Thriller, from the horror movie Thriller.

Christine: I thought b), I thought we were going for that-

Dean: They are college kids.

John: They’re college kids, is that how the flappers are dressing now?

Chris: This is Tim Gouran as Chronos.

John: [wheezing] Chronos… Oh the nipple rings are horrifying.

Christine: They’re fantastic.

Peter: The guy does- the guy’s channelling...what’s his name?

All: Chris Angel.

Peter: The way he does the movement, and all of that, we asked him to just study him and go wild with it.

Christine: I remember his audition tape; made me laugh.

Peter: I love that she’s reluctant to go up to the- first she goes, ‘Oh no no no, I don’t wanna go-’

Christine: ‘No, I don’t like magic-’

John: God, he’s so cheesy- oh man, and then him showing her exact- and that’s the- it’s interesting that the entire show’s, kind of, about trade secrets. Because you know, the whole idea is the advantage these characters have is, they know how these tricks work, which is a trade secret. Wow, that’s a really creepy look.

[All Laugh]

John: “Silence!”

Scott: Oh, he was great.

John: I almost enjoy this sequence more without words. Seriously, I’m like half a Guinness in and I’m loving this.

Chris: And kudos to the assistant, giving the bored reactions.

Peter: She’s just bored out of her mind.

John: I believe that’s actually in the script, right? ‘Even his assistant doesn’t like him.’

Peter: ‘That’s my girlfriend; that’s her up there, quit looking.’

Chris: A lot of great ad libs here from them.

John: Again, this is one of those places where when it’s, you know, Aldis and Beth, you just kinda get out of their way, and you assume it’s gonna work out.

Timestamp: [15:00]

[All Laugh]

Dean: This guy is so great.

Christine: We’re all just watching him.

John: I almost want to bring him back now; now that I’m watching this again?

Dean: He’s so over the top; it’s awesome.

Christine: Can we please bring him back? He’s adorable.

Peter: And once again, kudos to our magic… what’s his name again?

Christine: Apollo.

Peter: He helped him out with all these, how they do it.

Chris: He designed the box. I mean he did so much; he added so much to this episode.

Peter: That was a mistake, and it was hilarious, you know, with the sword; she grabbed it and pulled it in, and I thought it was hilarious.

John: No, I’m actually- I’m friends with David Ackroyd who designs tricks for Penn & Teller, and the whole, sort of, the loathing for stage magicians that these guys have is hilarious. Oh, the eskimo kisses. And the rings. Yup, I think we went through a whole day of, like, looking at tricks and seeing what could malfunction in the most annoying way.

Christine: That was an odd day of YouTube clips, I’ll tell you. We went down the rabbit hole there.

John: No odder than usual, really.

Christine: No odder than usual, it’s true.

Chris: I love the way this actor dropped the character at one point, like “stop it!”

John: That’s really, that’s dark, ‘cause now I can actually- now as he runs off-

Peter: ’Is there a surgeon? Is there a surgeon?’

John: Like, with Parker actually trapped in the box still, nice. And, another innocent human destroyed in our quest for justice.

Christine: Not so innocent. Not so innocent.

John: Yeah, that’s true.

Christine: He was sexually harassing his assistant, I believe it says in the text.

Chris: Here’s George Castillo, who’s playing Dan Markland, head of security, who is our bad guy’s henchman.

John: He’s the Busey. We can say Busey, Busey is the word we use all the time-

Peter: And here’s Tim, having fun.

Christine: Oh no.

John: If you haven’t heard the first season DVDs, the Busey is based on Gary Busey’s character in Lethal Weapon.

Dean: Are those Apollo’s hands?

Chris: Those are Apollo’s hands.

John: Uh, who is the thug who brings physical violence so that the main bad guy doesn’t have to. Yes, that’s Apollo doing the close up stuff. Although Tim did a little bit of it; Tim really got into it.

Dean: Oh, he was into it.

Peter: And again, Tim handled this so well, the idea that the- they just start pushing away and go through it all- they just start pushing their way in.

John: Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s the, you know, all of heist and confidence shows are just, just keep it moving so people can’t ask questions.

Dean: And carefully placing Gina behind the box.

[All Laugh]

Peter: She’s always carefully placed, you’ll notice.

Christine: We couldn’t have laundry in this one, so we, you know.

John: What is Beth- what is Beth wearing?

Dean: This got more and more obvious as the season went on.

Peter: I’ll bet.

John: Beth is like Neil Gaiman’s Death back there.

Christine: I know, I love it. Again, A+ Parker look right here. Just, all these Parker outfits are terrific.

John: And it’s interesting, it’s really interesting because you got, everyone’s got a very distinct look; in particular I love Aldis in the suit, as the engineer, as the kind of like.. you know, you can totally see how that character lives his life. He dresses up, he goes to these shows, he’s actually based- that character’s based on a British fictional character called Jonathan Creek, which is a British mystery show about a guy who designs magic tricks. He’s not the magician, he’s the guy who designs the impossible and he solves impossible crimes, and you know, when you have five humans, coming up with a role for everyone to play, never easy. That’s why Chris is actually in the box.

Peter: Oh, this is the rabbit gag.

Christine: Oh, the rabbit. I love the camera work here.

Chris: And this is all one shot, watch, watch this.

Dean: This is a beautiful steadicam shot.

Peter: Our steadicam operator was, uh, a bit nervous when we started, but- except for this.

Dean: Oh, this is awesome; one of my favorite flashbacks.

John: Now this- And we have not done a lot of the flashes this year-

Christine: Look at their face. [All Laugh] That’s great.

Scott: That was my mom’s favorite moment.

Christine: “It’s not the same thing.“

Chris: And the rabbit’s gone.

John: That was actually written as just an anecdote, and then we hadn’t done a flash in so long, it’s like, you know what, what the hell, let’s bury a kid.

Dean: And what’s the story with the girl who played Parker? Wasn’t there a story behind that? That she didn’t get to do that part in a different episode?

Chris: I think that’s right, she got cut out earlier.

John: Yeah, she got cut from the MMA one, the flashback of Parker’s first concert. And then, so instead, we gave this one where we buried her alive, in a backyard in Vancouver, Washington.

Christine: That girl’s adorable.

Chris: Backyard? That was a public park.

[All Laugh]

Christine: Buried a girl alive in a public park.

Peter: Marc Roskin shot that, by the way.

Chris: Yes, Marc Roskin did a fantastic job shooting that.

Christine: Only on Leverage.

Chris: That’s how accommodating they are in Portland.

John: ‘Hi, uh, listen, we’re the film department. We’d like to bury a twelve year old girl alive in a public park, if you can-’

Christine: ‘Great, great, we’ll get you a brunette, we’ll get you a redhead-’

Peter: I actually had a bet with the location department, because I’ve been all over the world shooting, where you could never dig a park up. In Portland you can.

John: No, they’re very happy to have us there.

Chris: We have eminent domain powers in Portland.

[All Laugh]

John: ‘We’re here seize your home.’ ‘What?’

Scott: We’re like diplomats.

John: To be fair, we couldn’t have made this year without Portland. I mean, seriously, the locations we got?

Peter: No.

John: Oh yeah. ‘Where’s the rabbit?’ Nice running gag, by the way, I don’t believe that was in the script?

Peter: No, that was just [unintelligible].

Chris: Nah, that came up on set.

Timestamp: [20:00]

John: Nice. You didn’t actually lose the rabbit, did you?

Peter: No. No white rabbits were harmed filming this show.

John: Now, have you shot a con or heist show before?

Peter: Uh, I did The Riches.

John: The Riches, yeah. So— but that’s almost more of a character piece, than a— ‘cause they, they’re, he’s running a long con, but not—

Peter: Yeah, big tycoon, he’s lying to everyone all the time.

John: Yeah, exactly. Was there any—

Peter: Not quite this… this…

John: Yeah this is more heisty, y’know, was there any prep you did coming into this, just like looking at stuff, or, uh-? I’m always curious, because we have different directors come in, it’s a very different kind of show. It’s not like, say, ER, where it’s the hospital, there are doctors—

Peter: Everybody runs a steadicam shot all the way through.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: No, actually, I just uh— I watched the, like, five shows that Dean had sent me, and in the big picture I got the idea, I mean the concept. Also, I love that Tim wanted to do the magic so badly that we ended up writing, what, four or five more pages that we shot for days on end. But it was great; it was really fun. And for me it was all movement; the whole show is about movement.

John: Yeah.

Peter: And we added a whole bunch of guards everywhere so, I wanted to have an extra pressure all the time, so every time they step around the corner there’s more security people walking around, so it appears as though—

Dean: I love this guy, who played the uh, the CFO.

Christine: Oh, yeah.

Chris: This is, uh, Jack Armstrong, another local Portland actor.

Dean: This bit was great, what was the story behind this bit?

John: I actually dropped this one in the script based on a guy who had been driving around, um, San Francisco with a RFID receiver, ganking people’s passport numbers out of their pockets. He was, like, driving around in a car, and the RFID chips were giving off enough of a signal that he could read their data as he drove by.

Peter: God.

John: So getting your car to do it was a piece of cake. I mean, getting your phone to do it at that range, eminently believable. That is one of the things about this show, is you spend an awful lot of time telling America they’re nowhere near as safe as they think they are.

[All Laugh]

Peter: This uh, this gag in the elevator, uh, the giant bar broke, and damn near took off… uh, who’s head?

John: Aldis?

Peter: Aldis, and Chris, actually. Both of them.

John: No, don’t hurt Aldis. I mean Chris, has the shit-kicker genes; he heals in like a day. Seriously he’s got some weird Wolverine stuff going on, but now, don’t bang Aldis up, man. You know, that’s weird, that happened on a pilot I shot in San Diego. They had a wire rig for two thousand pounds, had two hundred and twenty pounds of people on it, snapped, put them through like fifteen feet; dropped them right through the ceiling of a hut they were supposed to fall through. Now luckily, they were supposed to fall through the hut, so we got the shot.

Peter: Right.

John: And they were fine. [Laughs] But the point is—

Peter: Well, we had one take, we had one take of this, that’s it.

Scott: Yeah, this is it.

Peter: Luckily it worked really well.

Dean: Oh this is great, uh, falling through the, uh…

Chris: The elevator shaft.

Dean: The elevator shaft. Now part of the- this gag actually came because of TNT, right? What was the story behind that?

Chris: TNT said, ‘How come the in the script it just has him falling up? And we suggest her falling through the elevator shaft.’ And we said, ‘Well, if you’d like to pay for a shot of them falling through the elevator shaft, [All Laugh] we’d be happy to shoot it.’ And credit to TNT, they did.

Dean: That’s so great.

Peter: And I love– again, they’re arguing like — they’re back at arguing like kids, about who goes out and what they do and how they handle it.

Dean: Yeah, I love Eliot’s one, it’s like, ‘Who wants to be me? I punch people.’

Chris: ‘I get punched and kicked.’

John: That’s it. That is his lot in life, man, and he knows it.

Peter: And this was actually a auditorium from a large corporation.

John: Yeah. This is how they do those shows, man; those shows are death. They’re a lot of money, but they are death.

Chris: Hook it to something. There we go.

John: Now you shoot— Now, when you’re shooting up, this is green-, this is all computer generated right?

Chris: There we go.

John: But when you’re shooting up through the top of the elevator, was that green too, or—

Peter: Yes. I love his reaction here.

John: Yeah. And down.

Dean: I like the little pause, though. Like, everything’s okay, and then, Bugs Bunny.

John: It is Bugs Bunny, isn’t it?

All: Woah!

Dean: And that is digital debris, my friends.

Christine: Wow.

John: That is digital debris. So let me get this straight - we dropped digital pieces of cardboard, but we used a giant bar to lift our actor and slam him against the top of an elevator.

Peter: And slam him hard, too.

John: Okay. Good, that’s good, I’m glad we got our priorities straight.

Chris: There was a little smile from Aldis there because it was just so fun. I mean it was like, we couldn’t— and we only had one shot at it. I mean, you really wanted him to be scared, but it was just too impossible when he got pulled to the ceiling.

Peter: And we decided to add this part at the end where they drop.

[All Laugh]

Dean: “You didn’t see that coming, seriously?”

John: We actually, uh, it was a big debate this year, and most people watching the DVD might now know Jeri Ryan, until she shows up, when she would get her ‘seriously?’, because being allowed to say ‘seriously’ is part of the whole ‘you’re part of the team'.

Timestamp: [25:00]

Christine: On the writing staff, too.

John: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Peter: Where did Erik Casten come from, the name?

John: Uh, clearances. [Laughter] Seriously man, we accuse people of such horrible, actionable crimes, we absolutely will.

Christine: Well what do we say, K's are evil?

John: K's are evil.

Christine: S's, P's, you know, things like that. And so I, you know—

John: An F or a Ph, that's usually evil.

Christine: I like to work with sounds, when we're naming.

Scott: Oh here he's covering his scar there, too.

John: Yeah.

Scott: If you guys are paying attention, he puts his hat back on.

John: And again, it's, it's—'cause we just did the commentary for The Order 23 Job, and this is another one where it's just, you just take Aldis and Chris, you let them be annoyed with each other, and you set them off on a separate plotline. And that will bring you amusement.

Peter: Yes. Mark Roskin shot this scene also, because my wife was having surgery.

John: Oh I'm sorry, is she okay?

Peter: Yeah, she's fine. God bless you guys though, it's the only time I've actually been able to leave. [All Laugh] 'My wife's having surgery.' 'Sorry, you can't-- have to stay.'

John: Well, Marc Roskin directed, uh, MMA, the MMA job which is on the set of discs and everything; he's actually our Producer/Director up there, who stayed up in Portland. So he picked up a lot of-- he shot a lot of stuff. We're... we shoot in seven days when we should really shoot in, oh, ten. Right?

Christine: Everybody gets to work with Rosky, that's uh, that's the way it goes.

John: That's the tradition. Uh, which hack is he doing right now?

Chris: I think this is when he hacks into the camera.

John: Oh, as he hacks into the remote camera.

Chris: He hacks into the remote camera.

John: That's another thing we—

Dean: Yeah this is when we decided to have that— the camera on his belt buckle allowed them to see what he was doing on the computer.

John: The phone camera.

Dean: The phone camera.

Christine: Right.

John: Also eminently doable. It's a bit cludgy, but you can- you can do it.

Peter: Tim's bombing here, which— we decided to give an arc here-

John: See, this is my question, because Tim's bombing, alright, and that's what I found delightful, is the fact that Nate Ford is finally not good at something.

All: Right.

John: What was the audience thinking? These are Portland extras, they've been told they're seeing Tim Hutton, did he just go up and suck, or did you tell them he was going to suck?

Scott: No, they were—

Peter: We told them that—Uh, we stood up and we showed all the uh, audience reactions, and Tim was up there with me and I was yelling out 'Okay now he really sucks; no, he really, really sucks' [All Laugh] 'No, he's boring', and they would all get really bored.

Chris: Now here were these real tricks that Apollo Robbins taught them to do, we did— we kinda had a little magic bootcamp while this filming was going on. And uh, you know these are all things Apollo brought up there, and we choreographed; they just had a ball.

Peter: It was astounding the show still turned out short with the four pages we added there. [All Laugh] Nothing but magicians.

Chris: But, but it's a testament to the pace of this show, I mean you really- it just flies.

John: It's, uh— and she's having another drink.

Peter: More drink.

Christine: Still in the bar.

John: Seriously, we're so—

Peter: Three days later.

John: We're so bringing drunk science girl back.

Christine: Oh, that's right.

John: I love science— I love a good science girl anyways, so.

Scott: Who doesn't?

John: Who doesn't?

Christine: Drunk science girl is just a bonus.

John: Yup.

Peter: Covered his scar again.

John: Yeah. But it's a tricky bit, because you know, your average television script is between forty five and fifty five pages, and because we're an action driven show we just never know where we're gonna land.

Christine: Yeah.

John: Um, that's cosy. [All Laugh]

Chris: That's a great shot right there.

Christine: No comment.

John: Yeah that's, that's a great shot.

Peter: Once again the bad guys walk by.

John: You know what, if they were- if they were really good at their jobs, they wouldn't be working at a food company.

Chris: Eh, now they're starting to get the hang of their magic act, you see things starting to turn around.

John: Uh, and then, oh yeah, we came up with the whole idea— this was the other thing, is, what were the constraints, what you need for security systems?

Peter: This the most— with the check, the chances of us timing this correctly were so slim, and this was the first take. Wow.

Scott: That was perfect.

Peter: Racked to it. And everybody got up at the right time.

John: Nice. You either get that— you know what, that always is a first take, isn't it? It's like, either you get it or you don't, yeah? Um, yeah that was a big part of designing this episode, is, we had to figure out what were the security systems in place, and how they could possibly interact with magic, none of us being magicians.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah, it was a lot of, uh, a lot of big lists on the board that day. I like how the thing even has a top to hide her, uh, her pregnancy there. The sword thing is even at the right height.

Peter: The background absolutely loved Tim. They thoroughly enjoyed the—they sat there for, I dunno, eight or nine hours?

Christine: Wow.

Dean: I love that. 'No questions!' [All Laugh]

Chris: Yeah, first thing was- was a fingerprint. Okay—

Dean: 'Belieeeve in the magic.'

Chris: —well lets, how would they get a fingerprint if you're a magician on stage? Well okay, this is how. How would we relay it? And it was all... There's a lot of great gadgets here, we have the [Chuckles], you know the handy, uh, Brother P-Touch... [Laughs]

John: Yeah! The Brother P-Touch fingerprint printer.

Christ: The Brother P-Touch fingerprinter which, uh, available at [sounds like: hamburger shlemer] folks.

John: You know what? Again, this is why people underestimate Hardison. He has to have this stuff in his bag all the time. That's why he has the van. The van is there for a reason, people.

Christine: Respect the van.

Dean: Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was the first episode that we introduced the gummy frogs—

Chris: Yes.

Dean:—which now became a partner with the orange soda as a necessary thing for Hardison at all times.

John: It is required, it is absolutely required for Hardison to have gummy frogs while hacking.

Dean: And orange soda.

John: And orange soda.

Chris: Alright, now they got the fingerprint, now it's smooth sailing, we get to get in. Uh, not so fast.

John: Uh, well they need to get—it's not so fast because now they need the gel.

Peter: I'll never forget when the prop guy said— we started with gummy bears, gummy this, gummy that, and when you said, I think, gummy frogs, and he's like, "You're fucking killing me".

[All Laugh]

Chris: Nope, gotta be gummy frogs.

Christine: They're exactly the right size! They're perfect.

Timestamp: [30:00]

John: It's gotta be frogs. And again, by the way, I've actually seen the video where Bruce Schneier used this exact technique to fool a $150,000 fingerprint scanner.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The type that the TSA uses to secure airports.

Christine: So please try this at home.

Chris: This is a great reaction right here.

John: And that's a great reaction. Just the laser, just the mocking him with the lasers.

Chris: And literally, ‘I'm spinning plates here, I'm spinning plates here while you're asking me for retinas.’ He's spinning plates!

Christine: Doing a great job! Spinning plates. And juggling.

Chris: And the retinas part is, to me, what the show is all about, what Leverage is all about, is that we have to put a CEO in a magic box, to bring him to scan his retinas. That is a whole, whole thing.

Dean: That's my favorite part of this whole episode, that for me... when I read that in the draft, I literally fell out of my chair laughing. I thought that was the funniest bit.

Christine: I think that was our favorite bit to do in the room.

John: Yeah, I must have driven the staff crazy, because I must have said 'They put me in a box' a thousand times.

Christine: It was hilarious. And the fake music cues we would make up, wheeling along...

John: Yeah. Oh, remember the uh, the thing I had was the sound of the box [mimics squeaking] and then we cut to the box. [mimics squeaking] 'Hey, is anybody out there?''

Chris: And this was great, this is Apollo—Apollo figured out how we would do the uh, box switch.

John: Cause the box actually works slightly differently, that's not how you'd usually do it, but he—Apollo invented a version of the trick on the fly.

Christine: For us.

John: [mimics squeaking] Hello?

[All Laugh]

Chris: And this stuff, when we shot this, I literally was crying, I was laughing so hard. We were shooting the stuff of him in the box, the CEO-

John: How did you shoot that?

Peter: We attached a camera again, kind of like the box shot earlier, attached the camera to the box and spun it. But I was surprised, it didn't look like I thought it would. It looks great, but it didn't turn out like I thought it would. But he was great, we spun him around and around, at one point he said, 'I'm getting sick'...

[All Laugh]

John: And all the jokes about bosses here, this is what you do in a corporate show, is when you go, you find out like all the stuff, the name of the boss, and the one who's bad at golf, and you work it into the routine, and oh, man. It's filthy, filthy lucre.

Chris: Here's a beautiful shot I love here, too; there's a shot from behind of the box spinning I just love.

John: And, away.

Christine: The color palette’s great, for the entire show. Looks terrific. Really pops.

Peter: [Unintelligible] to our DP by the way, that was four cameras at once; we shot the whole thing in one day.

Christine: Wow. Dave Connell, superstar.

Dean: I love all these shots, I just love them. And he was great in these scenes. I mean, I totally buy him.

John: We just put him in the elevator. ‘Have a good time.’ Yeah like it's all sort of blue and orange down here, it's all sort of grey and pastels upstairs—

Peter: The crowd loved this gag.

John: Oh yeah.

Chris: And here we go.

John: [Mimics squeaking] It's just funny, I'm sorry, man. You put a CEO in a box... And the uh, did you use a real dove, or no, that was a fake dove all along?

Peter: It was fake. It was a little squeezy dove, that's really kinda cool.

John: There's actually a famous, uh, Penn and Teller famous story, they do magic exhibitions, where people demonstrate their tricks. And there's a youth category, where kids show that they have mastery of these classic tricks, there's one where you, like, show the dove in a cooking pan, and then close the pan and then light the fire and whip it away and there's like a cooked dove in its place? And as the kid did it, he screwed it up, so as soon as he lit the fire, like, a hundred magicians stood up at once and went 'THE DOVE!!' 'cause they all know how it works.

Dean: Oh noo.

John: And he's like the thing's on fire and he's beating it out with his tiny like, his twelve year old magician's coat... 'cause doves are expensive. I mean nevermind the cruelty, but yeah.

Christine: Aw... [Pause] These two need to have their own vaudeville act. I would watch a variety show that they hosted.

John: I like, again, just the constant choices that Beth is making at all times, just like- and she's kind of amused, and now she's bored with this. Ah, she's done, she wants to be breaking into things. Uh, excellent cheesy server room, nicely done.

Peter: It was the smallest room in the known world.

John: Ye—what's that?

Peter: It was the smallest room in the known world.

John: We like to build our sets really tiny.

Peter: It was basically a closet.

John: Yeah, and then this was again always our drive to the [unintelligible] complication.

Peter: Good bad guy, by the way.

Dean: Yeah, he really delivered.

Chris: This bad guy, he was really terrific, Kevin E. West is his name.

Dean: We actually met him through uh, Patrick Jakoni, who's our mixer, who mixes all the episodes of Leverage.

John: Did he have a—did he just bring the headshot in, or....

Dean: He was a friend and he just said "I really want you to meet this guy, he's a friend of mine, I really think he's a terrific actor." And I met him, and I thought he was great. You guys have met him, and—

Chris: Great kind of middle management evil.

John: The banality of evil. He gets a great evil speech of evil.

Chris: He does. Which is a late edition.

Dean: A little shout-out to Derek, who does all of our graphics on all the computers.

Peter: Unbelievable.

Dean: I mean, he does so much for us—

Peter: This is where he hit his head.

John: Yeah, see, no scar there, and then, uh, nothing but scarves afterwards.

Dean: I love this fight too.

John: This, I will—

Timestamp: 35:00

Dean: I love the closed quarter fights.

Christine: Absolutely.

John: I will fully admit, this is, um. I'm trying to remember....

Chris: Look at this. [All Laugh] There's the scene.

John: I'm trying to remember, there's a, it's not a Jackie Chan fight, it's a Jackie Chan produced movie, it's with three actresses, I think it's called So Beautiful, which has an elevator fight, that actually was the origin of this.

Peter: What I like is the 90 degree shutter in all these fights. It makes it feel, like...

John: It's very crisp.

Peter: Yeah. It makes it feel like, like you're missing a frame or something.

John: So what happened? Chris turned around, right, turned around and just smacked his head against the side of the cabin?

Chris: Well, I mean, we passed it, but there's a moment when he throws a punch, and it sort of—you can kinda see the edge, in the frame, and his head just continued into the edge of the box.

Peter: No, we had the— we didn't have the padded one in there. And he went against the hard one. Split it open huge too.

Chris: Seventeen stitches.

Scott: Wow.

John: Seventeen stitches, and then like a week later, pulled them out himself because he was sick of them.

Peter: I think it was actually right here.

Scott: Really?

Peter: I think it was this one. I think it was the last punch, if I remember correctly.

John: Never do the last punch.

Chris: Oh, might have been there, yeah.

John: Yeah, lotta elbows, lotta—I always loved a good fight—what, what is this? This is madness!

[All Laugh]

Christine: It's vaudeville!

John: What the hell was that?

Dean: Something like a Marx brothers movie.

John: I know!

Christine: It's delightful.

John: I'm really waiting for Zeppo to show up to that. I think Gina's Zeppo in this episode. And he's still in the box.

Peter: 'Hello? Hello?'

John: And then this, the getaway with the curtain trick.

Chris: Curtain trick, and this again was, you know, Apollo designed, because, you know, we had in the script, they disappeared in a cone curtain, and he, you know...

John: Well it's actually, it was uh, when I was seven, or something of that age, I saw Bill Bixby do that in The Magician, and it always stuck with me.

Christine: The greatest theme song in the world.

Chris: We watched a little bit of The Magician.

John: We watched a little bit of The Magician, and it has the greatest theme song of all time. If you can go YouTube the theme for The Magician, it's fantastic.

Christine: Our writers’ assistant had it queued up. Becky had it queued up and ready whenever we needed to play.

John: Ohhhh.

Chris: Ohh, gut punched into a chair, that's another kind of recurring theme of season two.

John: Well, it was our Rockford homage.

Christine: Ah yes, the gut punch.

John: Yeah, James Garner spent five years getting gut punched.

Chris: I think this is an iconic shot of this show, I do, it's a beautiful shot.

Peter: And this is Apollo's idea, I think, to put the rabbit back in, too.

Chris: Yes, it was, it was.

Christine: Fantastic visual.

Dean: And I love the way that Aldis plays this scene here, because I- the danger felt real. It didn't feel like, oh comedy villains' fake punch, he's really okay. You know when I watched it, I really felt like wow, we're in trouble.

John: Well Aldis is a very good actor. Yeah. This really also became the year where we kind of established the straight run fourth and fifth act.

Chris: Well this is very much a real time episode. I think three of the five acts were pretty much in real time.

Peter: I like that he talks about the uh, magician's union. You're gonna get a letter from them, I'm telling you.

Chris: And here is the evil speech of evil.

John: Just explaining that if people are stupid enough to eat frozen pot pies without heating them enough, they deserve salmonella.

Dean: That's not a rationale!

John: No!

Chris: That's what happens to people who don't follow instructions. Now I'm giving you instructions.

John: No, he's really selling this, he thinks he's gonna die here, or at least get seriously messed up. And the bad guy, uh, who played the Busey?

Chris: The bad guy was George Castillo.

John: Yeah he was good. He had a good physical menace. And the nice pass, there we go, if you're paying attention. And what I like is that Aldis made a choice there, like, as soon as he saw that—

Peter: Two different locations, by the way.

John: Oh yeah, you're not— that reverse isn’t anywhere near there?

Christine: Oh, nicely done.

Peter: It's like, thirty miles away.

Dean: Nice. Never knew that.

Chris: We coming up to— when we do this flash, about how we got the phone, is a, this right here is an absolutely beautiful shot coming up.

John: I like that he calls him magician too, as if— it's very, like [very dramatically] 'Magiciaan!'

Christine: I'm actually most proud of that line, by the way.

John: Yeah, exactly. It is. It's very Lord of the Rings.

Dean: And a terrific use of the ninja zoom.

John: Yeah, to reestablish that geography we talk about all the time. Um, yeah, and the poker chip, and the turn to the reveal, she’s gonna bump into him, but the thing I was going to say is, Aldis does a moment there where he sees the lift, he knows it’s going to be okay, and his expression changes.

Christine: His whole face relaxes.

Peter: She looks so hot there, too.

John: She does, she looks very good.

Christine: She's rocking the power pony. There's a lot of Parker's power ponytails this year.

John: Parker ponytails?

Christine: The power pony.

John: The power pony, is that what you're calling it?

Christine: That's what it's called.

John: By the way, if you google power pony that's not what you're gonna get.

Christine: Do not Google power pony.

John: [Laughing] Do not Google power pony.

Peter: Here's a flashback, this is a great shot.

Chris: Here it is, here's the shot.

Peter: This was— our operator nailed this.

John: It's coming.

Chris: It's a long explanation.

John: It is a long explanation.

Chris: Here it is, here it is. Oh, look at that. Perfect shot

Peter: Her look back is fabulous.

Timestamp: [40:00]

Chris: Perfect turn.

Christine: That is poetry. That's beautiful.

John: It also helps that Beth has good hands. You know, Apollo said that —

Chris: Well, he worked with her on this.

John: Yeah, he taught her how to lift.

Christine: She could be a thief if she wanted to.

John: And we'll see how season three goes, who knows where we'll wind up. Aww, thief of hearts, that's nice.

Christine: Isn't she?

John: And the whole idea of dumping, um, it was actually, the whole idea that phones now, you can just dump massive amounts of information on, was, I think Bruce Sterling had just done a thing about, um, the ubiquity... instead of cloud computing, but using the sort of—why go to cloud computing if your devices have more memory than the NASA moon landing?

Chris: And here, here's where we're—

John: And, ah, she's back!

Peter: 'I was in the box.'

[All Laugh]

Christine: 'I was in the bar!'

Peter: 'They put me in a box.'

Christine: He was in the box, she was in the bar, and now they're together again.

John: Seriously man, I had a fistful of scotch, and I must have been saying that for a week. 'They put me in a box'. I may drink during the day. And this, by the way, is an iconic shot for the show. That's a big one.

Christine: Aw, look at that. Look at those two.

John: It's tricky, when you find— our wardrobe has to be high style without ever going over the top, and that's what really— it's nice because that's what makes it visually interesting.

Christine: Look at these two together. Oh my god.

John: I know. They're great.

Dean: And this, again, was a real nice setup for where we ultimately go with the uh, the entire season.

John: That's right, because if you're listening to these commentaries in the—and we've split the season, it's— 209 is the last one. So you don't know what happens in the back end. Um. Dinosaurs.

Christine: They fight dinosaurs.

Dean: But this concept that he has replaced alcohol with control...

John: Right, this season is about addiction. Um, and people who cope with alcohol. Ahem.

Christine: Oh, this season is about addiction? [All Laugh] What? What show was I writing on last year?

Chris: Beautiful shot of her here, too, just really nice.

Peter: Hiding her pregnancy.

John: You know, she does a lot of work here when she's talking to—'cause it's interesting, this is a pairing we don't do a lot, and we wound up doing more this year. Um, is the idea that he is a little outside the team, and very hyper competent at what he does. And you can sort of see their relationship over the course of the first couple episodes arc where she feels comfortable confiding in him, in a way that was not there for season one.

Chris: And she's a little estranged from Nate, too.

Christine: I think because of that betrayal, first season, Sophie and Eliot have a special relationship in season two.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Well, Peter, thank you for being part of this episode, and being part of our show.

Peter: Loved it, enjoyed it immensely. I wanna live in Portland.

[All Laugh]

Christine: We do too.

John: And uh, Christina, Scott, nicely done.

Christine: Good job guys, everybody did a great job.

Dean: Stay tuned for the next episode of Leverage.

Peter: Single person clapping, single person clapping.

John: We're all clapping.

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