FX NETWORK: TERRIERS September 7, 2010/9:00 a.m. PDT
SPEAKERS
Scott Seomin – FX Network
Donal Logue – “Hank Dolworth,” Terriers
PRESENTATION
Moderator Welcome to the Terriers conference call. At this time, all
participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question
and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time.
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Scott Seomin.
S. Seomin Good morning, everybody. This is Scott Seomin with FX. Thank
you for joining us first thing in the morning after a long weekend.
We’re here to talk about Terriers, our new drama series that premieres
tomorrow night on FX—that’s Wednesday, September 8th—at 10:00 p.m.
eastern and pacific. On the line with us in his car is our star, Mr.
Donal Logue. Say hello.
D. Logue Hello, everyone.
S. Seomin There’s his voice. Let’s just go right into it. Let’s go start
with the questions.
Moderator Our first question is from Jim Halterman with JimHalterman.com.
J. Halterman Talk to me a little bit about the chemistry you have with
Michael? It just seemed to gel right from the first scene. Is that
something you guys worked on? Are you guys that comfortable with each
other? Can you talk about that?
D. Logue It was kind of a unique situation because I had worked with
Michael on the show Life, but even then there was something a little bit
different, like we had done this kind of all-nighter shoot on Life. He
and I just really instantly bonded actually over a book. I was kind of
running around with this Jack Kerouac novel, and we fell into
conversation. By the end of that kind of long, 16-hour workday, I just
realized this guy was kind of going to be a friend for life, whether we
ran into each other a lot or kept in touch or not, or wherever our
adventures took us.
Then when I came onboard Terriers, and I started reading with the people
who would make up the rest of the cast, Michael was the first person to
come in, which was quite … and it was like seeing a long lost super
friend. We had a real easy comfort with each other.
I have to say, the thing that initially struck me about Michael was what
a fantastic actor he was. I feel about Michael like what I feel about
Kevin Corrigan or Sam Rockwell or a handful of these guys that are just
so good. So I’ve always got tremendous respect for his work. And the
fact, we’re just best friends, and our relationship only got tighter
during the course of the series. We rented a house on the beach and
lived in this house together, and it was kind of like doing this weird
700-page … movie with your best friend living in a beach house in San
Diego.
S. Seomin Donal, I want to make sure that everybody understands, that’s
the real life, you guys lived in a beach house in real life—
D. Logue Yes, in real life. For the show, we decided why live in a
hotel. We’ll just rent a house on the beach, and we knew that the
challenge of this show, this isn’t to say that it doesn’t have a
fantastic cast with Kimberly Quinn and Laura Allen, Rockmond Dunbar,
Jamie Denbo, and great guest stars, but the real onus of all the work
falls on our shoulders, Michael and myself, so we lived in the same
house. We just kind of worked Terriers around the clock the whole time
we were down in San Diego, and it was a great experience. But yes, I
love Michael. He’s absolutely one of my dearest friends on planet earth,
and so it wasn’t hard, that whole chemistry gel thing. Does that make
sense? Is that good?
Moderator Our next question comes from April MacIntyre with Monsters &
Critics.
A. MacIntyre I watched five episodes and I have to tell you, you guys
definitely have chemistry, that chemistry thing, but what I really
appreciate is your sister’s performance, Jamie’s. The women in this
particular series are so brilliant and so, I love how “Hank” relies and
trusts this inner circle of women.
D. Logue That’s a really interesting point. First of all, the women are
fantastic across the board. I’ve worked with Jamie before. There’s a
reason Laura and Kimberly were cast because they’re brilliant. And
Karina, my sister, I think she’s a genius, you know.
What I have to say is—and what I love about Ted and Shawn too in this,
and I think it kind of migrated in this direction—is I have three
sisters. I don’t have brothers. I’ve always been very close to women in
that regard. My sisters are all incredible women, really bright.
I think it’s always false when you see these shows where guys … and you
know what? There might be guys like this, but we’re not those guys:
Donal, Michael, “Britt,” or “Hank,” where I can’t talk to women. It’s
like this weird pagan. When emotions come up, it just gets so …. It’s
like men and women can talk to each other and can rely on each other and
can have, and these guys have intelligent and kind of poignant
conversations with women.
Do Michael and I have good chemistry? Do I love doing stuff with
Michael? There’s no doubt. That’s kind of like a slam-dunk. But my
favorite individual scenes are always with the women in the show.
There’s always something kind of unique and special, and a completely
different side to my character that gets to come out and it’s different
with each one of the women. So I love that about the show.
A. MacIntyre There’s a scene you have with Kimberly Quinn (“Gretchen”).
She’s your ex-wife, and you say to her—and your timing was perfect—“I
still love you.” I’m just wondering if “Gretchen” is going to be a
continuing—if your ex is going to be a continuing player—and if you
could also talk about your sister. I hope that she continues in the
series.
D. Logue Absolutely, both of them. As we leave it at the end of the
first season, everybody is still around and still kind of in play in
those worlds, and it’s an incredibly selfish thing to do sometimes is to
throw that kind of a grenade on someone’s lap. When she says, “I don’t
know what to do with that,” I mean, I think I say, “I don’t either,” but
I think I would have said, “I don’t care what you do with it. I just
have to throw that grenade in your lap.” But they are really special
kind of actors, and it was a real joy to be able to do these scenes with
all of them.
I’m not a particularly … I have whatever bag of actor tricks that
everybody carries with them to what they do. I would say I’m not or I
don’t try to be particularly indulgent in the way I talk about it. There
were some scenes I had with my sister that were almost too emotionally
difficult to do to get through. It was kind of a thrilling experience to
be so overtaken by 100% real emotion that it was really difficult to get
through some scenes.
Moderator Our next question is from Far Hossain with FarFlips.
F. Hossain I wanted to know how you would describe Terriers for my
readers.
D. Logue I would describe it as kind of a throwback to that kind of
golden age of ‘70s television of kind of those buddy kind of shows or
those private investigators, things like the Rockford Files, except it’s
been updated with this FX sensibility. I think it’s routed in kind of a
little bit of a more—I would just say kind of a realistic style
emotionally and cinematically and otherwise. But in a way, I hope it
harkens back to those kinds of fun ride of those shows back in the ‘70s,
but I think that it definitely has some of that dramatic edge that I
think is based.
What I love about FX and part of their … is that they always say that if
there’s a dead body, it seems it’s really dead. That might sound kind of
like vague or obtuse, but there’s a tendency in these shows sometimes,
these one hour dramas, like it’s a crime, and it’s, ooh, someone is
dead. But it’s like Murder She Wrote. You don’t really feel like
someone’s dead. It’s just another way to get through that week’s kind of
thing. What’s interesting, fun, or clever about the show isn’t routed in
some kind of visceral reality, but I think our show has that too, if
that makes any sense.
F. Hossain If you were to describe your character, “Hank,” what do you
like about him as well?
D. Logue I like that he just doesn’t give up. And I like the fact and
what’s fun about him is that he feels, I think, embolden to be free that
once you feel like you’ve lost all the things that you were living for,
either your reputation, your wife, your career, whatever it is, once you
realize that that … for those things and to kind of one day win the
battles that you’ve lost is a futile effort, you’re free to kind of like
embark upon a new life and a new form of behavior. I think it frees up
“Hank” and “Britt” by proxy to kind of—whereas they feel that others
might think they’re small time, that that whole thing about maybe we are
big time and didn’t know it, that's kind of what he’s free to pursue
this life where they go after really big bad guys, and they’re fearless
about it.
F. Hossain When you were describing Terriers, what is the main
difference … working on, I think Terriers is more like a dramady versus
when you worked on Life or a sitcom like Grounded for Life.
D. Logue It’s interesting because this comes back to my very first
audition for television or movies was that this thing that was very
serious about the Boston bussing crisis in the mid ‘70s. And I’d done a
lot of plays. I’d never auditioned for film or television before, and
there was a really good casting director and an English director named
Michael Newel, who was directing the thing, and this woman, Meg Simon.
And I went in to audition. My first question was like, “I heard when
you’re filmed on camera, you have to be smaller,” and it’s this, it’s
that. And she said, “Acting is acting. Just do the … scene.”
I think with Grounded for Life, or Life, or Terriers that it’s all
acting. It’s all the same. You invested with the same emotional reality
of whatever the thing is. Now clearly the formats are a bit different,
and what I love about Terriers is that it can be funny, but it doesn’t
have the kind of hydraulic pressure on it to be funny every 15 seconds
like something like Grounded for Life. That it can take its own rhythm
and pace to find those moments, and Life, which had its moments. But I
think kind of whatever you do, whatever the part is that … or “Tidwell”
in Life, or “Hank” …. It’s like what’s real to this guy in this moment,
and you kind of try and play it as straight as possible. And as long as
you honor your dramatic commitment to it, then it’ll be funnier. It’ll
be poignant. It’ll be whatever it’s supposed to be.
I’ve had a good time kind of floating around in all of those different
mediums, and I try not to have favorites or be judgmental about one over
the other. It’s all a little bit of a different exercise. I actually
used to kind of talk down on that half-hour thing, and I was really put
straight by John Lithgow who, before I did Grounded for Life, was doing
Third Rock from the Sun. I mean, this guy’s career is so fantastic. He
said, “Look. What do you not like about doing a two-act play in front of
a live audience?” And so it’s all just a little different, but I think
this job has freed me up to be closer to what I want to be than any
other job I’ve ever done.
Moderator Our next question is from Lena LaMoray with LenaLamoray.com.
L. LaMoray Now Terriers has some of the best fight scenes, especially in
the second episode, “Dog and Pony.” Do you do most of your own stunts?
Can you talk a little bit about some of them?
D. Logue Yes. It’s always fun to do that. It’s the question you have to
ask Eric Norris, our stunt coordinator. But I’ve always had a really
good time doing a lot of that kind of stuff, especially movies like
Blade. I’m kind of a difficult person to double because of just the way
I look. So it’s always been very fun to do all the fight scenes and the
stunts and all that stuff, except I made a massive miscalculation in
that first fight scene in that second episode that you were talking
about, and I injured myself. It kind of stuck with me for the whole
season, but it was a real blast. It was always something that was kind
of like we’ve always felt that it was important to do as much of that
stuff as you can do.
But I knew that Eric was kind of psyched that Michael and I are kind of
familiar with that stuff and have done it a bit. Yes, I was in that
fight scene with Matthew Willig, who plays “Montell” … and he’s this
huge NFL guy, massive monster of a man, like as big as I’m in the
opposite direction, and he throws me through a wall, and saved the wall
in a couple of takes. I had to get kind of thrown by him and grab this
pole. I did something to my shoulder, and he was like, “Oh, buddy. I
think I got you there,” and so anyway, it became an issue over the
course of the year. So we ended up writing it into the script, but
you’ll see over the course of the season.
L. LaMoray Now even though you have just started playing “Hank,” do you
ever find yourself stealing some of his moves, mannerisms?
D. Logue Before “Hank,” I just stole everything from myself. Yes, but I
like “Hank.” I think I actually fell upon “Hank” at a time in my life
where I felt like something about that guy and where I was in my life
just met in this perfect kind of, we just fell into step next to each
other at just the right time. In another point in my life or a couple of
years ago, I couldn’t have done it, and I wouldn’t have been the right
guy to do it. But I wouldn’t say that about me or him now.
Moderator Our next question is from Brett Hickman with Rock & Roll
Ghost.
B. Hickman You were just talking about how you kind of stole from your
own life for “Hank.” I wanted to know what exactly was your mindset
going into this, and what exact aspects of your life that you put into
“Hank.”
D. Logue Some are coincidental and others were more intentional. One
very kind of cheesy one, I would say, is when it started and I first met
with the wardrobe designer, and in fairness to her, like no one really,
I think “Hank” was kind of seemed like an older guy at the time when it
was first written. For some reason, there was this weird like Dennis
Bronds kind of just in terms of the way he presented himself of just
kind of slacks and short sleeve button down shirts and ties and stuff.
There was part of me that was like, “Well, I grew up in this community.
I have a lot of friends who still live in Ocean Beach. Let me just be
me. Let me just show you how I would externally look being in one of
these beach communities in San Diego.”
I started kind of from the outside in. And I feel like, especially like
there’s something interesting about guys who used to be cops or in the
military or whatever, and had to tow the line, and when it ends, and
it’s kind of like I don’t want to tow the line for the man anymore. I
don’t need to be shored back inside. I don’t need to dress a certain
way. I can just—I’m free. If you want the kind of invest in being a
perpetual kid at some point, you’re like, well, you might as well take
advantage of it and be free to look the way you want to look and be the
way you want to be. So the external vibe helped start to inform a lot of
the internal feelings. Then whatever my private relationship is with
things like alcohol and stuff like that, a lot of them just happen to be
kind of coincidental, but … I knew an awful lot about, and so that
helped me.
Then there were a series of really interesting things like, Shawn and
Tim Minear and Ted, and they were like, “How would you feel about ‘Hank’
having a sister and having a family member with mental illness issues
and stuff?” It was just like there was a lot of stuff that me and my
sister, who plays my sister—my sister, Karina, played my sister on the
show, “Stephanie”—there’s a lot of stuff that we could relate to, so it
just started added up and becoming a combination of bringing “Hank”
closer to who I was and then elements in “Hank’s” life that I could
really relate to.
B. Hickman Now with regards to “Hank’s” kind of emotional build up, he
seems like a guy that—from the two episodes that I’ve been able to watch
so far—that he’s somebody that carries his emotions around almost like a
dark cloud over him, but he doesn’t seem to burden or doesn’t appear to
want to burden anyone else with it. What do you draw upon to get into
that kind of mind space, and was it difficult for you to do, or is it
something that you understood based on what you were reading?
D. Logue …because I’ve always described like the darkest period in my
life as being kind of like this thing from 1989 through 1991 when I was
kind of like just bouncing around homeless in New York and LA, bad
stuff, and to me it represents the real dark cloud period of my life.
It’s funny because when I talk to my friends—some of whom I felt like I
really mooched upon and abused back then—they were like, “Yes. You were
a mooch, and you were down and out, and you were always this and that.
But you were always fun to be around.”
I was like, “Wow, I didn’t really realize that I was projecting that out
there.” So I’ve always felt that like if I was of one or two varieties,
I’m definitely more of the suicidal than the homicidal variety as a
human being. So if I’ve got stuff going on, the hit is going to be on
me, and I’m not going to try to take it out on those around me. So maybe
that kind of led into where “Hank” is at, but it feels like a very
unfair thing to do.
At the same time, even when things are kind of down and out and bad,
there’s a certain delicious joy in that kind of melancholy and still in
the people around you. You can always still have a laugh. So that’s what
I liked about the show is all of that stuff rang pretty true to me.
B. Hickman I noticed that the first episode was directed by Craig
Brewer. I wanted to know what it was like working with him and what your
thoughts are on this two other features that he’s directed so far.
D. Logue I love Craig. When we do television, the one thing you ask
before anything else is who is doing it. If it’s someone who brought you
The Wire or if it’s the team behind Saved by the Bell or Small Wonder,
there’s a difference. It could be a private eye show in either camp, but
it’s going to be wildly different what the end result is. I saw that it
was Shawn and Ted Griffin and Craig Brewer—and I was a massive fan of
Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan, and I just loved the nature of the
grittiness and the dialog—I just felt like, “Wow, I’ll be in really safe
hands with a guy like Craig Brewer.”
He proved himself to be even better than I thought, an incredibly nice
guy, super sweet guy, very talented. We were just sad that he was so
busy with films after the pilot that he couldn’t join us for more, but
we actually got to work with a number of great directors. Craig was
great, and Craig was really instrumental in the fight to have Michael on
the show too because Craig, in a way, felt probably deservedly like he’d
discovered Michael with Black Snake Moon. So a lot of why Michael
Raymond-James ended up being on the show—even though he was probably too
… and a little too old and these different things to play “Britt” and
probably too much like me in a way—that it was like a lot of what helped
that was Craig Brewer.
Moderator Our next question is from Jessica Dwyer with Fangirl Magazine.
J. Dwyer I know that you’re a writer and a director, and the two
questions I have for you are kind of connected that way. Are you
possibly going to be writing or directing any of the upcoming episodes
of the show? You and Michael, did you create like a background history,
the two of you, while you were together filming? Did you create a
background and like stories of things that the two of you had done
together?
D. Logue On the first front, I would say probably not. To me, what I
love is that Shawn and Tim Minear and Ted have given Michael and I kind
of license to pitch in and have some say on things or just get or
opinion on where things are going. In a weird way, it’s like the acting
side of things is so overwhelming on a show like this when you’re
shooting six- or seven-day episodes and have—like for me personally, I
think there was an episode where I was in 73 of 75 scenes or something
insane. So if the workload is so much, and while you’re doing it,
they’re prepping the next week or they’re writing these arcs that I
think it would kind of preclude me from doing anything like that unless
it was like so deep in the run of the show that we kind of had a better
sense of what was going on. Sometimes when it’s really acting heavy, it
just feels good to leave it at that.
But Michael and I definitely kicked around a lot of ideas about how we
met and where we hung out, but like as it turned out, we were wrong. And
it’s funny because we talked to the writers. I said, until we figure out
certain things like what went wrong with me and “Mark Gustafson,” who is
played by Rockmond Dunbar … idea in my mind just to hang my hat on, just
to give me kind of an emotional … but if you tell me it’s something
that’s totally against where I’ve been kind of privately going, it’s
fine. I just do things to give myself a little bit of a—to know where
I’m at geographically within my own mind when I’m doing stuff. So, yes,
Michael and I had a bunch of ideas. What ended up being the reality of
it though was I think a lot better, just something that they sprang on
us, which was cool.
J. Dwyer If you had your chance with a character from a comic book to
play any of them, which one would it be?
D. Logue I had a chance, and I did a small part in it, but I would have
to say American Splendor, which I did, which was, of all comic book
movies, the one that was just the grittiest. What an amazing … to do a
comic about a dude in Cleveland, a kind of misanthropic, working class
guy. But I don’t know. I love Marvel Comics, and I kind of developed a
little bit of a relationship with them over the course of Blade, Ghost
Rider, and those things. So I feel like I’m down for any kind of
adventure that’s going down in the comic book world. The only thing that
bums me out is … in Ghost Rider and in Max Payne, which isn’t really a
comic book, but a video game … and graphic novel, I get killed, so I
don’t have a chance to come back ….
J. Dwyer Yes. You always die.
D. Logue …times … I’ve been decapitated a number of times. I know actors
who are like, I never want to play a part where I get killed. I’ve been
killed from the get go, man. I got killed in Sneakers, so like I’m just
dying left, right, and center, always.
Moderator Our next question is from Sheldon Wiebe with
EclipseMagazine.com.
S. Wiebe You mentioned that there was a kind of a Rockford Files thing
going on with Terriers. I found that interesting because when I was
watching the first five episodes, I got the impression that if Rick
Chandler or Dashiell Hammett had written Rockford, it might have been
something like Terriers.
D. Logue Yes, that's really great to hear. I guess that’s been buzzing
around a little bit lately, but I’ve always had this weird feeling, and
I think that Quentin Tarantino kind of really hit upon something
somewhat powerful with this was there was something pop cultural about,
I mean, I think this is like Pulp Fiction. He took something very ‘70s,
but he gave it his twist, his edge, his darkness, and his wit, and
turned it into something that kind of transcended what it was, but it
felt familiar. I have a weird sense that Terriers was kind of like that
as well.
S. Wiebe That kind of makes sense, and especially in so far as “Marlow”
and “Sam Spade” both had a knack of getting in over their heads, and
“Hank” and “Britt” have that same kind of knack.
D. Logue Exactly, and they can’t. They know, I mean, the flags are out,
and danger this way, but yet they get all of them.
S. Wiebe “Hank” also has that kind of integrity too. When he makes a
promise, whether it’s a promise of good things to come or bad things to
come, he keeps his promises, and I like that. So I was wondering how did
the role come to you, and what first appealed to you about it?
D. Logue It came down the normal channels. I don’t know exactly what the
kind of back story was. I do know that Ted and Shawn had gotten together
to create a show about this private eye. They probably went out to some
kind of big stars who, luckily for me, probably felt that they were too
big of a star to do something like this. So then my name popped up, and
I went, and I met with Shawn, his partner …, Ted Griffin, and Craig
Brewer and sat down and really just talked about it and where it takes
place and how I felt about it. I think, at the end of that meeting, that
the job was mine.
Then I was kind of really game to jump onboard and start getting into
the material and reading it with all the other actors who would make up
the rest of the cast. So I spent a good few weeks before we shot the
pilot really doing a lot of the scenes in the pilot with other potential
cast members, and that was really an enlightening experience. I just had
that initial meeting with Shawn and Ted and Craig, and my name had come
up somehow, so I was really fortunate.
Moderator Our next question comes from Ernie Estrella with
BuzzFocus.com.
E. Estrella One thing that’s interesting to me is that there’s different
parts of the city that have different flavors to it. Is that going to be
reflected in the series, especially, even in the costal cities? Carlsbad
and Delmar differ from OB. So maybe you can talk about kind of how
that's translated on the screen.
D. Logue What I like about the show is that … the shows … been, San
Diego has been used as the kind of place to film them, but it doesn’t
really specifically reference San Diego much that we film all over San
Diego, and we kind of know the difference between Mission and Hillcrest
and El Cajon and La Mesa, and what La Jolla means to San Diego, and OB of
course, most importantly. I think that hopefully San Diegans will feel
like they’re represented in a way by people who kind of know San Diego a
little bit.
Part of that is just the writers getting used to it. A lot of it is the
crew is from San Diego. A lot of that we changed was because I grew up
in El Centro, and my mom lives in San Diego, my sister, and San Diego
has been kind of part of my life since I was eight years old, so I know
it well. Yes, I hope San Diego likes it. We were filming at places, I
remember, like looking at the Coronado Bridge, and I remember running a
10 kilometer race over the Coronado Bridge to the Star of India when I
was 11 years old. And you know every hotel and parking lot where good
and/or bad things happened, so I love the fact that we’re in San Diego.
E. Estrella Is it something that you guys are going to continue to film
on location throughout the series run? Is that something that you’re
pushing for given that you want to kind of maybe spotlight the city a
bit?
D. Logue Absolutely. The thing was, I think FX was brilliant about this.
It costs more for them to do something like that. Most shows end up
being on a stage or they try a way to shoot everything in doors at this
person’s apartment and that person’s restaurant or whatever, and then
they’re out one day a week or something. We’re out six days a week in
San Diego, and it makes our show a lot better, and I think that they
realize that it looks better. It breathes in a different way, and that I
love.
The thing is, if you pan up to a crime scene and a couple of detectives,
and they’re standing under the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s like that’s not
like a scene you haven’t seen before. At some point people get fried on
Los Angeles and New York as settings for television shows. It’s fun to
just explore a new city and what’s different about it.
E. Estrella Were you able to maybe speak with the locals? Are there
crimes or different cases that would be unique to San Diego that
wouldn’t be in other places of the country?
D. Logue Yes. I don’t know if we’ve totally touched upon it. There was a
little bit of it. But when I started happening in places like San Diego
and maybe a little bit like in Arizona and Texas is that some of the
criminal elements from south of the border was coming up, and there was
a little bit of stuff happening in San Diego, kidnappings and the like,
that were tied to some of the things happening in Tijuana and Balan,
California. So there’s a total—border towns have their own unique
flavor, and that’s San Diego. I grew up El Centro and Nogales … so San
Diego was different in the sense that it was such a big American city
across from a Mexican city. I grew up in small towns on the border, but
I always think that that flavor is unique, and it comes up in our show.
Moderator We have a question from Nick Nunziata with CHUD.com.
N. Nunziata So this show, I love the tagline, too small to fail, because
everything is so high concept now, and it’s a great time for TV, but
there are a lot of really big things, and it’s big character twists and
stuff like that. This show delights itself in the character moments and
the smaller stuff. When you mentioned Craig Brewer, but you’ve also got
like John Dahl and Ryan Johnson and Clark Johnson, all these great
filmmakers. Can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like to make
what is really like a little … show with a network that’s actually kind
of the mark of quality right now?
D. Logue That’s it. You just nailed it. It’s like the networks, the
taste coming from up town, down below is the tone. They know what’s
good, so you’ll feel like, I mean, sometimes with Bill … films, in the
middle of it, someone gets scared, and they want to make something that
they feel is more palatable for a wider audience. And you’re like, no,
no. Don’t get scared and change midstream. And that’s when it doesn’t
know what it is.
The thing about FX is they know exactly what they want and what the show
is, and it’s most importantly … and then they bring in all these great
directors. I mean, Clark Johnson directed The Shield and The Wire. He’s
not going to lead you. He’s not going to not understand where you’re
going with drama. Clark was a great actor himself actually. Brian
Johnson and John Dahl and Guy Perwin and Tucker Gates and then actually
Ted Griffin himself came on to direct two episodes, and Adam Arkin
directed two episodes, so both guys were so fantastic. So we were just
lucky up and down all over.
N. Nunziata Yes. It’s so refreshing, and another thing, to see that they
actually take the time to focus on characters and that’s an overused
term that TV shows build themselves on being character driven, but in
reality this thing, the crimes take a backseat. All of that stuff takes
a backseat to seeing where you guys are going to go in your lives. It’s
really impressive.
D. Logue Yes. You know what? It’s fun. And believe me. We feel a bit of
the heat because it’s like you know that it’s like, look, Michael, if
they don’t—hey, look. I buy into it, and I believe it. I believe that it
should see people who really relate to each other, who really get along,
and the relationship is complicated, and on a weird side note, they kind
of look like guys that you feel like, oh, I’ve seen these guys in my
town. I haven’t really seen them on TV before. But there’s something in
every direction that feels kind of real that the show hinges upon that.
If they’re not along for the ride with us, then they’re not along, you
know.
N. Nunziata Yes.
D. Logue And it’s funny because I’ve read, I mean, honestly people have
been really, really … for this show has been kind of awesome and
overwhelming. Of course there have been a couple of people who have took
a swipe at the show and just, it’s funny. Just out of curiosity, you end
up looking up the future of the guy or who he hits, and just take a look
at judgment if the person has taken a swipe of your show. But I wouldn’t
take a ride with these two characters ever. It’s like, well, dude, we
wouldn’t ride with you. We wouldn’t want to ride with you. And if you …
my fan, I think I was doing something wrong.
So there’s an element to it like it’s so weird because in television,
you have to appeal to everybody. In rock and music, you know, you’re
like, hey, man. I’m Metallica. I play this type of music. I don’t expect
everybody to like what I do, but this is what I do.
And it’s weird because TV, you’ve got to kind of have, especially in
terms of critical praise or whatever, you have to have a broader appeal
than that. But hopefully what we’re doing is human, and if you do it,
and you do it honestly, and it’s really character driven, as you say,
then it … with people and they response because we are a low-tech show.
It’s not fancy. What I like about these guys as private I’s, which is
weird is, most private I’s do a lot of work on the Internet now. “Britt”
and “Hank” are kind of … to still kind of do old school, Jake Geti’s
kind of tricks to kind of get done what they have to get done, so I like
that about them.
Moderator There are no additional questions.
S. Seomin Thank you, everybody. I want to remind you that the season
premiere of Terriers is tomorrow. We shot 13 episodes this past spring
from early April to late June. All 13 episodes will run consecutively on
Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m. Please let us know if you have any
questions. My direct dial is 310-369-0938 if you need anything and
Kristy Silvernail, who you all know, is at 310-369-3699.
I want to thank Donal for joining us, as you’re driving back to LA, and
look for him tonight on Jimmy Kimmel.
D. Logue Thanks, Scott.
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