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By
Suzanne

Interview with Matt Nix of "Burn Notice"
on USA
"Burn Notice" is a great show on USA Network. I never
miss it! This is a fascinating interview with the creator of the
show.
Burn Notice – Matt Nix Conference Call
February 17, 2010/1:30 p.m. EST
PRESENTATION
Moderator Our first question comes from the line of Emma Loggins. Please
go ahead.
E. Loggins I just had a quick question for your guys about Comic-Con. I
know that was so successful last year with the shows first appearance
there. Are you guys planning to do anything there this year?
M. Nix We would love to. It was a blast and any opportunity to be on
stage at Comic-Con with Bruce Campbell is— I know he screams for me like
that so there’s lots of fun.
E. Loggins So you guys don’t have any plans yet but you’re open to it?
M. Nix Yes, I’d say more than open to it. It really though is just the
logistics of getting people from Miami to Comic-Con are just kind of
ridiculous. People often ask about, why don’t people do more talk shows
and things like that and they sort of forget that well, most actors are
either in New York or Los Angeles where talk shows shoot similarly when
we’re shooting. Things like Comic-Con are just logistically tough, but
we love doing them.
E. Loggins And could you also talk upcoming guest stars that you have
lined up?
M. Nix Oh. Please bear in mind as I answer these questions that we were
shooting these things a while ago so I just need to do a little review
and try to remember what have you guys seen and what have you not seen.
Well certainly in the finale, we have Garret Dillahunt coming and doing
a pretty amazing bad guy. Let’s see, the guy who played Tony Almeida on
24. I’m completely blanking on his name. In any case, he is in the
episode after this week’s episode and he is playing a bad guy who Fiona
has a real connection to. Oh sorry, Carlos Bernard, yes playing a bad
guy who is really sort of only removed from the characters on the show
by— under other circumstances he could have been one of the team, but he
is willing to do certain things that they’re not willing to do and
that’s a divide that they just can’t cross. But he’s a guy who’s really
committed to what he’s doing, really cares about what he’s doing. It’s a
pretty devastating performance. He’s pretty awesome. I’d say Garret and
Carlos Bernard are the ones that are upcoming that really jump out at me
right now.
Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Jenny Rarden. Please
go ahead.
J. Rarden I do have two quick questions. My first question is do you
guys get a lot of fans that tell you they want Michael and Fiona
together romantically because this season there’s been a definite hints
both subtle and not so subtle in that direction. Do fan wishes have
anything to do with that or was that something you’d been planning all
along?
M. Nix It’s certainly important to us that that’s something that fans
respond to. One of the things that we’re interested in in that
relationship I’m particularly interested in is just the idea that in
life, people have complex relationships that remain unresolved all the
time. That’s a really common experience. That there are people that you
can care for deeply and be romantically involved in who for one reason
or another, having a conventional relationship with them, no matter how
much you might want it, is extremely problematic.
What’s emerged for us is that Michael and Fiona are two people who have
a really hard time being with other people and at this point, there’s no
question that they’ve acknowledged how much they care about each other.
They’re not really built for stable romantic connections. So really what
we’re playing with is the idea that they have this unstable romantic
connection. That it’s something that they can’t really settle into and
they can’t leave alone.
It’s something that comes up a lot when people talk about relationships
on television. It’s always the Sam and Diane model, which is that
there’s romantic tension between two people and then that romantic
tension gets released and then it’s all over, right. We’re sort of doing
the exact opposite of that, which is nothing get released. When people
get together, it is not necessarily true that suddenly everything
becomes simpler. Often times everything becomes more complicated.
J. Rarden Great. Well, I have one follow-up question and it’s kind of
similar. Sam and Maddy have a unique kind of chemistry and relationship.
He seems to have more patience with her than Michael does. Are there any
plans for them to have any sort of romantic relationship or is it more
just a mother and son or friends type only?
M. Nix I can absolutely promise you that Sam and Madeline will never
have a romantic relationship. That is creepy and wrong and we would
never go there. That said, it isn’t really something that I sat down and
planned, but it is something that emerged out of seeing the actors
together on the screen and just realizing that certainly Sam is kind of
Madeline’s best friend.
J. Rarden Right.
M. Nix In a roundabout way, Madeline is Sam’s best friend. Michael is
Sam’s best friend mostly, but when it comes to a certain kind of stable,
like count-on able friendship that doesn’t have all of the baggage that
comes along with being friends with Michael, it’s really all about
Madeline and exploring that relationship. I think we really only just go
to the point; no it happened in Season Two and certainly in the first
half of Season Three where we got to the point where they’re the kinds
of friends who could have a fight and then reconcile. It’s sort of
emerged to be one of the more complex and interesting relationships for
us to explore. It’s not something that you see a lot like an adult man’s
friendship with his best friend’s mother, but it works for us.
Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Sheldon Wiebe. Please
go ahead.
S. Wiebe First an observation. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this
before, but Chris Vance looks an awful lot like Dougray Scott. That
wouldn’t have had anything to do with his casting by any chance?
M. Nix Actually, no. I literally just imdb’ed Dougray Scott to see what
you meant. Of course, you’re right. No actually, Chris Vance is somebody
that – he was the star of Mental and Mental was made by the same studio
as Burn Notice. So they all spoke glowingly of him. He’s a terrific guy
and a lot of fun to work with. When we’re doing those arcs, it’s usually
not an audition process and if it is, it’s sort of a high level audition
process, but we like to be able to have conversations with people and
know that this is somebody who has a lot of range, can play with things,
can have fun with the role and is someone that we really want to work
with. Chris was somebody who just hit all those marks for us and we’re
really excited to get him. But no, it certainly is not true that we sat
down and said let’s find someone that looks like Dougray Scott.
S. Wiebe Also, following up on that, Gilroy. He seems like the kind of
character that could go for more than just one season because he’s at
least as intelligent as Michael though he has this blind spot where
maybe he’s a bit too sure of himself. I was wondering if he’s going to
be around for a while or do you have someone even more diabolical lined
up to bring the pain to Michael.
M. Nix Well, I don’t want to give too much away but I’d expect option
two. The fun thing actually about Gilroy’s character is this sort of
snuck up on us in the execution. He’s a really, really bad guy and it’s
fairly clear he has a sort of flirty energy with Michael. I guess what’s
fun about him for us is he never stops being a bad guy and his
relationship with Michael in the penultimate episode takes a really
unexpected turn. It’s actually one of our more touching moments in the
season, but we didn’t think of it that way, it just sort of worked out
that way. So he’s a villain who over the course of his arc comes to have
an odd affection for Michael.
Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Melissa Lowery.
Please go ahead.
M. Lowery I’ve got a question here. This is actually from Liz who’s
working and she wanted me to make sure to ask you about in “A Dark
Road,” the episode with Tyne Daly, who is awesome by the way. We see
Michael arguing with Madeline that he helps people when he’s describing
what he does for a living and he repeats that a couple of times during
the course of the episode. So what we’re wondering is, is Michael going
to be able to settle with this kind of living as opposed to working as a
spy where you follow orders for kind of unknown reasons?
M. Nix That’s a really good question. You kind of have to work backwards
in a way like you’re making a television show but like, why does Michael
help people every week. You obviously don’t get to say he helps people
every week because he’s aware that he’s on a television program and that
the television program needs a story every week. So you really have to
think well, what kind of person really does this?
When I think about it, Michael has been kind of coming to terms over the
course of the last three seasons with the fact that there is a part of
him that has to do this, and that if you look at the first season, he
tends to take this attitude of this very reluctant hero. He doesn’t want
to take cases but he does. That’s sort of evolved at this point because
in our conception of the character and I think, if I can talk about him
like he’s a real guy, in Michael’s mind he has come to realize he is
self aware enough to know yeah, there is a reason I do this every week
and it’s related to why he got involved in the spy business in the first
place. He’s doing dark deeds for a noble purpose and that’s kind of the
gig and just because he lost his job doesn’t mean he stops doing that
and he is sort of a guy who is willing to use the dark to save the
light. That’s sort of a pretentious thing to say but it’s true.
So, that’s something that, in dealing with Madeline, part of it is her
confronting him with the damage that he sometimes does with the reality
of the fact that he’s a guy who decides what’s best for people and then
just goes out and does it. Michael basically having to confront the fact
that that’s who he is; he does this and he doesn’t really feel like he
has a choice and you kind of got to take him or leave him. And
ultimately, as is the case in the end of that episode, he is willing to
really put his own … on the line for the sake of these other people.
It’s not an easy thing for him to do and it certainly comes at great
cost. You kind of think he’s not a very demonstrative guy and that’s how
he cares about people.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Troy Rogers, please
go ahead.
T. Rogers I wanted to know, at this point in the series, how necessary
is the original arc because Michael already knows who burned him?
M. Nix Well, I think it sort of depends on what you consider the
original arc to be. I think that really, he kind of knew who burned him,
in a roundabout way, in the middle of season one. So the question of who
burned me is no longer the central question for him. It’s really more,
what do I do about it?
If the first season was who burned me, the second season is what do the
people who burned me want with me? The third season is can I get
unburned and if so, at what cost? So, we’re kind of examining that
question from different angles. I think people do sometimes look at the
show and think, and I understand why, they’ll talk like we’re still
asking the question who burned Michael, when in fact, it’s not really a
question that he’s asked since season one precisely.
So, I think that there is something to Michael having an ongoing
investigation into matters related to his circumstances for a lot of
reasons. But no, as far as the who burned Michael Weston, there may be
more to explore with regard to that question at some point, but it’s not
sort of what we’re spending our time on at this point. And, indeed, by
the end of this season, we answer a very big question about Michael’s
burning, as you will see. It’s not necessarily the question that people
would have thought to ask, although I think that it is a very
interesting question to ask, but it is not who burned me.
T. Rogers I always enjoy seeing Tim Matheson showing up as Crazy Larry.
I wanted to know, how much will he factor into the series in future
episodes?
M. Nix Well as a director, certainly we love Larry. I think that one of
the things that we’re conscience of in working with characters like
Larry and Jay Karnes’ character, Brennan would be another example of
this, the Michael mirror characters, the guys who are really in
significant ways operating on Michael’s level, and whose primary focus
is on Michael, as opposed to some – I mean that wasn’t true actually of
Brennan’s first appearance but it was true of the second. Those
characters whose primary focus is on Michael, you just can’t do that
every week. In the writer’s room, we always joke that Dr. House can’t
operate on himself every episode. Those are special episodes and you
love them, but you can’t do them every week.
So, the answer is yes, Larry will factor into the series in season four.
We haven’t exactly figured out how but we have a basic idea and we love
him. He loves Michael. Part of what’s fun about Larry for us is that
he’s a guy who’s primarily motivated by his love of Michael, which is a
really odd thing for a bad guy. He’s sort of like I love money and I
love killing people, but mostly, kid, I love you, let’s just hang out.
T. Rogers Does he love matching wits with him? Is that what it is?
M. Nix I think he loves matching wits with him. I think at a really deep
level one of the things that we look at in the series is the idea that
this job is really lonely. If you’re Michael, you don’t get to go to spy
conventions and talk to other people who do what you do. It’s a
profoundly lonely gig. Michael gets to hang out with people who are
reflections of himself in a certain way. Sam has certain skills that
Michael has. Fiona has certain skills that Michael has. They both have
inclinations and a world view that is not precisely Michaels. But Larry
looks at Michael and says, there’s the one true friend that I ever had,
there’s the one guy who really understands me and yes, he thinks I’m a
psychopath and he sort of hates me, but he gets me, man. That’s worth
something. That’s what makes him so much fun to write. It’s just not
something you get to do a whole lot, a guy who’s sort of arrogant but he
wants to be Michael’s Dad.
Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Sarah Fulghum, please
go ahead.
S. Fulghum Where do you get the spy tips in the show?
M. Nix Our primary source is the consulting producer on the show,
Michael Wilson, who worked in intelligence and sort of around these
things over the course of his career and can give us a lot of stuff. We
also read a lot of books and source material and stuff like that. We
even talk to law enforcement.
In a roundabout way, we end up drawing on any arena where you can find
interesting technique related to deception. We’ve gotten things from
undercover narcotics officers. We’ve gotten things from the ATF. We’ve
gotten things from folks at the actual CIA, all over the place and
reading tons of books. Foreign intelligence agencies tend to be really
useful, so histories of particularly the intelligence agencies like the
KGB or the Mossad or the agencies that do the more hardcore, devious
stuff and certainly the Soviet Union don’t have to worry about a
judiciary that’s going to come down really hard on them so the pallet is
a little bid broader. I’d say on a day to day basis, we talk to Michael
Wilson a lot but we also do a lot of other research.
S. Fulghum Wow, that’s a lot of effort that goes into it.
M. Nix Yes, absolutely. I think it’s sort of, you know, we’re doing
these voiceovers and the last thing we want is to be showcasing
technique that isn’t true. It seems like sort of a cheat.
S. Fulghum Thinking back to the creation of the show, were there any
difficulties in getting the script from just an idea to the hit TV
series it is now?
M. Nix No. I am joking of course. Yes, I think every phase has it’s
challenges. Really, I’d never worked in television at all before, so I
wrote the pilot of Burn Notice and it’s funny to me now, the first
writer I hired was my friend, Alfredo Barrios who’s been a writer on the
show for the full run of the series and he was really the first guy who
sat me down and said well, you got away with writing a pilot that had no
act outs, but let me teach you what an act out is and I said oh,
interesting. Terrific. So, something exciting should happen before the
commercial. Good to know. I’d been working in movies for years and so I
just didn’t think about it.
So, there was certainly a fair amount of learning the form, evolving
what the series was. The original conception of the series was a much
darker show and it became a lighter show for USA, so that was another
aspect of it. But then just kind of working out what are the values of
the show, what’s the kind of mass of an episode because people use the
term formula like it’s a bad thing. Ultimately it’s a well worked out
formula that makes the show work. The shows that go for a long time and
people really care about are shows that have formulas that are concrete
enough that they know what they’re sitting down to watch. They know what
the show is and flexible enough that they can still be surprised every
week. So, working that stuff out is an ongoing challenge and it never
really gets any easier.
Moderator Our next question comes from the line of Lena Lamoray. Please,
go ahead.
L. Lamoray As Burn Notice progresses, does it get easier to write the
episodes since you now have established characters or more difficult
since they have already done so much?
M. Nix I’d say both. Certain aspects of the series get easier because we
don’t have to have a long debate about what Sam’s basic world view is.
We know more about the characters, so those things are easier. At the
same time, you don’t want to repeat yourself and really I think you want
to find new ways that the interaction with the sort of A stories. It’s
really important to us that those not be or it’s really important to me
anyway, that that interaction not be mechanical.
Ideally, every episode is demanding something of Michael as a person.
Pursuing the case of the weak is not simply a matter of rearranging
pieces on a board and making sure that the client wins. It also
challenges Michael and it challenges the other characters to dig deep
and discover things about themselves, discover things about each other
that they didn’t know before.
One of the opportunities now that the show has established, and people
understand that these people fundamentally care about each other, is we
have the opportunity the put them in more conflict. We can do an episode
now where people really violently disagree about how to pursue a
particular problem and whereas if we had done that in the first season,
people might have been confused as to what the relationships between the
characters were. But, now we can get away with it a lot more easily
because people understand those things.
Another thing that we’re exploring is episode 15 of this year, the
episode before the finale, that’s an episode where the person taking the
lead on the case is really Fiona. It’s not fundamentally Michael’s case.
Michael is hugely involved and it’s a big deal for him, but that’s a
whole new arena for us to explore. It’s a big challenge for Michael when
Fiona’s going into stuff and doing things alone and facing her own
challenges as a person and he’s just got to be kind of sidelined and do
whatever he can to protect her, but knowing that, ultimately, she is
going to have to save the day in a Fiona way and he has got to stand on
the sidelines and know that he might solve this differently but he’s not
the guy on the ground, and that’s another really interesting thing for
us.
C. Fehskens Ladies and gentlemen, that’s all the time that we have for
today’s session. I’d like to once again thank Matt Nix for joining us
and remind everybody to tune into all new episodes of Burn Notice,
Thursdays at 10/9 Central on USA network. Thanks again everyone and
enjoy the rest of your day.
M. Nix Thanks all.
Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for
today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive
Teleconference. You may now disconnect.
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