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September 29, 2006

Onward and upward

Hi everybody... Just a quck blog to say bye for now. I hope you enjoyed the first half of the season. We'll be back in the Spring to pick up where we left off, and to produce at least another 20 episodes of Atlantis. Cheers and have a great winter!

Posted by Alex Levine at 11:11 PM

September 15, 2006

They just keep getting better!

I sat Carl Binder down in my office and I put this question to him. "Talk to me about Phantoms", I said. "Tell me some exciting, behind the scenes stuff about Phantoms— about the show, about the actors, about the creative process. Enlighten me!" So Carl sits silently for a moment. Then he looks at me. And he seems to look right through me (as it turns out he was just thinking, but it was unnerving while it was happening, I can tell you that). And then he says, without any affectation whatsoever, "Phantoms is my favourite episode that I’ve done."

And this is just exasperating for an interviewer, because… and I’m serious here… he says that all the time! So me, being no push over myself, I say to Carl – I say "you always say that!" And I smirk a little, because I know I’ve got him in a corner, because his brow wrinkles and he’s got this look on his face like maybe he made a mistake or maybe I made a mistake or maybe he’s just going to punch my lights out… and then he seems to regain his focus, and he says, very deliberately, with an accusatory finger pointed right at my forehead… "so far." And then he explains that he meant it’s his favourite episode so far. He’s also really proud of Irresistible and also Michael. So I backed off, because I value my pretty boy looks and I’ve got a big weekend ahead of me. But the point is a good one. The show keeps getting better. And Phantoms is a great example of that.

Why does he like Phantoms so much? Well, for starters, he actually came up with the concept, which is no small feat. Remember they’ve done 250 episodes and they’ve turned every story idea around and around and told it from every angle, so it’s no small feat to come up with a strong, original concept. The working titles were "Wraith Fight Club" and then "Carl’s Rage Machine." And the story developed from being a story about a Wraith experiment causing uncontrollable anger to one in which a device causes personal traumatic experiences to be relived. This created perfect opportunities to delve into the characters’ backstories – specifically Sheppard’s. The Atlantis writers had been looking for a story in which they could flesh out Sheppard’s personal history, and Joe Flanigan was also anxious to do that kind of a story. They thought about doing it in Common Ground, but there was too much story already in that one to do it justice. So this worked out just perfect. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but check it out, because it’s very cool.

You’ll also see Company of Thieves tonight, in which SG-1’s mission is to recover the Odyssey. This is a serious story, with high stakes and personal loss. I talked with Alan McCullough, who wrote it. He said he pitched it as a "get the ship back" episode, and Rob Cooper spun it into a Donnie Brasco kind of story, where we get to see the seedy underbelly of the Lucian Alliance. And there’s a great stunt in this show where a character is floating in space and bounces off the window of a space ship. Apparently the actor was flown in from LA, put in a harness, and swung against our model ship window for 2 hours, and then flown home the same day. This is definitely a crazy business.

Enjoy!

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 11:29 PM

September 08, 2006

Stop the inanities!

I’m not going to tell you about the stuff you don’t want to know… writer’s nicknames, what we had for lunch, who picked who in the dark horse NFL football pool (Paul picked Oakland!)… Because you guys just want to hear about the shows. So I’m just going to talk about the shows.

Memento Mori was written by Joe and Paul. Okay, here is a very behind the scenes little tidbit. The show involves a Deli named Sol’s Diner, but when you watch the show you’ll notice that the character who plays the deli’s owner is called Sal. And he explains it by saying that he bought the place from a guy named Sol. Weird and hilarious, to be sure, but also necessary to fix a problem. You see we had already cleared and made signs up for Sol’s Deli, but the best actor from the auditions looked a lot more Italian than Jewish. So they named him Sal and Joe added that explanatory line. And, ironically, we later found out he's actually Jewish.

I spoke with Joe about the episode… he said that when he originally pitched the episode he pitched Vala working in a shoe store, not a deli. Personally, I think the shoe store would have been great, but the deli works too.

Also in Memento Mori, there were some hilarious outtakes of when Mitchell is discovered handcuffed to a bed in a hotel room. Of course those didn’t make the cut… but I can tell you the cast had a great time adlibbing their reactions to finding Mitchell in such a compromising position.

The show is also stunt-heavy, featuring a car crash/roll-over, a motorcycle chase, and a high fall in a warehouse. Apparently Ben Browder was all set to actually ride the motorcycle for the chase, but the insurance company wouldn’t have it, so he had to step aside for the stunt driver. By the way, the stunts will be the subject of one of Ivon Bartok’s behind the scenes featurettes on the DVD’s when they come out next year.

McKay & Mrs. Miller is one of my all time favourite Stargate shows. I just spoke with Martin Gero and he told me how the story evolved. Last year, Martin actually saw David Hewlett’s sister Kate perform in a play that was directed by Martin’s friend, Brendan Gall. Martin thought Kate did a great job and that got him thinking about doing an episode with McKay and his sister. So once the episode was written, naturally Kate was hired to play the character of Jeanie Miller (McKay’s sister). And the chemistry is obvious on screen. AND… Brendan Gall was cast as Jeanie’s husband, Kaleb, as sort of a finder’s fee.

Here’s another little aside. In Hot Zone, an Atlantis show from Season 1, Martin Gero wrote a monologue for McKay in which he says to contact his brother if they are unable to get out of a certain life or death situation. Well David asked Martin if he could change the reference to his sister, and Martin agreed, thinking there was no way they were ever going to do a show about McKay’s sister…. But it was a good thing they changed it, because here we are with an episode about McKay’s sister, so it all fits together.

By the way, the tee shirts that Brendan wears on screen are Indie rock tee’s supplied by an independent Canadian record company – Arts & Crafts. They were very generous and we are grateful to them for their help.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at 09:41 PM