TSCS Exclusive Interviews/articles

[Erika]

Setting the TSCC Facts Straight with Josh Friedman
By Erika Blake
Chief Correspondent




Motherofalldestiny.com gets the whole truth from Josh Friedman about Season 1, ratings, and the status of TERMINATOR getting renewed for a second season.

This past week we were invited in on a conference call with Executive Producer Josh Friedman and got some of the lowdown from Josh on the status of the show and some behind the scenes info!

There've been mixed reports over how the ratings have been doing for the show along with worries that the show has an over-inflated huge budget. Josh addressed both of these concerns. "As to the ratings, you know I don’t know what to make of it, really. I think that the show has done well for a new show and for a new drama. There are not many that do very well or haven’t been doing very well, certainly in the last strike era. And we do very well in certain demographics. We do very well in DVR. We do very well on downloads. I think for our type of show that is a big chunk. We were one of the top five shows being TiVo’d right now, which is how I watch the show because otherwise no one would know that I’m watching." Regarding the show's budget he said, "You know it’s not actually an expensive show to produce. In fact, I think we’re below the budget of many action shows that are on TV right now. In fact, our budget is much more in line with your basic drama that you would find on any network. So I don’t think that cost at this point plays much of a factor."

Josh also gave an insight into what we can expect for a timeline on when we might learn if we'll get a season 2 for the show, and what he thinks the chances for renewal. "I hope so. Everyone’s sort of—the first year show is sort of the ritual for first year shows is to come back into the network and tell them what season two is. Things are just a little weird this year because of having the strike so we have to readjust what our season two plans are. We’re going to go in and sit down with the network and we’ll do a post-game on season one and talk about season two. They’ll make the decision. FOX, they haven’t made a decision on any shows yet. So I fully expect to get in there with them pretty soon and hopefully have an answer pretty soon because we need to start writing."

With the season coming to an end, Josh was very candid over some of things that seemed to be left hanging during the season. Most of these he attributed to the disruption of the strike and his not being at the studio to watch over the show's editing and the severed line of communication with FOX during that time. When asked about the finale for this season at episode nine, he had this to say about it being left as a cliff-hanger, "Well, you know it’s serendipitous. I wasn’t there. I was on strike and so this is the number of episodes that we had reached; we had only written up to this number and produced up to this number when I went out on strike. So it happens that a lot of stuff locks in and comes together during these last two episodes and frankly, that’s just dumb luck. If we would have gone one episode more or one episode less I think it would be probably less satisfying."

With a season 2 in mind, Josh is focused on planning out a full 22 episode arc for next year, he just needs to wait and see what FOX wants. "I don’t know. Last year I had 22 planned and we switched it to 13 and we did nine. So I’m always—when I sit down and plan a season out, until someone tells me otherwise, I plan for 22, and if it’s not going to be 22 I make adjustments. But I always plan for 22. I’ve had ideas for probably the first three or four years. I’ve got arcs for them. Sometimes it just a matter of moving things up or moving things back or seeing where it goes."

Then asked if his writing team plan to pick up next season at episode 10, he replied, " I’m kind of thinking about that all right now. Again, the strike is such a weird situation, but the school of thought is, well, you could start next year picking up almost where you left off, but sometimes what the next episode, episode ten isn’t necessarily right for a season-two premier. So I think you have to rethink how much continuity, not continuity, but how much carryover you’re going to have from where you plan or it gives you a chance to sit back and say, alright, what can we do for season two? I have a plan going forward. It’s just how we integrate that into the beginning of season two. He went on further to explain, "Well, that’s what I’ve been sitting around and I’ve been thinking about. Some of those episodes were—I can’t tell you what episode ten is, but episode ten was a fantastic episode ten and an absolutely horrible season premier for a season two. “….”, it is heartbreaking for me. I just wish I’d gotten—I really, really wanted to do episode ten, it was like one of my favorite ideas and I can’t do it. I really can’t do it because it would’ve been a terrible season premiere. Yes it’s going to take some re-jiggering but I think there are ideas and beats from those episodes that we had planned and hadn’t filmed that will definitely be making their way in. It’s nice to—I’ve got a little perspective on the show and when we were working on episodes 10, 11, 12, 13, we had yet to air episode one. So it’s nice to actually now have seen the show and sort of educate yourself on your own show on what works and what doesn’t work. It’s like you have a second chance with a look at it.

At WonderCon this past weekend, Josh admited that what surprised him most about the series was how funny it became. In the call he said, "In the pilot there’s absolutely no humor at all and I say that having written it. And then I sat down and wrote the second episode and I put a lot of jokes in it and most of them were Cameron’s. Everyone ... the table read and when read, it was like, I was really funny. And everyone’s laughing; it was like we had a sitcom taping. And it was like, God, first of all no one thinks that I’m ever funny and I know for a fact that I’m hysterical. They wouldn’t—everyone was like, wow, that’s really funny, it’s really funny and I remember Lena came up to me and she’s like, Josh, this is really funny, I’ve got to do comedy in here. Now you never told me I was going to do comedy. I was like, well, let’s go for it.

Every time people just put on the boots and the leather jackets it just seems people get pretty serious. I’m going to try to get more comedy next season. It’s one of my vows, is that we explore more of the dark humor of the situation. I think there are shows—Buffy did a great job with that many moons ago. I always thought it was a great balance. So if it’s not funny, that’s really just my fault for not getting there. Every time I sit down to do it just comes out the other way." When some of the physical comedy in the show was brought up like Cromartie getting smacked by the truck, he laughed, "It’s always funny when somebody gets hit with something but you end up with Three Stooges humor or Cameron says something odd." He promised for season 2, "There’s just not a lot of ha-ha. But I’m going to work on it, I promise everybody."

Josh was asked to further extrapolate on how he initially plannned on bringing Kyle Reese back into the franchise and his view of time-travel. " I’m not going to say how I was going to do it but I had an idea but it was one of those things that probably worked really well on paper, and I could easily explain it to you if we sit down for ten minutes. But I think if it was probably something that was a bit of bridge too far for an audience, and again, Kyle is sort of a sacred cow and I think one thing to see him in the future and it’s another to see him in the present. I don’t know, I still hold out hope that somehow I’ll figure out to get him back, but every time I ever brought it up everyone looked at me like I was completely insane. I listen to everyone every once in a while when it’s unanimous."

"I try not to abuse the time travel too much. I think we think about it all the time. I’ve been in the writer’s room and there will be points, it happens at least once a day where all of a sudden we just go quiet and everyone stares at each other because we completely tilted like a pinball machine because we can’t wrap our brain around what we’re trying to do. I think that I have a pretty specific idea as to what I believe the rules of our universe are and I try not to violate them. I think that chaos theory abounds and that’s always my argument, a specific geek argument, why doesn’t Skynet just send—well they can’t send a nuclear bomb back. I think even Skynet probably at this point understands that the causality is so complicated that it’s unclear as to what any one thing might do. So I think to do something en masse is a very—they might end up destroying themselves, when they need the humans as much as the humans need them to kind of—well, they need the humans more right now, until later, once they’re created, then who knows." Josh who admits to trolling online discussion boards to see what fans are saying about the show, added, " I think it’s great to argue it out. When it’s the movies, there’s that sense of refrigerator logic where you sit down, you watch the movie, it’s a big chase, it’s adrenaline and it hits you when you’re driving home or later, you’re like, “wait, wait, he just sent his best friend back to birth himself”—you can go crazy just off the first movie and with a series obviously there’s much more time. One, there’s more time to analyze it, and two, over time we have to introduce more elements so it becomes more complicated and it starts to fold in on itself. I just try to keep it clear and I think stay true to the basic ideas of the movies. It’s a lot to wrangle."

Josh discussed the dangling plotline of the painted doors at the High School, to which he replied, " I hope so. I know. So I hope that you know. I don’t know if anybody can tell by the way that we put the show together but I really do try to plant things and pay them off and I really hate television shows that abandon ideas; whether it’s sort of carryover emotionally from episode to episode. That’s one of the reason the show is so serialized is I just feel compelled to constantly track these things through. That story line—that’s it, that story line is part of the story line that was certainly supposed to be resolved and I was going to continue with it and resolve it in the first season. There’s been some high school stuff that we shot that actually explored that stuff more that ended up on the cutting room floor. High school is one of those weird things where it’s like either there’s fans that they don’t want any high school stuff and there’s fans that like the high school stuff and I kind of have my own opinions about high school and what it’s there for. So whenever I go to high school stuff I kind of want it to be important so I definitely had this whole big story that I was working on. Some of it got dropped for time during editing and I wasn’t around to edit, so it happened. I don’t even know that I disagree with it. So the answer to that is a very longwinded way of saying I don’t know. But I haven’t forgotten about it and there was a plan. There’s always a plan. Executing the plan is a whole different matter."

Finally he admitted, "I’m a fascist about spoilers. I’m the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotion department, and I think they were very happy that I was on strike for 14 weeks.Whatever they want to do and since I’ve gotten back I get these little e-mails and they say, “Can we show this?’ And I say, “No.” If I had my way the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with the words “Sarah Connor” on them."

Uh yeah, we're glad that you're NOT in charge of the marketing for the show Josh! Thanks for taking the time to talk to us - we'll be on pins and needles waiting along with you to find out when you all can begin on Season 2!

And finally - on a personal note - Maria's mother wants to thank Josh for inquiring about her health! Josh made a recovering woman's day in Uruguay!

[Erika]

Getting Down to Terminator Business with Brian Austin Green

By Erika Blake
Chief Correspondent
motherofalldestiny.com

This past week MoaD was invited in on a conference call with TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES newest cast member, Brian Austin Green and we got the lowdown from him on playing a Reese, how he got the part, and what discovering his darkest deepest secrets!

Ever the company man, Brian flat out refused to spill the beans on anything that we could expect from the 2 part season finale (Monday, March 3rd 8-10PM on Fox.) He said, “You know, it’s funny, I was online last night going through some of the chats just to see what people were talking about, and this is one of those shows, unfortunately—I mean it’s unfortunate for me in the sense of whenever I do an interview that if you give any little bit of anything, people will talk enough about it that they’ll start to figure out what’s going on.”

He laughed that Josh pretty much has put a gag order on him from being allowed to say anything about his character. “I actually did a talk show one night and the only clip we could get of me on the show, because I hadn’t premiered on it yet, was the teaser from the episode before, so it was like “Next week on the Sarah Connor Chronicles” and it showed my running and fighting, everything that everybody else had seen. We couldn’t get anymore footage than that. I knew at the end of it all that was Josh’s doing.” (This show BTW was the Tom Green show, you can watch that interview on Tom Green's website.)

When asked what it was like working against Summer who has to keep her facial expressions to a minimum, Brian Austin replied, “Well, it’s fantastic for this job. Summer is so good at completely staying in those moments and I think that oddity is what sort of creates the tension and excitement in the scenes. You do scenes all day long with people that react and when you have somebody that just sits there and blankly stares at you they almost end up becoming these staring competitions. And Summer and I will sort of laugh by the end of them if we haven’t made it all the way through, just because it’s an interesting relationship between the two of us. They’ve both known each other for a long time and there’s a lot of tension within it.”

After telling me that he had visited MOAD the night before the conference call and that he liked what he saw, I thanked him and asked Brian, “So the character of Derek, how is it for you, Brian, knowing that you are officially now a member of the Reese family, that your character has kind of become a member of the mythology of the show? And have you thought about what it would be like that maybe your character might get integrated into other things like novels or comic books down the road?”

Brian replied, “No. I hadn’t thought about that at all. Again, it’s almost like wrapping my brain around actual time travel. It doesn’t really—people have asked me that before and just going into the first episode that I had, Josh knows, I was really worried about how people would respond to me playing this character. I was a huge fan of the films and I was a huge fan of Michael Biehn and Kyle Reese as a character. So I knew I was kind of holding a heavy weight in taking it on.

At this point it’s not really how involved in the franchise or how big a part of the franchise I am or not, it’s really for me just the daily stress of making sure that I’m being true to the character in the franchise. So that’s the most important thing to me at the end. When I go on your site or any of the others that the fans don’t have a feeling that I have somehow let them down as far as what they would expect from Terminator as a franchise. So that’s all I really think about. If I end up being part of a comic book, that’s bad ass If I don’t, what I’m doing now is bad ass, so at the end of the day this is all just really cool.”

Brian went on to further discuss the acting challenges that he faced playing his part and how he has viewed Derek growing over the course of his episode arc, “ The challenges—I’ve got to say the biggest challenge going into the show was the fact that I was hired the night before I started work. So I really knew very little of the character except for the first script that I had in my hand, which is the first episode that everybody saw of my character. So the big challenge for me as an actor was the next day on set whenever I’d see Josh, just asking him as many things as I could. Just trying to get as many answers to questions as I could, because picking up a script and not knowing what happened before, and it’s like, okay, what the hell is a Turk and what—there’s so much involved in every script. The scripts are so detailed. And I really had no reference.

That’s been the hardest thing for me as an actor is trying to make sure that I have enough back-story to really understand what Derek is doing and what his thought process is. Development wise he went from living in the future where he was fighting every day to survive to now being in a world with a blue sky and grass, and fighting for a different reason. It’s at times just a huge rollercoaster for him. He still really has no grasp of it. I mean, he’s just coming out of nearly dying. So he’s got a lot of growing to do I would say.”

Brian was asked about the humor on the show and asked why Summer gets all of the great one liners, he snarkily replied, “ She gets the comedy though by chance. She’s not like Jerry Seinfeld. She’s not standing up there with one liners.” He admited to laughing hard when Cromartie was smashed by the truck in the pilot. He also further went on to say, “You never know when humor is going to be funny until you shoot it or really until we’re on the day, on the set doing it. You read it and you don’t really pick up the humor until you’re doing it. There are just a lot of odd moments that become really humorous, that are just humorous out of being so odd, I think. Those are the ones I always laugh at.”

Finally Brian was asked what he does in his downtime and what TV shows he watches, to which he replied, “I’m not watching any television, really, at all except for this show, to be honest. it’s actually the truth. It’s the only thing I am TiVo’ing and watching really just out of the excitement of it, being on set and shooting what we shoot and then sitting back and seeing how it all comes together. For me I can read a script ten times and there are still things that I miss that I don’t really completely understand until I watch it. But it’s really the only thing that I’m watching weekly.” He snarked that he's always waiting for Shark Week (on the Discovery Channel.)

Just like when I interviewed him on the red carpet at the Premiere Party, Brian Austin decided to once again show his age when he was asked what his favorite shows of all time were. He replied, “Oh, ... I watched Battle Star Galactica when I was a kid. I had the toys and it was the coolest thing in the world when Universal Studios had the ride, where the tram went through and the Silons were out and all that was going on. Now, God, I’ve always been more of a movie watcher really than a TV watcher. I think when I watched television it would tend to be more on the comedy side. I’d watch a lot of Three’s Company and shows like that.”

Josh Friedman who was on the show had to bark in at this point, “Dude, you’re talking like you’re 100 years old.”

“I am 100 years old. Are you kidding? I’ve been in this @#$%ing business longer than most of our cast has been alive. It’s ridiculous, you know. I’ll hang out with Thomas and he’s 20 years old, I’m like, really? Yes, my SAG-card, I’ve been a member since ’85. It’s just my life dates me. There is no real way of making myself look any younger within it all. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, ultimately. I’m Star Wars to the end, until I die.” Yes folks, my heart nearly stopped, somehow I knew that there was a reason that I got along great with this guy at the Premiere – he's a closeted geek just like the rest of us. Don't believe me? He didn't stop there. “I’m in my room right now with all my movie memorabilia and I have so much Star Wars ... I’m such a nerd. I’ve got Darth Vader’s helmet and Princess Leia’s gun, and I’ve got Han Solo’s gun and then all the light sabers, all in cases, the signed editions. It’s retarded.”

Josh Friedman had to catch a ride on that conversation train and admitted to spending over $100 on STAR WARS Legos for his son at WonderCon and had a Darth Vader Lego dangling off of his keychain. (Yeah...and now I know why I got along so well with BOTH Brian Austin & Josh at the Premiere party.)

Brian laughed and replied to Josh, “Yes, I saw the bag. You know what was really sad was like I almost got in a fight with Megan (Fox) over wanting to get stuff for my son. And she was like, “He doesn’t need anymore. All you ever do is buy him Lego Star Wars stuff.” And I was like, “Yes, but I’m sure there’s a Jawa there and it’d be awesome, he’d love it.” I’m a total—I’m a nerd and my son is a big Star Wars nerd now also. I’ve destroyed him.”

Awwww come on Brian, nerds need to come from somewhere and if they've got cool Dads like you that's even better

Find out the fate of Brian Austin's character Derek Reese on the 2 hour season finale on FOX Monday March 3rd between 8-10PM!

[allergygal]

Josh was asked to further extrapolate on how he initially plannned on bringing Kyle Reese back into the franchise and his view of time-travel. " I’m not going to say how I was going to do it but I had an idea but it was one of those things that probably worked really well on paper, and I could easily explain it to you if we sit down for ten minutes. But I think if it was probably something that was a bit of bridge too far for an audience, and again, Kyle is sort of a sacred cow and I think one thing to see him in the future and it’s another to see him in the present. I don’t know, I still hold out hope that somehow I’ll figure out to get him back, but every time I ever brought it up everyone looked at me like I was completely insane. I listen to everyone every once in a while when it’s unanimous."

I this driving anyone else crazy too? I'm dying to know how Kyle would have (or might still be) brought into the present timeline of the show.

[Erika]

Patience Needed by Fox to delay Judgment Day on TSCC

By Erika Blake
Chief Correspondent
Motherofalldestiny.com

With industry insider rumors flying that Fox might be ready to renew TSCC for season 2, I have a few reminders to pass along to the powers that be over at our favorite network that would most certainly help them to hang in there with TERMINATOR.

Remember your own past - Back in September 1993 when FOX was still a young and edgy network they took a chance on bringing on a unique, new sci-fi show into their lineup. The show's first season had a lot of ups and downs, it's ratings could make even a Naval Officer seasick. However, the show performed ok it's first year....well 2 years actually...with it averaging 7.0 million viewers in season 1 and then it received a steady pickup in the ratings by season 2 when it averaged 9.7 million. After season 2, the show went from being a "cult fan favorite" to becoming a bona-fide hit. What show was it?

The X-Files.

THE X-FILES wasn't an overnight success (you can examine their ratings history HERE,) it only became a huge hit for FOX once they allowed the expensive, smart, original show to grow and to find an audience. Sci-Fi fans are fickle and we bristle with annoyance at networks who only see the immediate bottom dollar when they dangle new sci-fi programming our way. We've been burned time after time again with one great show after another getting canceled way too soon because the network panicked over ratings.

Oftentimes we sci-fi fans find ourselves immersed in other shows and don't have time for trying out new programs. We do, however, read about the other shows and will mentally check them off in our brains as ones "to check out later."

The future is ripe for picking up new viewers for SARAH CONNOR, since a couple of fan favorite sci-fi shows will soon be coming to their end. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA only has 1 season left to it. When that happens there will be a million plus fans who will be lost and will be longing for something new to watch. They've used the shows drama, brilliant writing, kickass action, and awesome FX as a drug for 4 years. They'll need another fix...STAT! All they will have to do is hear is the unmistakably magnificent opening score for TSCC, written by their beloved composer Bear McCreary, and they'll be hooked.

The end of next year will bring us (FINALLY) to the end of SMALLVILLE. Fans who are weary of the endless soap opera on the aging series are already sniffing out TSCC to see if it's got anything going on to capture their attention. On our boards alone we have a large number of SV fans in our midst...and they're chatting up the show everywhere that they go. When SMALLVILLE is over, expect 4+ million viewers to be seeking another show about heroes battling against great odds.

Most viewers of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES tend to agree that the first few episodes seemed choppy with their writing - the writers seemed to jackhammering the show story-arc and filling it with blaring plot-holes. By episode 5 the tone from the fans changed - they moved from mildly curious to rabidly addicted to the show. The plot-holes started to get filled in at an alarmingly fast rate and with the arrival of Brian Austin Green's mysterious character Derek Reese into the cast, a wayward trio of heroes on the run seemed to form into a real resistance group that was capable of taking on Skynet.

As the show wound down to its grand 2 hour finale the complaints were far outweighed by frantic cries from fans demanding for a season 2 of the show to be allowed onto the air next Fall. The writers and finale director did the unthinkable, they created for us 2 highly memorable scenes that had nothing to do with your usual TERMINATOR franchise action. The first the Derek/John Birthday "gift" was without a doubt one of the most brilliantly played out scenes I've ever seen on TV, it was filled with wonder and had an amazing purity to the scene that could've been cheesy if put in the hands of less than capable actors, instead it brought tears to many people's eyes. Finally the final showdown w/the FBI and Cromartie was stylish, fresh, and unique. If the scene had been shot in a major motion picture - the directors would be up for Oscars, it was that poignant and spellbinding to watch. TSCC is on the verge of becoming something truly remarkable and special and it's a damned shame that the writer's strike prevented us from getting our last 4 episodes, because the fans are starving for more...NOW!

Something that FOX needs to remember, many people simply didn't watch TV this winter to support the writers. Those who missed out on season 1 are now kicking themselves, like my co-worker who went home this week and had to endure his family going on and on and on about how much they LOVED TERMINATOR. (Me of course being the constant cheerleader for the show reminded him that he could buy the entire season on iTunes or Amazon Unboxed.)

Fox doesn't have SARAH CONNOR on their summer rotation schedule. If they want to see the shows ratings to increase next season they need to perform some guerrilla war tactics. Fox owns FX, they need to do what NBC does with HEROES and put aside 9 hour programming blocks on their cable channel FX and run marathons of TSCC. Or put it on late night on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night on FX. During the second season, re-run the episode on the weekend on FX. The hits that they get on cable can get added into their overall Nielsen ratings...and it'll allow for folks who maybe don't watch FOX anymore a chance to catch the show on their cable channel.

As a final parting thought - at WonderCon last month there were only TWO panels that had wall to wall filled capacity...one was THE X-FILES panel and the other was TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. Sounds rather like one Fox classic was passing the torch, don't you think? Fox, do just like the wall mural says "Hang in there, baby" TSCC has a GREAT foundation to grow from...if you play your cards right, it will be your next X-FILES. To many of us who grew up loving Chris Carters show and grew up watching your network, TSCC already HAS done that.

All we ask is that of FOX is that you have a little patience...and we will deem you worthy of great rewards.

[Carri]

Josh might be fascist on the spoilers, but I'm sure we will get some if we want them Soon as the scripts start being written again.

I'm gonna die till we get official word on Season 2. But I think it's looking good, so far.