The Point Radio: CHICAGO FIRE Ignites Primetime For NBC

We aren’t trying to be cute in saying that NBC’s CHICAGO FIRE seems be be heating up the network’s Wednesday nights. Series star Eaamon Williams and creator Derek Haas talk about how the series keeps it real – and safe – plus the comeback trail is getting crowded with new material on TOMB RAIDER, Ralph Bakshi and The Thunderbirds! Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The point, the point. Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point, where all parts of pop culture come together. Alright, I won't use the cliche that it's hot, but it is throwing a lot of attention to Wednesday night on NBC.

It's Chicago Fire, and we've got the cast and creators here to talk about that. Plus, look who jumped on the comeback trail, Ralph Fashki, the Tomb Raider, and the Thunderbirds. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point, the point radio, get the point radio. The NBC series Chicago Fire has continued to heat up Wednesday nights for the network.

At the midway point of the season, we sat down with the executive producer and creator, Derek Haas, and series star, Eamon Walker, to talk about, well, where things have come so far. Starting with Eamon's cut on the progress his character, Chief Brody, has made so far. Well, more has been revealed about Chief Brody. We have found our feet now as we've been growing.

I really like playing Chief Brody, and it's been really open with Derek and with Michael and the ideas that have been going that way, and they inform us of things that are coming up. And we go, oh, great. And where is that now with the deeper layers of the onion that are coming out that who he is? I'm very, very happy to play him.

Once this episode goes out, and you find out this other layer with Cody, who plays the young boy. And I think the audience should be really, really happy. Action plays a big part in this series, and I was curious about the danger factor. To make it look good, can it still be safe? Well, Derek and Eamon waited on this.

The thing that you should take on board is if there's a corridor of fire on the other side of that corridor. Firemen and safety people and the special effects guys all sit in waiting, having done all the safety checks. So in actual fact, we're not in any danger at all. But sometimes it's arduous. Yeah, sometimes it's really, really hard work.

Me being the chief, fortunately, doesn't have to do as much work as everybody else. But it's a good place for me. And now I've said that I'm sure Derek's going to do something about it, aren't you, Derek? We're always laughing when we write these scenes because we just think, how in the hell are they going to shoot this? And most of them are based on stories that we've heard firemen tell us either directly or from Steve Ciccarotas,

who's our technical advisor of Michelle. And then we just write it and we never think about the budget. We never think about how they're going to figure it out. We have great, we have a great crew. And somehow, and these actors get in there and do it and it always astounds us.

Both guys agree at the heart of the show is a tremendous respect they have for those in the firefighting industry. For Eamon, well, it comes right down to the sound of the siren. The amount of knowledge that is needed to be a fireman. There's a degree you can get in fire science, but I didn't have it taken on board in any shape or form before starting to play this role or any of the research for it.

But they have to know basic engineering, the constructs of buildings, how they put together, what the get to calculate how much stress a floor can take to give the way after it's been burning up for an amount of time. So everything that I thought I needed has changed. And how it manifests now in my real life is when I hear a siren, I am forever changed. And I will always be quiet because I know at the end of those sirens,

it's some drama or tragedy. Sometimes it's comedy at the end of the show. And for Derek, that respect began even before they rolled the cameras. For me, it's when we saw this in the very first firehouse we walked into was that these guys who worked on this shift and these women are a family. And when we first conceived the show, we thought, oh, we'll just follow one character, you know, journey in a firehouse.

And then we walked into, you know, a house in Chicago and watched these guys interact. And they, I mean, in five minutes you'll be laughing so hard you fall out of your chair and then they'll tell another story. You'll be wiping tears out of your eyes. And we thought, okay, that's our show. Jerry came to television from movies. So how did that transition work out for him? It's more rigorous and more fluid. When you work on a movie, you write your script, you go on set,

and you always know there's an end. And you're working towards a premiere date, and then it's over. And with writing a television show, it's really like writing chapters in a book. And you have some of the same goals because you're closing storylines, you're opening new ones. But the anxiety level of each week of having to try to do something, you know, equal to what you did the week before, for me it's an awesome challenge. I love challenges.

And to get more in depth with all of these characters and know that there's more stories to tell and surprise people, that's what makes it fun. Catch Chicago Fire. We do episodes every Wednesday on NBC. And as always, you can catch up at NBC.com. As always, a lot going on. Here's the latest in pop culture. Put a little money aside for this one. In June, you can pick up the Wolverine adamantium collection. It weighs 16 pounds. It's 720 pages.

And it's a slip cased hardcover collection with some of the very best of the Wolverine stories from the past few decades, including Wolverine origin, of course, by Paul Jenkins and Adam Kubert. Weapon X by Barry Windsor Smith, the original Chris Claremont Frank Miller miniseries from the 80s and so much more, including work by Warren Ellis, Mark Millar and Jim Lee as well. Of course, it'll come out just in time to celebrate the release of the Wolverine movie, which will be hit theaters in June.

England's ITV studios are partnering with a couple of other worldwide production companies to bring back Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are go. An update of the classic kids cereal that debuted in 1965 will be back with 26 half hour episodes already ordered for air on ITV and another countries to sometime during 2015. The new series will use a unique mix of CGI animation and live action model sets. But the new producers promise it will also pay tribute to the legacy of model locations that are so important to those of us who love the original series. It's the 90s all over again. There will be a best buy exclusive Tomb Raider comic all tied into the upcoming release of the new Tomb Raider game coming from Crystal Dynamics with a comic, of course, being produced by Dark Horse.

It's actually an origin story for Laura Croft called Tomb Raider, the beginning of 48 page six part hardcover that will be available free for anybody who preorders the Tomb Raider game at best buy. No word yet on whether Dark Horse it will release this in any form or fashion to comic book stores down the road. Better get in line. No Tomb Raider is set to come out on March the fifth. Lifetime was ordered 10 episodes of the drama, which is of East End, which starts Julia Ormond and Rachel Boston, among others. It will premiere later this year and they're excited about it, saying it could be the first in a long term plan for Lifetime to do more original series programming. Just to make it clear, this is not the Witches of Eastwick. This is based on a novel by Melissa De La Cruz of the same name, Witches of East End.

Animator Ralph Bakshi is back with a project that he hopes can get funded on Kickstarter. He actually hasn't gone too far. He's done a couple of new things on the Internet that you should be able to find, including a short called Trickle Diggle Down. Now he's hoping to get about one hundred and seventy thousand dollars from Kickstarter for what he calls an animated cop mafia and horror movie set in nineteen sixties on Coney Island with political overtones, realistic and outrageous as well. You can see the latest on Kickstarter if you search under Ralph's name and we've got the trailer for you posted up this week on our website, GetThePointRadio.com. Mark Bellar has been talking movies a lot, promising some pretty big things for X-Men Days of Future Past and also claiming that if there's a third kick ass movie, it will be the last in the series.

Kick ass 2 though in production right now, so there's no guarantee we will see a 3. But if we do, Mark Bellar says that'll be the last in the series. Will the characters die? His response to that question was maybe. As we gear up for the Academy Awards, the Annie Awards took place a few days ago, those of course for the animation business. Reckon Ralph pretty much walked away with the big win at the awards, winning best animated feature, best directing, music, voice acting and best writing as well. The Robot Chicken DC Comics Special won best general audience animated television production and the Avengers from Marvel got best animated effects in a live action movie as well.

For a while now, the Harbinger movie has been stalled at Paramount even though Valiant has been pushing it forward as fast as possible. And now the comic companies made the decision to follow the lead of Marvel Studios, take the property back home and do the movie themselves. They're now hoping that Brett Radner, who was originally attached to the film under Paramount, will come along for the ride as well. And Variety reports that Valiant has asked Steven Susco, who wrote Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to do a script for the film. Paramount first optioned the property back in 2008, but now has decided not to go forward, fearing some lawsuits possibly involving who really created the characters in the first place back in the original days of the…

Your Pop Culture Channel. And perforated, Valentine's you can tear out and give to the ones you love as well. All in this unusual special from DC. The Doctor Who Omnibus is much more serious than all to get you prepared, of course, for the 50th anniversary. A beautiful package out this week. First of all, it'll be a series from IDW.

Cool independence to look for. Snapshot and Son of Merlin, both first issues this week. And both ones definitely deserve a look through. By the way, Son of Merlin, bargain priced at just a buck, both from Image. At your Marvel Now, number one this week, that's interesting. Fearless Defenders begins the new series with a first issue from Marvel. Second printing, Star Wars number one from Dark Horse. That's already sold out, so grab it if you can. Hellboy in Hell number two has a second printing this week, and Django Unchained does as well.

First issue of that, of course, from DC. There's also a second printing this week of all new X-Men number five, and Spider-Man number 700. Captain America number two gets a second printing, and Hawkeye gets a bunch of printings. There's a fourth printing of number one and number two of that series, and a second printing of number six. Indestructible Hulk has a second printing. That's the second issue of that, by the way. And Morbius L

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