The Point Radio: Bad Girl In A Family Way

It’s not quite the way Stan would write it. Super Villain vs Super Hero and the result – somebody gets pregnant. Meet Jourdan Gibson (aka “DarkStar”) star of SUPER KNOCKED-UP, a red hot web series already in its second season. Plus more with Brian Fuller on bringing HANNIBAL to network TV, and Robyn Schneider returns to start Talking Dr Who again. 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

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point, where all parts of pop culture come together. Super villainous meets superhero, the result? She's super knocked up. The mom-to-be Jordan Gibson is here to explain how that happened.

Brian Fuller is along to talk more about the challenge of bringing Hannibal the network television and Robin Schneider is back and she is talking Doctor Who. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point, The Point radio, get The Point radio. Meet actress Jordan Gibson whose latest character is Darkstar, a badass supervillainess who

takes on her adversary and somehow fighting turns to, eh, let's just say the title says it all. The web series? Super knocked up. It's a comedic web series where my character, she's actually a supervillain.

She gets knocked up by her arch enemy, a superhero and he is Captain Amazing. They can't stand each other and they have a night of passion and surprise. So the premise of the show is, or the storyline, basically they have to figure out how are they going to raise this baby together and go through the pregnancy together and it's a love-hate relationship and it's pretty fun.

So other than the pregnancy part, what kind of research did Jordan have to do for the role? Well fortunately I've always been a pretty big sci-fi fan and there's actually a comic book based on the show as well that the creator of Super Knocked Up created. So I just, you know, looked into some of my favorite superheroes and supervillains and

just talked a lot with Jeff Burns, the writer of the show and discussed the character and her backstory and her weaknesses and her strengths and ends. It was just really fun, sitting this character together. Jordan first established herself with an award-winning web series called Cell. Yeah, that was a completely different type of show.

That was a drama, the beautiful, kind of creepy, beautiful love story that doesn't really look like it's going to be a love story. I loved Cell. It was an incredible experience. So from supervillainess to psychopath, Jordan's done it all.

You know, I've actually played a lot of roles that I may have originally thought I wouldn't be comfortable with. Like you mentioned serial killer. I've actually played a serial killer on Cell. Like he's…

Oh, believe it or not, I don't know if it's because I look like the opposite of what a serial killer might look like, but I have been cast as a crazy person several times and that's really fun. It's disturbing to watch and disturbing to get into that headspace, but it's also pretty fun because it's very different from who I am.

She's one of the new wave of talent honing their craft on the web, and that's a place that Jordan says she always wants to stay connected to. Well, you know, I'd love to, no matter which direction I go in, whether it's into more films or into more mainstream stuff, I want to always stay involved in the web world. And it's just…

I actually just had an incredible experience that's so fresh on my mind with the LA Web Fest. The people in the web world, they're just so very collaborative and so supportive. And I just… I haven't found that in any other type of entertainment medium that I've been involved

in and I just love it. So I want to continue producing in web and creating web and especially acting in web. But of course from that, any opportunity I would get to act, whether it be an independent film, it also has a similar vibe. I love it all.

I'm open to everything, but I don't want to abandon my roots in any way. I think I'll always be involved in the web world. All right. Well, with so many web series out there, it is hard to keep track. And I asked Jordan to point me in the direction of the stuff that she likes.

I'm crazy about the show, Caring. It's just beautifully shot. I mean, it looks like you're watching a movie every time it comes on. It's funny, it's a dramedy, it's really good. Love pairings, anyone but me.

Well, there's a ton. There's so many quality web shows. They just get better and better every year. Super knocked up as a pretty extensive website, not only with episodes from the first and second season, but a great ongoing video podcast as well, done by the cast and creators, including

Jordan. It's just fun. We put a lot into it, but it's very rewarding at the same time because the fans have just been, they're just so cool about Super Knock Up. They're very supportive and they're very, you know, they're excited about our show and

about being behind the scenes footage and always asking questions. And it's really great to know that, okay, we're not just having fun. You know, we're actually, you know, making someone's day. So that's a really, that's just a really cool thing. Plus, you know, I get to hang out online at least with a bunch of really fun people and

with Jeff, the creator of the show and with Mark, his place, Captain Amazing. We have a lot of fun and it's just a cool, it's a great idea. That's one of the other wonderful things about the web world is that everyone's very in touch with their fans and very much an open book, kind of like glass glass walls, you know, come and see how we made this and, you know, go do your own stuff.

You know, it's a lot of fun. And as far as a third season of the series. Oh, heck yeah, definitely. We're planning it for late summer or early fall. So probably around August, August or September.

I'll love it if you subscribe to Super Knocked Up on YouTube, but more importantly, head over to the website for not only episodes from season one and two, but also the video podcast as well at superknockedup.com. It's set for the very latest in pop culture. Famed comic creator and extraordinary art talent, Carmine Infantino has passed away

at the age of 87. Infantino, of course, began his career during the golden age of comics, but of course was the forefront of helping bring back the flash as a revival in 1956 and arguably kicking off the silver age of comics. Global publisher at DC Jim Lee said that Carmine was a legend and we're quoting here.

The number of classic covers he created are innumerable. His influence, reach and impact is humbling and will always live on. Disney has shut down LucasArts, which is the in-house video game studio, which was originally part of Lucasfilm, which as you know, Disney purchased a few months back. They blame the overall downshift in the video game business already down 9% last year and

it's expected to take another dip in 2013 as well. Disney's also shut down all of its in-house video game development except for Disney Infinity, which will be the collectible game figure video game set for release later this year. On top of all the huge ratings, Game of Thrones Season 3 premiere set another record. Once again, it is the most downloaded show on the internet.

It came pretty close to that last year, but the previous winner in the category was a season premiere of Heroes from a few years ago. Expand the marketplace as much as it has been since then and well over a million people illegally downloaded this premiere episode and that was in the first 24 hours after it was broadcast.

Marvel has released some plans for the upcoming Infinity crossover tie-in project set for later in the summer. It actually starts on May the 4th with a free comic book day sample. It's an original story by Jonathan Hickman and Jim Chung. That will give you the preview to the story.

From there, the title Infinity itself will have about six issues. There will also be tie-ins in New Avengers and Avengers as well beginning in Avengers number 18 and New Avengers number 9. Three issues of each of those will give you another six to worry about and then there will also be some supplementary crossovers in books like Scarlet Spider-Man, Thunderbolts,

Wolverine and the X-Men and Captain Marvel as well. Again, the entire Infinity project will begin in August but you can get the sample during free comic book day on May the 4th. Hey there, it's Robin Schneider and I'm here to talk Doctor Who. The seventh season of Doctor Who is back from its break with a strong opening episode.

Same Doctor, New Companion. Or sort of New Companion since the Bells of Saint John was our third introduction to Clara Oswald. Let's start with Clara. The girl twice dead, Soufflé girl, the Victorian governess and now a computer inept nanny?

I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to keep the Clara we met in the Christmas special, Mary Poppins, the secret barmaid. It would have been refreshing to have a companion for whom modern day London would have been an adventure. A companion who knows Arthur Conan Doyle as that drunk from the pub and has never heard

of Harry Potter. But it's okay. I survived my disappointment. This new episode opened wonderfully with Moffat once again taking something ordinary and making it seem terrifying.

And so we have the world wide web gone evil where clicking the wrong wifi network could permanently download your soul. I loved the part where the Bells of Saint John referred to the TARDIS and I loved the Doctor having to walk Clara through her internet problems over the phone. And I particularly loved the way Run You Clever Boy and Remember was Clara's mnemonic for

the wifi password. But it was when the Doctor and Clara came face to face that I found myself wishing she was still a barmaid and he was still a scowly thing in a top hat. Because this Clara was only able to save the day through cleverness downloaded into her brain while held captive in the wifi.

And for me that made it harder to cheer for her. She's not an ordinary girl who can save the world or an extraordinary girl who can either. She's merely a quirk of extraordinary circumstances. And she called the TARDIS a snog box. But I suppose not every Clara can announce that it's smaller on the outside.

I liked the spoon heads as walking base stations, making the thread of being downloaded a lot more present. And the little girl from the cover of Amy Pond's book was definitely creepy. Speaking of, Amy Pond, novelist? It's like someone was peeking at my Christmas list.

Anyway, there were some great moments in this episode. The jammy dodgers, the motorbike, the Doctor's remark that he doesn't predict the future, he just works there. But the plotting still fell a little bit flat for me. While the idea of downloading people's souls was horrible, I found it odd that the evil

wifi network was staffed by a bunch of sheepish 20-somethings with Facebook accounts. The crash landing of the airplane came out of nowhere and disappeared from the story almost instantly. And the way Miss Kizlet controlled everyone's conscience from her tablet was a pretty convenient day of sex makna that made me wonder why the people downloading souls wouldn't believe

in their mission without being manipulated to do so. Still, I liked the return of the great intelligence, and I'm interested to see what Miss Kizlet's having encountered the intelligence in her childhood will mean for this villain's role during the remainder of the season. I just wish I was more interested in Clara after this episode.

Be sure to let me know your thoughts on Twitter. I'm at Robin Schneider, and thanks for listening. The Point Video. Taking bits and pieces from the books and the movies, executive producer and writer Brian Fuller is bringing Hannibal Lecter to television in the new NBC series.

So for the first thing I wanted to know was how this whole thing came about. It was a fateful plane ride. I had just finished writing a script and wanted to cleanse my palate by going to New York and taking in some Broadway shows. I just happened to be on the plane with an old friend of mine who just became the CEO

of Galmall TV USA. She said, we just acquired the rights to Hannibal Lecter. Do you think that there's a TV show there? Not necessarily inquiring about would I want to be involved, but just what was my professional opinion as a writer if there was something left to be explored.

I was absolutely yes. My first question was, do you have the rights to the Will Graham character? They did. For me, that was the way into the show that we hadn't seen before was a chapter that doesn't exist in any of the literature and takes place during the time that Hannibal was a

practicing psychiatrist and a practicing cannibal. There's a line in Red Dragon where Hannibal says to Will Graham, you're paraphrasing here, but you caught me essentially because you're crazy too. I just thought, oh, there is a great untold romance that I would love to see as an audience member.

That's what excited me. Then we took it to NBC and they were very excited about the project. That's the long and short of the genesis of the involvement. It was nothing that I was planning to do, but was something as somebody who read Red Dragon in high school and was a student of Thomas Harris's work.

I was aware of how much there was that hadn't been explored, so I was very excited to talk in. Right now, hottest thing on television is horror. I asked Brian why that's true. I think one of the reasons that horror is finding an audience on television now is that

it really wasn't represented before. In the last 15 years that I've been working in television, I've pitched many a horror series and I have been told horror does not work on television. What that basically means is that it doesn't work until somebody proves that it does work. I think AMC proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is an appetite for horror.

It's a popular genre and it's certainly a genre of love for me. I've been reading Fangoria magazine since I was 10 years old and I now read it on my iPad. I think it was just a matter of it hadn't been represented before and now it has and it was successful, so that success changes perception of a genre.

I think with the subject matter being dark, it may be as with anything a reflection of where we are in that place talking about gun laws and violence in reality. Entertainment has a very strange cloudy mirror that it holds up to society. I think we're reflecting where people's heads are in a certain way and I think that's part of art's responsibility in its role in society.

Hannibal is on network television as opposed to The Walking Dead for example on cable. Now has that limited things? Is there anything NBC has asked him not to show? Oh yeah there's lots. What's been really great about working with NBC on this project is that they recognize

that they are doing a horror show and the show is called Hannibal Lecter and they have put us on at 10 o'clock for a reason so we can maximize what we can show to honor the genre and also provide fans of the genre certain ingredients that they are expecting to see. But there's absolutely places where they won't allow us to go and that's too far and you need to come back from that.

But they have been, it's always a push pull because it's like can we do this and we show it to them and they're like ooh not that one. So it's definitely a collaboration and they're taking it very seriously that they are presenting a horror show and they have to honor that audience. But we're not necessarily, I would love to be going a lot further but NBC keeps on reminding

me where the line is and that's their responsibility as broadcast network but they have been very supportive in terms of what we can do and going as far as we can without being x-rated. Two episodes of Hannibal every Thursday at 10 on NBC and there's always lots more to see at NBC.com. It's a wrap for the podcast but we're back in a few days and between now and then Pop

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