The Point Radio: PACIFIC RIM Set To Roll In

For months now it has been the hottest trailer on the internet and now PACIFIC RIM is ready to hit theaters next Friday. Director Guillermo Del Toro along with actors Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman talk about putting the epic together, plus SyFy‘s WAREHOUSE 13 winds up it’s season on Monday. It returns for a short fifth season in 2014 which will be it’s last. How do Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly feel about saying goodbye to the long time fantasy series? This summer, we are updating once a week – every Friday – but you don’t have to miss any pop culture news. THE POINT covers it 24/7! 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. Warehouse 13 set the closest doors next year. And as the cast and the crew wind down, we talk to them about the memories they're taking home.

Plus Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim about to hit theaters and Charlie Hunnam is facing a whole new set of monsters. And how about Walking Dead every two weeks? Let's get to The Point. This is The Point.

The Point radio. Get The Point radio. It's a bittersweet summer for the cast and creators of the Sci-Fi series Warehouse 13. They've wrapped up season 4.5 and What Lies Ahead will be a six episode final fifth season set to roll on the network next year.

We talk to stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly and showrunner Jack Kenny about their thoughts on this. What about Jack telling me how he began the process to wrap things up? Well, we knew how we had to get, obviously we had to wrap up this cliffhanger from next week.

We had to figure out how to get that taken care of. And because it was only six, we didn't want to spend a lot of time doing that. We wanted to take care of it, kind of wrap up those stories in one episode and then move on to tell kind of as many big fun stories as we could. We designed an arc for the six episodes that would involve Claudia's sister, obviously,

because we introduced that. And so some major Pete and Mike stuff. Really we just wanted to have fun. We just did some really big, big ideas. Sci-Fi said, faith big.

And so we did. We just got five really big ideas and then the finale, which is I think a really satisfying way to end the show. So yeah, we just, we just, we just put our biggest ideas out there and anything that would fit.

We did in season, we're doing season five. What about favorite moments over the years for Eddie? It was, I would say that it was when the show got picked up, we went to New York and we closed the NASDAQ and and we were in Times Square and it said on the NASDAQ, sci-fi, welcomes warehouse 13.

And for Jack, my favorite one is, was directing the second Christmas episode. I think that was my favorite time because it got to see all the characters, how they would be if they hadn't done, if they hadn't found warehouse 13. Yeah, you want to get the wonderful life episode. And I really liked that.

It was a really, it was a fun episode. I'd already done one. So I kind of knew a little bit I was doing and it was such a cool place for everybody to be. And it was, and I love Christmas.

So that was my favorite. That was my favorite experience so far. I'm hoping that this next season provides my big wins. The question of how each of them want their characters to end up is a little bit of a tricky one.

As Jack explained, we know where the characters are going. It's hard for us to talk about where we'd like the characters to go because we don't want, hey, we don't want to give it away. And B, we don't want to sound like we don't like where the characters are going. You know, so it's kind of hard to kind of have to answer that question.

We know what's going to happen and we don't want to give any of that away. So I think that everybody just, the characters will have a very, very satisfying final episode. I think it's, it's going to be basically six episodes in one week. When the seasons when 4.5, when five season five was being ordered or on the fence of being ordered, we, the writers broke out about 10 or 12 stories and we only got six scripts.

So we're doing five solid stories and then our six script is going to have six more stories in it. That was more of a case of what she'd like to see down the road for her character. What would I like for her? What would just be hard to be happy?

Like, I think, what do you want? How would I like to be happy? You know, it's pretty special to be, to have, for an actor to have a job for five years. It's been pretty, pretty great. It's been so nice to kind of be a part of all of that and to be introduced to the science,

sci-fi world and to introduce to something like Comic Con. I mean, I don't know how I want to be remembered. I think I'll know how I remember it. And where does any one Pete end up? Well, Joanne keeps saying that she'd like to have an end with Pete and Micah in bed.

And I'm just like, I don't know. I'm not sure. And like the last words of the series would be Micah going, oh, Pete. Catch the season finale of Warehouse 13 this week on the Sci-Fi channel. Or if you miss it, catch up at Sci-Fi.com.

Here we go, jumping into the latest in pop culture. You've probably seen the news reports about DC's We Can Be Heroes campaign and the latest Superman edition. It was looking to pick up $100,000 for charities. And it just got a big jump in that direction from one Timothy Draper. That name, you may know from a man who invented the term viral marketing on the Internet.

He's a venture capitalist who now has ponied up some $25,000 to have Jim Lee paint his wall. No more yet on exactly what that mural will contain. There's something to look forward to in the fall. The Walking Dead will go biweekly for a story arc called All Out War. It's a 12 issue stretch.

It begins with issue number 115. And there'll be some new creative people involved in the artwork department as well. It's all timed, of course, to tie into the debut of the new season on AMC. But if you wanted just to keep it to the comic, Walking Dead number 115 hits on October the 9th and in every two weeks after that. Should be a great start to the Christmas season.

Warner Brothers Home Entertainment is releasing the Dark Knight trilogy. The Ultimate Collectors Edition has all three, of course, of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, but lots of extras and memorabilia too. There's six discs and two new featurettes as well and a lot of unseen footage. Plus interviews with people like Damon Lindelof and Guillermo del Toro as well. On the collectible side, there'll be a premium Mattel Hot Wheels Batmobile, a Batpod and Tumblr too.

And new collectible art cards with Scarecrow, Joker, Bane and more as well. And a 48 page hardcover book with production stills and behind the scene images too. Entire package will run for just about under $100 and it'll be on sale at the end of September. There's been some movement in the reboot of the Crow movie property. First of all, James O'Barr, the original creator, has been signed on as a consultant.

And Luke Evans has been cast as the lead in the film. Production will start in early 2014 on this. And as we told you earlier, F. Javier Gutierrez will be the director. Christian Bale has done his best to put an end to the rumors about his involvement as Batman in the alleged Justice League movie project. He said to reporters he's put the Batman role behind him and he feels it's a character that needs to be passed on to a new actor.

He said that he has heard talk of a Justice League movie, but no one has approached him about being involved in any way. TNT has renewed falling skies for a fourth season. The show's been averaging a fairly decent 5.8 million viewers for this summer. And it will return with 10 new episodes in the summer of 2014. Could it be a new Saturday Night Live?

NBC has green-lit a new sketch comedy series. That'll involve sending talent scouts to major cities around the country to find performers who are skilled in improv and stand up as well. Actually, the word is they're looking to make a series more like In Living Color or maybe even the old Carol Burnett show as opposed to SNL. Alright, get ready to groan, but it's a good week to cool off with some very cool stuff in your local comic book store. We're going to point you there and tell you some of the things to look for starting with an interesting small title from Dark Horse called The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoy.

Second issue is out this week. First issue should be pretty easy to check out. Take a look. If you really want to spend a few bucks, the absolute blackest night hardcover is finally in from DC covering the Blackest Night series and a couple of the tie-ins as well. A hefty price of about $125 will let you take that one home. Much less expensive is a continuing look at the origin of Bad Man, year zero, running in the Bad Man title from DC. New chapter of that in number 22 this week. And Trinity War begins in the Justice League titles with Justice League number 22 this week.

Harlan Ellison's Seven Against Chaos graphic novel is out. It's a hardcover, beautifully illustrated by Paul Chadwick. That's along this week as well. And for some classic Judge Dredd stories by some of the original creators, IDW has a new series called Judge Dredd Classics. It starts as well. East of West has a second printing of number three this week from Image. There's a new one, number four out. And a new issue of Walking Dead as well, number 112 this week. Those and a lot more waiting for you. All sorts of summertime treats in your local comic shop. Shop around. Find different stories in your area with the Comic Book Locator service at 1-888 Comic Book.

With an app that's available in the iTunes App Store. You can also try a website called FindMyComicShop.com. Your pop culture channel. For months now, one of the hottest trailers on the net is Pacific Rim. Every time a new one pops up, there's lots of buzz about it. And now it's time to see the film as well. At the center of Guillermo del Toro's massive sci-fi epic is Charlie Hunnam. And I ask him how he got involved with that project.

I had met Guillermo a couple of years ago. Well, several years ago now when he was doing Hellboy 2. And he asked me to come in and meet with him. I don't know if you remember the movie. There were a prince and princess. There were identical twins. And he'd already cast the girl. So he was interested in me playing the guy. And he just felt ultimately when we did the prosthetic test that we didn't look similar enough. But we really liked each other and had a lot of fun during the audition process and the prosthetic test and stuff. And so I guess he just kept an eye on me over the years. And through his relationship with Ron, he'd been watching.

Oh, sorry. I'm just a fiddler. He'd been watching my work on Sons of Anarchy. And thank you. And then he somehow arrived at the decision that I would be the guy. He wanted to save the world in this thing for him. So he invited me up to his famous man cave, Bleak House. And we sat and chatted for a couple of hours before there wasn't a script or anything for me to read. And he just said, hey, there's going to be these giant robots. They're going to kick the monsters. And you're going to be in the brain of the robot. And you say it can work. So you want to do it?

And Guillermo's side of that story? I met Charlie when we were casting Hellboy 2. And I knew him from his work on Children of Men and from his work on the Dickens adaptations in Nicholas Nickleby. And I liked him very much. I thought he was an actor with a lot of freshness and good nature and a pure heart. And when I met him, he was like a big kid. And I liked it very much. And I said, we'll work together. We didn't cast him on Hellboy 2. I said, we'll work together one day. When the time came to cast Pacific Rim, my conversation with Legendary was very short. They said, who you see as Raleigh Beckett?

I said, Charlie Hunnam. And Thomas said, Charlie's cool. So for Charlie, what was it like working with Guillermo? Amazing. He's just a sweetheart to work with. He's a very, very kind and generous and collaborative man. I mean, I can't speak highly enough of him. And we both really enjoyed each other. And he just offered me one of the leads in his next movie that he's going to do.

So it's kind of developing into hopefully something that I've always dreamed about, which is to have a long standing relationship with the director and work with him over and over again. And he certainly expressed an interest in me being in all of his English language films from now on. He said that to me at the end of the movie. He said, you're in my friend. And I said, what do you mean? He said, I'm going to put you in every English language film I ever made from now on. Ron Perlman, Charlie's co-star from Sons of Anarchy and in Pacific Rim, has worked with Guillermo a lot and feels he has a certain connection.

Well, he doesn't see me like anyone else sees me. He sees these things in me that enable me to play some of the most deliciously fun characters. I mean, there's always humor in the roles that Guillermo gives me. Most guys only see me one dimensionally as somebody who's just very bad or very badass or very tough or very, you know, this Hellboy was hysterically funny. And the character in Blade was funny. The character in Chronos was funny. Hannibal's funny. So Guillermo sees stuff that he pulls out of me that no one else does. And they happen to be my favorite roles that I've ever played. Ron said he feels comfortable with the director right down to what the words are on the script.

I never ever wanted to change a line or add a line or subtract the line from anything Guillermo ever wrote. It's pitch perfect. It always is. And it's so perfect that, you know, it's almost the easiest to act because it's almost pre-digested for you. Just by the way, Hellboy talked. I knew how he walked. I knew how he lied down. I just knew just because of how well articulated he was, you know, in terms of his worldview. It's in the dialogue. It's in the stuff he refuses to do. He refuses to accept that he's a superhero. He's just a slow-eaten pizza and watching Marx Brothers movies, you know. You know actor Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a Pacific Rim. He adds a lighter touch to the story.

Certainly. The roles that have made me famous. I didn't get much fame playing Mikey Boscarelli on Third Watch. Charlie Kelly on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is incredibly dumb man and Dale Arbus in Horrible Bosses was not a far stretch from that character. So I'm sure some people will go into the theater with a bit of trepidation seeing me playing a scientist. But, you know, Charlie Day writes all those lines for Charlie Kelly. In some ways this character is a little bit more like the guy who writes It's Always Sunny than the guy who appears in it. And for both Charlie and Ron Guillermo said he created roles that were somewhat out of the box.

I wanted to not do the scientist with the white coat. I wanted to do sort of a really like a comic book geek that has all the knowledge and says, talks about mint condition and talks about collecting those organs and how rare they are. And he has a little bit of the arrogance of like a music star. So I thought of Buddy Holly and the tattoos, the sleeve tattoos and all that stuff. I didn't want him to be the regular guy. But what I wanted was Charlie is well known for playing remarkably stupid characters, you know. And that's what makes him great. And I wanted him to play an arrogant, super smart guy that thinks he's better than the others. And Burn is just one of my favorite actors in British TV. I wanted him to be that. They are coming relief because they hate each other, mainly.

And what I think is when Charlie really becomes coming relief is when he joins the strangest looking creature in the movie, which is Ron Perlman. The Civic Ram is a bit of a jump from Sons of Anarchy. So I had to ask Charlie why he took a role like this. It's funny. It's kind of, you know, I just really listen to my heart, I guess. I don't know if there's any like, you know, explicit specific, you know, cognitive process that goes on with that. I just read a script and if I'm just drawn to do it, then I say yes. And, you know, Frankie Go Boom, you know, really surprised me because, you know, we made that whole film for $400,000. It's comedy, which I have no interest or any skill set to actually do. And I just, you know, I've been playing a series of really tough, you know, very internal characters.

And I just thought it would be like an interesting fun experiment. And the fact that it was so small kind of was one of the draws because I thought, you know, if it's no good and we totally screw this thing up, no one's really going to see it. No harm, no foul. And but the script is really special and very, very sweet and very, very funny. And so I thought, you know, maybe we can just go in a very relaxed way, make a little movie that we can be proud of and maybe a handful of people see it. Known for playing very intense characters, Charlie said he does this by drawing a lot on his past. I grew up in like a really in Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England and a very it's a very it was it was like a pillar of the Industrial Revolution. And then all of the industry kind of, you know, systematically dried up the coal mines closed down the shipbuilders closed down all the cotton factories got outsourced elsewhere and in the bottom kind of fell out of the city and they're really like salt of the earth type of people up there.

And I remember I was always like a weird existential little kid and, you know, like I feel like I've been on the precipice of total existential crisis since I was about five years old. And and and I just remember like looking around and thinking, you know, like I say, not to, you know, to talk badly about these people because they're just wonderful salt of the earth type of people. But everyone's just like so engaged all day and like the brutal gritty reality of like survival up there. And I just thought, God, where is the like, where is the intention? Like, what what are these people like, you know, they've got, you know, what are they what is inside them that they wanted to do, you know, and and I just, you know, and because I was kind of unhappy, I would often retreat into film and was always like, you know, just loved watching films and being transported into these worlds that I just like felt like I wanted to live in myself. And at some point, those two things like became connected that I felt like if I could work and film myself that, you know, for not in a grand way, like what we're doing as actors is important.

But for me personally, if I look back on it at the end of my life, I could feel like I did something specific. Graham opens in theaters this week. That does it for the podcast for right now. Keep up on pop culture, though. Every day, every hour with Get The Point Radio. Listen free at GetThePointRadio.com. Take us anywhere during the summer on your mobile device, iPhone or iPad users. Get the free app in the iTunes app store under pop culture in The Point. Or if you use a droid or a blackberry, then the tune in radio is the app you want. It's free as well.

In the meantime, the podcast is produced every week by Malcaten Media. It's on websites like ComicMix dot com and Michael Davis World dot com and the iTunes podcast directory where you can always subscribe and not miss anything. Follow us on social media. We always have something to say under the point radio on both Facebook and Twitter and see you back here in a few days. Get the point radio dot com. You