The Point Radio: ARROW Evolves

There is a lot coming at us on this year’s ARROW including introductions of The Black Canary and The Flash, but first the characters have to cope with the ramifications of events from last season. Star Stephen Amell and the cast talk about how it’s all evolving into what may be a different show. Meanwhile, he was hand picked to get a late night slot after CONAN on TBS. Pete Holmes has a show that needs fan attention. 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

The Point Radio I'm Mike Raub, so Arrow is back for a second season and as we wait for Black Canary and Flash to show up what about the regular characters and what are they evolving into? Plus he was hand-picked to follow Conan in Late Night and The Pete Holmes Show is one that comic fans need to pay attention to Let's get to The Point

This is The Point The Point Radio Get The Point Radio Arrow is back on the CW with some big changes and some different motivations for characters in the new season I sat down with series star Steven Amalu told me that he had no problem admitting he needed to recharge after last year

You know, it's weird I had never been a series lead before And you know, we shot the pilot and I was really able to just… the pilot was like a sprint I was able to push myself through By the time we got to episode four, I was like, oh my god

Holy smokes This is an insane schedule And… but now I'm prepared for it Events at the end of the last season still motivate his character Everything that happens with Oliver as it relates to when he is costumed, so to speak

Everything that happens with him going forward is going to be informed by Tommy's death And what Tommy thought of Oliver when he died Thought he was a murderer And that's going to change everything According to showrunner Mark Guggenheim, these changes have been planned since the beginning

Well, it's an important part of the character's evolution The show has sort of always basically been like, you know, the television series long, you know, tale-heart Like Batman Begins, a guy who comes home, he's bent on revenge and is slowly becoming a hero You know, this year really is about going from being the vigilante that he was last year Becoming a hero, you know, and a hero who's not just going to have to cross the names off of a list

The hero's actually really trying to do good in the city And that's a lot harder to do than he, you know, thinks it will be at the outset So I asked Steven, what does it all mean? There's no more vigilante It has to be about something else

That's what we're working on It's a delicate process, you know I freak out about the reciprocation of TV characters I think one of the reasons that Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Sopranos are such wonderful TV shows Is because the character is unflinching

So I'm cool with Oliver refusing to do something But he's not rescuing kittens from trees One of my favorite things that we've shot so far is the island footage from our premiere Because all through is this happy guy You know, as happy as he can be on the island

He's smiley, he's jokey, he's jovial And, yeah, it's going to be a big change Other characters are evolving too this season Including Laura Lance, played by Katie Cassidy Throughout the season you saw her go from everything is by the book, by the law

To sort of, you know, there was maybe a different way to look at things And through the eyes of the era So he's basically doing the same thing that she's doing Trying to, you know, save this starling city And he's doing it through not a lot

As long as justice is served, it's served, you know So I think she definitely goes from that place and then sort of teams up with the era Something that she normally would be against And you'll see her point of view on the vigilante in the era Like how it definitely changes throughout obviously season one

And now coming into season two She kind of has a different way to look at things when it comes to him And as far as getting to where she is in the beginning of season two You know, obviously I said there's a chunk of time that has passed And there's mourning and she's lost obviously a lot of people in her life

And I think that she, it's made her a stronger person It's made her grow and kind of be able to deal with you And I don't know if she necessarily was ready for that Or knew that she was ever getting a look of dealing with everything that she has But it's made her a stronger person just in general

Despite the mega buzz that surrounded the show since the beginning Steven told me he doesn't get too involved with fan reaction I am not concerned, never have been and never will be About being liked or being disliked I am concerned with indifference

When we were shooting the pilot, David Nutter It was the scene where I first see Laurel And David Nutter said, Katie I want you to, I want you to just I don't want you to give him anything

You know, I don't want you to be super emotional Katie said, you know, why? And David Nutter said, and this is not his quote But I think about it all the time He said because the opposite of love is not hate

It's indifference I'm fine with people hating the character I'm fine with people loving the character I am petrified of them not caring either way So whatever moves the meter

Positivity and negativity move the meter the same way Indifference? No good That doesn't mean, however, he doesn't keep in touch with social media Yeah, I mean, I got to fall last on Twitter and Facebook Because the show just premiered in Spain

Just recently And people sending me the numbers People sending me the ratings It's, you know, for example It's the third biggest American show in China

At the moment And on a trajectory to be the biggest It's the biggest American show in Italy It's the biggest American import that Sky One in the UK has ever had That's incredible

It's really, really cool And it's, you know, I got to meet a bunch of international fans and media Over the hiatus And it's… You never think about that

Until you see people getting on a show But the way that it's impacted globally is really cool Keeping in character, Stephen also did the voice for Arrow in DC's Injustice, Gods Among Us game But there was a little story behind that Sure, so they set it up in a studio

I'm on the phone with the director who's in New York, Chicago or something It took us an hour and 15 minutes to go through all of the vocal cues And then there were a bunch that I just had to rip through at the end He had me be a little bit more animated, a little bit more talky-talky for… And then when I ripped through them at the end, I did them in my Arrow voice

And the director goes, look, I'm really sorry That's how you should have done all of them And in my head I go, I know Would you mind going over them again? I said, yeah, I'll go over them again

But I'm doing them one time and we're just going, and that's what we did Big things on the way this season for Arrow You can catch new episodes every Tuesday on The CW And always see more at cwnetwork.com Settle back, this is it, the latest in pop culture

Writer Alex De Campi, best known for writing Grindhouse for Dark Horse Is taking a little bit of a left turn to do a new My Little Pony series for IDW On the book with Alex will be Carla Speed-McNeil as the artist And the second ongoing series will be called Friends Forever First issue will be sent from IDW in January

IDW is getting into other media in a big way Launching a new division called IDW Entertainment The purpose they say is to fund, develop and produce new TV programming Based on IDW's properties Some of the initial comic projects that are already slated for development

Include Life Undead, Brooklyn Animal Control and V-Wars Archie Comics, who you have to admit, is not afraid to make some pretty ballsy moves Bringing zombies into Riverdale And of course a few years ago starting a series where Archie was married off to Betty and Veronica And now they've recently announced something called Farewell to Betty and Veronica

There's no official word on this, just speculation Michael Usel will be the writer and it'll take place in the regular Betty and Veronica series And should start sometime in 2014 Things are starting to get serious for the Ant-Man movie With a whole ton of casting rumors that have been out there the last few days

Names on that list, well they include Paul Rudd and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as well Variety is the source of most of the rumors However in the playlist Gordon-Levitt said that he is not up for the role Nevertheless, production's moving ahead and we should expect to hear an official casting announcement Sometime over the next few weeks

Best selling comic of the year for two times running That's the honor going to Walking Dead The 115th issue, which was the 10th anniversary one as well Ships some 350 plus thousand copies to the direct market That makes it the biggest seller of the year so far

Topping the sales of Justice League of America number one from DC back in February Which sold just a little over 308,000 copies And as you know, last year Walking Dead number 100 Jipped well over 360,000 issues into comic stores all over America Making it the biggest seller of 2012

We get not one but two years of Tina and Amy Tita Fey and Amy Poehler have signed on to host the Golden Globes again That's no big surprise But the interesting part, it'll be for the next two years And it was a pretty smart move on the producer's part

Last year's show was the best rated in six years This year's awards, the 71st annual, will be aired Sunday, January 12 Some countries around the world were set to wait a full 24 hours Before they got a chance to see the premiere of The Walking Dead last week However, that didn't stop them within just a few hours of the airing here in the US

More than half a million people had downloaded from torrent sites on the internet 15% of those, by the way, came from within the US Maybe they didn't know that AMC streams a show for free on their website The Point Radio Variety has called him one of the top 10 comics to watch

And apparently Conan O'Brien was paying attention Pete Holmes picks up the slot after Conan with a new show That's a little different than most of what you find in late night Especially for those of us in the geek community It's called The Pete Holmes Show and…

It's a half hour show, it's on after Conan, Monday through Thursday It's fast-paced because it's only a half hour The monologue is more like my stand-up Rather than pulled from the news, Vermont Man found a beaver sort of thing We'll talk about sex and relationships and whatever we want to talk about

There's going to be more sketches I don't know if you're familiar with the Batman videos we've done There's going to be stuff like that, almost like SNL digital shorts And then the interview is going to be less celebrity driven than me and my comedian friends Almost like Mr. Rogers and Pee Wee's Playhouse sort of vibe

They pop in And when we talk to the celebrity we might go to them and film something We just talked to Jon Stewart and we went to The Daily Show and filmed something with him And when you do that not in front of an audience you kind of get more real conversation And some weirder moments

That's very fun Did Pete get any inspiration from the former kings of late night? I do love Carson, in fact that's where we got the idea for the whole like I want it to be bodies Like when Rickles would drop by Carson it was always just a different vibe And that's why I'm so happy that so many of my friends are just some of the most talented comedians in the country

So they have them pop in and talk about our lives and talk about things we've done together and do those bits Rather than promoting something I think is going to help our show stand out Also the fact that you know I genuinely love video games I love comic books, I love comic book movies So we're doing more Batman videos

We're doing Superman videos We're doing X-Men videos These are things we've already shot So I think people that are into Comic Con and this sort of thing are going to enjoy the show You're nodding your head right now

Remembering Pete is the guy who did those great Batman videos you saw And I ask him well how he managed to get by with that As long as it's parody you can get away with anything Which is a great and inexplicable law I have no idea how we get away with that

You don't have to pay him You sing two bars of a whole new world You owe someone ten thousand dollars But I can dress up like Batman with their official logo I dress up like the Joker

It doesn't matter as long as it's supposed to be funny I don't want that law changed That's literally how we're making the show as funny as we can make it So it's late night and it's cable Any limitations on that?

I keep waiting for someone at Turner or TBS to tell me to rein it in And they haven't yet And I honestly believe It's such a kind of obvious thing to say But they're so supportive

I haven't run into any of that network clash stuff Or rein it in or anything I think that's virtue of we're not replacing anybody So we can kind of do whatever we want There's no standard

It's not like, oh this guy wouldn't do that Or this guy wouldn't do that We're doing the show that we're going to do We can swear there's going to be topics that you wouldn't necessarily see covered And I just don't think that's something that you'd see necessarily on The Tonight Show

The Beat Home Show debuts October 28th after Conan Midnight Monday through Thursday on TBS That does it for right now Back in a few days with Rob Cordry Who's winding up this Emmy winning season of Children's Hospital

With a couple of surprises now And more on the way for another season next year In the meantime, you know where to get your pop culture And give The Point radio Listen on your desktop or your laptop

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