The Point Radio: THE WRITER’S ROOM Opens Again
Transcript
The Point Radio. It's Mike Rod, Dean Talton is back with the writers room. Jim Raj has a whole new run of episodes and previews them for us right here. In the meantime, you know Tyler Labine from shows like Invasion and Reaper. Now he has a new paranormal comedy that you can sit and binge watch.
We'll leave it later on today. Plus Thanos is the glue that holds the Marvel Universe together. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.
Get The Point Radio. With his work on community and being an Oscar winning writer, Jim Raj is a pretty busy guy. But he found time again to bring back his second season of his passion project to the Sundance channel. The writers room is back with another six episodes and Jim laid out what we're going to see this time.
Last year we were starting off with Scandal and then the other ones will be like The Good Wife. We talked to House of Cards and I sat down with Sons of Anarchy and Pretty Little Liars. And then we do sort of a special. I mean it focuses on The Walking Dead but also includes talking about just comic book adaptations to TV in general. So I also talked to the guys who brought Smallville to the screen and stuff like that.
The comic book show is kind of a departure from what they've done in the past. Yeah I mean I think the idea was to talk about something specific and the idea of adaptation. And obviously these guys had taken and specifically comic books which obviously is such a big thing right now with Arrow. And they're developing Flash. So it really was just sort of like to talk about the broader topic of what it takes to be true to fans of a comic book.
And the folklore of these heroes and then to interpret them for TV. So it was just an interesting conversation I think was what was the inspiration for that. So why these shows? Was there a method of what was chosen? Yeah I mean you know there's always these shows I think were picked. These particular shows were picked for one for just their obviously rabbit fans.
But also sort of in timing with either they're in currently airing or about to air or getting close to a season or a finale or something. So it just felt like a good time for these particular shows in conjunction with us having a conversation and fans wanting more information. So that was that. But I think there was always you know there was something nice about this year because when talking to Smallville we were talking about such a different idea in the sense that that show was out. And it feels like it's not that long ago but it was before Twitter and stuff.
So it was interesting to talk about what it felt like to be in TV at that point. So I hope and I've often thought it'd be fun to sort of revisit classic television shows and talk about some of the changes that happened you know and those staff. So that's something I've always really wanted to do in case there's a season three. So what if we get time travel a little bit? Go back and look at some of the great shows of past decades.
If so I asked Jim but there were any great TV shows from the past he would have liked to feature it on the show. And down and you know like if I was there I would want to talk to Norman Lear you know and talking about all the family. I want to talk about you know that type of win win that television sort of age and sort of you know what was all over the screen with you know what controversial interesting topics being being examined. You know it'd be fun to I mean also be fun to talk about you know. Oh God. You know MASH.
I mean I'm trying to get shows that were such an impact on television you know and change certain things. You know if I don't go so far back I want to talk to the people who have lost because as a fan I have tons of questions as a writer you know. So I feel like there's lots of decades you could go to and really learn about that certain time for television. So what are the big outstanding moments for this year. Well I think I certainly enjoyed this season was interesting to talk about the celebrity that is involved with showrunners because we were sitting on Shonda Rhimes and you have a Willamons from House of Cards and you have Kurt Sutter from Sons of Anarchy.
And these are especially Kurt are very vocal and connected to their fans in the sense that you know in their and their attitude towards the creative process and what they're trying to do. And I really enjoyed it's not getting into that and hearing sort of their candid moments you know and like Shonda talks about specifically in the premiere about one big note she got when she first was developing scandal that she just was ready to walk away from the show. That was a note that they really wanted her to stick to and it was about the president and Kerry Washington character, the Pope being in a romantic relationship. And to eliminate that was to eliminate the show she wanted to do so she was ready not to do it. And so then with Smallville I was talking to those writers and they were talking about the origin of actual kryptonite.
And it was this interesting story at least I'll talk about what it was from. It was from when it was a radio sort of radio show radio play and them needing to create it to help out an actor who was on their vacation. Such an interesting story that you think of Superman all the time you think kryptonite's always been there and it sounds like it came out of an actual time when it was not the comic book but a radio show. Unlike last year there are no comedies in this run of shows he's looking at so I asked you to comment on that. Yeah certainly was more about again some shows that I feel like they were looking to start or be stopped or in a certain period.
And so I certainly would love to do some more comedies again. So I think that was just this particular six but another season I'd love to certainly not ignore because there's so many good new comedies. And I want to hear about that. Of course we had to talk community and in a world with Kickstarter and of course the Veronica Mars success a few months back. We talked about the fact that the cast is waiting for a word on a season six and after that a movie. Is that impossible.
No I you know it's weirdly the whatever vision board was created in our minds really could come to fruition. I feel like people my thought is you know obviously six season would be ideal and would love to do it as long as they allow us. But at the end of the day something about achieving that sort of mantra of six seasons a movie seems absolutely perfect for the world of community. And what better what better hope you have is to end your sort of series and cap it with a movie because I feel like if there's anything that speaks to community it is needing some kind of epic ending. And something that connects so much to an obit like character which is film it seems very fitting that how you end community is with a film.
So yes and then like you said with Kickstarter and the idea of Veronica Mars it seems like that is a very good possibility. So we'll just cross our fingers. Jim rash in the writer's room on Sundance TV with a new run of episodes. Find out what's coming up and see full episodes you may have missed right now. Sundance TV.
The latest in pop culture as we told you a few weeks back the Simpsons are headed to syndication on FX X in August. And of course it is one of the biggest syndication deals ever in TV history. And now there's a big debut as well. The long running series will get a marathon in the last 12 days with 552 nonstop Simpson episodes running on the network. There will even be a new app for the network involved as well.
Official dates for the beginning of the marathon should be announced in a few weeks on that backpacks. The CW seed series backpackers is transitioning from the web to the network. It'll be the very first project from the seed to do so. It's a story about a couple of friends who backpack across Europe after one of them is dumped in a relationship. Material from the web series will be integrated into the first four episodes of the show.
There'll be 10 episodes that will run all together again beginning this summer on the CW. As the world nods in agreement HBO has announced a renewing Game of Thrones for two more seasons. It'll be on the network at least for seasons five and six. Of course your premiere delivered some 6.6 million viewers and managed again to crash the HBO Go app on most iPads and on other mobile devices. By the way as far as downloads go yeah it was pretty much up there as well.
Over one million reported illegal torn downloads of the first episode of Game of Thrones for the season. The Marvel continuity machine just keeps cranking on with appearances on the way by Samuel L. Jackson and Colby Smulders on the Shield television series. That'll take place in some episodes set before the series ends for this first run. That'll be during May. In the meantime they've announced that the Guardians of the Galaxy will have a direct tie into the Avengers movie.
Especially leading into the third Avengers film. They say it's all due to Thanos who'll be pretty much the main character that ties it all together. Stars is jumping into the reality unscripted series market with a return of Project Greenlight. Well almost. Project Greenlight producer Chris Moore has a new series.
It takes two independent filmmakers and has them both direct a film from the same script the same budget and in the same city and see which one premieres to the most success. It's called The Chair. It'll run 10 episodes and premiere on Stars in the fall. Classic 60s television series Route 66 is coming to Hulu and Hulu Plus. The first season featured some 30 episodes and that'll premiere sometime the next couple of weeks there.
In the meantime season two will follow and it's all put together by entertainment company The Shout Factory. How would you like to turn up on screen in the second Sharknado movie? Well it's possible due to a new crowdfunding project that's taking place through Indiegogo. The production company doing the film is hoping to raise some money to do a little more on a scene they're doing that involves chainsaws and sharks. They're hoping that the financing will make the scene better and they're asking for some $50,000 to be contributed by the end of May.
For those who contribute and get everything from a t-shirt all the way to a walk on part of the movie depending upon the amount of money that you do contribute. You can check it out on Indiegogo and the project of course is Sharknado 2, the second one which is set to air in July on Sci-Fi. A lot of great collections both straight paperback and hardcover waiting for you this week and a few reminders too. As you head to the local comic store the $1 samplers continue from Dark Horse this week, Emily and the stranger number one. Get you a chance to preview that for a buck.
And the Brain Boy series is collected in a trade paperback volume for about $15 as well. Speaking of collections, the Adventures of Superman digital comic from DC gets a few stories collected in a trade paperback this week from them. Zero Year continues in Batman number 30 and of course there's a second issue with the weekly Batman Eternal. And a Justice League of America omnibus 2 that contains a whole bunch of stories just about 33 issues or so of the Justice League from the 60s all collected in one volume. This one a little expensive just under a hundred bucks.
So Nestro gets a new series this week by Cullen Bunn and Dale Eagle Sham that begins. And the 24 comics from IDW are collected in the one trade paperback just in time for the start of the new run of the series on Fox. And a run just under 25 bucks. If you're looking for something totally new, Star Mage is a new series by JC De La Tora. You know him from Ancient Rising and it's new this week with the first issue from IDW.
Tales of Honor number one gets a second printing and then over to Marvel for another number one this week. It's a reboot of Hulk with the first issue there. Also Magneto and Moon Knight number one both get second printings. As does New Warriors number one and Punisher number three and She Hulk number two also get second printings as well. And finally you may want to check out a Marvel title called Ultimate FF.
It is not what you think. It's not a return of the Fantastic Four to the Ultimate Universe. It's a different team with some familiar names like Sue Storm, Tony Stark, Machine Man and Sam Wilson all in a new series that begins this week for Marvel. And now here's your reminder. Just a little less than a month away from free comic book day.
So you better make your plans right now and find out where you're going to grab the goodies. Find out the local comic shops in your area of course with the free comic book service. It is available at 1-888-COMIC-BOOK. Check out a website called findacomicshop.com or check out the link on the front of one of our favorite places to hang out. ComicMix.com.
On the surface, Dead Peed looks like a paranormal comedy that debuts on Hulu this month. But there's a lot more to it than that. And I asked series star Tyler Labine to help me get the real answer. Dead Beat is about me being a Dead Beat. A drug addicted kind of idiot savant medium.
He's a bit of a Chauncey Gardner type. He's failing upwards. He's a medium but he has no idea that that is a skill that can be monetized. He's just eking his way through life. And sort of has been dealing with this curse since he was a small child.
And it's the way he gets money for rent and for pot. And that's about it. And along the way he ends up sort of meeting up with and eventually clashing with a sort of American sweetheart televised medium named Camomile White, played by Kat Dealey, who he idolizes but ends up sort of uncovering the fact that she's a sham. She's a sham from top to bottom and he is the real deal and they end up having a whole series of sort of misunderstandings with each other.
And it's a through line for the show. And it's fun. Hopefully funny too. So how would he describe it? I don't want to use this word. I'm using it loosely.
We're lampooning a little bit the whole idea of a procedural supernatural style show, you know, Alec Ghost, Whisper, whatever. We're kind of taking the piss a little bit and just looking at the lighter side of being a medium. In addition to shows like Reaver and Invasion, Tyler's done a lot of producing and writing in the business. So I asked him about the new medium that makes hits out of shows, well, like House of Cards. I really think it's a great thing.
I think we're adding to the content pool, you know, which is ever growing with, you know, Yahoo getting in the game and Esquire and even Coca-Cola is starting a new medium network. And, you know, it's like it's obviously the way that things are going. And what I've always sort of likened it to is that, like, we're just giving people, when I say we, by the way, I mean, who put Netflix and giving people just more options, more ways to get at good content. And they can get it when they want it, where they want it.
And, you know, I just feel like people go to bed with their computers. People take their iPads into the bathroom when they go, you know, take a dump. It's like people are constantly wanting to watch and be entertained and Hulu and Netflix, who are the trailblazers in this new sort of sprouting industry, are just the first ones to really click, you know, to get it. So I think it's cool. And the other thing I think is important to mention is that, like, we didn't make a web series or like a, you know, an Internet show. It's a very well-produced, high-end TV show. It's just available in a different way.
You know, I think it's still in line very much so with what you would find on TV. And Hulu is famous for streaming TV. And I think we're just going to sort of be lined up well, aligned with all the other content, including network and cable TV that is available on Hulu. Binge-watching is the buzzword right now. How does that work into Tyler's life? I'm a binge-watching expert. I have, like, binge sweats that I wear. I have a dent in my couch where I watch my binge-watching.
I'm, I think, honestly, that's like, that's the way I've been watching TV for a long time. And then the TV DVDs started coming around. You know, I just, a lot of people don't have time to wait. Or they don't want to wait. Anyway, I've certainly done, you know, especially when somebody is serializing and you want to watch it right away. It's just awesome to be able to, like, look at your wife or your partner or whatever and be like, one more? You know, you just keep doing that over and over again.
And I don't know. I love it, man. It's fun. It's like, it's a good, like, little thing you can do on a Saturday. And I think it's certainly an easily digested sort of 10 episodes. And I think it's the best way to watch it. You don't lose people. You kind of get to tell the story in a different way because you don't have to, like, rely on the fact that people are going to come back, you know, next week in seven days. They're just right there. And if you give them a reason to, you know, click one more, they're going to do it. So, anyway, it also makes for more interesting, like, cooler talk, I think, you know?
Like, water cooler talk, people standing around like, how many did you watch last night? I'm like, episode four. Don't tell me they only watched two last night. You know, it's like, I think it's great. I think it's the wave of the future. As I said, Tyler is both a producer and a writer as well as an actor. And he's done a lot of work with his brothers. So I ask him what's coming down the line next. Yeah, I'm actually in the middle of production on our new feature right now.
We're shooting in the Canadian shoe slot mountain range right now, and we're shooting a movie called Mountain Men starring me and Chase Crawford. And it's like a two-hander about brothers who get stranded on this mountain, and the one brother breaks his leg, and it's about them trying to get back down the mountain together. And along the way, they learn, you know, a lot about each other and about their dad who has been missing for three years. And it's kind of like a, it's a really kind of dark, it's a comedy that takes a really dark turn where all of a sudden the stakes are going to be And it's pretty cool if I do say so myself. And it's just rad to be working with my brother again.
Producing, writing, acting, what is he like best? I like it all, man. I love acting. Acting is my favorite element. You know, that's where I think I work the best. But I really am finding that through the development process, I'm loving writing these days. It's really fun, you know, like, especially when you, at the end of the day, are kind of writing a character that you want to play. You know, it's like, I'm not limited anymore to like trying to find the thing that I want to do. I can kind of create the thing that I want to do. And, you know, I think I know which characters and which elements of characters I can play best.
So you start writing to your own strengths, and me and my brother sit down, and we write a bunch of stupid stuff, and we kind of like throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And it's like, I like the whole process. It's really fun. Podcast comes back a couple of times every week. You find it on websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavisWorld.com. And also, of course, in the iTunes podcast directory, what you can subscribe. Keep up with us on social media, too, under The Point Radio, and we'll see you back here in a few days.
