The Point Radio: You Must Binge THE HIGH CASTLE

It’s a weekend made to binge! MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE has dropped from Amazon Prime video, and if you don’t know what all the buzz is about, we have stars Alexa Davalos and Luke Kleintank plus visionary show runner Frank Spotnitz to fill you in. Plus with a title like ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING, Adam Conover is making a lot of noise on his Tru TV series.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. Get ready to spend the weekend in binge mode. Man in the High Castle debuts on Amazon Prime, and if you don't know what everybody's buzzing about,

the cast and creators are here to talk about just what makes that show special. Plus, a show called Adam Ruins Everything? Well, it is funny, and it's on TruTV. Series star and creator Adam Conover comes along to explain where this came from. Let's get to The Point.

This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. It's a what-if concept that will have you hooked right from the beginning. What if the Nazis won World War II?

It's all from a Philip K. Dick novel called Band in the High Castle, and it's a new series, too, exclusively on Amazon Prime. Want to know a little bit more? Well, we talked to series star Luke Klein. Okay, based upon the book by Philip K. Dick.

It's post-World War II, based in 1962, where the Axis have won World War II and the Allies have lost. So America we know today, in our reality, is no longer. And Imperial Japan is taking over the West Coast, and Nazi Germany is taking over the East Coast,

and in Colorado there's a buffer zone between these two higher powers, and that's the premise. It's just this kind of fascist world, and it's inhumane society, but at the same time, very humane. And so, yeah, it's just a wild premise.

The show came from Amazon Prime's tryout system, where fans vote on the show and decide whether or not it should go to series. That was something new for showrunner Frank Spotenant. Now that it's been greenlit, I really like that process. At the time, I was very worried about it, to be honest,

because it's pretty embarrassing to get a fail publicly. Usually you make a pilot and nobody sees it if they don't like it. And in this case, to have people vote is a little unnerving, but it actually was a great asset because, as I said, I got to think about why people responded to the show.

And then when we were gathering actors and crew to produce the series, we kind of had our pick, because people had seen the show, they knew it was well received, they liked it, and it was much, much easier than it normally would be to move forward. While the show isn't weighted down by the usual television ratings,

there'll be plenty of online commentary, and Frank's ready for that. I have always been dumb enough to read everything online. When X-Files started, it was the beginning of this. I remember the very first news groups, and I remember the screen, black with green,

I remember bold enough to remember all that, and I always read everything, and it's quite painful, as I'm sure you know. And I still do that. There's probably 13,000 comments now. I've probably read all 13,000 comments. In this case, actually, it wasn't that helpful because most of them are so positive.

But every once in a while you read something, a question somebody has, a point somebody has, and you go, oh, that's interesting. I don't think you want to write for those people, but it's a tool. I'm a big believer in using tools wherever I can find them to help me. So why are what-if stories like this so fascinating?

We talked to series star Alexa Davlos. I think for a number of reasons. I think, you know, on a very small level, you know, the minutiae is, I think that we as human beings often ask ourselves what if, you know, that's the smallest level.

What if we hadn't left the house at 3 p.m.? What if we hadn't met so-and-so? What if we hadn't gone there? I think we often question, you know, the state of our lives and the domino effect that one small event has on everything. On a global level, I think, this is a show that encapsulates really, you know,

human suffering and human existence, human experience. You know, we're living in a world today where oppression and fascism and fear and all of these, you know, horrific things are unfortunately very, very real today as they were when the book was written. So I think there's an incredible amount of things to relate to as far as this show goes,

you know, exploring, you know, what that feels like, virtually, emotionally, to live under that kind of fear. I asked Alexa to describe her character, Juliana. Yeah, I think, you know, when we meet her, she's somebody who's really trying her best to live in what is a matchbox society.

You know, you're expected to conform, you're expected to keep your head down, you're marginalized, you're living in that world, and, you know, to be other in any way is dangerous. And I think she's, you know, doing her best, even though she has, you know, she's intrigued by the Japanese culture, which is completely unorthodox in the world she lives in.

But then she suffers yet another tremendous loss, which is a very normal thing, unfortunately, in that environment. And a film falls into her hands, and it propels her into this journey of discovery and real desperation to kind of justify the loss of her sister. And so that's what, you know, pushes her out into the world in a way that's completely unnatural to her.

Luke's character, Joe, is another one from the show that is so much more than what you see on the surface. Yeah, just that. I think he's, you know, he's a young man, and I think he's, you know, trying to serve his country, as any young man would in the reality we live today. But, you know, you're forced to do things that maybe you question.

And I think on the surface, he's doing it for the respect and the honor of it, but when he sees it firsthand, he starts to question his own reality and why he's doing what he's doing. And so he struggles with that very hard. And, yeah, he's just a young man trying to find himself in this kind of world. And so as any young man, I feel, for me even, as a person in this reality I live in today.

So it's very relatable in that sense. Of course, adapting a book to television means there's some changes. And one involves a central part of the story, which in the book was a book, but now in the television series has become a film. Frank explains what's behind that.

Well, that was the first thing that occurred to me, is that it should be a film, not a book, because obviously of the medium we're in, which is a visual medium. And I did think seeing that newsreel footage will have a power for all of us that just hearing about a book would never have. Of course, it's a significant change because that's a literal thing.

It's a physical object to film, whereas writing a book, you know, comes from one's imagination. So that requires a different mythology than is in the book. But the Man in the High Castle still plays the same thematic role that he does in the book. And I think there's a lot of change that they made. There's characters I added. There's an awful lot of plot I added that was not in the book.

But it was all designed to stay true to the ideas in the book. That was really my intent, because I think the book is so challenging and rich, and he really was so far ahead of his time. And I wanted to honor him in the book that way by giving more space to explore the themes that he's building.

So how do the actors handle adapting their characters from book to screen? I was told not to read the book when we were filming the pilot because my character has been adapted very much so. And the outcome of my character in the book isn't the greatest. If you read the book and you're a fan of the book, you'll know what I'm talking about. But yeah, so I was told not to read it because they didn't want to steer me in a different direction.

They kind of wanted me to find this man as he is on the scripts and as he is on the page. But as far as the premise of the story, I mean, that is invaluable to understand the mind of Philip K. Dick and what the kind of world he was trying to create. And for Alexa, how does her Julianna compare with the one in the novel? The character in the book is absolutely unbelievably delicious.

She's just so multidimensional and so many different things. And I think it's very much the birthplace of the Julianna that we see in the show. Frank Spotniss is an expert at serialized television, so he's found a way to take a novel that has a finite ending and stretch it as long as possible. And so we're really only at the surface of the novel at this stage in the series.

And so all of these characters are yet to fully develop. We're really just at the beginning. And so the book is the Bible, if you will, for what we're doing. It's very important. It's the root of the tree.

And so we're growing as we speak. And so all of that is yet to come, which is very exciting. And as far as other major changes go? Well, everything's going to be quite different. Yeah, we're on a different path.

But I think, weirdly, we have more room than he had in the book to explore his themes. And we're going to be able to, you know, if the show goes on, we'll be able to explore all kinds of things that the book didn't get a chance to. No spoilers involved, but I will tell you that by the time you get to the end of the ten episodes, there's one question on your mind, and that is, when can I see more? I can say that it's looking very promising, and, you know, Amazon's extremely excited about it, and they've invested a lot of time and a lot of money into this project. So, you know, I don't think they're on board. I can say that much.

The cool thing is that it's really up to the audience. I know they do. That's so amazing about, you know, this process, is that those who watch the show on Friday are able to then comment and communicate to Amazon, you know, how they feel about it. And, you know, a tremendous outpouring as there was with, you know, with the pilot, then, you know, the people will then secure more episodes. So if they like it and they want it, go get more.

Yeah, so we urge the audience to go and vote and like it and write great comments and make sure we go season two for sure. Man the high castle. You can get all ten episodes right now at Amazon Prime. The hottest screaming show right now. We'll let you know as we look at what's going on in pop culture. Actor producer Johnny Knoxville is working with NBC to bring an adaptation of Image Comics Hawaii and Dick to the small screen. The story follows a mainland cop who becomes embroiled in the dark side of paradise with a lot of humor and supernatural elements involved as well.

The property is one that Knoxville has been working on for a while. In fact, for a time, there was a talk about bringing it to a live action film. Right now, the plan is for the show to be a one hour action comedy on NBC with hopefully more information coming along between now and pilot season. So what is really the most popular shows in streaming without real ratings? It's tough to really determine that. But a group called Listen First Television Interest has put together a combination of, well, almost ratings. Combined shows that are searched for on Wikipedia and also hashtagged on Facebook, Google Plus and Tumblr.

And keep in mind that also means that the list may include shows that well haven't even begun yet. All that being said, the list of the top five most talked about shows streaming right now include Orange is the New Black, The Man in the High Castle, Marvel's Jessica Jones, and the number one is Master of None from Netflix. Say goodbye to the bastard executioner FX has pulled the plug on the Kurt Sutter series after just one season, all due to poor ratings. Sutter's reportedly okay with it all and working on a Sons of Anarchy spinoff. Meanwhile, the soup comes to an end after 22 seasons on E. The final episode will come up on Friday, December 18th and of course be hosted by Joel McHale.

Sci-fi is giving the green light for new seasons of a couple of their series, including Ghost Hunters and Farinormal Witness. Ghost Hunters will return for season 11, Farinormal Witness picks up with season 5. Both will be back on the network early in 2016. Actor Matthew McConaughey may turn up as The Man in Black when The Dark Tower, Stephen King's acclaimed novel, finally makes it to the big screen. Variety reports the possibility and says there could be a problem with the length of the time it'll take to film the project, coinciding with McConaughey's schedule. Reports are, though, right now that the project is moving ahead at a fairly fast pace, so that may make things work out for Matthew.

The point, the point… It's a smart combo of comedy, history and science, and it's all with the unlikely television show title of Adam Ruins Everything. What's it all about? We talked to creator and star Adam Conover. Adam Ruins Everything is what I call like an informational comedy show. I'm a comedian, and I tell sort of an unsuspecting person the awful truth about so many things in our culture that we take for granted and clear up common misconceptions. So the classic one from our first episode is that the tradition of giving your fiancé an engagement ring that we think of as being this classic tradition of American life was actually a marketing creation by the De Beers Corporation back in the 30s.

They wanted to sell more diamonds, so they created the idea of an engagement ring through ads and movies and magazines and stuff like that, and got it to be a part of our culture. Even though it was not a tradition before that. So where did the concept from the show come from? Well, I created the show. I come from kind of an academic background. My entire family, my mom, my dad, and my sister are all PhDs, but I just have a bachelor's because I was an ADD kid who couldn't do all the reading. I couldn't handle the extra six years of school, but I still was very much in love with learning and ideas and facts and things like that.

So I've always been kind of an information sponge. When I drive my car, I live in a podcast and audiobook. I don't listen to music. I read magazines and stuff like that. So I just started collecting facts like these. I do stand up. I'm a stand-up comedian. I started dropping them into my stand-up set and writing jokes around them. I noticed that the audience really enjoyed, while they were laughing, also learning something. It really sort of helped them key into what I was doing. I could sort of feel them lean forward in their seats a little bit when I started doing those bits. Then I was a sketch writer at College Humor at the Comedy Web, and we did a sketch of the Engagement Rings idea, put that online.

It got like a couple million hits in a day, which was like, oh, this is great. We said, hey, let's see if we can make a TV show out of it. We did, and True TV took a chance on it, and here we are. All right, so what are some cool things that Adam has ruined so far? I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

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Those are the sort of questions that our show asks. But he does it through comedy. I just want to stress. It's a funny joke. I know it sounds a little dry the way I'm describing it. Like so many others right now, Adam comes from the Internet.

And I ask him if there's still a lot of other undiscovered talent out there on the web. Oh, yeah, of course. There's so much. I mean, the Internet is such an incredible, you know, like, protoplasmic soup of amazing content and people making amazing things, you know. And, you know, I think, you know, we're so lucky that we're one of the few things

that was able to make the jump from the Internet to television. And I feel very happy that we did it. But I think there's so much great stuff where it's like the television executives need to get off their butts and go, you know, go to the people who are doing the cool stuff on the Internet. And then the Internet comedians need to get their act together

and figure out how to pitch a TV show. Because, you know what I mean? Right. There's so much stuff where you're like, oh, man, this should be on TV.

Someone needs to wise it up and get it out there, you know. But I mean, the Internet makes it the best time. It's the best time ever to be a comedian, for sure. Because there's so much opportunity to get your stuff out there. Along with the series, Adam also turns out a weekly comedy gaming series called Fave Game.

What's that about? Oh, yeah. I'm really glad you brought that up. Yeah, I do a series on my YouTube channel called Save Game. That's where I play video games with comedians. We play.

I ask them what's their favorite classic game. And we play it and talk over it. So it's sort of like a comedy podcast. But we're talking about video games. Because I grew up with video games.

And that's really like, I think, like my generation's art form, you know. And so there's a lot of really rich history if you ask a comedian, what's your favorite game? What's your memory of playing this? You know, that kind of thing.

They'll get into it very quickly. And then it's also fun to watch us play the game as we're talking. Because we'll screw up or we'll, you know, fall in a pit. And it gets, you know, it's like a very fun, very fun environment. I hope to do some more of those now that we're done taping the TV show.

That's like my fun little side project. And as far as what's next? Oh, I mean, we're hoping we could do more episodes. We're talking to the network about it. And if we do, that'll be the next nine months or so.

And we're also looking at taking the show on the road, doing Adam Ruins Everything Live at some point in the future. No specific dates yet. But that might be something you see on a marquee in your town before too long. Catch Adam and Fave Game on YouTube right now.

And Adam Ruins Everything has new episodes every Tuesday on TruTV. That does it for right now, but the podcast is growing every day. And you can check us out on places like ComicMix dot com in the iTunes podcast directory on GetThePointRadio.com and on TrekTVNews.com as well.

Listen for our pop culture upload feature on a radio station near you. And if you don't hear it, we'll ask somebody why. Follow us on Twitter under PC upload and on Facebook under The Point Radio. See you right back here in a few days. GetThePointRadio.com