#Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts
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Leverage Season 3, Episode 16, The San Lorenzo Job, Audio Commentary Transcript
Marc: Hi I'm Marc Roskin, director of the season finale.
John: John Rogers, executive producer and co-writer of this part of the season finale.
Scott: Scott Veach, the co-writer of this part of the season finale.
Aldis: Aldis Hodge, actor, Hardison, yeah that guy.
Christian: I'm Christian Kane, I play Eliot Spencer.
Chris: Chris Downey, executive producer. And this is part two of our season three season finale, The San Lorenzo Job.
John: Starting with the brief flashforward, which I think has become the kind of signature of the season finale.
Christian: I like it.
John: The little jump forward, the little ‘this is what you're gonna see.’
Aldis: Yup, yup.
John: And this is the reset scene, this is the last time you guys are in the bar for the year.
Christian: Yup.
John: And just to remind everyone - cause we didn't know if they were gonna show them back to back - exactly what we're doing, what the stakes are, and why they're going.
Chris: Now the origin of this one was Scott, you came in with the one liner, where they steal a country?
John: Well it was two, because I had that saint story, remember when I was a kid?
Chris: Oh, right.
John: And Scott had come in nicely enough with the exact same he wanted to do, which was-?
Scott: Yeah, when I was a computer scientist, I had a friend from Nigeria, who told me that in Nigeria, when they were kids, one of the things they do is they sit around and argue about who could coup the country if it came to it.
[Laughter]
Scott: And they used twinkies, and they'd put twinkies down and argue over what the right pathways are. And I was telling John this and we were saying it would be great for Leverage to coup a country, and that dovetailed with something you'd already been thinking of.
John: That dovetailed with the saint story, the Simon Tepler story about The Revolution Racket, which I read when I was 12. And the whole idea of somebody taking over a country just because somebody pissed them off just stuck with me for 30 years.
Christian: Right, yeah.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: And so that was- alright, well that's insanely ambitious and impossible to write, let’s bang that out in a week.
[Laughter]
Marc: And you believe it!
Christian: Yeah, you do.
John: And that's the fun of having, you know, Scott is experienced in computer science and technology and I'm a conspiracy geek, you know there’s- we don't do anything in this episode that you couldn't really do.
Christian: So let me ask you a question, you're saying that someone actually stole a country before?
[Laughter]
John: It’s come close.
Christian: There you go, exactly that’s what I'm- yeah.
John: And then- it was picking the country, making sure we found it. What was great was we found- like, don't want to go Africa, can't shoot in Africa, can’t duplicate it. Can't go to Latin America, can't shoot the geography. So finding a European country, and it turns out I knew somebody who specialized in journalism of small countries. She had written about the smallest countries in the world, and so I knew there were some countries kicking around that were this small.
[Ice rattling in a glass]
Chris: And there was another source- piece of source material for this that was very helpful, which was a documentary called Our Brand Is Crisis. Which was a great- if you get a chance, a great documentary about how James Carville's team went down to Bolivia, I guess in 2002?
John: I think so.
Chris: And basically won the Bolivian election for an ousted president, and there were kind of horrible consequences that followed from it.
Scott: Yeah.
[Laughter]
Chris: And we got a lot of great stuff from that.
John: Yeah. And that's the trick is to just, you know, you don't really have to make stuff up, the real stuff out there, you just gotta dig deep enough. This actually is great- this is digitally treated, you just shot the footage.
Marc: Yeah. I mean every time you're in this room and you see these screens, it’s always green screen, so the visual effects department having to labor.
Christian: But it's great, it really shows the distance between us and him right there, you know.
Aldis: Yeah.
Marc: Yeah, we gave it that glitchy techno feel.
John: It was also nice how you dropped in, “At ease.”
Christian: Yeah.
John: That was I just-
Christian: Thanks man.
John: No, I noticed that, my brother would do that when-
Christian: You know, I used- I was talking to you, I used kinda a little bit of George Clooney in The Peacemaker for this scene. I just kinda-
John: You know what? Underrated movie, by the way.
Scott: Very true, very true.
Chris: That is, it’s true, it’s a really good movie.
Christian: Absolutely, absolutely, it's one of my all time favorites.
John: I love that flick.
Christian: And I just used the fact that it doesn't make any sense to- anyway.
Chris: It’s one of the first times we saw somebody from Eliot's past, and I thought- and we’ll get to it later-
John: Who's not dead.
Christian: Right.
[Laughter]
Chris: But the camaraderie, it was like it opened up the character in a lot of ways. I thought it was great.
John: Yeah, this guy met bad guys and good guys. It’s interesting, cause we wanted to crack open Eliot for this season, but the character doesn't lend himself to long bits of exposition.
Christian: Right.
John: So we had to do it through indirect means. And then we find out Hardison was a ninja next season.
[Laughter]
Christian: That's right.
Aldis: Yes we do.
John: Raised by his nana, his nana was like a shogun. No, that was all a nice beat. And considering you guys were all acting to a green screen that was very emotional, very nicely done. This staging was a bitch, by the way, cause you had three and two.
Marc: Three and two, and a lot of page count.
John: Yeah.
Marc: A lot of page count.
John: And it's tough because page count- shooting a lot of pages in here means it's not a place you have to go to that you have to light, that you have to shoot in a different way than you're used to, you know the set. But this set requires you to have five humans in it.
Marc: Right.
John: And so there's this sort of cancellation of the advantages. No, nice beat by Tim there, just “Oh, we fucked up.”
Christian: And by the way, Goran was nice enough to come in that day and sit over to the side; he's actually in the room with us reading.
John: That was his first day!
Chris: Yeah, I think that was his first day.
Marc: It was his first day during his wardrobe fitting.
Christian: Yeah.
John: Yeah, and we had not met him, and he came in and sat off to this side and did the mocking speech, and I remember thinking, “Ah that’s it! That’s it right there!”
[Laughter]
Christian: No, it was perfect.
John: You could actually see the whole cast like, “Oh, I get who this guy is.”
Aldis: Ahhh.
John: No, he's fantastic in this.
Scott: Yeah, he looks the part.
John: Absolutely you could do him with Saint.
Scott: Oh yeah.
John: Yeah, you could [unintelligible mumbling] absolutely.
Chris: Yeah, he hasn't really played bad guys. I mean the most-
John: No, this was his first real bad guy.
Chris: First real bad guy.
John: He said it was why he took it, so he could get a chance to do it. It's also nice why he said, “You used to,” to Eliot, just a reminder again to the audience of some history there, some past there. And, you know, kind of a center of gravity of emotion there.
Christian: Yeah. This was actually really tough.
John: Yeah, cause he’s not- he’s holding it in.
Marc: Yeah, cause you feel at fault.
John: No, it was a- Hardison kind of playing straight ahead, Parker not dealing with emotion well, and then straight to the “ciao.” And then the hatred. The hatred.
Chris: And we did it a bunch of times, too, cause I remember we did it a number of times.
Christian: Yeah, it was tough.
Marc: Beautiful San Lorenzo.
Christian: I didn’t want to screw it up.
John: Beautiful scenic San Lorenzo.
Christian: That was actually before the first episode- that was one of the first scenes up, it was like we just had-
Chris: Yeah.
John: It was a cold start.
Marc: See the digital background there, beautiful stuff.
Chris: And great music here, that we’re not listening to.
John: Yes.
Marc: Oh yeah.
Chris: But I've been hearing it in my head from Joe LoDuca.
John: What was really fun was that Joe LoDuca, because I said this was the Mission Impossible episode I always wanted to write-
Chris: Yeah.
John: He put a little Schiffer in the score here. It was really- he put a little 1960’s Mission Impossible in the score.
Scott: Yeah.
Christian: I gotta be honest with you though, her in that dress, I don't think people are gonna be listening to the music.
[Laughter]
John: You know the people who care are. And this is the Schnitzer Theater.
Marc: Schnitzer Auditorium.
Aldis: Yeah.
Marc: Downtown Portland.
Chris: Oh boy, does that look great.
John: And this was the location that kept on giving.
Christian: Yup.
John: We walked in here on scout and at this point the finale- this part of the finale was not yet written, because I knew- we'd done the rough draft, but I was up in Portland scouting locations. And I knew we had to do it- we had to rewrite based on what we could get, and that was the layout of the original script.
Scott: Yeah.
John: We were just so lucky to get that auditorium. And this was great, James Draper from Mad Men, kind of the vibe there, that was the name check.
Chris: Sure, and the suit is very much Our Man In Havana.
Scott: Yes, it really sells it.
John: Our Man In Havana is definitely- that's one of the movies we talk about that nobody ever has seen. Alec Guinness, Our Man In Havana is a great flick.
Christian: Again Nadien Haders, but I gotta believe Tim had a lot to do with this as well.
John: Yeah, Tim likes a hat.
Scott: He does.
Aldis: Likes a hat.
Marc: And this guy was great. Humberto.
Scott: He was amazing.
Aldis: Yeah, he was.
Marc: He was just fantastic. Again another tall guy between Alistar, Humberto, and Goran, Nadine went through every extra large dress shirt and coat in Portland.
Christian: Big and tall.
Aldis: Big and tall store.
John: About two days in I was like “Humberto, with 8 months and 2 million dollars, I could make you governor of Oregon.”
Christian: Yeah, right, exactly.
[Laughter]
John: He's got that- and he's a local Portland actor, he showed up for auditions it’s like, wow this guy has got it!
Chris: Well I think Lana had been sitting on him for a while, she was waiting for the right part.
John: And this was a ton of fun, this is of course, all the people who work on the show we’re taking photos of.
Aldis: Yup.
John: And also again, the two of them as peers, you know, planning it. We don’t show you what's on the screen, it’s horrible. Assume it involves half of a clown outfit.
[Laughter]
Chris: The wrong half.
John: What's the right half?
[Laughter]
John: And this was great cause when we were shooting this Tim was like, “What is this?” And we said “The Music Man” and he said, “Ahh, The Music Man.” And he got it, he really laid into exactly how to play this. Because it’s not mocking, he’s not joking.
Christian: Right, right.
John: He's gotta sell this guy on this.
Chris: Come along with me, I'm gonna take you.
John: Absolutely The Music Man in this scene, and Girl Friday in the later one.
Chris: Yeah.
John: When they're trying to get rid of Ralph Bellamy.
Scott: And it’s this guy's reaction that really sells it, too. He believes it so we believe it.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: No, and then the sort of pitying looks from Aldis and Gina are lovely.
Aldis: The sparkle in his eye.
John: There you go, now we make a dream in order to betray people. This is the most deeply cynical episode we've ever done.
[Laughter]
John: Even I was morally troubled by this episode.
[Laughter]
John: Because I realized about three quarters of the way through, I said, “Wait, we took the only decent man in the country and we corrupted him in order to get- to win this election.”
Christian: Right, right.
Chris: Watch the documentary, man.
[Laughter]
Christian: You know what, don't forget, though, we're still criminals. That's the whole thing.
Aldis: We do.
John: I know. I'm always the first to say the Leverage crew are not good guys, they are protagonists. But there are times even I am like, “Wow, I found this amusing, there's something wrong with me.”
Christian: Yeah. [Laughs]
Marc: This is the lovely library room in the Governor Hotel.
Aldis: Yup.
John: Beautiful ceiling.
Marc: Beautiful ceiling.
John: Comes dressed with books, nice.
Marc: And Alastair Duncan is just fantastic.
John: Oh man, and that was- we were really lucky, cause we were so focused on Vittori, and so focused on Moreau. This isn't a big character role, and he anchors it, he really nails it.
Chris: And I always love the “Just sign it.” That’s my favorite bit.
Scott: Oh yeah.
Marc: This was- if you remember John, this was a ten page day.
John: Yes.
Scott: Oh my god.
John: Yes, this was a ten page day. Other shows do not shoot ten pages. Movies shoot three.
Christian: Yeah.
John: But average on other shows is five, six?
Marc: This was just a bear. But these guys were all just so prepared.
Christian: You know, it was just one of those things where we said, “Ok look, we got the two scripts came together, we got the first- the first and second part of the season finale,” and everyone said, “Let’s just buckle down and knock this out of the park.” And everyone ran full speed ahead the whole time, nobody fell, nobody slowed up. For three weeks straight.
John: You guys absolutely proved yourself. And that's the thing the boys, Goran, Tim, and Alastair showed up with the blocking kind of in their heads, cause we had that room-
Marc: When you get to that moment I said, “How do you want to do this? Tim, do you want to do this in pieces?” And he said, “Let's do all five pages.”
John: Yeah, so we shot like a play.
Christian: Yeah.
Marc: Yeah, so each take was five pages.
John: And just shot from different coverage. Yeah, incredible.
Marc: It was brilliant.
John: No, great local actors. By the way, I like to say, this is some of the best extra acting work I've seen in a television show.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: All the extras are fantastic.
Chris: And here's a pairing I always enjoy.
John: You love a good Parker and Eliot.
Chris: You guys together.
Christian: Yeah, it's fun.
Marc: Another high angle on the tombs, another great set that we built.
Christian: Like Hardison just makes me mad, but she actually, like, annoys me.
[Laughter]
Marc: This is the Frankenstein set reconstructed.
Aldis: Oh, yeah.
John: And she enjoys annoying him. Actively.
Christian: Yeah, that's it.
John: Hardison doesn’t, Hardison doesn't realize what he's doing to piss you off, she actively enjoys annoying you.
[Laughter]
Chris: And you'll tease her, that's what I like, too.
John: And the funny thing is the off screen thing is reversed. No one makes Beth crack up like you do, because I was there when you shot that god damn fashion thing.
Christian: It’s true, it’s tough for us to do a scene together, we always end up laughing.
John: And that was the little frustration bit where she doesn't understand humans can't crawl through steam.
Christian: Right, right.
John: Very nice beat. I forget where the bit that she can tell how deep she is by echo came from, but-
Scott: Right here, oh yeah.
John: It's one of those bits that I think we threw as a joke in the room and then it wouldn't go away.
[Laughter]
John: Like no, no, that's how she works. She's not totally human. She's got some manticore DNA in there. Exactly.
Scott: Echolocation.
John: She's got some echolocation going on.
Marc: This is a great scene. I loved how you guys wrote Sophie just getting more involved and involved in playing a part.
John: Watching someone-
Christian: Sophie always gets over involved in everything!
John: But this is unique in- we talked about when we were plotting out the scene, it wasn't just the rescue. It was the idea that this actor and this character had to be super sympathetic, but also when you're someone who can win strangers over, watching someone do it this badly is like watching someone play solitaire and not seeing the red ten.
Christian: Right.
John: You know, it's like how can anyone suck this much, and that’s what really sucks her in.
Christian: Right, and that's why everyone loves Sophie, is the simple fact-
Aldis: She has a heart.
Christian: That like- it's like Angel, it’s the vampire with a heart. She's the world's best grifter, you can't be a grifter and have any sort of a heart, and she has a heart. And it's a beautiful character.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Goran plays this perfectly. This is a great pairing, Alastair doing the comedic sort of classic British character actor thing.
Marc: Right.
John: And Goran starting to play the chess game. Starting to realize something’s wrong. This was lovely. Just this little- and we tried to figure out what would she do that isn't overly intimate, that's just right?
Marc: Enough to give you a sense.
Chris: And they have really nice chemistry together.
John: They have great chemistry together, great chemistry. When he calls her “dear” later in the script you totally buy it, that he’s just sucked into the con.
Chris: Yeah.
Marc: And this is, of course, Moreau-
John: Nice crane up there.
Marc: Yeah, realizing that something’s up.
John: And it's interesting, cause we'd originally put them way farther back in the room, remember? So you had to pick them out. But that close up actually works better, cause it just announces to the audience that the game is on. And this again, this is our fable, okay? This is us taking every element of real elections that we don't like and exaggerating them that little bit more. But the idea that they would fixate on the beautiful girl touching him? Absolutely believable.
Christian: Right.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
John: And the fact that you could sweep up a media by announcing, sort of, a glorious engagement? Absolutely believable.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: You know, it’s all about controlling news cycles.
Marc: That’s my first toilet shot.
[Laughter]
Christian: Nice.
John: First one?
Marc: Yeah, very clean toilet.
Aldis: Is that a first for Leverage as well?
Marc: Yeah, I think so.
Aldis: Congratulations, Roskin. Boom.
John: That was also a lot of fun, is we designed the tombs, and then realized we hadn't figured out any way to get stuff back and forth.
Christian: Right.
John: So yeah. But that's always the better way to start, write backwards. He's great, by the way, absolutely fantastic.
Christian: He's great.
John: And believable as a military man, and somebody that he could have known.
Marc: There's just a subtle moment here that's just so great. You know, when the general says, “Would you leave your people behind?” And this exchange between you and Beth, it just- my eyes always well up, right here. Just, she has no idea what's being said, but it’s just so effective.
Christian: Wow.
John: Yeah, you should do this for a living.
[Laughter]
Christian: I know.
Aldis: You awed yourself, didn't you?
Christian: I did, a little bit, yeah.
Aldis: Do it again, dammit.
Christian: I hadn't seen this yet, and then she comes in.
John: And also you've forgotten. I mean that’s the thing, these things ran at ten pages a day, sixteen hours, it's blinding.
Christian: Yeah, that's exactly it.
John: And her play there, that- the little scene out on her, just she’s bugged.
Christian: Yeah.
John: That is not the Parker from first season.
Christian: No, it’s not.
John: Beth’s done a really great job of modulating Parker forward through all three years.
Scott: Without losing the core, which is always tricky.
Aldis: She has some of the best facial reactions, too, to express her character.
John: Yeah. It's never not Parker, but you can see Parker evolving.
Scott: Evolving, yeah.
John: This is fantastic, he's so hapless.
Marc: And Gina did a great job here.
John: With the accent and just dropping it in.
Marc: Yeah. “We're getting married!”
John: And look how delighted-
[Laughter]
John: And the extras sell it. They really do, like, “Everyone loves a wedding!”
Christian: That's so great.
John: “It’s so delightful, that nice boy is getting married.” You know, it absolutely works. Love the smiles, love those people.
Marc: What I love about a lot of this episode is the pairing between Tim and Aldis, and not having him in a van.
Aldis: Thank god!
Christian: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: Yeah, there was no van here.
Aldis: Thank god.
Marc: There are so many great moments-
John: You're in a suit looking fine.
Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Aldis: That van, boy.
Scott: An expensive suit.
Aldis: Rented it out for the day.
John: And this was a lot of fun, too, was the controlling information through the phones, through the screens people got their information from.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: And it actually was started because Bill Cosby had been announced dead on Twitter for like the third time. And for, like, four hours I was going, “Oh god, Bill Cosby's dead!”
[Laughter]
John: And I realized like, “Wait no, Bill Cosby’s not dead.”
Christian: Right.
John: But he is actually, for all intents and purposes, dead to everyone who's reading those.
Scott: For those four hours.
Christian: Yeah, wow.
John: For those four hours, until he makes the announcement.
Christian: Wow.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: And that's really what bore part of- the birth of part of this episode.
Scott: Well he even has that line: “I only need them to believe it for a few hours,” or something.
John: Yeah, exactly, that's why we threw it in. We only need it for ten minutes. And this speech is fantastic, and this is- Goran did a lot of work on this speech.
Marc: Yes.
John: And this is also one of the reasons I love you guys is, this is not fancy directing. This is just park on the actors, and let them work.
Marc: But of course we had to have a crane to reach them.
[Laughter]
John: Well, that's not my problem.
Aldis: Oh that's right, you guys were downstairs while we’re upstairs.
Chris: Well there's the crane, that's right, that’s right.
John: Yeah, because you had the crane up from that shot up to him, and then you shot it with that, oh wow.
Marc: We got it.
John: And just Nate running an enormous bluff here.
Marc: Yes.
Chris: And also, this is a rare episode because it’s two adversaries in the show; usually we’re in the shadows, we’re undercover, we’re playing somebody. Here it's just out in the open a chess match.
Marc: Yup
Chris: Between these two people. Which is not something we’d done before.
John: Yeah, the first one, they stayed under until they could get the Davids. The second one, he got busted by Shepard, but he was playing from an underhand.
Chris: Right.
John: Yeah, this is the first time it’s like, yeah this guy could serve us our lunch.
Christian: That's what I was saying; it was very strange for me, because I came up to John I was like, “Dude, what am I gonna- how do I play it?” Cause he knows Eliot’s in town. He knows what I do ‘cause I used to do it for him. He's gotta be scared a little bit, and that's what- Goran was and his character was not. And he knows we’re there, and it's very much out in the open and we've never done that before.
Scott: And we always called it a chess match, but what's kinda cool about it is that when it's out in the open it kinda has the flavor of a slug fest, too.
Christian: It does, exactly.
Scott: Toe to toe, just taking swings.
Christian: That’s exactly what it is, a street fight.
Chris: But the great thing is we had a political campaign. So we had rules, we had a clock, I mean, it gave us a structure for the whole con.
John: Yeah, I love that acting beat there. Just the little look away, the down- also I like that hat a lot, I'm not gonna lie.
Christian: Yeah.
Marc: And the campaign’s growing, we have more posters and people.
John: We had a very specific timeline on the campaign room. We had three phases: the despair phase, the growing phase, and the triumph phase. And we had to make sure- because we have ADs, first ADs work hard. They have to pack that room to make it look different each time. Yes, and this is Girl Friday. He's Ralph Bellamy, and he's just gonna be pushed around and manipulated.
Chris: That's a great line.
Christian: Wow.
John: And again, the campaign promise: “How is a campaign promise not like a lie?” “It's complicated!”
Aldis: Yeah.
[Laughter]
John: Deeply cynical, deeply cynical stuff.
Chris: Great comic timing on that.
John: Yeah well, Tim’s a funny guy, That’s why we’re very blessed, all you guys can land a joke. You know, that's- you don't get that lucky all the time. And then the little snarky look from her. And again, that attitude that character would not have had first or second year. Really both the characters, and the actors have driven the characters. This is what- by the way, what he's- the rough estimation he’s doing is called the Fermi Problem, something that I was taught back in my physics days, is you just do order of magnitude guesses.
Scott: Right.
John: And it allows you to just make good, order of magnitude guesses without having to grind out the actual math and boring the audience. Like I am right- now!
[Laughter]
Marc: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: And now you've hit stop, and now you're back in it.
John: There's some physicists out there in their underwear just freaking out because I said Fermi Problem.
[Laughter]
John: This was a ton of fun. That was a street in Portland!
Marc: This is all exterior Portland, yes.
John: Yeah that's done on Ankeny. That's fantastic! That's done on cobblestone! That's fantastic, yeah. And just putting up posters. And we got a lot of photos of the Italian elections actually, and used those as the models for the poster style and density and stuff. And this was Aldis working hard, second unit.
Aldis: Yes, indeed.
John: “Now loosen the tie, it's later!”
Aldis: Yeah, small little room, dig it.
Chris: And there's his- what's in his cabinet? Incoming cabinet?
Marc: Yes, incoming cabinet.
John: Yup, doing the JFK short sleeve thing. It was great, it was a ton of fun.
Christian: Was that supposed to be me putting that poster up?
John: No, no, no, that is the locals who are so filled with joy at the chance to be liberated.
[Laughter]
John: It also had a really pretty light cause we ran out of light and blew it out from the side.
Marc: This is a great graphic that Derek built for-
[Laughter]
Marc: For the campaign.
Aldis: Light it on fire!
John: What's crazy is it should be over the top, but if you looked at this year's election, it wasn't!
Scott: Yeah!
Marc: It wasn't as bad!
Chris: No, not at all.
Christian: I was just gonna say it's totally, exactly what's going on.
Scott: Not even this year’s election-
Chris: This is very restrained.
Scott: Yeah, like even the 60’s there were the nuke- the kid- the little girl with the flower ad.
John: The daisy ad, only aired once.
Scott: Yeah, and then the nuclear bomb explodes, it’s crazy.
Chris: Oh, and child labor!
John: By the way, that was great casting, that kid. “Alright now look sad, now look like they beat you! Alright, that's perfect.”
[Laughter]
John: No, we're not gonna beat him, no, sorry.
Christian: Such a beautiful shot, by the way, Roskin.
Marc: Thank you.
Christian: And again were back in that-
Chris: Oh, that made me laugh.
John: That's a great joke.
Chris: That made me laugh very hard.
Aldis: That kid had fun that day.
John: That's a lovely joke.
Marc: And Alastair plays that well.
John: And this was a ton of fun, figuring out exactly what Parker and Eliot were up to, their two cons.
Christian: Yeah.
John: And I'll give Chris- Chris was the one who came up with the scandal, this scandal right here. Cause we couldn't figure out what this scandal could be.
Scott: Yeah.
John: The conversation between Vittori and Nate is basically the conversation we had in the room. And then Chris said, “I got what’s worse than sex.”
Chris: What’s worse than money or sex?
John: Yeah, the only thing that America can't forgive.
[Laughter]
Scott: That's right.
John: And this puppy was found on the street, right?
Christian: Yup, yup,
John: And then was - rubber glass by the way - and then was adopted-
[Laughter]
Chris: You don't see it bouncing.
John: Yeah, you don't- yeah.
Christian: Yeah.
John: This is a great scene. Goran is- what I love is Goran-
Marc: The Canadian accent is really nice.
John: [Doing a Canadian accent] It was really nice, oh jeez.
Scott: This got a huge reaction in the screening.
Christian: Did it really?
John: Yes.
Marc: Huge.
John: Well because it’s-
Christian: Such a good little puppy!
[Laughter]
John: Just the boldness of it, just the sheer stones of it, yeah.
Marc: And the reactions of either of the guys playing on the other side.
Chris: When you put the glasses on, I always have fun playing with the glasses.
John: Well, what I love is Goran is playing it actually kind of amused at the move that's being made.
Christian: Yeah, cause he's well he's looking at Eliot!
John: While Alastair is freaking out. Yeah, he's like this is actually-
[Laughter]
Scott: This is great, that's great.
John: Yeah. “I think I hate you.” “I'm ok with that.” No Nate is- Nate Ford is not a good man. We've said this. And this was actually Goran’s favorite piece.
Marc: Yeah, this was like great. This was like ok, it's a game of chess match, but here are the questions to all the- yeah, this was great.
Christian: You gotta feel like he’s- you gotta feel like Moreau’s like, “Wow, after all these years, an adversary that's worth the fight.”
Scott: Yeah.
John: That’s kind of it, you know.
Christian: You know, like how many times he's just run over people, all of sudden: hey, we get to fight.
John: That's what he says to Nate, he says, “Make it interesting.” He's kinda looking for this.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
John: It's not until it starts to go against him.
Christian: Out of sheer boredom of the other people he's just rolled over.
John: I adore this scene.
Chris: I love this scene between these two so much.
John: They play it so well. You could do a series with these two, absolutely.
Marc: Yes.
John: You could do a series of the American con woman who helps the guy get elected and then helps him run his tiny European country.
Scott: Oh yeah, let's go sell that!
John: We’ll sell that, done!
Chris: And John where did the whole handshake bit come from? Cause I know I had written it a bit differently, that opening- but the handshake paid off so well. Where'd you come up with that? The western gesture and all that.
John: I had read a book by an FBI- this is what you do on Leverage. I had read a book by an FBI profiler, and he also did some hostage negotiation. And it- in the book it talks about always gesturing with an open right hand. Because you just trust it, you know, and it always just stuck with me.
Chris: It plays so well here as a, you know, getting the guy up scene. And it paid off so well at the end.
John: Yeah, it really- big applause when he does it at the end. We did a live screening, which is when we talk about applause.
Chris: And this obviously is our homage to the Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960.
[Laughter]
Scott: Yeah, right.
Chris: Which was famous.
John: If we could've had him sweat, we would've.
Marc: Again in the Schnitzer Auditorium, same building.
Christian: Yup, late night.
John: Yeah that was the last night of shooting, right?
Aldis: Yeah, it was.
Marc: And Alastair again, is just fantastic with this.
John: Bailing this.
Marc: And so is Humberto. But him playing the- taking the effect of the nicotine cream was just classic.
John: And the list of ways to kill people, don't do that. If you ever think about doing that, the nicotine thing, don't. That’s very dangerous.
Christian: Yeah, very dangerous.
John: Leave it up to people who are very good at almost killing people like Eliot Spencer.
Chris: Would it kill you?
Christian: Oh god, yeah.
Chris: Too much- the nicotine?
John: Oh yeah, fuck yeah.
Aldis: Oh, yeah.
Chris: Wow.
John: Absolutely. This- we probably should have changed this a little more.
[Laughter]
John: We usually change it in the show. This one we were kinda moving kinda fast, we should've done-
Marc: Look at that crowd there.
John: How many people are in that crowd?
Marc: About 80.
[Laughter]
John: And we turned them into 2,000; that’s Mark Franco, doing visual effects.
Marc: Doing some tiling.
Christian: That's not our biggest one, our biggest one was the baseball game.
John: Yup. Biggest one, we filled it with like 30,000 people.
Aldis: Oh, yeah.
Christian: Baseball game in season two.
Marc: “Vote for me!”
[Laughter]
John: So delightfully cheesy.
Christian: Parker.
John: And then the match cut over, that’s nice.
Marc: Yeah.
Aldis: Eliot almost killing a guy with nicotine.
Marc: He's got rubber gloves on, though.
John: He does, because he's careful.
Chris: That's right.
Marc: This is my favorite look.
Scott: He plays this perfectly.
John: And again it's one of those, one of the reasons doing the television is, you're moving so fast the actors have to create a lot, and there you go!
[Laughter]
Chris: “Wait who's that? I wanna talk to you later.”
Christian: Hey c'mon man, that's my move!
John: He’s charming, you know, but that’s- having a charming bad guy, ‘cause you need to like him for the end.
Christian: Oh, yeah.
John: No the- and this local, again local- almost all local actors in this one.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: That’s fantastic.
Chris: And they had to make up an accent for a non-existent country. Which folks, for an actor, is not the easiest thing in the world.
John: Yeah we actually wound up- I'll say it, we wound up basing it on Malta, which was a British colony until the 60’s, and really filled- the government structure filled a lot of requirements for us. But we made it Italian, because it's kind of a good European accent. So we made it close to Italy.
Chris: Oh, this is great.
John: Yeah, this is great. Huge- tell me you couldn't make that guy governor.
Christian: Oh absolutely.
John: Absolutely, maybe that'll be my hiatus project.
[Laughter]
Scott: Why do I think you're not kidding?
Christian: “Listen, we've got another job for you.”
John: No, this- and him storming over. Now it’s not fun anymore, now he's gonna kill you people.
Marc: Yes.
Aldis: Ah, he's breaking the rules
Scott: Yup.
John: And wow, without that staircase? What a great set.
Aldis: It was all right there.
Marc: Chandelier, staircase.
John: That looks like Europe. And then it had the matching mini balconies here to shoot across, it was great.
Marc: Yeah, it just gave us so much. This was just the- I love this, just the unspoken-
John: He's not gonna threaten them.
Marc: Just “I'm here.”
John: Just- and that's what also is kinda fun is when we talk about Hardison wanting to run his own crew sometimes, he's still being schooled; these are the rules we play by.
Christian: “Hey, how's it going.”
John: “How's it going? Sup!” Now these are the rules you play under. Nate is trying to tell him if you're gonna run a crew, these are the stakes.
Aldis: Yeah.
Christian: Look at how beautiful that is.
Aldis: That is. Where are those actually captured from?
John: I dunno, that's stock- from Stocksylvania.
[Laughter]
Scott: Stocktopia.
John: Sanstockington. Yeah, no, and this was a ton of fun. And of course the UN is always this effective when they monitor elections. They are pretty tight, actually, when they do it; they're pretty effective.
Marc: Yeah.
John: And this sort of walk by. Yeah, that's not a friendly look.
Aldis: “I'm still gonna kill you.”
Marc: Campaign’s growing.
John: Yeah, phase three, this was great. And this was also kinda the- we had to show that Sophie was genuinely interested, she wasn't just game invested.
Scott: Right, yeah.
John: She's actually come to like the country and really believe in this guy. Cause he- and we lucked out, the actor was really super charming; Humberto was fantastic.
Scott: And this fits perfectly with her ambition; she easily could've been a princess of a country in an alternate life.
John: And then we establish in the backstory.
Chris: Well we play her, we play aliases of her as princesses, so yeah.
John: Backstory explained she was married to royalty at one point; she knows this world better than he certainly did. That's the first time you see Moreau pissed off. And the president actually, he's a results-oriented guy.
Chris: Oh I love this shot. This is just great, the two of them, the expanse of the office.
John: This looks like West Wing.
Scott: Yeah, it really does.
John: It's gorgeous.
Christian: People have to understand- and this is the scariest moment because if he starts losing it, he starts pulling triggers. It’s a very, you know, Moreau doesn't lose it. He's losing it.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: And that's when he realizes, “Oh, I know how to handle this.”
Marc: Dave Connell did this beautifully.
John: Yeah, the- and this was a lot of fun. Also tracking exactly what information Hardison leaked at any given time. We had a whole timeline of who knew what, and when the people of San Lorenzo knew, when Nate knew it. Not quite as complicated as some of the other ones, but pretty brutal. And here we go, I love the starting gun.
Marc: That's a oner! Pressed for time.
John: Just the- we stuff on the TV, we see the reaction, and then Nate steps in the foreground.
Marc: Boom, we told that story.
John: Yup, that's all the information you need to know. And peek around, and just- and again, it was important in the writing - reset to the audience what every character's goal is, and where you see them next so you don't have to do the math.
Christian: Right.
John: And “age of the geek.”
Chris: In the story development process, at one time they won the election, and part of the episode was them governing. And John, I think what you struggled with in kinda figuring it out, was making the election the ultimate end.
John: Yeah, the election was a big enough story and that's something we hit every now and then in the writers room. You don't know how big the story actually is until you actually outline it. And then you have eight acts worth of cards up there and then you go, “Oh, alright.” The story has told you how long it needs to be. This was a ton of fun, the idea that he'd be doing press conferences from in prison - that delighted me to no end.
Marc: Right.
Chris: And very Mission Impossible.
John: Very Mission Impossible.
Chris: All the scenes with him, every time I see that, it takes me back to Mission Impossible.
John: I'm not gonna lie, this is our Mission Impossible episode, absolutely. And yeah, he's venal, this- Alastair is great.
Marc: Alastair, yeah, this is the bad side of Alastair, really bad, you know, take them all out.
John: And this was part of the fun was figuring out how the ending unrolled, was the chess match of what would a bad guy do to control information? And how would you use control of information against them? Using your opponent's strength against them is great. And by the way, big ups to these actors who were working background here, because the little look he throws, just a reminder this is not a good thing. It's a nice choice, nice choice picking up the single on that.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Oh and this was a ton of fun. Whenever you have- I think a lot of the Leverage audience knows at this point, whenever you see people and you can't see their faces? We’re in there somewhere.
Scott: I think we need to do a double reverse reverse, just to reset the clock.
Chris: We may need to go the other way on it.
John: Yeah, maybe in season four.
Chris: Oh and once he brings Nate in here, this- the scenes with the three of them coming up are some of my favorites in the whole two part finale.
John: Well again, that was right there when he says, “We're not gonna release the results.” You have to set up each time, you know, exactly how the mechanism of the con is gonna work.
Marc: Here Sophie's first instinct is to call for Eliot for help.
Aldis: Boom, ting!
[Laughter]
John: There you go, I've actually seen somebody knock the top champagne glass off a stack of champagne glasses with the champagne like that.
Christian: Oh, yeah.
Aldis: Wow.
John: And we had a big discussion that day of exactly how this would happen, exactly how she would do it. And we were like, “We'll just put the cork in the dude's eye and swing to him.” And it looks great!
Christian: It does look great, absolutely.
John: And then she just brains the dude, no elegance on the second one.
Marc: And now we're back to our opening scene.
John: Yup, which is- you know, there was a time we talked about doing every episode like that.
Chris: I- you know I like it when it’s the finale, I like when we make it special.
John: Yeah, for a while we kinda did that jump.
Chris: You see it a lot, it's in The Hangover, it’s in, you know what I mean? It's done a lot now.
John: Yeah, but you know there is something for promises.
Christian: I enjoy it, like John says, it’s become a signature for the finale.
Chris: Yeah, I think so too.
Marc: This was a great speech. The writing on this was great, and she really delivered it.
John: That was Scott, that was the writing- he was the one who really dug in on who her character was, you know, while I was mucking around with plotting.
Scott: And taking over Oregon?
John: Oh, yes.
Scott: I mean San Lorenzo.
John: San Lorenzo. While I was doing my how you would actually take over a government thing. He was doing the- well you were the one who came up with the whole idea of she's Avita.
Scott: Yeah, right.
John: And that's exactly how she would go about winning their hearts, and what speeches she should make.
Scott: Yeah, cause having the chance to be Avita, that seems like the one thing that would be a true draw for her.
John: The one thing she wouldn't be able to resist.
Scott: Yeah, right.
John: And this is- now of course the audience knows she's not dead, but the fun of it is playing it out.
Marc: And these three just killed this scene.
Chris: So you said- you did all- all of this- all five pages?
John: We pretty much did the entire half act in one take, every setup.
Marc: Every set up. They went through five pages of dialogue each take.
Chris: Wow.
Scott: That’s crazy.
John: Just- and that's why you have such great coverage of this. You just kept parking the camera, moving it around and parking it. And they found this, I mean we got in there at lunch that day, and just walked the scene.
Christian: Oh this is the one you were talking about where they had their blocking down when you got there?
John: Well they had a good idea, and then they saw the room.
Marc: But it was really- you know, instead of- we do so many bits where we break things up in our show, cause we’re always cutting away to somewhere else, but you know, Tim said, Let's go through all five,” and these guys were like, “Alright, I'm in.” And they just fell into stride.
John: That was kinda those great actor- cause actors are all a little competitive. So when Tim said, “Let's do all five pages,” you saw Goran and Alastair look at each other like, “Alright yeah, yeah, we’ll do all five pages, yeah we’re prepped.”
[Laughter]
John: “We don't need sides, I'll see your five.” It’s great, and it really comes across in this scene. And that little smile.
Scott: Isn't that the speech that got a huge spontaneous applause in the screening?
Marc: Yes.
Scott: Yeah, that was awesome.
John: The- oh no it's coming up, the “I have the guns, I have the government, I have the-”
Scott: No, “I bought an election.” Isn't that coming up?
Marc: Yeah.
John: The- yeah, the “I have the guns, I have the government.”
Marc: Right here.
John: It’s like “No, no, I have a 24 year old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority.”
Scott: That’s it! That’s it.
John: That got a giant applause break.
Aldis: That guy! This guy!
Scott: Who is that? Oh it's you.
Christian: Nice.
John: And I'll say actually, it's heavily influenced by Cory Doctorow's book, Little Brother.
Aldis: Oh.
John: About teenagers in a near future America who are oppressed by Homeland Security and strike back by using teenage geek culture and technology.
Christian: Wow.
Marc: It’s like our own little book club here.
[Laughter]
John: What do you guys think I do?
Chris: Read books.
John: What do you guys think I do? While you’re off touring the fucking world with your guitar, meeting beatiful girls. And you’re off doing your own thing?
Christian: Yeah, I get real quiet when all that stuff comes up.
John: I fucking read all the time, that’s my job.
[Laughter]
John: Some of us have homework forever, that's our job, that's our life.
Christian: I read two books, which is Call Of The Wild by Jack London and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
[Laughter]
John: That was it.
Aldis: Everybody’s read The Alchemist, it's a great book.
John: Well there you go, there's your books from them.
Aldis: I'm rereading it for like the third time!
Scott: Marc, what did you think of The Alchemist?
Marc: I loved it.
John: No, this was a ton of fun.
Aldis: Age of the geek!
John: Age of the geek. You know, as we established, there's only, you know, X number of people in the country; it's not that hard to email all of them.
Chris: Right.
Aldis: Yeah, no.
John: Particularly since these small countries have controlled ISPs. Or governmental ISPs. This is a great show down. And sitting Tim here is actually great staging, cause it gives you three levels, three eye lines. Playing with information, playing with access to information is a crucial part of this. Alastair’s turn here, by the way, as he starts to slowly panic is kind of what anchors the scene.
Christian: Yes, he did such a great job.
Marc: Now it's like, “Where the hell did he come from?”
John: Yeah “Oh hey, yeah I fucked you.”
Marc: “Oh, and we stole your security.”
John: Now this was tricky, cause this was a series of nested flashbacks, and the first time we did post, we put the flashback process on the big Guillermo scene.
Christian: Oh yeah?
John: When he does the speech after Sophie’s been assassinated.
Christian: Oh, right.
John: But it made- it took all the emotional weight out of it.
Chris: Right, cause it felt like it already happened.
John: So it's actually one of the few times we do a flashback without this filter on it.
Chris: Yeah, that's true. And it works.
John: Yeah, it absolutely works. And also the line from season one: “We be the cavalry.” You're giving it, like, an Eliot signature here.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
John: Something that Eliot says all the time. That's the fun of season three is you get to start to fill out the previous lives of these guys that they've had in the past.
Chris: And down.
Christian: That’s awesome.
Aldis: If you're asking, we hit them really hard.
Christian: Yeah, we did, we hit them really hard.
John: Yeah, you beat the hell out of the stunties.
Chris: You hit them hard?
Christian: We hit them hard.
John: Well they were wearing those things!
Christian: They were wearing helmets, and if you hit them softly you couldn't see the movement. So I said alright- they can't see it coming, so I was like, “I'm gonna have to hit ya.” And they were like, “Alright.”
John: Oh and this is Gina, by the way, wearing the pack.
Christian: Yeah.
John: Gina took the squibs.
Scott: Oh really?
John: Yeah, that's why she has the dress on, and that's why we could do it in closeup. Cause if it was a stuntie, we could do it with just the dress, but with Gina we could put the packs under the sweater, and we just ruin the sweater.
Christian: Yeah, she did the stunt, I was very very proud of her.
Scott: And those hurt, right?
Christian: Oh yeah.
John: Yeah those things are scary.
Marc: This was a great speech.
Christian: You turn them around, you’re dead. People don't realize that, that's actually a bullet coming out.
John: No, Gina was a fucking trooper. Yeah, this was a great speech, he nailed it. The slow push in on him. We were joking the night we were shooting this, like, “This scene will be recreated on San Lorenzo television, like, 20 years from now.”
[Laughter]
John: With actors when they do the documentary. And there will be people like, “You know Rebecca Ibanez wasn't alive.” “Oh you're one of those people are you?” “She wasn't a real person!”
Chris: This guy has a real arc in this show.
John: Yeah, he does.
Chris: This is not something we typically do.
John: This was the thing, it's like and now he is complicit in our crime. We’ve taken the only-
Chris: No, no, but it takes the fact that he has this arc, that he's become worthy of the office that we've manipulated. I think it really takes away from the fact that the mark in this episode are the people of San Lorenzo. That's the difference!
[Laughter]
John: But we’re doing it for them!
Chris: It's not right, but we've given them a worthy leader.
John: We were actually joking about the fact that after he did that scene, I said, “Michael Vittori’s reign of genocide began that night.”
[Laughter]
John: “Oh, oh we didn't think this out at all.”
[Laughter]
John: “20 years of terror.” “Oh, that was a bad move on our part.”
Chris: Well, watch the documentary.
Scott: Yeah, exactly.
John: This is great, this was the chess match.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Where it literally became Alastair is the chessboard, and the two of them squaring up on him.
Scott: Yeah.
John: And the two windows behind them.
Chris: And there you go! there’s the shot, what's he gonna do? Who’s he gonna go with?
Scott: Bachelor number one or bachelor number two?
[Laughter]
Marc: “How big of an estate?”
John: “How big of an estate?” No really, I've been watching a lot of noir lately and he's just doing it perfectly, he's just doing a throwback to a 40’s character actor here. Just playing- really underplaying it.
Chris: Yeah the, “I'm shocked! Shocked that there's gambling in this going on here!”
John: “Gambling in this establishment!” He's absolutely playing Casablanca.
[Laughter]
John: He could not be more Claude Rains at this moment. No, and then the flashback to the very beginning of the episode to set it up. This law was in place in the United States up until the 1830s, by the way.
Marc: There you have it.
John: James Madison actually considered using it at one point. Seizing the assets of his political opponents.
Scott: Really?
John: Yes, absolutely.
Scott: Very useful law.
John: Not one we have now, thank goodness. Very useful law for us.
[Laughter]
John: And that moment kinda blows by, actually.
Christian: Yeah, wow.
John: “The guys coming in are honest, so I need a corrupt man.” The entire plan depends on using the most corrupt man.
Marc: Bye!
Chris: Waving goodbye.
John: This is great. And what I love also here is they're playing it like, “We will gun your ass down if you don't give up the desk.”
Christian: Yup, it’s strong arm, it is.
John: What I also love here is the moment, like, “Wait, did we just spring a war criminal in order to win?”
[Laughter]
John: Yeah, kinda. But he's our war criminal.
Scott: Yeah, he's a good war criminal.
John: Yeah, exactly. The blood on the shirt is a nice touch. Nadine really killed that.
Marc: Yeah.
John: And the reveal. And now the gloat, the crucial gloat.
Marc: Bad guy has to suffer.
John: Bad guy must suffer, our guys must gloat, we must see the victims rewarded. She looks great in that shot, that’s again, very classic 1960’s.
Aldis: When does she not look great?
Scott: I was about to say, unlike usually?
John: Well just, you know, she looks very exactly that 60’s spy vibe there, you know.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Also fun, we stumbled across that last line of, “Damien Moreau will never leave San Lorenzo.” I think we actually wrote it on the set.
Chris: Well she says it in the garage.
John: Yeah she says it earlier, and I think we were on set going, “Oh wait.” And we tossed it out, yeah.
Marc: This is our first scene we shot with Goran, and that's what we see.
John: We locked him in a cell.
Christian: For some reason I'm just unconvinced that a little cage like that is gonna hold Damien Moreau, I'm just saying.
Chris: Nooo.
John: What? No. By the way, this- I love this. This is just so over the top and perfect and right.
[Laughter]
John: I was actually in New York when Princess Di died, and I remember going-
Chris: But look how much information you pack in one shot here.
John: Yeah, exactly. You know she's been sainted.
Chris: You have a shrine to her, everyone knows she's dead, you have what's happening in San Lorenzo, we pan up and-
Aldis: Yet again, she's at her own funeral.
Scott: Yeah that's a great one.
Chris: And we begin our scene. I mean that is a great shot.
John: That is a great shot.
[Laughter]
John: And there she is, in the ridiculous hat.
Christian: Wow.
[Laughter]
Christian: Really a great shot.
John: That’s- well that's the trick, we expect the audience to keep up on these episodes.
Aldis: Yeah.
Christian: She has a habit of showing up at her own funerals, doesn’t she?
Aldis: Yeah she does, bad habit.
John: It’s a character trait now; it's a feature, not a bug. No, and it's a lovely speech.
Christian: It's the actress, it's the old off broadway actors. “Do they like me? Do they love me? Who showed up?”
John: Exactly. This was great, by the way, was finally take the sting out of the relationship, only to utterly subvert it 30 seconds later. But the two of them are such good friends, and the characters had come to a new parity this season, they really acted the hell out of this. She's wonderful in this.
Aldis: By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, there goes Tim's hat again. Another hat.
Marc: And again a oner.
John: And a oner.
Scott: Yeah, that's right.
Marc: Gary Camp walking backwards.
Aldis: Yeah, the work that Gary Camp actually does.
John: Yeah, we should pay him more than you, is that what you're saying?
Aldis: Nah, I'm saying the audience-
Christian: I'm pretty sure he does.
Marc: This is a great line.
John: The “I don't travel with luggage.”
Marc: “I don't travel with luggage.”
John: All right-thinking men don't travel with luggage. Luggage is for women. Men buy shit when they get there, I'm just saying.
Christian: Oh Parker does.
John: Yeah this was a ton of fun, figuring out what everyone's tie up for the season was.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Of course Parker stole shit, she's Parker! Not gonna leave the country and not-
Aldis: Kinda a shame that Hardison didn't steal gold bars.
John: Actually in the original version of this we were at the estate.
Chris: Yeah.
John: When we originally broke it, we wound up going to the estate, and then we realized we couldn't find an Italian estate in Portland, that was a little tricky. Ton of fun, was this just a random room? This was a meeting room we made a bedroom.
Marc: Yes.
John: And at one point we had Gina outside the window.
Marc: Yeah.
John: That was not such a good idea.
Marc: Well.
John: Well there's a tiny ledge out there.
Aldis: Ahaha, and wait for it, wait for it!
Chris: Oh this is a classic.
Aldis: Boom! Knocking the boots! [Sing-songy] Bow chicka bow bow.
John: The little zoom in there you go.
Christian: Bwooooo!
Aldis: Bwooo!
[Laughter]
John: And fans across America scream.
Scott: Yeah.
John: That’s great. No, they didn’t have sex, they just cuddled.
Christian: Right.
Aldis: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
Scott: Didn't you tell me she read that and she thought it was a joke, she didn't think it was real?
John: Yeah she thought we were giving her a fake ending.
Chris: Oh c’mon.
John: Like nope, you guys did it!
Aldis: You did it!
Chris: Season three, we’re moving on.
Christian: Season three! Thank you so much guys, some of the best writing, the best directing I've ever had man, it's just unbelievable.
Aldis: Thank y’all for staying until the finish.
John: Marc, you directed the hell out of those, that was fantastic.
Chris: Yeah, these are-
Christian: Awesome!
Marc: Had a lot of help.
Aldis: Roskooni!
Chris: These are -
John: Alright, season four coming up.
Christian: Come on!
Aldis: Peace, people!!
Marc: Stay tuned.
#Leverage#Leverage TNT#Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts#Audio Commentary#Transcripts#Parker#Alec Hardison#Elliot Spencer#Nate Ford#Sophie Devereaux#Season 3#Episode 16#Season 3 Episode 16#The San Lorenzo Job
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Is there anywhere online one can watch the Leverage commentaries at or do you just have to buy the DVDs?
Unfortunatly I don’t think the commentaries are uploaded anywhere. But I am part of the group for the blog @leverage-commentary that is working on providing transcripts for all the commentaries! We have up through about halfway of season 3, and are working on more.
Does anyone know of a place that just the audios are uploaded?
#leverage#ask#anon#commentary#leverage commentary#it’s a very slow process of transcribing the eps but we’re working on it I promise lol
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I tried to show people how I've made thousands of dollars doing voiceovers and I'm not sure they believe me. So here is a screenshot of about 2 hours worth of work. I teach people how to do this for $50.
This is going to be an extremely important skill in the near future when the work from home industry booms and will be more competitive with ai.
Voice acting skills can also be valuable in numerous non-directly related jobs and industries, where effective communication, storytelling, and vocal performance can make a significant impact. Here are some examples of other non-directly related jobs and industries where voice acting skills can be beneficial:
1. Customer Service and Support: In customer service roles, having strong voice acting skills can help professionals communicate clearly, empathetically, and professionally with customers over the phone or via virtual assistants.
2. Public Relations Public speaking and Communications: Voice actors often work on PR campaigns, creating impactful messaging and narratives that resonate with the public and media through press releases, social media content, and other communication channels.
3. Medical and Healthcare: In healthcare settings, voice acting skills can be helpful for creating educational and instructional materials, patient information recordings, and medical training content.
4. Hospitality and Tourism: Voice acting can be used in hotel welcome messages, audio tours for tourist attractions, and visitor information services to enhance the overall guest experience.
5. Legal and Court Reporting: Voice acting skills are valuable for court reporters and legal professionals who provide voiceovers for transcriptions, witness statements, and legal documentation.
6. Museums and Exhibits: Museums and exhibits often use voice acting for audio guides, exhibit narrations, and interactive educational displays to engage visitors and enhance the learning experience.
7. Environmental and Nature Conservation: Voice acting can support documentaries, educational videos, and public awareness campaigns that raise awareness about environmental issues and conservation efforts.
8. Human Resources and Training: Voice acting can be beneficial in creating training materials, HR communications, and employee orientations to ensure clear and engaging delivery of important information.
9. Non-Profit and Advocacy: Non-profit organizations and advocacy groups can leverage voice acting skills for fundraising campaigns, public service announcements, and educational outreach initiatives.
10. Technology and Software: In the tech industry, voice acting skills are used for user interface design, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and instructional videos for software and digital products.
11. City Planning and Urban Development: Voice acting can support public outreach campaigns, urban planning presentations, and community engagement initiatives aimed at conveying information about development projects and city initiatives.
12. Architecture and Design: Voice acting can be used in architectural walkthroughs, design presentations, and promotional videos for architectural and interior design firms, helping to illustrate and enhance the visual experience.
13. Financial Services and Banking: Voice acting skills can be useful for creating training materials, customer service tutorials, and interactive voice response systems within the financial industry.
14. Sports and Recreation: Voice acting can be valuable for sports commentary, stadium announcements, and event promotions, adding excitement and energy to the sports and recreation experience.
15. Culinary and Food Industry: In the culinary world, voice acting skills can be utilized for cooking shows, food podcasts, and culinary educational content to engage and entertain audiences.
16. Fashion and Retail: Voice acting can help fashion brands and retail companies create compelling audio content for fashion shows, product demonstrations, and promotional campaigns.
17. Transportation and Logistics: Voice acting can enhance transportation announcements, safety instructions, and informational materials for airlines, public transportation systems, and logistics companies.
18. Call centers and work from home jobs!!! Role play character implementation strategic reflective listening
These examples demonstrate that voice acting skills have broad applications beyond directly related entertainment and media industries. Effective vocal performance, storytelling, and communication are highly relevant across various professional sectors, allowing individuals to leverage these skills to excel in their respective fields.
#make money tips#make money online#wfhlife#voice acting#make money fast#make money from home#wfh#work from anywhere
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!!!!!!!
A blog that is transcribing the Leverage commentaries! (They're almost through season 3).
Major, major, major kudos.
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John Roger, Executive Producer: By the way, can we talk about how we stole this entire patio set?
Chris Downey, Executive Producer: Oh that’s a great story.
Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and director of this episode: Go ahead.
John: Alright, so this is very Leverage-y. So we get to the location at some ungodly hour of the morning, and we were supposed to be in a cafe across the street. Pretty standard, they’re watching from the cafe across the street. We get there, and they tell us, “You cannot use our property.” We couldn’t use the cafe.
Dean: We had lost the location.
John: We had lost the location. At 7 o’clock in the morning. As we’re about to shoot. And so there is a coffee shop that is in the base of the building where we’re shooting, that had all that patio furniture chained up outside. I was like, “I mean, I know these people would give it to us if they were here, they just don’t open for another half hour.” And Dean says, “Cut the chain.” … “What?!?” He says, “Cut the goddamn chain, I’ll pay them back when they get here.” So we cut the chain, take the patio furniture, move it across the street, we turn what I believe is the exit to the subway, uh and interchange, into an outdoor patio. If you look at those tables, there’s no servers around.
Chris: So for you aspiring filmmakers: Genesis camera and bolt cutters.
Dean: … and bolt cutters.
Chris: Really the two most important things.
John: Absolutely. And then, you were absolutely right. The guy showed up, ‘what the hell’d you do?’, ‘hey, we’re shooting a pilot, would you like to meet the actors? Here’s Tim Hutton.’ Shook his hand, ‘here’s a pile of cash’, and we were fine. Yeah see the same furniture’s over there, because that’s where we stole it from. Uh yeah, sometimes even on a big budget TV show, you gotta go a little guerilla.
Leverage Season 1, Episode 1, The Nigerian Job, Audio Commentary Transcript, transcribed by @leverage-commentary
#leverage#dvd commentary#the nigerian job#john rogers#chris downey#dean devlin#method or meta or both#big budget 🤣#no.#not spn
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Look! Someone did transcripts of the Leverage audio commentary! (Only through s2e9 but still!!)
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Hi! Not a clip request sorry, but would you have (or know where to find) the audio commentary for the Two Live Crew Job? I'm rewatching all of Leverage with the commentaries, but this one is missing! Thank you for all the clips you post! :)
Dude, I have no idea where to find the episode commentaries, I’ve been trying to find a way to watch them without having the DVDs for months now. But you probably can find the transcript @leverage-commentary !! I hope it helps!!
#but no seriously where are yall watching the commentaries#please i need it#is there a secret google drive folder i dont know about???#ask#Anonymous
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09/30/2020 DAB Transcript
Isaiah 60:1-62:5, Philippians 1:27-2:18, Psalms 72:1-20, Proverbs 24:11-12
Today is the 30th day of September welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it's great to be here with you as we cross through the center of a week together and bring to the conclusion another one of our months together. Today is the final day of the third quarter of the year. Ahh man…that's where we are. One quarter of the year to go after this and I pray that it's glorious in all of our lives. But let's dive in and finish this quarter well, finish this month well. We’re reading from the Lexham English Bible this week. Isaiah chapter 60 verse 1 through 62 verse 5.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we end a month and a quarter, we find ourselves in the book of Philippians, and Paul is speaking to his readers and essentially…well…first of all, telling them what he's told everybody in his letters, “this is all going somewhere. Everything is happening for a purpose. We are headed somewhere good.” And then he invites them to get on the same page so that they can all go where this “somewhere good” is going. And, so, he tells them, “having the same love, united in spirit, having one purpose, do nothing according to selfish ambition or according to empty conceit, but in humility considering one another better than yourselves each of you not looking out for your own interests, but also each of you for the interests of others.” And it would be easy enough for us to say, “well…I mean that's kind of part of the Christian faith. That's the posture. That’s…we all know that.” Well we…we have to live that though. Like, it doesn't matter if we know it know it but don't live it or do it. What's the point? Well for Paul it's…it's important to get on that same page because that's the Jesus page. Like that's the page we’re trying to get on. And, so, he says, “look, basically, look at Jesus. What I'm telling you is what He did. He was God”…well…I’ll just quote it…”who existing in the form of God did not consider being equal with God something to be grasped.” That right there is saying a mouthful, “but He emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave, by becoming in the likeness of people. And being found in the appearance like a man He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore”, and it's because of this obedience that Paul is saying this, “therefore God exalted Him and graciously granted Him the name above every other name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, of those on earth, of those under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” That's where this is all going, and we go there, we follow that path, that narrow path that leads to life by becoming imitators of Christ. That's a page we all need to be on. And Paul gives some words to what that looks like. And even as I was reading it just a minute ago, I was like, “wow, right here as we’re gonna go into the final quarter of the year, and it's gonna be a roller coaster of a quarter of a year, it always is. It’s the fourth quarter of the year. So, it’s like major holidays like Christmas in the next quarter of the year, but there’s also domestic things here in the United States, like an election in the next quarter of the year. And that’s always fun. You know, it's popcorn eating fun.” And, so, Paul's words to the Philippians really ring true in the season that we are in. And, so, I quote Paul as…as we end our time together today. “Do all things without grumbling and disputing in order that you may become blameless and innocent, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine as stars in the world, holding fast to the word of life.” I don’t know, could there be any better advice for going into this next season of our lives, this next season of the year, and this next season in the Scriptures?
Prayer:
Father we thank You. You remind us, always, You are continually bringing us back and orienting us to You and it happens almost every day because we need it. It’s crushing here in the swirl of everything that…that happens. It's confusing here when we try to navigate on our own. It's confusing here when we try to play by the rules of the cultures that we live in and its hard. And yet You are with us and it becomes less difficult when we step back and let go realizing You are the sovereign Lord and we are Your children and we are going somewhere good and it doesn't matter what things look like at the moment, ultimately we are going somewhere good with You and we can access that spiritually now. We can live into that now. This isn’t something we have to wait for it's something that we are transformed into and we are in process. And some days, we are more of a failure than a success and other days we are more of a success than a failure. And typically, that is very very much tied to how much we are paying attention, how much we are aware of Your presence and guidance in our lives. So, we confess we need You now more than we have ever needed You before and we need to pay attention and stay awake now more than we have ever had to before. You are inviting us into maturity. This…this season we've been in, this year that we've been in, it's been a bit of a crucible, is refining us. We’re fighting to get through it as fast as we possibly can, but it is a refining time and You are purifying us and preparing us for what is yet out in front of us. And, so, we embrace that. We embrace it by stepping back, letting go of all the control mechanisms that we are trying to leverage to make life work. It just doesn’t work without You. And all we need is to be in Your presence and aware of it. And, so, that is the goal. That is the goal of this next quarter of the year, to be awake, to be alert, to stay completely aware of Your presence and Your guidance in our lives. Come Holy Spirit into that we pay. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s where you find out what's going on around here. Of course, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you kind of have that in your pocket. You can find out what's going on around here on the app as well. And one thing that I can tell you that's going on that I can't really tell you. What I can tell you is this. Tomorrow I'm going to tell you something that's going on around here and I even think you might want to know about it being a community like we are and all and I can’t tell you today. I have to tell you tomorrow. It’s a very specific thing. So…so, stay tuned until tomorrow. But while you're waiting for all of that just be aware of all the things that are available at the website – the Daily Audio Bible Shop, the different resources that are there for our journey through the Bible in a year to just…to encourage, to enlighten, to deepen, to widen and just to bring joy into the journey as we make our way through the Bible. So, check that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link that just kinda lives on the homepage. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can just hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.
And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here next month, which will be tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hello Daily Audio Bible family I…I’m baking birthday cakes for my two grandchildren who were born a day apart and I’m listening to the prayer line and I’m just so grateful to God for the Daily Audio Bible, for Brian Hardin, for the way that he has been obedient to God’s calling on his life and all of the support and the beauty that his wife Jill has brought into women’s lives also and China, listening as a double DABber all the wisdom that she imparts every day and just the peace and love and beauty of her life that she…she speaks about. But it’s all of the voices on this prayer line that have healed me so greatly. And I want to thank Radiant Rachel. So, I’m sitting here making these cakes and I am kind of murmuring and complaining and grumpy at my husband because we had a friend show up at the door the other night with no mask on, no call ahead. And my husband goes…he says that the door…Ken you better not have COVID and then walks right out and starts talking to him. Meanwhile I’m thinking, what is going on? But this is the way our lives show up. And, so, all night long I spent frustrated at him and now this morning we prayed, and God is going to use it to break my husband free of the need to please people. And, so, I…I know God’s greater than the COVID, but God gave us a brain to use as well. He gave us His Spirit of wisdom so we gotta be wise as well. So, thank You God for your love. Thank You, Father God for people like radiant Rachel who call up and encourage us and bless us sometimes with our own words. How humbling is that? So, thank You Lord for Your love Your mercy and Your kindness and I lift each one of us up…up and pray that You would give us that spirit of encouragement and help us speak words of life and light into each other. In Jesus’ name.
Disappointments are many and sometimes they hurt quite a lot
and with time the pain may lessen but forgotten they’re not
because they’re based on dreams and fantasies that we create in our own mind
visions of what we believe will make everything just fine
but then disappointment enters in and we get shaken to the core
A shot of reality that’s impossible to ignore
we don’t get what we wanted but we lose what we’ve gotten
either way the dream is shattered and the future starts to look rotten
but sometimes we push on any way and stubbornly persist
trying to bend realities to our wills with the strength of our own fists
refusing to submit refusing to bow refusing to even entertain the possibility that the disappointment just might be a blessing somehow
because God said that all things will work out for our good when we stay focused on him
even through disappointments when the future looks grim
and God you also said you keep in perfect peace the mind stayed on you
so help us to truly live into those words stand both faithful and true
and help us to grow to the point where we can honestly say not my will father but thy will be done
and to fully rule us and accept it that it’s you and not us that should always be number one
for you said that every knee would bow and every tongue would eventually confess that it is only your grace and mercy that allows us to be so abundantly blessed
so help us to stay humble totally trusting in you
knowing that your words are both faithful and true
so that when disappointments come as often they will
we’ll have the strength and good sense to just hold on and be still
Hey, my brothers and sisters this is the Prodigal calling in. I’d like to take this time to thank Brian and his family for all the sacrifices and everything that they’ve done to be here today. I’ve been a rodeo clown at this rodeo for 15 years now and the changes have been amazing from iTunes reviews that said he had a creepy voice to where we could be lost without his voice every day, without our shepherd. It’s him. His service crash, just amazing stuff. His initiatives, the Wind Farm Café and all that sort of stuff that many of you new people don’t know. But Brian’s been trying everything God has sent him to help grow this community and resource this community. And, so, I’m grateful to have participated along the way and made friends, virtual friends anyway, along the way. And it’s so amazing. We had people who needed kidney replacements, Robert I think is name was. We had crazy Natasha from New York. We had I remember Tony first home, Blind Tony’s first poem. I remember when Slave of Jesus showed up on the scene and remember what a powerful prayer warrior Sinner was. He disappeared again. So, come back my friend. You were in inspiration to us all. I remember Biola’s first call. The memories along the way. Going to Israel Brian. I remember his…his trip to Rwanda. I remember the…the container…the shipping container he made into a school over in Africa. Just everything. God has…has just been divinely guiding him. And, so, if it weren’t for Brian we wouldn’t be here. And if you’re here it’s because you’re meant to be here, and you’re meant to listen to Brian’s word and get out of it every day. I’ve been getting different stuff every day for 15 years. And the Bible didn’t change, I changed. And that’s a beautiful thing. So, praying for you all. Praying for Brian and his family. And thankful for, incredibly thankful for all the gifts we been given. So, pray on and warrior on and you make it a great day. God bless.
Dear God, I want to lift up those who are having anxiety. I pray for the two anonymous callers who called in from Michigan who are just anxious about what’s going on in the world right now for safety for finances for their future. I pray for Drew who put in a prayer request to be able to trust people and for healing in his ear. He’s looking to have more people in his life but he’s having trouble trusting people. So, I just pray that the anxiety will go away. I pray for James the mighty warrior from Texas who is praying to stay on the path and Pelham who is praying for strength to stay on the path. I just pray that You will lift these people up and fill them with Your Holy Spirit so that they can reflect Your grace and Your mercy and Your love in their lives. I want to pray for those who are feeling overwhelmed right now. Please help us to stay prioritized to be able to filter through to get to what really needs to be done and not to worry about the rest. That everything that needs doing will get done in Your time Lord and that if we just give it to You that You will help to keep our eyes on You and to put You first in our lives. I also pray that You will just protect us from being guided in the wrong direction through things like the media. I pray for that little girl. Her mom called in and she’s being pulled in different directions through other family members and social media. I just pray that we will be a little filter in Your name. Amen.
Hello my Daily Audio Bible family I just listened…today’s Sunday 27th of September and I just listened to a recording from Tammy and Canada. Tammy you were talking about how you couldn’t…all the sudden you can’t sleep and your mental health is…is at stake physical health is…is at stake. I just cannot begin to imagine what you’re going through because I know when I don’t sleep properly for just one night the next day I feel like a zombie. So, to imagine you’ve been going through this for over a month now its…its worrying to be honest. And I really…I pray the good Lord will lift…will hold you in his arms. I lift you up and ask the good Lord to please quiet your heart and whatever it is that is causing this to please take it away and give you peace. And, yeah, I know you’re hanging in there and I know it’s difficult but I want you to please not give up. Keep fighting because it’s a battle. Keep fighting. And if you if you do want to talk to someone you can reach me [email protected] and I would love to speak to you or to at least chat with you. I’m calling from the UK and I pray that the God Lord be with you. God bless you my dear.
Hello, DABbers this message is for James the mighty warrior. I heard your message this morning and it just makes me so happy to hear that there’s someone like you out there so joyful and a DABber in Texas that I never knew about. You make it feel like family James and because of you I put away my fear of calling in and just said, you know what Lord I’m gonna pray for James because you give me love for him. And, so, you asked for prayer James and I want to pray and encourage you to trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. So, it’s already answered for your brother. You are mighty warrior and I’m your sister out here in Arizona. I love you and I love you all DABbers. Bless you.
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Hi, I just saw and read your reasons to listen to the leverage commentary post and I really want to listen now! Do you know where I can get it online in the uk? I'm happy to pay for it, I don't need a pirate link or anything but I don't want to buy the dvds because I have no way to watch them. Thanks in advance :)
Yay, I'm glad you enjoyed the post! I try to reblog the post every time someone adds links to how to watch the show in other countries, and i think someone did just add a link. If that link doesn't work, there actually is a tumblr account that is making transcripts for the commentaries, and they're almost through S2 last time I checked. If I can't find a way for you to listen, check those out at @leverage-commentary . If I find a link to audio though, I'll tag you!
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Leverage Season 3, Episode 11, The Rashomon Job, Audio Commentary Transcript
Arvin: Arvin Brown, Director.
John: John Rogers, executive producer and writer of this particular episode.
Chris: Chris Downey, executive producer, and this is The Rashomon Job. John?
John: Yeah. Which we played around with a couple different names for it, it’d always been shorthand, The Rashomon Job, and then it just- we wound up keeping it. This was-
Chris: You had another title, though, that you kinda-
John: This was The Five Story Job.
Chris: The Five Story Job.
John: The Five Story Job, just cause ‘Two Story’ is a classic. And also House won their Emmy with a three story job. So I figured two more stories would get us our Emmy.
[Arvin and Chris Laugh]
Arvin: I like Rashomon Job, though.
John: Thank you very much. It’s a classic. And really, it was born- this has been the free pitch that’s been kicking around for ages. This was that high-concept idea I think we even had in the first year, and just, like, all right, you have to know the characters really well for it to make any sense whatsoever and it has to be basically a standalone. And nicely enough, we hit a weird soft spot, a gap in the arc narrative this year.
Chris: Right.
John: So we had this free one. And so I took all our notes we had accumulated and basically banged this out in about a week. Which turned out pretty great.
Chris: Yeah, it has to be executed perfectly or it’s a complete disaster.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: Yeah.
Chris: And you did it in a week.
John: Yeah. [Laughs] Well, no, the boys up on set did it, because this- writing it was a bear, but- oh, “I stole it!” That was the high concept. The pitch was always, they were watching the news and “I stole it!” And Sophie Soong, who is a recurring character now, she’s the reporter from The Inside Job. Arvin, what’d you think when you got the script?
Arvin: I thought it was impossible.
[John and Chris Laugh]
Arvin: I thought this was probably the end of my TV career.
Chris: [Chuckles] Now Arvin, you have a background in theater. Now- and this one really required an awful lot of entrances and exits. What did you bring from your theater background to approach this?
Arvin: Well actually, y'know, the interesting thing is that a lot of the plays I did, particularly toward the end of my theater career before I made the total transition into television, were very impressionistic plays. Y’know, the- television and the screen has influenced contemporary playwriting more than anyone realizes. So, a lot of times I’d be in situations where I needed to create transitions, and odd appearances, and disappearances. One in particular, for example, there’s a writer, Peter Nichols, British writer. And I did a play of his called Forget-Me-Not-Lane in which people would open closet doors and there would be somebody, and then they’d close the closet door, and open it again and that person was gone. You know, so all that really played into this in fine fettle.
John: This is meant to be, really- you could do this as a play. This episode, if you had like three staging spots on a stage, you could pull this off.
Arvin: Yeah, that’s true.
John: And that was the key, is- our 1st AD, Eric- and this was also- the recurring visuals was really important for editing.
Arvin: Incidentally, doesn’t Gina look gorgeous?
Chris: Oof, wow.
John: Gina looks stunning in that dress. That dress is killer. And it was interesting, Eric, our 1st AD saw this and he said, “You’re mad.” And then as we talked about it, you realize everything really takes place in three spots. Everything else- is just, you talk about it a lot but you’re never actually there.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: You know what I mean? And that’s the key to any of this. Ah, there’s Traber, Traber Burns, he’s a local Portland actor, and did a great job for us as the main villain.
Arvin: And who had incidentally, a wonderful time doing it, and has been in correspondence with me since.
John: Oh, that’s great. No, he was fantastic. Now talk about- sort of the challenge about setting up Tim as the observer character. Because we talked about a couple different ways to establish him, and he was coming up the stairs with Gina there, as the, sort of- y’know, and there he is, he’s popping into frame.
Chris: I guess we call this the “Annie Hall” sort of narrative.
John: Yeah.
Chris: In which people appear in the flashbacks.
Arvin: One of the challenges, though, in this kind of a situation is to keep him active. Because the trap with the observer character, y’know, is that it becomes very, very passive. So that’s one of the reasons I kept finding these ways to sort of have him physically be there, appear, and visit, and suddenly be gone whether it’s in the closet or just-
John: Rather than just hanging about.
Arvin: Yeah, exactly.
John: It has to be startling and notable when he’s there. Also-
Arvin: And that creates its own sense of amusement, so that he’s got a certain color watching all of this stuff.
John: That also is an in-camera effect. The fade out. Dave Connell came up with that, right? The idea that we would have him fade out by bouncing a bright light on him and reflecting in that glass and then just killing the light.
Arvin: Right, yeah.
John: No, it was a really, really lovely effect.
Arvin: Yeah. I was- I loved that.
John: And this is where we start to get into the bones of it. Oh, that’s Juan, that’s Juan Canopii, who’s playing our minister. And this was- this was the trick, the- I’ll have on my website, you can go find it on kungfumonkey.com, or blogspot.com. There is the flowchart for where everyone is, who everyone is, and what they’re doing at any given time. And it’s three pages long.
Chris: Now, did you do it with- did you do it visually? Did you have the maps of the sets, and you had- and you had three pages, and you kind of-? Is that how you worked?
John: No, it was- I specifically built each person’s story.
Chris: Okay.
John: I figured out, what would Gina’s attack as a grifter be- and that was the fun of it, that was what really gave us the birth of Grifter, Hitter, Hacker, Thief.
Arvin: Right.
John: And nicely enough, a phrase we threw away in Season 1 became the archetype for the show.
Arvin: This guy, we should mention quickly, incidentally, is Riley.
John: Oh yeah, of course!
Chris: Riley Smith.
Arvin: Who is best friend of Chris Kane, yeah.
John: They’ve been friends since they were teenagers.
Arvin: Yeah. And he did a great job.
John: Just a great, great job. Really, really flawless. No, it was really- that was the trick, was building out Gina’s- pardon me, Sophie’s story, what everyone else could possibly play within that story, and then after that everyone’s approach to the crime fell out of that.
Chris: Right.
John: You know, why they would need to be there? Why they would need access? etc. etc. etc.
Chris: And then, presumably, the things they interacted with then were kind of things that you could incorporate into the other stories.
John. Yeah.
Chris: The ‘World’s Greatest Grandpa’ mug-
John: Yeah.
Chris: And stuff like that.
John: And we’ve got- I mean, in the room, I finally came out into the room with a bunch of paper cups and objects and folded notecards, to the writer’s room and said “All right, help me.”
[Chris & Arvin Laugh]
John: “I have- this object has to wind up in this cup. At some point through the iteration.” Cause the trick is, each person needs a perfectly flawless plan.
Chris: Right.
John: It’s five heists that have to all go wrong not independently, but interdependently.
Chris: Right.
John: I was drinking fairly heavily by the end of this one.
[Chris and Arvin Laugh]
Arvin: Incidentally, we should note, too, that I have rarely done a script that actors have fallen so completely in love with as this one. Cause of course every single member of the cast gets a phenomenal opportunity.
John: Oh, yeah. And they get ten big pages of playing a character-
Arvin: And every time they got hopelessly confused cause of the way I had to shoot this, and to try to remember desperately which story they were in, I would remind them of how much they loved this script.
[John & Chris Laugh]
John: “I know you’re really miserable right now at two o’clock in the morning.”
Chris: There’s some actor maintenance advice there from our director.
John: Yup. And John Billingsley, Oh, he’s great in this.
Chris: Now that was your suggestion, wasn’t it, Arvin?
Arvin: Yeah, John I have worked with so often and he is the most versatile, most remarkable character actor. I did a television film with him where he played a just brutal interrogator, prosecuting attorney. So he’s got tremendous dramatic chops.
Chris: But- but you needed him to swing from kind of meek to menacing. And that is- that’s a tough thing to do.
John: Absolutely.
Arvin: And have a certain believability in all of it, and also have a sense of comic timing. Which incidentally, is one of the things that the regular cast has in spades in this episode. Their timing is so good.
John: Yeah. And that was something that- we could not have a weak sister on this character. This character is as strong as the other five in this particular situation.
Arvin: Absolutely.
John: If you don’t believe that fifth act turn, you’re done.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Really, yeah, no, it’s Noises Off, but with crime.
Arvin: [Laughs] That’s right! That’s almost- exactly right.
Chris: In a way, it’s almost his story, isn’t it? I mean, you look at it that way?
John: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Chris: If you had to zero in on whose story it is.
John: Absolutely. If the rule is the protagonist is the person who suffers the most, it’s definitely Cosgrove’s story.
[Arvin & Chris Laugh]
Arvin: Yeah.
John: No, it’s just- also I was delighted by the idea of the sort of cluelessness of hearing what people say and you’re not really paying attention so you assign- I love the fluidity of memory. That’s just one of my favorite things to write about. I’ve written about it a bunch of times.
Arvin: It’s wonderful- it’s a wonderful phrase, too. And I gotta tell you, while we’re looking at Gina, a very quick funny story there. We had one dark moment in prep where we had gone to Gina and she was really hoping to have complete costume and hair changes in every single story.
John: Yes. In each story.
Arvin: And of course, practically speaking that would have been an absolute nightmare.
John: Production-wise.
Arvin: So we had to convince her that she could do it completely from an acting point of view, which of course eventually she got excited about.
John: Yeah, and she does!
Arvin: She does. That’s wonderful.
John: Those are two entirely different- and that was - the hair is different, the difference between the geeky woman in the little jacket, and, you know, Gina in that dress- there’s no comparison, you know?
Arvin: Exactly.
John: And also, that’s tricky, because that was one of the discussions we had about the audience being able to track what the hell is going on.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: You know, because the entire episode is basically a series of nested flashbacks, and so if she’s wearing something different and she’s too different you lose-
Arvin: Exactly right.
John: Where in the narrative you are. Yeah.
Chris: Mmhm.
John: Also the voices are great. Because at some point in the episode, as her accent deteriorates, I actually wrote in the script, “Sophie:” and then the dialogue block just says “Unintelligible British gibberish.”
[Laughter]
Arvin: Yes! I know. I loved that.
John: And just- Gina, being a fantastic comedic actress, just tee’d off on it. Beth could barely keep herself together.
Chris: That was right, didn’t you- you got to shoot that over and over again, right?
Arvin: Oh yeah, they couldn’t control themselves.
Chris: They kept breaking up.
John: And now, also to say, Arvin, I also wrote this bear and then stranded you. Because I went straight from this into the finale with Chris.
Chris: Right.
John: So Jeff Thorne, the writer on Inside Job, who had been my writer on Inside Job, the one I directed, babysat this.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And since, you know, we’d worked together, he knew what I was going for.
Arvin: And he did a nice job. He really did. And he has the right sense of how to deal with actors.
John: Well, you know, he used to be an actor.
Arvin: Oh, no, I didn’t know that?
John: Yeah that was Jeff-
Chris: [Laughs] We’re outing you on DVD, Jeff!
John: I know- How long was he on In The Heat Of The Night? Five-
Chris: Five seasons.
Arvin: He was on what?
John: He was on- In Heat of the Night for five seasons.
Arvin: Oh my-! I never knew that.
John: And it’s one of those things that he never talks about it in the writer’s room.
Arvin: Nor on set, let me tell you!
Chris: No.
John: And it’s like, when we found out in the writer’s room, it was like we found out he’d been involved in human trafficking.
[Laughter]
John: We were so filled with rage.
Arvin: One of the things I kind of worked on here with these little framing scenes-
John: Oh yeah, framing devices.
Arvin: Which is very important to me. Had a link with each- one actor would take us to the next area of the set that they would be in.
John: It’s a great use of space, whenever you bounce back, you know what version of the story you’re in.
Arvin: Yeah, rather than just finding people in different places, there was always a thematic element that took us to the new place.
Chris: Now this is a great little fight, John, and if I may just blow some smoke. I think you do an amazing job, in these episodes, of bringing us in media res in these-
John: Yeah, thank you.
Chris: In these Eliot fights, and they always have a great punchline to them.
Arvin: Yeah, this was- I love this one.
Chirs: They have a setup, they have a punchline, and it delivers exposition.
John: Uh, I will absolutely tell you that Jackie Chan taught me that. Jackie Chan taught me, because I worked with Jackie briefly, and he was like, you know, each fight is three acts. You know, each fight- and there’s also, if you look at the fights that I write, I wind up- you know, everyone’s got their toolbox, in a lot of scripts, in the Eliot fight, even if it’s not my script, I end up swanning in on it. He also showed me the fight line: the one line that you do the fight along. And everything else is peripheral, but as long as you have one line to shoot on, you can shoot it quickly. And that’s why you’ll notice a lot of times Christian is fighting along one axis.
Arvin: Yeah.
Chris: It’s great.
John: And then you can just throw a lot of stuff at him.
Chris: Yeah, exactly.
John: And this guy is named Gutman, of course because of The Maltese Falcon.
Chris: Oh, that’s great.
John: There you go.
Arvin: We love that.
John: There you go, this is plainly The Maltese Falcon at this point.
Arvin: We all love that.
John: Yeah.
Arvin: He did a great job.
John: He was fantastic and it’s a very small part.
Chris: And a nice menacing push in there.
John: I know!
Chris: I love a good push in.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: I also love the- love the read Christain found here on like, “You know I have to do this, right?”
Chris: Yeah!
John: “You're aware I have to punch you.”
Chris: And there's our joke.
John: There's the joke. The bit with the knife was fun.
Chris: And we got all the exposition out.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: Yeah. No this- and again, the sort of recurring shot, the reset, this is what kept me sane when writing this, was always knowing I was gonna get to the reset scene.
Chris: Right.
John: And see- and this was also a ton of fun. I actually shot this. This was crazy, I got up there-
Arvin: And I was very grateful that you did.
John: I got up there and I had not had any sleep cause I'd been working on the finale and I swung by the set to say hello.
Chris: Right.
John: And they were like, “That's great, you can shoot the second unit!” “I don’t- tired!” And Christain, I will give him full credit, Christain really powered us through this.
Chris: It's a long speech here.
John: That's a long speech and it was- we covered the hell out of it. And he nailed it every single time, and we could've been here all night.
Chris: Yeah.
John: I mean really. But that's the advantage when you're in season 3. You know- this is the longest speech Eliot’s ever said.
Chris: Right. I'd say so, and you know what's nice about it, too, is it gives you a sense- which helps you in the finale, of what his life was like before Leverage.
John: Yeah.
Chris: There's definitely- you wrote the characters in a different way than they are on the show now.
Arvin: Here’s an example of that fade out that you were talking about.
John: Yeah so you get the- him in reflection next to Christain in the shot.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: It's really a nice piece of work.
Arvin: Incidentally, you know, one quick thing that I should say, which was such a joy, you know, that I didn't do the second season. Of course I did the first season and then came back for this. And the growth in the actors, in the regulars, is really remarkable.
John: No, they own these people now. I mean, to a great degree a lot of our fun in the writing room is knowing if we toss the ball into the pit, how they are gonna play with it. And so it's just coming up with stranger and stranger balls that we can throw.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And just alright,’’ how about this one’? You know. Yes and- also, this is where we start to put in the dueling flashback attitude.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: This was an awful lot of fun. And- [laughing] oh and the corncob pipe killed me every time!
Arvin: That's great.
Chris: Oh, the corncob pipe!
John: Kills me every time.
Chris: And the nice comedy wipe right there.
John: Yeah.
Chris: Rhhh!
John: Classic comedy wipe. No the- that's also something we don't get to do, and this is another reason it was one of my favorite episodes not because I wrote it, but because we got to do something we never got to do because we were such a plot heavy show. Show what they're like when they're actually not on a job.
Chris: Right.
John: You know, this is what they're like when they're hanging out in the bar.
Arvin: Yeah, that’s interesting.
John: And Sophie's- something we never get to address that much is Sophie's truculence.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And just the sort of- she's very hard done by, you know she's very- she's a princess in her head. You know.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And an actual duchess we find out later in the season.
Chris: Oh, this was so funny.
John: Oh I forget- this, I believe this comes from a friend of mine’s comments about the British spelling of elevator and color. It’s like, isn’t it stupid? The ‘u’ just makes us feel bad!?
Chris: Sea roaches? Oh that's so great.
John: And yes, Eliot’s a thug, but he's not a bad guy here. I mean he's not gonna let somebody let some dude die on the floor.
Arvin: Right.
John: No, this was an enormous amount of fun. And this when you start- honestly, it's not that complicated a story once you figure out who everyone is. Great job here. And now, when you shot this, if I remember correctly, you literally parked the cameras, had them come through, do one version-
Arvin: Yeah!
John: Had them come through to do the other version.
Arvin: That's why I was so grateful that you were outside shooting the night shot. Because it was like organizing the Prussian army, I mean it was-
Chris: Oh boy.
Arvin: And also figuring out which exact lines and moments could be done that way and which couldn't because of either a change in look or a change, you know-
Chris: Or some inconsistency in blocking.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: But that’s-
Arvin: It almost is exactly the same blocking, but not really. Just enough changes.
John: That's where- I will admit, even when we were working on this. That's where the idea that everyone's version is slightly different, I knew was gonna save us.
Arvin: Yeah.
Chris: That’s right.
John: Because otherwise we'd be trying to mirror and we'd have guns in our mouths.
Chris: Right, well of course, because people accept- I mean the whole premise of this episode is recollection is flawed.
John: Yeah. So if everyones standing a little off or a little different places, it’s, you know. There's fine- and then figuring out what you had to shoot- what you had to shoot new and what you would just keep reshooting-
Arvin: Exactly.
John: Sequence of. Cause that was originally our 1st ADs thing, which was, ‘Oh my god, there's a thousand shots in this.’
Arvin: Yeah.
John: It's like no, that’s- that shot.
Chris: Oh.
John: That by the way, a comedy- a locked off comedy frame.
[Laughter]
John: There's nothing better than a locked off comedy frame.
[Laughter]
Arvin: That was-
John: A medium with, like, bullshit happening in the back, there's nothing funnier than that. I wouldn't have staged it that way in a million years, that was inspired, Arvin.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: That was great. No, love that.
Chris: And now here we see walking down with the flowers and not the gun.
John: Not the gun. Yeah. And then it goes back to a gun for Parker and you see what- yeah.
[Chris Laughs]
John: See how everyone builds it. In retrospect I might have written that the jackets were different colors.
Arvin: The jackets?
John: Like, cause that's a little close to Riley- the doctor's outfit. That’s the only thing I can think of looking back on-
Chris: Yeah, but it doesn't throw you. I mean I would say-
John: Yeah it doesn’t throw you. That was the only thing that bothered me.
Arvin: I wouldn't have thought about it, that's interesting.
Chris: Yeah.
John: I was watching it. And still never hit- oh and that is of course a- and that's the reveal of the previous shot. That is, of course, a shout out to the great British comic book writer Warren Ellis on the address label.
Chris: Oh, is that his address?
John: No that is- it’s Warren Road, Ellis County.
Chris: Oh that's great.
John: Just a little something. and this was great cause I told them it's Raiders of the Lost Ark. You just- you know, you're going through the-
[Laughter]
John: We also had an intern, because we had to do multiple takes, hiding behind him to catch the vase. And, you know, Christain’s just whipping that piece back there.
[All Laugh]
John: Just like- he's like ahh!
Chris: That's true, I imagine we wouldn't have nine vases.
John: No, we do not have nine vases.
Chris: Do they have nine vases on NCIS, Arvin? I bet they do.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: On the network show?
Arvin: Certainly NCIS LA.
[Chris Laughs]
John: On a cable show they had- we had one vase. Take good care of it.
Arvin: That's right, [laughing] it's a rubber vase.
John: No, I love the choice that Gina's making here which is Sophie’s getting more and more drunk as the night is going on.
[Chris Laughs]
Arvin: Yeah.
John: She's getting angrily drunk. Yeah, and the World's Greatest Grandpa mug.
Chris: World's Greatest Grandpa.
John: That was insane. That was the point in the writers room where I just had my head on the table because it was- what is each person trying to accomplish, what do they wind up with, and how does that object wind up in their hands because of the other humans?
Chris: Oh boy.
John: It was not- it was not a fun day.
Chris: Don't try this at home, kids.
[John & Arvin Laugh]
John: This is the one you do after forty of them.
Chris: Don't try this at home.
Arvin: It was very interesting working with Timothy on this episode, because he had to find his inner progression in the piece.
John: Yeah, when he's- cause he’s-
Arvin: Of what he's trying to accomplish.
John: He's playing chess, and the rest of them don't know it. Yeah, Tim-
Arvin: But nevertheless there are also certain things he needs to find out to bring him to the very final point of the script.
John: He's actually interrogating them. Subtly. Which is very clever.
Arvin: That's right, that's right.
John: And then you move to the dartboard, which is nice. It's really important. This was a ton of fun. And calling Apollo and going, “How do we do this?”
[John & Arvin Laugh]
John: And I originally had it with rocks glasses and just- because rocks glasses aren't that transparent but I love the teacups.
Chris: Wait, so this was all practical?
John: This is practical. The way you do it- although Beth has amazing hands, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to do that properly. There is a ball bearing inside the crumpled up bill and there is a magnet on the inside of the teacup.
Chris: Oh, this is great! This is why we do this!
John: Yeah.
Chris: I did not know that, folks!
Arvin: That was so much fun.
Chris: I work on the show!
Arvin: That was so much fun.
John: It was a ton of fun. You never know with Beth, cause she's learned how to do a lot of it, so you never know.
Arvin: And that's also the sort of thing my years at O’Neil [¯\_(ツ)_/¯] didn't really prepare me for.
[All Laugh]
John: Oh really? No? Yes, and this was a lot of fun, was the James Bond. Cause, you know, let's all face it, the female fans are thanking us right now.
Chris: Yeah.
John: They've been waiting to see Aldis in a tux for a while.
Chris: He looks pretty good.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, this was a ton of fun and randomly picking a name off the list. Look at the- look what Tim plays there, right there, he plays that he's starting to figure it out.
Arvin: Yeah, that's right.
John: Just at that moment. No, this is lovely. That may be a slight anachronism with the phone, we'll assume he built his own sliding keyboard five years ago. He may have innovated that himself.
Chris: We'll take the emails.
John: I'll take the emails on that one.
[Chris Laughs]
John: God bless you, God bless you. Now this-
Chris: No, they had that five years ago.
John: Yeah, eh. This was also fun was the- was figuring out why he needed to be there, physical insertion versus remote attack, you know the different stages of hacking.
Arvin: Right.
John: This montage was great. Adorable. There's no reason this should've come out as well as it did.
[Laughter]
John: The only thing - the only thing- yeah and there he's presenting the flowers. It's great. The only thing I miss, and it was ridiculously impractical- oh, I love this shot.
Arvin: I love that. This one was- that was really.
Chris: They're all over each other.
John: Yeah, and taking the picture. And I'm willing to say that's canon. I'm willing to say that happened. Nice wipe, by the way, nice wipe to reveal Tim. Did you have that in your head at the time?
Arvin: Mhhm.
John: Yeah, to get him back in the shot.
Chris: That's great.
John: The only thing I regret is in that montage, in the script, there's a moment- there is one shot, which was just impossible to shoot, which he's playing chess with an old man.
Chris: Yes! That's right.
John: And [laughing] just the crowd is watching!
Arvin: Yeah.
John: It's like no, there's no way to do it.
Arvin: I couldn't figure out how to do it.
John: Surrounded by honeys.
Arvin: Could not figure out how to do that one.
John: Yeah. And this one was great, because what was also fun was Treber really has to sell this three different ways, also.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: You know, Portland actors. Never let us down. And the freeze frame.
Chris: And the freeze frame!
John: And that's great. This is a common-
Chris: That's when you go beyond the wipe. That's when you just stop the- stop the rolling.
[All Laugh]
Chris: The first one is the wipe, cause it’s like you're trying to wrap your head around it. Then you need to-
Arvin: I think this is almost an encyclopedia of film.
Chris: Yes it is.
John: You had to pull pretty much every trick out of the can on this one.
[Laughter]
John: There you go, and psychopath Eliot! This was a ton of fun to do. And again-
Chris: And the much larger knife.
Arvin: And of course Aldis-
Chris: Cause that's what he would remember!
John: Yes.
Chris: He would remember a much larger knife.
Arvin: This is Aldis’ great strength. He's just unbelievable.
John: Oh yeah, yeah. And by the way, Christain digging in.
Arvin: Oh yeah.
John: He really, there's not a lot- it's like, “Oh, so I'm psychopath?” ‘Yes, yes, you’re terrifying.’
[Laughter]
John: Yeah. He told me this was the most fun bit, this bit.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Just the creepy bit with the knife.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Peppermint. we got to use his signature line, ‘it’s a very distinctive smell’. Yeah, trying to figure out why he needed to be in there.
[Laughter]
John: Walk the halls in the dark. Oh yeah. This is- the little half smile, he's genuinely creepy here.
[Laughter]
Arvin: And that reaction. The thumbs up. Inspired.
John: Creepy crazy. And bang in, and where's Nate?
Arvin: He will be there right-
John: There you go.
Arvin: Right behind him.
John: And that's fun. I will tell you the day that a hacker friend of mine told me that he was running OSX- he was running his operating system off a thumb drive is the best thing that happened to us.
[Chris Laughs]
John: Don't have to lug a god damn laptop around everywhere.
Chris: Now, what was the option other than having Nate appearing in the flashbacks? Were you gonna do a voiceover? What were you playing around with?
John: I was thinking about a voiceover, but-
Chris: It becomes like the voice of god, I guess.
John: Well it's- he's talking to- each character would end up talking to the screen.
Chris: Right.
John: But that breaks the fourth wall so heavily.
Chris: Yeah.
John: You know, it's just not something we do and- yeah.
Arvin: Well you know what else you would have lost, is that part of what tells the audience how to respond to the tone is Nate's attitude.
John: You know, it really- I played with it for like a day and then tossed it. Nate had to be not just asking questions, but in the scene. Which at the point I was like, “Oh god, Arvin, I'm sorry.”
[John & Arvin Laugh]
John: In my head, cause I knew you were directing this one by that point. Which also to a great degree, I’ll tell you, is why I wrote this one in this order. Cause I knew you could, with your theater training, you'd be able to handle it.
Chris: I think that in the House he appears in- if I remember right, that Emmy-winning House, he appears in the flashbacks like that. And it was pretty- it's a bold move to do that.
John: Yeah.
Chris: You know, I mean it's-
Arvin: But I think it's vital, I think that's-
Chris: Yeah, no, it's now that you look at it again, I can't imagine doing it any other way.
Arvin: Almost the single most important element in the entire show.
John: No, you can't. Yeah, I did one version where they talked to the screen and I did one version where it was just clean, and then no, you need some sort of pipe.
Chris: Right.
John: You need exposition cause we still do four really complicated heists in this. You need to explain what the hell they're up to. Yes, and the blocking on that, the whole design of this hallway. Who’s standing where, and what are their sight lines, and how can they see?
Arvin: Oh boy that was- we spent a lot of time on that.
John: Oh my god. But the-
Chris: I mean, and the doors and stuff, this is where you get the great far sell.
John: Yes.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, that was intentional.
Chris: Once you got people shoved into doors, and throwing people.
John: Noises Off, exactly. I’ll tell you what was interesting, I had originally envisioned the supply closet closer to the downstairs over on the other side, out of sight line of the antiquities room. Now by the way, Aldis just slapping Eddie Murphy on there, hard.
[Laughter]
Arvin: Yeah.
John: However, putting in the other place gave you the locked off comedy frame to play stuff back and forth across that door.
Arvin: That was the big-
John: Yeah, which really was- I never imagined that.
Arvin: That was the thinking of behind-
John: This, by the way, is the fun of television. You write it, and you actually make it.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And it winds up being better than you thought.
Arvin: Right, and oddly enough, because you make it at such speed, a lot of ideas kinda crystallize that might not be there, you know, if you were thinking it out over a longer period of time.
John: And each one of them lying, each one of them not- this was- and this was fun. Actually, I'll tell you that was the hardest one to write. Was the hacker’s.
Chris: Oh.
John: Eliot’s was fairly straightforward, cause he needs to get into- because it's true that the most vulnerable place when you're transporting valuable objects is in the transition from storage to transport.
Chris: Right.
John: Figuring out why he needed to be there and what his scam was? Was the hardest one. She was easy.
Chris: Mhhhm.
John: Cause this is almost beat for beat exactly a heist she does in almost every episode. This is her thing, you know?
Chris: Right, right.
John: She's a thief. Once you're in the fourth act, you're in the home stretch, you know.
Chris: Right. And play around with- because for those of you that aren’t aware, the acts have different lengths-
John: Yes.
Chris: We knew that we were gonna end with Nate because Nate’s the one who's gonna give you the true version. But in the other order, did you always think that Parker was gonna go on our fourth act?
John: Yes.
Chris: Cause that's the shortest act?
John: Cause that's the short act. And we actually talked about it being no dialogue.
Chris: Oh.
John: We actually debated- “What, I'm a thief?” And then no explanation, that's what she is.
Chris: Right.
John: And she nailed that. We actually- remember we talked about for a while- this was before, well before we wrote it, Arvin, the idea that we would shoot this in like a really weird black and white expressionistic idea of like-
Chris: Right, right, right, right.
Arvin: Oh really? wow.
John: Yeah.
Chris: It's like the way dogs see the world.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: She just sees like- everyone would be wearing the same clothes, and just like it's just- only the objects that have reality.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And then we realized that was just from a production standpoint, impossible.
Chris: Yeah
John: Just impossible to do. And as a result, just gives us a lot more fun to play with.
Arvin: I love this little brief moment with Aldis here, cause again with the interconnect.
John: Yeah.
Arvin: And he's stuffing himself with-
John: Yeah, with freebies. This was actually- in Montreal when I was going to McGill University, the strip joints had free buffets.
[Laughter]
John: So and the- I don't know what it does now, but the meal plan at McGill University in the dorms, they are not covered on the weekends. So you would put plastic bags in your pockets and you'd go to the strip joints and fill your pockets from the buffets.
[Chris & Arvin Laugh]
Chris: Wow, pretty impressive.
John: And that's- I love that. I love her frustration. ‘I hate you all.’ She just nailed it.
Chris: There's a great little sequence too, Arvin. Cause the camera was always moving or people were moving. I mean it’s, you know, considering it's a party where somebodys stuffing hors d'oeuvres in their pockets, it had a real dynamism to it.
John: Oh this thing flies. Well Parker’s always moving.
Chris: Yes.
John: That's the key, is if you're following Parker and she's always moving you're just- yeah, you're aces up.
Arvin: And the change in attitude here, of course, was just wonderful.
John: Yes. And that was tricky because one time we talked about this being Sterling. I mean one time we talked about- it couldn't have been Nate. You know, but we talked about it being Sterling and then realized- no, we fell in love with the crush story.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Also love- this worked out. Look at the way she does that line. She knows somebody else is there.
Arvin: Oh yeah.
John: She just figured it out.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: You know, she does that great. She’s just now pissed she wants to get on the job. It's actually what motivates her to do the job.
Arvin: Right, exactly. And I love the linking of the blackout in each story.
John: That was key.
Chris: It gives you like a timing.
John: Yes.
Arvin: Yeah, and that's right.
Chris: Cause it orients you visually to- ‘Okay, I remember when that happened.’
Arvin: That's right, cause the time is complicated. I mean you go back, you go forward, you go back.
John: No, it's- the- I remember developing it’s like, we need a starting gun. And the blackout became a starting gun for when it just goes to hell.
Arvin: That's a perfect image.
John: Cause everyone’s in the party until the starting gun. And then you’re, you know, and then you're up and running. And there's the two bags cause she's got two bags. It's a ton of fun. Ton of just crazy second unit stuff here. Because there's so many- we have to look at so many plans and diagrams and maps, cause trying to make sure the audience knows where the hell and what we're doing.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Just crazy. And she grabs the wrong bag.
Chris: Right.
Arvin: And where those bags would be in relation to each other, those are the kind of tiny details you have to figure out in this.
Chris: Oh boy.
John: I don't relish directing this one. [Laughs]
Chris: And look at that! There's a great transition, right?
John: That's the classic highlander transition.
[Arvin Laughs]
Chris: Crane up. Crane up through the floor.
John: If you actually- ordinarily that crane up is through the- it reveals a Scottish village in the 1400s.
[Laughter]
Arvin: [Laughing] That's right! Yeah, right.
John: And catching it before it broke. That was just a lift from Jackie. I love when he has fights when he doesn’t- when he tries to keep stuff from breaking while he's fighting. It just always makes me laugh. And it's not there! Yeah, there was, like, another layer of transport originally, in the original design of the script, and then it just got ridiculously complicated.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: So. And establishing that. Oh, tons of fun.
[Silence]
John: God, I can't think.
[All Laugh]
Chris: I know when you watch it- there's so many pieces in it, it’s-
John: A little sick.
Chris: It blows you away.
John: This is the fun bit, this is why you pay Beth Riesgraf whatever the hell she wants. I say this, it will come out after contract negotiations.
[Laughter]
John: I would not have come up with this! In a million years. That little sword fighty bit?
Arvin: Yup!
Chris: Child-like skipping!
Arvin: And this! And the skipping out.
John: She got the shiny thing!
Chris: Yeah.
John: Love the shiny thing. Also I love the- it’s fun, you could play her episode without dialogue, it totally works without dialogue.
Chris: It does work.
John: Absolutely works.
Arvin: Which is interesting, since there was a silent modern film that was done as a silent film called Thief.
John: Yes! Of course!
Arvin: You remember?
John: Oh yeah, the opening. No, and then we built- how did we do this shot down? Cause we did not- we did not have a ventilation shaft that went 30 feet down. How did we do this?
Arvin: It was-
John: Mirrors? Or did we do it digitally?
Chris: Ohhh! [Laughs] He just gets punched.
Arvin: It wasn't-
John: He's just having a bad day. This is digital.
Chris: That's digital? That's great.
Arvin: That- yes.
Chris: Looks fantastic.
John: That’s digital. But when she comes out of her side, I think we just built a small drop.
Arvin: That's right, that's what we did.
John: No, it was nice. And everyone still digging in on- it’s interesting, they’re each playing this realization differently. It's really lovely.
Chris: Now this was all done over the course of how many days? The-
Arvin: Seven days.
Chris: No, no, but I'm saying the framing device in the bar? How long were you in the bar?
Arvin: In the actual shooting, you mean?
Chris: Yeah.
Arvin: Uh, one day.
John: One day?
Chris: This was all done in one day? All the framing scenes in the bar?
Arvin: Yeah. All the framing scenes were done in one day.
Chris: Wow, that was a lot of pages.
Arvin: That's why I had worked out the movement pattern so clearly in my mind beforehand, so that it would be very clear what brought each person to the next area.
Chris: Right.
John: And you didn't double set ups.
Arvin: Yeah, right.
John: See that’s why it’s- interesting thing, for those of you listening for film school, you don't measure television shows when you're shooting in pages, you measure them in set ups.
Arvin: That’s correct.
John: Cause each time you set up the camera it takes about 20 minutes.
Arvin: That's right.
John: So that's your shot count. That's your shot list. That clock is- and it's amazing, no matter how complicated or not complicated the shot is, it's always 20 goddamn minutes.
Arvin: Oh yeah.
John: You know, at least.
Arvin: Well, never less!
John: Never less.
Arvin: Certainly a lot of times, more.
John: But if you can light a set- you know, like the bar where you don't have to light it like a freakin’ miracle. Then you just know- you just know what your coverage is, you know your coverage, you know how long you'll be there.
Arvin: Now an interesting thing here is the difference in Timothy's attitude when he's actually now in the story.
John: Yeah.
Arvin: Compared to what it's been throughout up to now. Cause now he's coming in with a chip on his shoulder because he's already suspicious of-
John: Also, this is our way to remind the audience he was a prick back then!
[Laughter]
Arvin: Exactly! And that was a big factor too.
John: Tim Hutton's character is not a nice- you know, Nathan Ford, not a nice guy back then. You know?
Arvin: Yeah.
John: This is- he was a lot more like Sterling than he cares to admit. So, yeah. This was- this meet cute, I love this meet cute. So, you know, that was kinda fun. It allowed him to- we kinda missed that guy.
Chris: Yeah.
John: The flashbacks, you don't really flashback to those days anymore and since we're kinda moved on past that in the character, because he's playing the thief not the ex-insurance guy.
Chris: Yeah.
John: It's always fun to watch Tim play Nate from five years ago.
Chris: Yeah.
John: You know. And he's got- John's so amazing in this.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And just- what were the character beats? I mean the dialogue had changed, but you know, what- I mean was- I see the glasses, and his hair is done differently. And just any sort of difference, you know-
Arvin: It's a really different attitude.
John: Yeah.
Arvin: It’s what he's able to do internally that makes the-
John: I love the giving- and she's giving him the big knife in this one, kinda like Excalibur. It's just a subtle difference in each version of the story.
Chris: Yeah, and what's nice about Nate being the prick also is that, you know, usually the final version is the true version- the reason it has credibility in the audience, is because he didn't make himself out to be a great guy.
John: Yeah.
Chris: In other words, like, if he had made himself out to be the hero, you're suspicious, but the fact that he makes himself out to be kind of a hard ass jerk, and the character reveal is that Cosgrove is the sympathetic person.
John: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: It really - I mean that really is what tells you not just that it’s the fifth act.
Arvin: And I think of all of the aspects of John's performance that are so tremendous, the fact that he achieved a real vulnerability.
Chris: Yes.
Arvin: Not a play- not just a kind of casper milktoast quality.
Chris: Right.
Arvin: But a real caring about Gina.
John: Also, we had stripped him of one of an actor's most valuable tools, which is different dialogue.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: This- it’s gotta play- he's gotta say the same words.
Arvin: Same thing, that's right.
John: Or as close to the same thing as he can and still get it. You know, there's a great Hal Hartley movie that's gone completely out of my head. I think called Flirt. I have seen that my wife is a giant Hal Hartley fan and I will say that is- and this is totally Noises Off, by the way. This bit right here with the door.
Chris: Mhhm.
Arvin: And one of the rare moments we were able to use actually the same footage.
John: Yeah.
[Laughter]
John: That is three twenty minute movies, each one using exactly the same dialogue. Not necessarily spoken by the same characters. But exactly the same dialogue. In each of the twenty minutes.
Arvin: Oh, wow.
Chris: But did with different inflections that gave it a completely different meaning.
John: With different characters, different settings, different places.
Chris: Oh, that's great.
John: And it's fantastic. And that really is one of the birthplaces of this episode. Is the idea that each person can remember even the words differently.
Chris: I'm guessing Martin Donovan was in it.
John: Martin Donovan may have been in it. You cannot-
[Chris Laughs]
Chris: Isn’t Martin Donovan in every Hal Hartley movie?
John: I'm sure at this point you can IMDb on your Google TV right off to the right hand side while you're listening to this, but yeah. Oh and he's so sweet here!
[Laughter]
Arvin: I know!
John: Everyone's such a bastard to him, I feel really- I feel so bad for him.
Arvin: Although you have to say, not cut out for security work.
[Laughter]
John: No, but you know what-
Chris: He's a little lovesick. Right?
John: But, you know, Gina's worth falling in love with! I mean that character- you know. That- you're not not gonna fall in love with her. And then the reveal the person who ran by was Eliot. A ton of fun. Yeah, we should have slicked back his hair, I missed that.
Chris: Yeah, but you know-
John: Yeah.
Chris: That’s okay. Still works.
John: And the reveal of the roses.
Arvin: There was a discussion- that was strictly a time issue, as I remember.
John: Yeah cause he would have remembered to do it.
Arvin: No, we had discussed it.
John: Oh, yeah a time production issue. The ability to just throw that suit and tie on him and walk him through those sets was a big deal.
Arvin: Yeah. And the museum stuff of course had its own issues connected with it, in terms of the time sequence.
John: Yeah. Cause this is set. The upstairs, the gallery is at the museum where we shot.
Arvin: Is actually at the museum.
John: Yeah, so we had limited time there. I mean we could- you know, this was our bank vault slash mine slash, you know.
Chris: Mhhhm.
John: Becca and the production design people do an amazing job as usual. Oh he's so wrecked up here.
[Laughter]
John: That's a great performance. And Aldis kinda- like I love also the Aldis choice here of like, just, ‘Are you ok?’ Is just-
Arvin: [Laughing] right!
John: He's not a bad guy! He just, you know.
Arvin: No, right.
John: This is a little disturbing.
[Laughter]
John: Now that I'm thinking about it.
Chris: Right, what happened to him?
John: Yeah. Again, Eliot was not a nice guy.
[Arvin Laughs]
John: By this point, I mean, this was the trick, too, was designing it so you could do shorter and shorter takes.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Because Gina’s has to be the longest and the most narrative, and each one is a sort of a collapsing set of information.
Arvin: And I used Gina’s to really teach everybody what the shape of the thing was.
John: Yeah. Oh look at those ropes! He's so nice! I should write them a nice letter! He's just great. Also that was a big part of it, was writing down everyone's equipment. Was figuring out who would need what when. You know, why and how they can- how you can wind up screwing them.
Chris: Wow.
John: Yeah. no I was pretty much just locked in our office [laughs] for that week.
Chris: Wow.
John: Like, ‘Where’s John?’ ‘He’s in there, don’t bother him.’
Arvin: Oh this is good- there's a funny thing about this.
John: Oh this was great! Tell them what happened on set. And then boom. And he’s- oh look! He finds a strange girl in the shaft and he's still concerned about her. And the drop. And- this is not digital. We literally dropped this.
Arvin: We literally dropped it. Here's the story: this was the real thing. This was really quite heavy. And we had a rubber one, an exact duplicate which we wanted to- intended to use because we were afraid that Timothy would get hurt.
Chris: Yeah.
Arvin: It's not so easy to catch, with the momentum, something like that.
Chris: Yeah.
Arvin: To take the chance of catching it, and he insisted, god love him, you know, the actor till the end.
John: Yeah.
Arvin: He was gonna work it out that he could catch the real thing. And he tried it a couple of times and it didn't work-
John: Yeah.
Arvin: And then finally, man, the catch was perfect.
Chris: Oh it’s perfect.
John: Oh, well I remember it didn't- cause I was actually on set for that day, cause we were prepping the finale. It didn't work in the rehearsals, but he got it on the first shot.
Arvin: That's right! That's it. Yeah.
John: The first time the camera’s rolling he caught it.
Arvin: Yeah, that’s absolutely right.
John: He might've been hamming it up a little during rehearsals. Just “Oh, I don't know!” Yeah.
Arvin: Yeah, yeah.
John: No this is- and Traber’s just lovely here as the guy who never really believes he's caught.
Chris: And everything ties up here. I mean there's the, I mean-
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Why is he there?
Chris: Every thread, why is he there, what his plan is, that wraps everyone else's story up-
John: Oh my god! That was the insane thing. The insane thing is we had broken all of these great crimes to keep everyone from stealing the dagger, and then realized we still needed the crime story in the news to say it had been stolen.
Chris: Right! Right.
John: That was a bad day.
[Laughter]
John: That was- that was a bad day to realize when we pretty much finished breaking this that-
Arvin: Oh, but the logic of it came through perfectly. I mean, when you created that scene, I mean it's totally believable.
John: Yeah, that was kinda the- that was- and I'll fully admit, by the way, that's just one of those ones where you can't logic yourself out of it. That was a good four glasses of Irish whiskey.
[Laughter]
John: In the writers room.
Chris: And the-
John: And just like, ‘You know what? Here's what he did.’
Chris: And the Gutman thing ties up, too.
John: Yes.
Chris: And was that- was that after the fact when you realized-
John: No, ironically he was the easy one.
Chris: So the fact that he was responsible for the Gutman thing-
John: Yeah, it was originally all gonna be Gutman.
Chris: Okay.
John: And then it was like, wait, Gutman never owned it, so why would it matter if it was stolen or not, how would that lead to the news thing?
Chris: Okay, right.
John: Nice blocking there, by the way, moving John over to next to him. It's the- in my head, although he is unlucky in love, he gets full credit for this.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: And so we- you know, the Leverage team never hurts the bystanders. We do what we can to avoid it.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: Unless you've taken a job with a security firm, in which case you know what you're getting into. Maybe you didn't expect to get choked out quite so often on the job.
[Laughter]
John: Stripped down to your underwear, but you know.
Arvin: Now you know what I love here, is that the end- that you manage to find in the ending, John, something a little bit underlying the whole thing, which is the idea that it’s better for them to work as a team than separately. Which I think is such a wonderful-
John: Well you have to do it or else this is masturbatory. Honestly? Otherwise it's a magic trick.
Arvin: Yeah.
John: You know, it's- oh nice bit of plotting but what was the illustrative character point? And this is the illustrative character point. You know, and we really felt this way - is they’re a family now.
Chris: Right.
John: You know, the show is a family now, that's kinda the point of it. You know?
Chris: I mean, and there’s an inherent desire, I think, in the audience wanting to believe that they ran into each other. I mean that's the star-crossed lovers-
John: Yeah.
Chris: Fantasy is that we met-
John: Destiny meant for them to be together.
Chris: We met as children, you know? And I think that's something that- that’s what drove you- why we're drawn to this story.
John: And to a great degree, he is the best British asshole on Earth.
[Laughter]
John: Man, is he good at this! And what's great is we just took the stuff the guy from BP oil actually said.
Arvin: Actually- I know! I love it!
John: And it was so dickish! There was really no way to there's no way to improve it.
Chris: He’s great, look at his face.
John: Look at his face. God, you just wanna burn parliament down.
[Laughter]
John: Ugh. And they're off! And yeah that's great there's never any doubt.
Arvin: Now I gotta tell you, one of my- here’s a favorite actor moment. Watch how Timothy gets out when he decides to join them. This is a pure little actor- this is the kinda thing Timothy comes up with-
John: Yeah.
Arvin: That is somehow so unexpected to go over the bar like that.
John: Yup. And turn out the lights. If this was the last episode of the show, I would've been perfectly happy.
Chris: Yeah, no!
John: Honestly if we had never done another episode.
Chris: It's got that vibe, doesn't it?
John: Yeah, if we had never done another episode I'd be perfectly happy. Oh my god, that was a ton of fun!
Arvin: It was a joy for me, I'll tell you.
Chris: As I said when I read it John, instant classic.
John: Thank you.
Chris: And Arvin, script- we were amazed and executed to-
John: Arvin, incredible job. Incredible.
Chris: Wow.
John: Just on an impossible- and by the way, big shout out again to Bekka Melino who- Melina, pardon me, who just killed it on production design on this.
Chris: Yes.
John: The museum, the downstairs building, the set, making it- you know.
Arvin: That closet with everything- Yeah.
John: The closet, everything, yeah.
Arvin: Absolutely.
John: Alright, stay tuned - there's more of this coming up right on the next disc. Put it in, get drunk.
#Leverage#Leverage TNT#Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts#Audio Commentary#Transcripts#Parker#Alec Hardison#Elliot Spencer#Nate Ford#Sophie Devereaux#Season 3#Episode 11#Season 3 Episode 11#The Rashomon Job
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I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS WITH MY BITCOIN!!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
The ocean, the largest economic playground for would-be moon boys out here in the cold, cruel depths of the sea. Many, sadly, get completely wrecked. However, quietly lurking below the surface. A remarkable turn of events. It’s whale breeding season unperturbed by Coronavirus and its uncertainty for the global economy. The world population has been spotted to be increasing rapidly. This, as they say, is definitely good for Bitcoin. I think David Attenborough has done a great job moving on with the Times and staying relevant with his commentary. If more nature documentaries were like this, then I’d probably watch some. What he’s referring to, of course, is market research conducted by glass notes showcasing entities holding a thousand Bitcoin or more, a.k.a. Bitcoin. Whales are increasing as visualized by this spiking blue line. Two very interesting takeaways from this chart for myself. Our number one, the rates of increasing whales only briefly halted despite a 45 percent crash in Bitcoin’s price earlier in March. And number two, practically this entire year. Whales have been breeding, growing. This analysis is further corroborated by studying what’s going on with the Bitcoin balance on exchanges, which has currently faced its sharpest decline in all of Bitcoin history. More people are withdrawing from exchanges to store their Bitcoin themselves as they should. Promoting, holding. And as Mr Asim Breath tests, definitely good for Bitcoin. That’s just the greatest audio snippet of all time. I want a button that I compress that just plays it when I hit it. Bitcoin is possibly the scarcest asset known to humanity. But let’s put that all aside for a moment. Yes, I know it’s mildly interesting information, perhaps even comforting for those who are maybe buying Bitcoin regularly or have been long term holders of the coin. But what we really want to see is crypto daily trade. You talk the talk, but now let’s see you walk the walk. Well, to be fair, I have been holding you talk about trading, so let’s see you trade, bruh. Okay. Sheesh. I have never had so many Dems about anything I’ve ever talked about, even as I did when I first mentioned that I wanted to do something like this late last year. Sorry to have kept you waiting. It’s finally time now to be fair. I was busy in the interim cofounding exchange, one that does not trade against its customers. But with this whole coronavirus going on, fundraising was postponed indefinitely, shall we say. So now I’ve got the time to focus on trading. Silver lining. The rules are very simple. I take one bitcoin and I try and trade it into two or see if I can hold on to the one. The USD value will, of course, be important. However, that will be secondary to the primary goal of stacking Satz because I have a long term belief in bitcoin and just want to accumulate as much as I can. The second rule, every win or loss will be a matter of public record, as I think some cryptocurrency activity should be. Yes, I believe in privacy, but I also believe in no openness and verifiable openness where appropriate. So I will be opening a fund on literally the most ethical exchange I could find in the industry, prime expertise, funding it with one Bitcoin, calling it crypto daily and have my activity visible by anyone anytime. The third rule will be no exit scene of my position. I don’t want to be trading into USD or in my case, TBP and exiting my positions. I will be staying in Bitcoin leveraged trading. So that’s longs and shorts for those that don’t know. But I will probably never go beyond five X leverage. Yeah, I know it’s kind of boring, but I also think it’s not really appropriate to ever really go beyond that Mark. Now, I hear some of your concerns, but Krypto daily, you’re an idiot and you’re not a pro trader. And to that, I say I’m well aware of these concerns. To compensate, late last year, I completed reading a bunch of highly recommended books on trading. I’ll show you them now. So we’ve got how to take profits, cut losses and benefit from price declines. Pretty relevant with Bitcoin over the last two years. Trends following how to make a fortune in bull-bear and black swan markets may be also very relevant right now. Paul Hollywoods 100 Great Breads Always relevant. Well, I actually recommend that book, by the way. Not very good. I also have done pretty well for myself trading historically. I swing trade where I take large positions two or three times a year. Basically only when I think it’s very overbought or very oversold. As an example, I can proudly say I bought to the absolute bitcoin bottom in twenty eighteen, which I did make videos about at the time. But I must admit, this trading challenge is definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done with my bitcoin, probably even my channel where you get to laugh at me if I lose it all and I get to claim your praise. If I actually win, there is definitely going to be some added pressure on myself to perform because no one likes to look silly. But one of the things that these books tend to reference is the need, the importance of a training mentor. One, you can discuss your trades with bounce ideas off of. To that end, I have sought out a pro trader friend of mine who has actually been living off of his trading ability, a rarity in crypto, I’ll tell you that. It’s on Twitter app block, chain blitz. Give him a follow. Also, just as an aside, if you’re not following me, why I put out highlights from videos in case you missed him. I also recently shared the greatest moment to have ever happened in my life. There is an Easter egg somewhere in the photo. You’ll have to find it. But looking at the charts again for a moment, I could definitely talk about the holiest of Bitcoin indicators, the gold and cross. This is where the 50 days in the 200 days moving average cross and it heralds in a bull market. The last one occurred in mid-February to not much fanfare, almost an immediate dump, and then eventually followed by a death cross. But this time. Things are very, very different because can you believe this, guys? I would be literally shaking if I was cold. So I think this is another reason I need to do the trading challenge because I just think it a little bit disingenuous to talk about trading like primarily orce or a lot and not actually do any kind of. See, the problem with that and I’m not taking shots at influences here. If you’re offended, I don’t really care. It’s not aimed at anyone specifically. There are some interesting tidbits of information to be gleaned from a chart and make a video on like I do that as well. But I just think you as the viewers deserve better, honestly. I. I’m only burning my half. All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class. I’m going to give it up. So if you want to see me burn all my money away or potentially turn it into more. Make sure to subscribe with notifications. I never asked for that before. I feel dirty. Now, interestingly, you can join my fund by going into prime SBT, hitting co vesting, looking for Krypto daily and hitting invest once you put like ten bucks there. There are fees applied when you withdraw. But these fees are only applied on top of profits if any. Don’t make any guarantees. I’d get a portion of those fees. The platform gets a portion. Majority of it comes back to you. Again, only if we’re in profit. I don’t make any money from training fees. I don’t make any money from liquidations, literally. Only if I first make you more money, which I think is a great situation. It’s a situation I’d like to see more influencers in, but it is what it is. So hopefully this is the start of something amazing. I am somewhat terrified, but I’m also very excited if I am able to help you make money and get paid for doing it. That’s the best job in the world. That’s literally one of the main reasons I started YouTube. So maybe you wait first. See how I do. I’ll even link Downbelow if you do want to support the idea of throw five or ten bucks into it. No guarantees though. I will never, ever make any guarantees. But let’s find out. Wish me luck. Blinded by the touch./otw_shortcode_content_toggle]
source https://www.cryptosharks.net/im-doing-this-with-my-bitcoin/
source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/05/i-cant-believe-im-doing-this-with-my.html
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I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS WITH MY BITCOIN!!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
The ocean, the largest economic playground for would-be moon boys out here in the cold, cruel depths of the sea. Many, sadly, get completely wrecked. However, quietly lurking below the surface. A remarkable turn of events. It’s whale breeding season unperturbed by Coronavirus and its uncertainty for the global economy. The world population has been spotted to be increasing rapidly. This, as they say, is definitely good for Bitcoin. I think David Attenborough has done a great job moving on with the Times and staying relevant with his commentary. If more nature documentaries were like this, then I’d probably watch some. What he’s referring to, of course, is market research conducted by glass notes showcasing entities holding a thousand Bitcoin or more, a.k.a. Bitcoin. Whales are increasing as visualized by this spiking blue line. Two very interesting takeaways from this chart for myself. Our number one, the rates of increasing whales only briefly halted despite a 45 percent crash in Bitcoin’s price earlier in March. And number two, practically this entire year. Whales have been breeding, growing. This analysis is further corroborated by studying what’s going on with the Bitcoin balance on exchanges, which has currently faced its sharpest decline in all of Bitcoin history. More people are withdrawing from exchanges to store their Bitcoin themselves as they should. Promoting, holding. And as Mr Asim Breath tests, definitely good for Bitcoin. That’s just the greatest audio snippet of all time. I want a button that I compress that just plays it when I hit it. Bitcoin is possibly the scarcest asset known to humanity. But let’s put that all aside for a moment. Yes, I know it’s mildly interesting information, perhaps even comforting for those who are maybe buying Bitcoin regularly or have been long term holders of the coin. But what we really want to see is crypto daily trade. You talk the talk, but now let’s see you walk the walk. Well, to be fair, I have been holding you talk about trading, so let’s see you trade, bruh. Okay. Sheesh. I have never had so many Dems about anything I’ve ever talked about, even as I did when I first mentioned that I wanted to do something like this late last year. Sorry to have kept you waiting. It’s finally time now to be fair. I was busy in the interim cofounding exchange, one that does not trade against its customers. But with this whole coronavirus going on, fundraising was postponed indefinitely, shall we say. So now I’ve got the time to focus on trading. Silver lining. The rules are very simple. I take one bitcoin and I try and trade it into two or see if I can hold on to the one. The USD value will, of course, be important. However, that will be secondary to the primary goal of stacking Satz because I have a long term belief in bitcoin and just want to accumulate as much as I can. The second rule, every win or loss will be a matter of public record, as I think some cryptocurrency activity should be. Yes, I believe in privacy, but I also believe in no openness and verifiable openness where appropriate. So I will be opening a fund on literally the most ethical exchange I could find in the industry, prime expertise, funding it with one Bitcoin, calling it crypto daily and have my activity visible by anyone anytime. The third rule will be no exit scene of my position. I don’t want to be trading into USD or in my case, TBP and exiting my positions. I will be staying in Bitcoin leveraged trading. So that’s longs and shorts for those that don’t know. But I will probably never go beyond five X leverage. Yeah, I know it’s kind of boring, but I also think it’s not really appropriate to ever really go beyond that Mark. Now, I hear some of your concerns, but Krypto daily, you’re an idiot and you’re not a pro trader. And to that, I say I’m well aware of these concerns. To compensate, late last year, I completed reading a bunch of highly recommended books on trading. I’ll show you them now. So we’ve got how to take profits, cut losses and benefit from price declines. Pretty relevant with Bitcoin over the last two years. Trends following how to make a fortune in bull-bear and black swan markets may be also very relevant right now. Paul Hollywoods 100 Great Breads Always relevant. Well, I actually recommend that book, by the way. Not very good. I also have done pretty well for myself trading historically. I swing trade where I take large positions two or three times a year. Basically only when I think it’s very overbought or very oversold. As an example, I can proudly say I bought to the absolute bitcoin bottom in twenty eighteen, which I did make videos about at the time. But I must admit, this trading challenge is definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done with my bitcoin, probably even my channel where you get to laugh at me if I lose it all and I get to claim your praise. If I actually win, there is definitely going to be some added pressure on myself to perform because no one likes to look silly. But one of the things that these books tend to reference is the need, the importance of a training mentor. One, you can discuss your trades with bounce ideas off of. To that end, I have sought out a pro trader friend of mine who has actually been living off of his trading ability, a rarity in crypto, I’ll tell you that. It’s on Twitter app block, chain blitz. Give him a follow. Also, just as an aside, if you’re not following me, why I put out highlights from videos in case you missed him. I also recently shared the greatest moment to have ever happened in my life. There is an Easter egg somewhere in the photo. You’ll have to find it. But looking at the charts again for a moment, I could definitely talk about the holiest of Bitcoin indicators, the gold and cross. This is where the 50 days in the 200 days moving average cross and it heralds in a bull market. The last one occurred in mid-February to not much fanfare, almost an immediate dump, and then eventually followed by a death cross. But this time. Things are very, very different because can you believe this, guys? I would be literally shaking if I was cold. So I think this is another reason I need to do the trading challenge because I just think it a little bit disingenuous to talk about trading like primarily orce or a lot and not actually do any kind of. See, the problem with that and I’m not taking shots at influences here. If you’re offended, I don’t really care. It’s not aimed at anyone specifically. There are some interesting tidbits of information to be gleaned from a chart and make a video on like I do that as well. But I just think you as the viewers deserve better, honestly. I. I’m only burning my half. All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class. I’m going to give it up. So if you want to see me burn all my money away or potentially turn it into more. Make sure to subscribe with notifications. I never asked for that before. I feel dirty. Now, interestingly, you can join my fund by going into prime SBT, hitting co vesting, looking for Krypto daily and hitting invest once you put like ten bucks there. There are fees applied when you withdraw. But these fees are only applied on top of profits if any. Don’t make any guarantees. I’d get a portion of those fees. The platform gets a portion. Majority of it comes back to you. Again, only if we’re in profit. I don’t make any money from training fees. I don’t make any money from liquidations, literally. Only if I first make you more money, which I think is a great situation. It’s a situation I’d like to see more influencers in, but it is what it is. So hopefully this is the start of something amazing. I am somewhat terrified, but I’m also very excited if I am able to help you make money and get paid for doing it. That’s the best job in the world. That’s literally one of the main reasons I started YouTube. So maybe you wait first. See how I do. I’ll even link Downbelow if you do want to support the idea of throw five or ten bucks into it. No guarantees though. I will never, ever make any guarantees. But let’s find out. Wish me luck. Blinded by the touch./otw_shortcode_content_toggle]
source https://www.cryptosharks.net/im-doing-this-with-my-bitcoin/
source https://cryptosharks1.tumblr.com/post/618829869408747520
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I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS WITH MY BITCOIN!!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
The ocean, the largest economic playground for would-be moon boys out here in the cold, cruel depths of the sea. Many, sadly, get completely wrecked. However, quietly lurking below the surface. A remarkable turn of events. It’s whale breeding season unperturbed by Coronavirus and its uncertainty for the global economy. The world population has been spotted to be increasing rapidly. This, as they say, is definitely good for Bitcoin. I think David Attenborough has done a great job moving on with the Times and staying relevant with his commentary. If more nature documentaries were like this, then I’d probably watch some. What he’s referring to, of course, is market research conducted by glass notes showcasing entities holding a thousand Bitcoin or more, a.k.a. Bitcoin. Whales are increasing as visualized by this spiking blue line. Two very interesting takeaways from this chart for myself. Our number one, the rates of increasing whales only briefly halted despite a 45 percent crash in Bitcoin’s price earlier in March. And number two, practically this entire year. Whales have been breeding, growing. This analysis is further corroborated by studying what’s going on with the Bitcoin balance on exchanges, which has currently faced its sharpest decline in all of Bitcoin history. More people are withdrawing from exchanges to store their Bitcoin themselves as they should. Promoting, holding. And as Mr Asim Breath tests, definitely good for Bitcoin. That’s just the greatest audio snippet of all time. I want a button that I compress that just plays it when I hit it. Bitcoin is possibly the scarcest asset known to humanity. But let’s put that all aside for a moment. Yes, I know it’s mildly interesting information, perhaps even comforting for those who are maybe buying Bitcoin regularly or have been long term holders of the coin. But what we really want to see is crypto daily trade. You talk the talk, but now let’s see you walk the walk. Well, to be fair, I have been holding you talk about trading, so let’s see you trade, bruh. Okay. Sheesh. I have never had so many Dems about anything I’ve ever talked about, even as I did when I first mentioned that I wanted to do something like this late last year. Sorry to have kept you waiting. It’s finally time now to be fair. I was busy in the interim cofounding exchange, one that does not trade against its customers. But with this whole coronavirus going on, fundraising was postponed indefinitely, shall we say. So now I’ve got the time to focus on trading. Silver lining. The rules are very simple. I take one bitcoin and I try and trade it into two or see if I can hold on to the one. The USD value will, of course, be important. However, that will be secondary to the primary goal of stacking Satz because I have a long term belief in bitcoin and just want to accumulate as much as I can. The second rule, every win or loss will be a matter of public record, as I think some cryptocurrency activity should be. Yes, I believe in privacy, but I also believe in no openness and verifiable openness where appropriate. So I will be opening a fund on literally the most ethical exchange I could find in the industry, prime expertise, funding it with one Bitcoin, calling it crypto daily and have my activity visible by anyone anytime. The third rule will be no exit scene of my position. I don’t want to be trading into USD or in my case, TBP and exiting my positions. I will be staying in Bitcoin leveraged trading. So that’s longs and shorts for those that don’t know. But I will probably never go beyond five X leverage. Yeah, I know it’s kind of boring, but I also think it’s not really appropriate to ever really go beyond that Mark. Now, I hear some of your concerns, but Krypto daily, you’re an idiot and you’re not a pro trader. And to that, I say I’m well aware of these concerns. To compensate, late last year, I completed reading a bunch of highly recommended books on trading. I’ll show you them now. So we’ve got how to take profits, cut losses and benefit from price declines. Pretty relevant with Bitcoin over the last two years. Trends following how to make a fortune in bull-bear and black swan markets may be also very relevant right now. Paul Hollywoods 100 Great Breads Always relevant. Well, I actually recommend that book, by the way. Not very good. I also have done pretty well for myself trading historically. I swing trade where I take large positions two or three times a year. Basically only when I think it’s very overbought or very oversold. As an example, I can proudly say I bought to the absolute bitcoin bottom in twenty eighteen, which I did make videos about at the time. But I must admit, this trading challenge is definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done with my bitcoin, probably even my channel where you get to laugh at me if I lose it all and I get to claim your praise. If I actually win, there is definitely going to be some added pressure on myself to perform because no one likes to look silly. But one of the things that these books tend to reference is the need, the importance of a training mentor. One, you can discuss your trades with bounce ideas off of. To that end, I have sought out a pro trader friend of mine who has actually been living off of his trading ability, a rarity in crypto, I’ll tell you that. It’s on Twitter app block, chain blitz. Give him a follow. Also, just as an aside, if you’re not following me, why I put out highlights from videos in case you missed him. I also recently shared the greatest moment to have ever happened in my life. There is an Easter egg somewhere in the photo. You’ll have to find it. But looking at the charts again for a moment, I could definitely talk about the holiest of Bitcoin indicators, the gold and cross. This is where the 50 days in the 200 days moving average cross and it heralds in a bull market. The last one occurred in mid-February to not much fanfare, almost an immediate dump, and then eventually followed by a death cross. But this time. Things are very, very different because can you believe this, guys? I would be literally shaking if I was cold. So I think this is another reason I need to do the trading challenge because I just think it a little bit disingenuous to talk about trading like primarily orce or a lot and not actually do any kind of. See, the problem with that and I’m not taking shots at influences here. If you’re offended, I don’t really care. It’s not aimed at anyone specifically. There are some interesting tidbits of information to be gleaned from a chart and make a video on like I do that as well. But I just think you as the viewers deserve better, honestly. I. I’m only burning my half. All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class. I’m going to give it up. So if you want to see me burn all my money away or potentially turn it into more. Make sure to subscribe with notifications. I never asked for that before. I feel dirty. Now, interestingly, you can join my fund by going into prime SBT, hitting co vesting, looking for Krypto daily and hitting invest once you put like ten bucks there. There are fees applied when you withdraw. But these fees are only applied on top of profits if any. Don’t make any guarantees. I’d get a portion of those fees. The platform gets a portion. Majority of it comes back to you. Again, only if we’re in profit. I don’t make any money from training fees. I don’t make any money from liquidations, literally. Only if I first make you more money, which I think is a great situation. It’s a situation I’d like to see more influencers in, but it is what it is. So hopefully this is the start of something amazing. I am somewhat terrified, but I’m also very excited if I am able to help you make money and get paid for doing it. That’s the best job in the world. That’s literally one of the main reasons I started YouTube. So maybe you wait first. See how I do. I’ll even link Downbelow if you do want to support the idea of throw five or ten bucks into it. No guarantees though. I will never, ever make any guarantees. But let’s find out. Wish me luck. Blinded by the touch./otw_shortcode_content_toggle]
source https://www.cryptosharks.net/im-doing-this-with-my-bitcoin/
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John Rogers, Executive Producer: […] Uh also the police driving across. How great is it that we got all the cops to help us drive across that bridge?
Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and director of this episode: Well you're not allowed to have police cars driving with the sirens on….
John: What, Dean? We didn't have actual police cars?
Dean: … without a police escort. And the city pulled our police that day. And we couldn't afford to move it, so…
John: We may have had our PAs drive police cars across the rush hour bridge in Chicago.
Chris Downey, Executive Producer: Oh, really? Now that we're no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois…
John: Right. (Laughs) We can say things like this.
Leverage Season 1, Episode 1, The Nigerian Job, Audio Commentary Transcript, transcribed by @leverage-commentary
#leverage#the nigerian job#criming#dvd commentary#john rogers#dean devlin#chris downey#caps from lost in time
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Leverage Season 3, Episode 10, The Underground Job, Audio Commentary Transcript
Marc: Hi, I'm Marc Roskin, Director of The Underground Job.
John: I'm John Rogers, Executive Producer.
Chris: I'm Chris Downey, Executive Producer. And I guess standing in for our two writers.
John: Yes, Melissa Glenn and Jessica Rieder are unfortunately unable to do the commentary. However Chris developed this episode with them so he will catch-
Chris: I'm gonna be both of them.
John: He's gonna be both of them. He's wearing a pretty little smock dress just to commemorate that. Great episode, a ton of fun, and very relevant. Of course it is inspired by the- one of the many disasters, mine disasters in America.
Chris: Yes.
John: And it was a little shocking when we started doing research on how easily safety- you can flaunt the safety regulations in this industry.
Chris: Yeah, I- you know, Jessica and Melissa are great at really digging in on a subject.
John: Yup.
Chris: It all started season one when they did the Two Horse Job, and we sent them into the world of horse racing, they befriended a jockey.
John: They went and lived at the- yeah at the stables for a week. Right.
Chris: And I believe they befriended a coal miner for this one.
John: Yes, they called the coal miner and got- all that banter from the opening scene is directly from him. Marc, how the hell did you do that?
Marc: We dug a hole in the side. We had a black up- a black in the back so it's just the entrance, just the side of a hill.
John: So the entrance was built on the side of a hill?
Marc: Yeah, it’s all fake. We had a CG explosion there, we did have a little propane mortar just to give us something to start with.
John: Well that's actually a good point, is what do you need- I know you guys do that all the time is to have like a little starter explosion. Is that to map the light? or what is that for?
Marc: Yeah, it’s to give the artist something to start with. And this time, you know, Dean just wanted it bigger, bigger, bigger. It's also a little more costly to use gas when you do explosions. You know, it’s more permitting,, so we used propane and then we just enhance it. But unfortunately that day we had a nice rainy day to open with.
Chris: Yeah, it sure gave nice atmosphere.
Marc: Nice, yeah.
John: Yeah.
Marc: Yeah, and they gave us full use of all the mining equipment like the skids and dump trucks; it was great.
Chris: Now Marc, did you look at- were there any movies, or any influences that you had when you were going into this episode and knew you were gonna do coal mining? Anything sort of interior?
Marc: Yeah, it was- well at first it was just looking at pictures, you know, with our production designer. And just going through what type of coal mines do exist, and how are we gonna create one with our frankenstein set which is used in numerous episodes?
Chris: Right.
John: That is over on- if you've been on the tour seen Con Con on the DVD you know that's over on studio E; that’s our other sound stage and it has been a hospital, it has been FBI offices, it’s been-
Chris: The vaults.
Marc: Antiquities rooms.
John: Antiquities vaults.
Marc: You name it.
John: Yes exactly and this time we turned it into a mine for this one.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Because apparently you can't bring equipment down into a real mine.
[Laughter]
Chris: And I have to say Marc, I know I said this before, but this to me is my favorite of your episodes. I thought this was a really cinematic-
Marc: Oh, thank you.
John: Really? Oh interesting.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, you know. I liked this even more than Tap Out and that’s saying a hell of a lot. I thought this came out fantastic.
Marc: What I loved about this, you know, after shooting and editing it, there’s no fat to this episode.
John: Yeah.
Marc: I mean the girls did such a great job writing it, we had such a good production quality, and our guest stars were fantastic.
John: Yeah. There is an acting moment Bruce Davison does later which is generally one of my favorite acting moments in the whole series, all three seasons up to this point.
Marc: And Annie Fitzgerald playing Deborah Pierce. Everything just clicked, and you just never felt like “is this scene gonna make it?”
John: Yeah.
Chris: Right.
Marc: Because every scene was important, and there was a little bit of everything for everybody.
John: No, good- a couple good con elements. And this actually was also born of- you finally got your Mission Impossible episode. Like you're ‘trapped in a subway’ episode.
Chris: Well we did a little bit, and the other thing is, you know, we talk about classic cons and you know, now that we're done season three, one of the all time classic cons in history is salting a mine. And it, you know, typically was done during the gold rush where, you know, people would put gold dust in a, you know, a prospectors pan and sell the worthless land.
John: With- with a shotgun.
Chris: Or salt the, you know, an empty hole, yeah with a shotgun. And the challenge here was how do we contemporize it? And more importantly, since we were starting with the premise of a mine owner, how do you find a way to sell a mine owner his own mine? How do you salt a mine he already owns?
Marc: Right.
Chris: So that became, you know, a big challenge. But I love that we’re able to do one of these classic cons that we've never done before.
Marc: Yeah. Well what's also great about this, and you'll see as the episode goes on, every cast member has something to do in the con, and no one is just sitting in a control room.
John: Yeah.
Chris: Right.
Marc: You see Gina and Aldis get to play a part here. You know, Tim follows right in. Christian with the relationship with the boy who lost his father. And Beth as well, when she has to befriend Deborah Pierce.
John: Two bad guys. Two bad guys always give you a lot to do-
Marc: Yeah.
John: But plotting it's a nightmare.
[Laughter]
Marc: Right.
John: Because, you know, you have to come up- these episodes already burn two or three cons or heists an episode, you have to double that when you have two bad guys.
Chris: And you have to make them really distinctive and different.
John: Yeah.
Chris: I mean this may sound-
John: We actually struggled with this; we didn't originally have two in this.
Chris: We didn't really have two, yeah. But I think that one of the real research stories we had, there was some element to the two.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Well, yeah the idea that the way that these mine guys dodge having to pay for all these improvements is just keeping stuff tied up in the appeals process.
Chris: Right.
John: And that led us to, you know, who could help him in that situation? And Citizens United had just gone through, so the whole idea that you could, through a shell company, donate pretty much anything you wanted through a PAC-
Chris: Right.
John: -to a candidate without worry about the individual donation limit was just- that was great.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And some people said we got a little wrong. We don’t- we didn't quite explain what this guy was doing properly, which was putting it through a PAC.
Marc: Right.
John: And we actually had a fairly- we won't say who it was, but we had a guy who could viably run for president’s lawyer on the phone, and he-
Chris: During the research for episode one.
John: Episode one, exactly.
Chris: 301.
John: And he took us through the whole difference between campaign fund and PAC. And took us through the rigorous ways the government makes sure you cannot cheat in a campaign fund, and how PACs are basically giant slush funds.
[Laughter]
John: That you can do anything with. This was a lovely sequence, by the way.
Marc: Yeah, these are nice moments when Sophie gets to coach Parker.
Chris: And then look, I love the con character that Parker came up with here. It was sort of a very nice, specific sort of southern belle.
Marc: Right.
Chris: Eager intern, who didn't need the money but just was willing to do whatever it took to work for the candidate.
John: I mean yeah, some of that was in the script, but a lot of it was Beth landing it.
Chris: Yes.
John: Landing that. You know, finding that voice and- yeah. And also, nobody quite writes Parker like the wonder twins. I mean, they really nailed the whole not quite understanding-
Marc: They really do.
John: Parker not quite understanding the goal of the grift, and why she's bad at it.
Marc: And the other thing that the wonder twins are great at, and sometimes it's complicated when you're shooting, but when you see the finished product, their flashbacks are very intricate.
John: Yeah.
Marc: But they really hit home during the story. And all of their episodes are really gifted with the flashbacks.
John: Yeah. No, they've done- yeah this one- they all fly, what are we saying.
[Laughter]
John: They are all bears to break, they've all got four plot lines and- yeah. It's not exactly just find a body in Central Park and then move on and figure out who killed them.
Marc: But it was great, that little notepad that she had as Sophie plays here and pays off at the end.
John: Yeah, exactly. And introducing her in the mirror, nice idea. Whose idea- did you come up with that?
Marc: Well yeah, I mean- it was scripted that she's rehearsing in a mirror, so we just played into that a bit.
John: Oh, I did not remember that. No, coming up with that shot, that was nice.
Marc: And this is the building that was used on many times, the city hall building in downtown Portland.
Chris: Oh, yes.
John: Portland always doing their best to make us feel welcome. We actually kick the mayor out for this. Is that- wait this is the mayor's office from the season finale!
Marc: Exactly, it was Richard Klein’s office.
John: Season 2 finale.
Chris: Oh it is, boy that's pretty good.
John: Yeah.
Chris: People are paying attention at home.
John: We stared at that for a long time. I recognized that bookshelf.
Marc: This was a fun scene.
John: No, she does a great job. And it's kinda- been kinda fun, I mean it's tricky because Beth is such a charming person.
Marc: Right.
John: It's been fun having her play Parker as someone who's bad at it. But you can look at the arc of her grifting abilities, and she'll never be good at it, but she's gotten better. You know what I mean? She's worked through it, yeah.
Chris: Yeah, there's totally an arc to it. And, you know, as the show goes into season 3 and 4 and beyond, I mean, it's credible to the audience that she will get better and better in her limited way.
John: She'll always have a fatal flaw, you know.
Chris: Yes.
Marc: Yeah.
John: She always never has some little thing. But this was great, shooting- now how'd you light this? How'd you get the spotlight to do the lighting there?
Marc: This was Dave, Dave Connell and Neil. They gave the rocks an overall blue feeling, and then we just wanted to have as many, you know, source lights with headlamps, or hanging lamps, or oil lanterns, just to break it up a bit. And this young kid, Colton Lasater, did such a great job, and this arc really, really pays off.
Chris: Yeah, I mean-
Marc: Gives some weight to the episode.
Chris: Yeah in the story breaking process, you know, we’re always looking at which character in the con gets over invested in it. And sometimes that plays out comedically, and sometimes it plays out dramatically.
John: Yeah.
Chris: And you know, seemed to make sense that the one character that would have a personal connection to mining would be Eliot. And you know, we sort of established his protective nature of young people in the show.
John: Around kids, yeah. No, this is nice also the- and the frustrated look, thats-
Marc: Right.
John: This was nice, this was a nice- and they did make a lot of progress this year but it was good to kinda reset that they’ll never be really comfortable with them no matter how long they work together.
Marc: Right.
John: Too much talking!
[Laughter]
John: And a kicky little wrap on Hardison there, that's a nice scarf. Yeah, I'm trying to remember how we came up with what was in the mine? Was that just- that was the girls?
Chris: Which one?
Marc: The coltan? The girls came up with the coltan?
Chris: No, I’ll take a little credit. We actually- Alana Binker, our casting agent, is very good friends with a woman who’s an activist who wrote a book about the Congo. And I wish I remembered the name of her- her name and the name of the book, but it's a book that's out right now. And we were talking about what's going on in the Congo, and the- not just conflict diamonds but there's conflict minerals that are tied up in these horrible abuses. And one of them is coltan, which is this element that- a metal that is used in every microchip cell phone in the world.
Marc: Right.
Chris: And it sorta made sense that if you were going to try and con a coal miner into believing that there was something valuable in his mine, you would want to take him out of his comfort zone.
John: Yes.
Chris: So his comfort zone is coal.
Marc: Right.
Chris: So let’s convince him that there's this thing that's valuable that's sort of exotic. And that's where coltan came in and it also makes sense that if there was a domestic source of coltan, it would make sense for the audience that this would be something that an American company would want.
Marc: Right.
John: Yeah, and the- I'm sorry, I was distracted for a moment from the giant faux bows on the front of both of those outfits.
Marc: They’re fantastic.
Chris: Sorry, my long rant about coltan.
John: No, I was just saying Nadine Haders did another great job, and it's like those dresses are perfect and not over the top, but yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
John: No, that's the thing when we talk about - you never know what's gonna pay off on the show. That's one of the reasons that we have writing stuff. You never know who read what that's just gonna toss in-
Chris: Yeah!
Marc: Look at all that red, white, and blue.
John: Yup. And your great fake mine there. So is that just a frame?
Marc: It- we built it in. So it goes back about thirty feet. So in that opening scene when we had all the miners coming in and out we were able to get the camera back and see some distance.
Chris: That’s great. But it's an actual mine? I mean-
Marc: No, it's a rock quarry.
Chris: It's a rock quarry, ok.
Marc: It’s a rock quarry, we just dug into a side. This is an actual mobile trailer that we had dragged out and set up there. And then just dressed it. This is actually the Carver Cafe, which is from Twilight so when we were shooting this scene, and had all our production gear, all these people came because they thought we were filming.
[Laughter]
John: They thought we were filming Twilight.
Chris: Oh that's not a good thing.
Marc: I think Gina is fantastic in this scene.
John: Yeah, well I actually- this is one of my favorite American accents that she does before the con is revealed.
Marc: Right.
John: And then when she flips, it’s just perfect. It reminds me a little of the pilot, actually, the Nigerian scam. The voice she does.
Marc: And Tim was really influential in blocking of this. He really helped out a lot. And then they just went for it.
Chris: Bruce Davison is so great.
John: I know it's really- it is one of those guys where it's like, ‘And you don't have an oscar, why?’ You know?
Marc: Right.
John: He just had great performance after great performance.
Marc: Yup.
John: And he just grounds them. I mean, this is really tricky. We wanted to take this episode fairly seriously because, you know, the mine thing is serious. You know, you don't want to seem like you're making light of people's tragedies, so you need someone who can play a villain but would be utterly grounded. And Bruce was available, and he's a friend of the company, and he's great.
Marc: He's fantastic.
John: I mean, he's charming as hell, you believe him, you believe in the relationship with Pierce. No, it’s- big win on this one with Bruce Davison.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And again, also making sure he seems reasonable. The villain is never a villain in his own head.
Chris: Right.
John: He's just a man trying to, you know, make a dime, or do a good thing, and he really conveys that.
Marc: Here's Gina saving me an insert, as she did in the previous shot with the card.
[Laughter]
Marc: Thank you, Gina.
John: Thank you.
Chris: Those of you budding filmmakers saving an insert is hours-
John: Well that's usually a second unit guy's problem but, yeah. Yes, that is a big deal. And now- and by the way, because we're a con and heist based show we do a lot of inserts on screens and information to make sure everyones tracking everything. Most shows do not do the number of inserts we do, in any way, shape, or form.
Marc: That's correct.
John: No, they just- the actor waves an object past the screen and tells you what's on it and you just move on. We're full service here. Look, and I love watching this with the sound off because just watching Bruce sorta modulate his performance. You can tell confrontational, then amused, then, you know. When you cut back to him here you'll start to see him get hooked in, but he's never boring, you know, he's never not making a great choice.
Marc: And I love using Gina in these scenes. And the twins use her well cause even in Double Blind with Michael O'Keefe, was the Gina mano y mano.
John: Yeah.
Marc: That sets it up.
John: And you know, trying to touch the hair, that's a lovely bit.
[Laughter]
John: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, you think at some point you'll get bored of just having these scenes where Sophie seduces the mark. No. As long as the mark’s always different and the con’s always different, it's a little competence porn. It's like watching Parker break into a safe; you’re never tired of it.
Marc: Right.
John: Or I'm never tired of it.
Chris: No? And you know here you get, you know, two grifts going on simultaneously that have a different tone to them.
John: Yes.
Chris: And yeah, I mean it's true, there's so many threads to this story, inside the mine, you know.
John: Yeah, it's three storylines. And then, you know, this great little bit about politics. I mean, Pierce doesn't see herself as a bad person. Pierce is a politician. I mean, you know, there's interesting stuff now they're trying to talk about campaign reform, and they can't get it off the ground because even though everyone who runs for office hates raising money, they're better at it than everybody else so why give up that advantage, you know?
Chris: Yeah.
John: And this is the- oh burying paperwork on a busy person's desk. This was- we had originally a much more complicated bit for this that wound up going away. The bit with the box.
Marc: Right.
John: Yeah. Turns out just sliding stuff into people’s piles is a lot easier.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And that's it, like watching Bruce there, he's not furtive. You know, this spiking a competitor is just something you do, this is part of his work day, may as well be on his iCal.
[Laughter]
John: And down.
Chris: There it goes.
Marc: Buried.
Chris: And by the way, I think you certainly buy that a busy attorney general has a desk full of paperwork.
John: Yes.
Marc: Absolutely.
Chris: I don’t think there’s any stretch there.
John: Who is he calling on this?
Marc: Gina.
John: Oh there you go, Gina. Going back to Gina. God, this one just flies.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Gina looks great in this one, by the way.
Chris: Yeah.
John: I love that trench coat. That's just- yeah.
Marc: There's just no fat in this episode, it just really moves.
John: The-
Marc: And a lot of different locations.
John: Yeah. And I'm trying to remember what- besides salting the mine there's another classic con we reference in here and I cannot remember for the life of me. Yeah, cause we wound up having to stack this one pretty deep.
Chris: Well it kinda, you know, by the end it becomes a gaslight.
John: Yes! That's right. Oh we're always trying to do the gaslight episode; we can never do it so we spot welded it in.
Chris: Yeah, yeah it is a little bit. The not the- we may be burning it by saying it right now, but, you know, the classic Mission Impossible in the fallout shelter.
John: Yes!
Marc: Right.
Chris: That's the fallout shelter episode.
John: You’ve woken up and everyone’s in like the tattered clothes.
[Laughter]
John: You know, charcoal on their face, this is the end of the world. I think they look through a periscope? The periscope that shows them the post apocalyptic earth. And it's not cool gamer world post-apocalyptic earth either, it's very depressing.
Chris: And by the way, a very simple way to show a test here.
Marc: That’s right.
Chris: Test tube and the colored water.
Marc: Scrape, scrape. Colored water.
John: Yeah it's pretty- everyone knows what green is.
Chris: Yeah.
John: But again, this is another thing that shows you this research gives you a story. Trying to figure out how you salt the coltan, the girls had done so much research they found out that's what you do to keep the dust down, you know, they had a full file.
Chris: Right.
John: Of, you know, just the life of the mine. And then we dove in there for the story ideas.
Chris: Boy that mine looks great.
John: Yeah.
Chris: Really, I mean-
John: They built that how fast? Two, three days?
Marc: You know, like every show episode they don’t get many days.
John: Well sometimes you get a little more time on B because we’re over on A, but yeah.
Chris: And that, you know, credit to Paul Bernard, our line producer, too.
John: Yeah, cause it was getting hairy by this point.
Chris: Well no, but I think just when we- you know, sometimes when we’re in the writers room and discussing things, you know, we’ll spike stories early in the process if we think there's no way we can do it, and he right off the bat, we said “We wanna do a coal mining episode.” He said “Oh, you know, it’s just like Eight Legged Freaks.” Which is a movie the company made.
Marc: Which I think we had more set than they did almost. I mean-
Chris: Really?
John: Oh really?
Marc: Becca, our production designer, and Randall just gave us so much with turns and chambers and then we, you know, we used one little tunnel just- and we just changed the background a bit.
John: Well that's the great thing about that, that frankenstein set is built to be corridors. So as long as you put another right hand in it, you have no idea where you are.
Marc: Yeah, they give us more than we ask for. And this, Dave just lit beautifully.
John: Yeah, this is gorgeous.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Half a million bucks. It is amazing- it’s always amazing to me when you get down to local politics how little money it takes-
Chris: Yeah.
John: To swing these races.
Chris: Well you had that great line about how much it costs to buy a senate seat. Less than a house in-
John: It's blown now because of the mega millionaires who ran this year. But at the time it was the average senate campaign cost 8 million dollars.
Chris: Right.
John: And the average house in sort of the ritzy section of Beacon Hills is 10 million.
Chris: Right, yeah.
John: Yeah, buy a Senate seat cheaper than you buy a house.
Chris: I also like- is this where we set up the lunch pail?
John: Yes.
Chris: That's another great little moment.
John: Great little character beat.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Great little physical artifact. If there's any- yeah. If anyone's reading- pardon me, if anyone’s listening to these and they're thinking about trying to do television or anything. It's tricky, you can fall into words very quickly, and then- just remember it's a visual medium. Using props, using physical objects to link storylines is crucial. It- also because the audience doesn't have to process it, they recognize it.
Chris: And it helped in a story point later because then he sees-
John: He knew where he was.
Chris: Knows he's in there when he sees the lunch pail.
Marc: That’s right.
Chris: And I think the idea here, that his dad had been in the explosion, I think was kinda late to the writing process.
John: Yes it was. Yeah, we were trying to figure out how to link him, and then I think we were just going over the dialogue and the act was already written, which was the kid’s birthday party. And wound up making it that kid.
Marc: But it also- it was- put it well cause it gave Eliot a little stinger.
Chris: Yes.
John: Yeah. There's a lot- and also the thing I like about this, too- and we try to lock on this - Eliot’s not gonna send this kid to Harvard.
Chris: Right.
John: You know, it’s make your life a little bit better, that's all you can do.
Marc: Right.
John: Conceivably, you know. We try to do that a lot, it’s like give people the next thing up.
Chris: And we are not saying that- we don't make a statement that coal mining is bad and we need to bring organic farming to this community.
Marc: Right.
Chris: I think it's pretty set early on, coal mining is how they make their living and they just want it to be safe.
John: And that was important, when the girls called the- they’re women now, we should stop calling them girls even though they are our baby writers. When the young women, when the wonder twins, called their coal mining source that was a big concern of his, you know.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Everyone makes us look bad and they're like “No, we're gonna show it's a valuable part of the American economy; somebody has to do it.”
Chris: Oh, they’re so great.
John: Oh I love this scene! Love this scene so much. Because they're playing the sexual subtext here and the audience doesn't know it yet.
Marc: Right, no.
John: You know, and that's a little flirty look. I mean, you know, it makes sense when you go back and watch the second time.
Chris: What do I know Annie Fitzgerald from? I feel like is she- I mean, boy Bruce Davison-
John: Yeah.
Chris: Did a ton of stuff.
John: She's done a lot of television. I mean, you know, American television has its own sort of, you know, it’s like British theater in the 40s, it has its own collection of just really great actors who are kinda kicking around from show to show.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Oh that’s it. The beat where he goes, ‘Here we go’, and then dials the phone. What was that? That was a- we couldn't have scripted that in a million years. It was just really- a great moment of duplicity, and just that you saw the moment where he decided to do it.
Marc: Right.
John: And it was kind of almost sexual, it was just a weird choice.
[Laughter]
John: Oh great, in the elevator!
Marc: In the elevator! We went for it.
John: Nice.
Chris: That’s great.
John: Moving background.
Chris: Yeah, could've been a little static shot.
Marc: All in the city hall building, and Gary got in there with her, did a couple runs.
John: He’s pretty close to her, yeah; you have to be close to her. I think also this was the original act break. I think we cut out on this.
Marc: I think so.
John: Yeah.
Chris: I think there was a little trim here, yeah.
John: Yeah, there was another- the first scene in the next act is the act break or something like that. Cause I remember that- I remember- this is, you know, also people don't know, not only do you have to do the number of acts that the network asks you to do- they have to be certain lengths.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And so we have a traditionally short fourth act. And so you have to- sometimes we shoot the show and it's like oh that not where that commercial’s gonna go, and you have to jigger it a little bit.
Chris: Another tricky story point here was because we knew that we were salting the mine, and then we were gonna ultimately trap them in the mine and do our gaslighting. The question- the challenge was, how are we gonna get him in his own mine-
John: Right.
Chris: -at that moment when he's already decided to blow it up?
Marc: Right.
Chris: You know, that was a bit of a tricky writing and plotting that we-
John: We originally had him call and tell him that he won Yankee tickets, that he could collect at his own mine.
[Laughter]
Chris: Exactly.
Marc: This is a great location that we never shot at. It was like a private club-
John: Is this the golf club from Tap Out?
Marc: No, it’s a private club in downtown Portland. And it's been there for years, and they just gave us so much free rein in the place.
John: Gorgeous. Oh and picking them up on the stairs and bringing them down.
Chris: That’s great.
John: That's a nice shot Marc.
Marc: This is nice to see both of them in the con playing their parts.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Which we don’t- again, just because we're very new at having Parker's character do the grift, we haven't really had a chance to do before.
Marc: Right.
John: And that also there's- if you go back in third season and watch the Parker-Sophie scenes, that when there's just the two of them and you compare them to the first and second season, you can see that evolution. And you can actually see that comfortable emotional vibe that they've set up. You know, from a writing standpoint Parker is the happiest that Sophie’s back.
Chris: Right.
John: Yeah.
Chris: No, no, I mean, it's a pairing that we don't do enough.
John: Yeah.
Chris: The two of them. Because I guess story-wise-
John: They have different skill sets.
Chris: Yeah, yeah exactly. She's usually, you know, dangling from a building.
John: Rigged up. Yeah, exactly.
Chris: But it just occurred to me that this is another party scene that is similar to the one in Double Blind.
John: Yes.
[Laughter]
John: We all have- there's only so-
Chris: Champagne flute party scene.
John: There's only so many places to put- you know, if we oppress the man, the man hangs out in champagne parties, you know!
[Laughter]
John: That's where he hangs out, that's where you gotta go.
Marc: Yeah.
Chris: That was another thing, too, with this episode in sort of conceiving it, was to give it a, at least in a political setting, give you kinda an upscale, rarified world that you could juxtapose with the grittiness of the mine.
Marc: Mine, yeah.
Chris: Rich swells, as we like to say.
John: Rich swells. Lush, rich swells.
[Laughter]
John: 1920s types. Also late to the party, the fact the attorney general is a woman.
Chris: Yeah. Well part of-
John: That was- we started with a woman because we were like, we haven't had a female villain for a while, and there's a whole rash of- when we did research, for whatever reason attorney general is a big, sort of, upscale position as female politicians enter the race.
Chris: Yeah, that's true.
John: It tends to be- a lot of them are female in America.
Chris: But as a practical matter, also, you know, it’s hard when you have two bad guys that are- sort of have equal weight.
Marc: Right.
Chris: You don't want the audience to be confused. You don't want two guys that look similar and the audience is saying, “Wait a minute, is that the mine owner, or is that the attorney general?”
John: Yeah.
Chris: If you quickly decide that it's two genders, then you're pretty safe.
John: And then we had them sleeping together.
Chris: Yeah, and then that opened that up as a storyline.
John: When we talk about it, it makes it sound really chaotic how we write these things, but actually it's a well-oiled machine.
[Laughter]
Marc: Well-oiled. But it's also- when you shoot these scenes, you have to shoot both sides of the conversation twice.
John: Yeah.
Marc: I mean, here we were at the party, we were in the mine, we were in the van. So you really do it- and you have to pay attention to so many things of how you shot that scene, which way was Hardison looking, which was Eliot looking.
John: Yeah, then again that's something we do that not every show on earth does.
Marc: Yes.
John: I mean we actually match eyelines across locations.
Marc: Right.
John: That's crazy.
Chris: Right. Well, but it helps, right?
John: It makes a difference when you have three people on intercoms.
Chris: Now how do you keep that- I mean, do you keep that straight Marc?
John: That’s Suzie.
Chris: Do you have a pad or-?
Marc: I mean there are times that I will do it and there are times I won’t, but yeah, Suzanne will keep a score.
Chris: Keep score.
John: That's our script supervisor, and you know, we’ve talked about this job before, that's the person who keeps track of every shot and all the continuity on set.
Marc: Yes.
Chris: No, I think it makes a big difference. I mean, you wanna get- when people are in different locations you wanna get- feel like they’re talking to each other.
John: Yeah. We tend to intercut simultaneously more than other shows do, so we kinda-
Chris: I like them when they're walking in different directions, too. I like when one’s walking downstairs and one’s walking upstairs; I like all that stuff.
John: I like motion. I like to see things moving on the screen. No, lovely scene, lovely little screw you scene between Annie and Gina.
Marc: Yes.
John: The ever present American flag pins. Always amuses me.
[Laughter]
Marc: Always good to have those.
John: Yup.
Chris: Oh!
John: That’s a great shot.
Chris: What a great shot!
Marc: Oh yeah.
Chris: What a fantastic- these are some of the things that just make- that's a cinematic shot right there.
Marc: Yeah.
John: And it gives you depth, real depth.
Chris: Yeah!
John: I mean, look how far back on set you can see.
Marc: All those practical lights.
John: Yeah, and now this makes it look huge because he looks like he's in a different location.
Marc: Right.
John: Yeah, and this was the- this was a variation of the reveal the con bit. This was like the implied double-cross. It’s-
Chris: Right.
John: We’re deep into con world at this point.
[Laughter]
Marc: These guys did such a great job with this.
John: Yeah.
Marc: Tim- I mean, Tim was all over this scene.
John: Yeah. He plays- well this is the character he kinda enjoys the most, is this kinda surly asshole, is really the only way to say it.
Chris: Yeah.
John: And he'll be the first to admit that's what the character is.
Marc: Yeah.
John: But yeah. It's a little Jimmy Joe Meeker.
[Laughter]
John: It's a little- you can go back to the Rockford touchstone.
Marc: There's the lunchbox he saw.
Chris: There's the lunchbox!
John: Oh shit now I've gotta go kick somebody’s ass with a pickaxe.
[Laughter]
John: He might not be thinking that but, you know.
Chris: We make a contract with the audience. I feel like when we send Eliot into the mine, I feel like the audience says, “When is he gonna fight a guy with a pickaxe?”
John: Yes.
Chris: And if you don't give them that, I feel like we've broken our contract.
John: We have not necessarily delivered that which we promised to deliver. And that was- there is the card- the various cards on the wall of things Eliot hasn't fought with.
[Laughter]
Marc: Right.
John: That was fun. And the in the King George-
Chris: Bowling trophy? No, he's fought with a bowling trophy.
John: King George: belt fu. Belt fu is something I've been wanting to do for a while.
Chris: Oh look at that!
Marc: This was fun to do.
Chris: That was great.
John: So how'd you do that?
Marc: Air mortars. The guys pretty much took their own fall.
John: Wait, that's Bruce and Tim?
Marc: Well we had stunt guys do it, and then they would- then they took a crack at it. And that rock pile, we had some come down and then Mark Franco and company added more rocks.
Chris: He's our special effects-.
Marc: To really establish that they are closed off.
John: Yeah.
Marc: But this is great. I mean, these guys just got down and dirty and wanted to play it. You know Tim was ready to play it down and dirty. It was great.
John: And also this was- I remember this was a bear. I was working on that other episode and came in and you guys were wrestling what this was. We don't usually lie to the audience this blatantly.
Chris: Yeah.
John: We have to- and that was the trick, we dont lie to the audience, so how do you write these scenes so that they are concerned because they've lost contact with Nate, but you can read it as concern for the fact that the mine has collapsed?
Chris: They’re in a collapsed mine.
John: Super- I remember long conversations about that.
Chris: Yes.
Marc: This is just another- the same hallway that we just redressed with some other things.
John: Put a minecart in.
Marc: And changed the background just to give us new locations.
John: And- yeah.
Chris: Oh that's great.
John: That's another great shot, look at that.
Chris: Look at that shot.
John: And then- did you- are those digital? No, you stacked those.
Marc: Those are stacked foam, yeah.
John: It’s- yeah, the two- you’re looking at two great actors just having an enormous amount of fun with these scenes.
Marc: Yeah.
Chris: Now you're waiting for him to do math. How much air is there in here?
John: And I'd actually prepped that movie, remember?
Chris: That's right! That's right.
John: I had prepared to direct a movie that wound up not going, but one of the conciets was two guys trapped in a safe. And I had to do the math on cubic air. And so that was again, that's why you have writing staff, you never know who's got a note in their notepad. Yeah, and then all this, the tone of the confrontation scene went up and down a lot.
Marc: Right.
John: Yeah, how crazy would she get. And then when Annie really plays it in control, which is great.
Marc: Well, that's like Parker’s so naive about it. And Sophie totally gets it and uses it to her advantage in the con.
John: Yeah, just like a knife. Just twisting it in. That was also another thing, the- how they had not heard that before. I forget what we were talking about. We were talking about the fact that they just have people whose job it is to go through wire taps. Just the hours and hours and hours of wire taps. But when you were a lawyer you had done some of that.
Chris: Oh, sure.
John: Because they regularly recorded phone calls in these places.
Chris: Oh, in brokerage houses. Phones are always recorded, and those are all kept.
John: Yeah. Somebody has to actually go through that stuff. The great Bourne fade.
Chris: It might've been- there was a good disappear here. I feel like in some early version she decked her.
[Laughter]
John: Yeah, I think we had that originally and then were like eh, is it a punch? Is it a- and then Gina doesn't really punch.
Chris: She doesn't really punch.
John: In the season finale she hits somebody with a champagne bottle. But that's good. That gives her an edge.
Marc: Yeah. This guy was great, he was a local actor. Geno Romo. And he wanted to do his own stunts.
John: Oh, that's great.
Marc: And he tried out with Kevin, and he was great! Because Kevin said, ‘he's not trying to impress me.’ You know what I mean?
Chris: Right, right.
Marc: Cause that's when actors get hurt.
John: Yeah.
Marc: And he worked with Christian, and I said “Christian are you up for it?” He said, “Yeah, he's got skills; it's gonna be a great fight.” So-
Chris: Now how long-
Marc: So we had two actors, we had Christian and Gino doing their actual fight.
Chris: Now how long did it take to film the pickaxe part? I know it was done in pieces, right?
Marc: It was done in pieces, so probably half a day over all.
Chris: Wow.
John: And then the oxygen saturation stuff is from, again, the research. You know, being able to talk. And that's the other thing, and Chris, you're always on about this cause you used to be a journalist. If you're writing your spec script or writing your movie or whatever. Just call people!
Chris: Yeah!
John: Just cold call them. Nine times out of ten they love to talk about their job.
Chris: People- no matter- rule of thumb, no matter what people say I hate my job, they love talking about it.
John: Yeah.
Chris: And here we go, now he’s just got a bat.
John: Now he's lost the- that's actually a lesson-
Chris: Oh I love that shot, too.
Marc: Yeah that's a good commercial break.
[Laughter]
John: I think was the commercial break intended-
Marc: Yeah.
John: And then when you actually like timed it out- that's a 13 minute act four, we can't do that. Yeah. That's not gonna work. And here we are now trapped in the classic science fiction story, The Cold Equations.
[Laughter]
John: Other people might phrase it differently, but I always go to The Cold Equations.
Chris: And just he's so great at just- you totally buy all the things he says here.
John: Yeah.
Chris: Cause he sees his life ending. He's just got that fatalististic vibe to it and then he's just able to turn it on. Turn on the menace.
John: Well, and that's the Nate character. It's important, it's always tricky when you're trying to get these confessorial scenes. If you ask another character a question, and they give you the answer, that is boring. And they wouldn't fall for that.
Marc: Right.
John: If you argue with them, and you get exposition as refutation, it feels organic.
Chris: Yeah.
John: You know what I mean? That was also- that was tricky, too, hitting him with the board.
Marc: Yes.
John: Cause outline- we did a reset. That's right, I forgot we did a reset at the end of this. Just to-
Chris: You know, sometimes people were getting a sandwich and they missed it. You gotta make sure they understand what's going on.
John: I like a reset!
Chris: I like it.
John: Here's the thing, I think it was also we didn't want to- if we're gonna cut back to this, you didn't want to think that Bruce Davidson is in the other part of the mine beating Nate to death. Like, just taking the two by four to him.
[Laughter]
Chris: Yes.
John: I think that was also- that was, originally we had him strangling him. And it was like, well why wouldn’t you just not stop strangling him?
[Laughter]
John: Like oh, oh yeah.
Chris: Right how do you con somebody-
John: Into not strangling you. Yeah. that's no, hit him, hit him with the board. This is great. This is of course the scene in the The Lathe of Heaven where he is imagined- he has dreamt that he is a lathe- that's really obscure.
[Laughter]
John: It's like eight people who are gonna get the Lathe of Heaven reference.
Chris: I'll take Ursula K Le Guin for 200.
John: Take Bruce Davidson's minis series when he was 20 something for five hundred, Alex.
Marc: That's a great shot by Gary Camp.
John: That's a beautiful shot.
Marc: A little 360 steadicam.
John: Where the hell- wait where's the crew? What the-
Marc: They're hidden!
John: They're hidden. We do- when we do those 360s we hide behind trees and trucks.
Chris: Yeah, that's right.
Marc: Another great flashback sequence that the girls wrote-
Chris: Oh! Look at that!
Marc: This was cool. That was Gary running through the whole mine, so that's actually the full length of the set from beginning to end.
[Laughter]
John: That's great. Oh man, I did not know that. Oh yes, and Eliot screwing with Hardison.
Marc: Yeah.
John: A lot of fun.
Chris: And you know, I think-
John: And to see the little look he gives just for a second before he does it.
Chris: That’s great. Yeah. And to make sure showing you don't need a giant bomb in a mine. A mine is-
John: A mine is a bomb waiting to happen.
Chris: It's a bomb waiting to happen.
Marc: Right.
John: Now that- remember, I worked on the natural gas pipeline-
Chris: That’s right.
John: When I quit university. And yes the ever present threat of just blowing up sometimes. No, this was- oh and this was the header. Yeah, the flashbacks in this one are tough.
Marc: Yes.
John: There's a lot of story in these flashbacks.
Marc: You really gotta wrap your head around these when you're shooting them.
John: We’ll try to give you easier ones for next year, there you go.
Marc: Perfect.
John: Do the ones in real time where there's no flashbacks. Like Rashomon, something easy like that.
[Laughter]
Marc: Right, yeah.
John: Yeah.
Marc: There's the X of course, that we set up.
John: Oh yeah. And it was interesting, too. You do a lot of this in post. The flashbacks have to have different luts on them. They have to have different lights- different color schemes so you understand you're not happening concurrently and they happen in the story.
Marc: Right.
John: No, this is a nested flashback.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Yeah, this- he actually changed locations in the flashback, this is tricky.
Marc: Oh, yeah.
John: We’re in three different places. And both light comedic exposition and dramatic ‘you're gonna die’ exposition. Aldis Hodge does it all.
Chris: Yeah.
Marc: That's right.
John: He conveys urgency.
Marc: Our M.A.S.H. speaker.
Chris: And here's your undoing. Oh that's great!
John: Oh the zoom around.
Chris: Great zoom around too!
Marc: Give them a little something.
John: Yeah. And then push in, do you do a push?
Marc: I think that was done in post.
John: There you go. There's the push.
Marc: There it is.
John: Yeah, the world’s just kinda closing in on her. We don't mention-
Marc: And this of course, now we're back in the car.
John: Yeah. What, like four minutes later? I don't always like-
Chris: Yeah, wow that's right, they've been in the car for a while!
John: This is like a four minute flashback.
Chris: What's the deal? Is the battery running out? Did they leave the lights on?
John: No, remember Inception! Time is different in your dreams! So, you know, you have more time in the flashback.
Marc: Always good.
Chris: What a great gloat!
Marc: The make them suffer look!
John: Yup.
Chris: Look at all the different looks we got on this gloat.
John: The villain must suffer, we must have the gloat. Disdain.
[Laughter]
John: Rage.
Marc: Another flashback.
John: And now! We do a flashback in the gloats! Oh my god! This is brutal! God, no this one is tough. I can't believe we pulled this one off. Yeah, and the whole- and again this was crucial, you know, how you move money around and just spook her into hiding it.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Yeah, no- and that's a big thing is that it all boils down to Irene Adler, really. You just have to scare somebody and they'll give up the information that you need. Move it somewhere safe. Yeah, multiple gloats. And also a little victory moment for Parker.
Marc: Yes.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Very nice. Very nice the- you know, she's learned a new job skill.
Marc: That's right.
John: Won't be using it all the time, but yeah.
Chris: Tomorrow's women. That's right, a little- just a little throwaway line seemed like the thing to sell her con.
John: Her character.
Chris: Now this is something we never do on this show. I remember this was like a late addition to the script, just a little character-y moment here.
John: Yeah.
Chris: And it's great. I mean it’s, you know, in a show this packed and busy to find a little time for this.
John: That's what I said in the Rashomon commentary, I love watching them just hang out in the bar cause that's what they talk to each other like when they're not on the job.
Marc: Right.
John: This is- the vast amount of Hardison/Parker interactions actually sound like this.
[Laughter]
Chris: Right.
John: You know, when they're not doing urgent stuff, you know.
Chris: Yeah, ‘smells like bubbles.’
John: She's kinda spaced and he's trying to figure out the hell- smells like bubbles, yeah. And the- touch the chin a bit.
[Laughter]
John: That was great. And it all rides on his reaction there.
Marc: This scene was great.
John: Yeah. Well he plays it with the right amount of betrayal.
Marc: Yeah.
John: It's like what? Clark, you're Superman?
Marc: It’s very-
Chris: Yeah.
Marc: Gary giving us a 180.
John: Yeah. Just land into it rather than pop into the cut. No, it's nice. It- this was a great location.
Marc: Oh, yeah.
John: This is the rock quarry?
Marc: Yeah, same place.
Chris: Is it raining right there?
Marc: No, this-
John: Man it rained a lot during this episode.
Marc: It rained a lot. But when we first set up that mobile trailer, we actually had to pump out the surrounding area cause it was about a foot of water.
Chris: Wow.
John: And camera-
Marc: But they were great!
John: Camera and power cords don't really-
Marc: The rock quarry, they were giving us all- ‘you want this tractor?’ They'd move things, they gave us everything we needed.
John: Well it was like in The Three Days of the Hunter.
Marc: Yeah.
John: The national guard- the reserve, pardon me, the state reserve guys they really gave us everything we could possibly want.
Marc: Exactly.
John: And hence we were able to bring filthy Hollywood money to their state. It’s a great relationship.
Marc: And it was in close proximity.
John: Yeah. Really nice.
Chris: And now we get-
Marc: This is our little closer with Timothy Whitcomb and Tim and Christian.
Chris: Now due to the miracle of receivership were able to-
John: Oh receiver- sweet receivership.
[Laughter]
Chris: We were able to both make our victim whole again, our client, and actually bestow the title in some way to the- instrument of their acting.
John: I learned more about corporate bankruptcy on this job than I could possibly ever want to know.
[Laughter]
John: Various and sundry conditions and states wherein, and yeah.
Chris: No, but I think it's also a result of research and-
John: Yeah, it's based on that company- down in Central America, the auto company. The guys who took over their own plant.
Chris: Yes.
Marc: Yeah.
John: Yeah. Evidently doable. Not always heard of-
Marc: Yeah.
John: But, you know. The stories where the workers take over the means of production? Not a big play in America.
[Laughter]
Marc: This we graded darker in here, cause this was shot on one of the clearer days.
John: So you had to match the rest of the rain.
Marc: But of course we did the exterior-
John: And it's raining.
Marc: And it's raining. This is the shot where Dean goes, “how come you get all this moving gear?”
Chris: Oh, I know, look at that!
Marc: Mine is back.
John: And pull up to reveal the mine! Oh.
Marc: People are back to work.
Chris: And a perfect, you know, we started it on the mine, there's people coming in and out and exploding, and now they're going into a safe mine.
John: That's American work right there.
Chris: Beautiful bookend.
John: That's America at work.
Chris: Beautiful piece of work.
John: I think you’re our most patriotic director, Marc.
Marc: I am.
John: More shows should hire you to combat the liberal agenda.
[Laughter]
Marc: Amen.
John: That was Underground Job, stay tuned for a lot of great episodes and Marc Roskin thank you so much for giving us this episode. It was great.
Chris: So great.
Marc: Thank you, my pleasure.
#Leverage#Leverage TNT#Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts#Audio Commentary#Transcripts#Parker#Alec Hardison#Elliot Spencer#Nate Ford#Sophie Devereaux#Season 3#Episode 10#Season 3 Episode 10#The Underground Job
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Leverage Season 3, Episode 15, The Big Bang Job, Audio Commentary Transcript
Marc: Hello I'm Marc Roskin, director of this episode.
John: I am John Rogers, executive producer.
Geoff: I'm Geoff Thorne, I'm a co-writer of this episode.
Aldis: This is cookies, the good looking half of milk and cookies.
[All Laugh]
Christian: That's Aldis Hodge, I'm Christian Kane, and I play Eliot Spencer.
Aldis: That'd be milk.
Chris: [Laughs]
Christian: There you go.
Chris: And I'm Chris Downey, executive producer, co-writer of this episode: The Big Bang Job, part one of our explosive two part season finale.
Geoff: Yay!
John: Yeah, I think this one is gonna go a little slower since we have the boys in here today, we're gonna keep—
[All Laugh]
John: Gonna keep hopping back and forth, that's why I broke out—usually Guinness, I broke out the Irish for this one.
[Clinking Noise]
Marc: Ice in the glass, ice in the glass right there.
John: Okay, this is the big setup, we had to—we knew that at this point we were coming back after a break, so we had to do a big reset scene, and actually, this is pretty cut up. We had, at one point, a long sort of recap version of this scene to show you all the victims, the villains, and how they hooked up and how they connected, to remind you exactly, you know, how the season had built to this moment. This was a, this was a ton of—how'd we come up with this abduction/rescue?
Chris: Yeah, Geoff, I think this was, when we broke this-?
Geoff: I just think we needed a way in, we needed a victim, we—this show is very—this episode was very sort of James Bond-y movie-esque, and we didn't want to get too far away from what Leverage actually is, so we needed someone to bring the crew in, so we came up with Yasmin, and her—
Chris: Played by Ginger Williams.
Aldis: Yes.
Geoff: She did a lovely job, a lovely gal. And and this scene right now, is her being, sort of victimized, [laughs] but-
Aldis: Let me ask you something-
Marc: In the labs of Portland State University.
John: Yeah, this was great. Portland State was amazing.
Aldis: We actually, they got mad because we actually blew up a building. No, let me ask you something Geoff, I know that John and Chris write from personal experience of criminal history—
[All Laugh]
Aldis:—how many people have you abducted?
[All Laugh]
Geoff: No abductions, a little bit of grifting in my past.
John: Here, a little something for the red states: how many white women have you abducted in the past year and [drowned out by laughter].
Geoff: Uhhh, well they all came willingly, so is it an abduction? I dunno! If the victim comes along and they want to be there...
Aldis: So, so, how did that explosion happen?
Marc: Interactive light, and then we built some models and shot some models and put them in.
Christian: Man, don't give stuff like that away.
John: No, we, we actually... and unlike doing CG, we have found that models, which is the old school, actually looks best on explosions.
Christian: Yeah.
John: So we blow real stuff up.
Geoff: Practical.
John: And it's still pretty big, by the way, we have to build it in our parking lot.
Aldis: Basically part of their job is to build stuff just to destroy it.
Marc: And Christian, Christian actually wasn't in that scene, he was out doing bigger scenes.
Christian: Yeah, I was out doing-
Chris: That wasn’t you in the-?
John: Yeah, that was actually the reverse on you-
Christian: Yeah, that was- yeah.
Chris: You're kidding, really?
Christian: No, that wasn’t me.
Geoff: That's insane.
Marc: The reverse on Christain-
Christian: I was doing a bigger stunt that day.
Geoff: That later thing, ok.
Christian: I'll tell you where I was later on.
Marc: That was actually the last shot of the entire season.
Christian: Yeah, that's right.
John: Get out.
Christian: Me taking my mask off, that was it.
Marc: That was it.
Geoff: It was actually a lot more I-Spy-ish and we actually pared it down to make her more victim-ish.
John: Yeah.
Geoff: She was initially more…what would you say? She was more in the government. She had a gun in her desk, and she was, like, gonna pop off some shots.
Aldis: Ah.
Geoff: We were like, “Nah, she needs to be more victim-y.”
John: Well that's always the challenge when you do an off-speed episode, you have to make sure all the touch stones: the victim you care about, some sort of mystery to be solved. And this is a much more mystery oriented episode than usual.
Geoff: Yeah.
John: You know, we don't have our goal right up front, which is fun.
Chris: And also we’re trying to- ultimately we’re trying to prevent something which is typically not something we do.
John: Not ordinarily something we would do, exactly. Oh and here we are with Timothy Carhart, is that right?
Marc: That's correct.
John: Yeah playing the general, good job.
Geoff: Excellent job.
John: Looks exactly like a dude who was building rockets in the late 50’s to defeat the Soviets, thank you. And thank you to all the men out there who helped us defeat the Soviets.
Aldis: Has a fresh haircut right there.
Chris: Yeah, your eye goes right to that hair.
[Laughter]
John: That is some X-Men hair.
Aldis: It's just like boom!
Christian: He looks like that guy in Beverly Hills Cop II.
[Laughter]
John: He does.
Marc: That is the technical green color, as Dave Connel calls that.
John: Technical green?
Marc: Technical green.
John: [British Accent] “We need some technical green in here, mate.” Yeah. There you go. Yeah, look sciency!
[Laughter]
John: Which is an actual artistic term for that color.
Geoff: Sciency green.
Aldis: [Accent] “Sciencey!”
John: Yeah, this is a tricky as hell episode. We gotta meet the victim and then we have to set up the plot of the arriving bad guy. We have two bad guys, which is always difficult as hell.
Geoff: Right.
John: Always really tough to do. And it is an enormous amount of pipe. And there’s us towing a real plane.
Marc: Towing a real plane.
John: Lovely private airport.
Aldis: They allow us to do these things.
Christian: That's actually Timothy Hutton's plane.
[Laughter]
Marc: It came with another car.
John: That's right, that’s the plane he flies around to solve crime and woo authoresses in.
Chris: He has an interesting power like Elvis.
Geoff: It turns into an anime style mech suit to fight space battles in.
Marc: There’s Michael Rogers as a rival.
John: That's not Michael Rogers, Michael Rogers is the guy in the suit; that's a Portland actress. This is a lovely shot, looking up like this. Portland State has this great central staircase which we had scouted a bunch of times, and it always stuck in our heads and we finally shot the hell out of it when we did this.
Chris: Now how do you introduce the- there's a challenge here because we’ve never seen-
John: Always on his back.
Chris: We've never seen the big bad guy, and we've alluded to him the whole season, so how do you approach this?
Marc: Yeah, the idea was just to stay on his back the whole time, hear his voice, call him by name but never reveal his face until the proper moment.
John: Yeah, this is- in Inside Job I did that with Chamberlain, it's a very classic 1940’s way of- you know.
Marc: Well especially since this whole season has been building to this.
Geoff: Yeah.
John: We were very lucky to get Goran Visnjic who was amazing who doesn't normally do this kind of role and really enjoyed it.
Geoff: He did a great job.
Christian: Unbelievable.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Yeah, this was a lot of fun setting up exactly the- oh by the way unfortunately cut was the fact that the battery is a xenon difluoride battery. The tech of this battery actually works.
Chris: The sound you hear right now is everyone listening falling asleep.
[Laughter]
John: No! No, no! They are fascinated by new battery tech! They’re on wikipedia now!
Aldis: You won't believe how many people are actually really truly fascinated by it, cause I get the questions all the time.
John: Yeah, exactly.
Geoff: Hey, the craziest thing about the show is we make up stuff that is less interesting than the stuff we grab from the news.
John: Yeah, almost everything you think ‘holy shit is that true?’ Yeah, that’s the true part. Particularly the horrible bits.
Geoff: Yeah, the most horrible is usually the truest thing.
Christian: You guys are a bunch of dorks, man. If I can't punch it, I don't care.
[Laughter]
Christian: If I can't punch it, it doesn't mean anything.
John: We give you shit to punch!
Christian: I know!
John: Is that how you read the scripts? “Blah, blah, blah, blah, Eliot hits a guy! Ahhh! Here we are.”
Chris: Punch!
Geoff: Spinning backfist!
Chris: It's true, he does enter here late after a lot of exposition is given.
John: He does, he does. As a matter of fact, he was scheduled to enter earlier-
Chris: What were you doing back there while all that- that exposition was happening?
John: He was flirting with some extra back there.
[Laughter]
Geoff: Punching people!
Marc This is a great moment where Eliot is holding back something, and Hardison is the only one who is tapping into it.
Christian: Actually I think Sophie’s the only one that’s tapping into it.
Aldis: Well, wait for Hardison.
John: Yeah, she senses something, but Hardison gets it but he doesn't get it. I think Sophie's kinda figured it out by this point.
Aldis: Like I said man, see, right there, boom.
Christian: There you go.
Aldis: “Are you ok?” You see all the passion in the eyes? See the worry?
Geoff: Bromance, it's a bromance.
Aldis: Told you man, milk and cookies.
[Laughter]
Christian: I'm working off of it right here.
Aldis: Just saying. That just means we spend too much time together.
Christian: It does.
Aldis: Hardison needs to spend some special time with Parker.
John: We’ll see what we can do.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: This was a long act 1. And this was kinda fun actually, was hacking out exactly- and something we discovered going into the third act: audience likes to see process, they like to see you guys figure the stuff out, they like to see how you plan, not just the actual execution.
Aldis: How many pages was that?
Marc: And we love shooting five-handers.
John: And the directors love shooting five-handers. You got through that coverage in what, 48, 72 hours for one scene?
Marc: No, yeah.
Geoff: They sent us memos, can we have more than five-handers?
[Laughter]
John: But now you’re split up, split up into two and two, essentially, here.
Geoff: Can I just say how awesome a job Portland does, doubling every place else in the world?
John: Yeah, really fantastic.
Aldis: We got- yeah, who is that, Geoffrey Blake, right?
Marc: Geoffrey Blake playing Bixby. This was a fun beat, Tim played this really-
Chris: Lionel Whitney, by the way, his alias here, was a nod to Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.
[Laughter]
Marc: No way!
John: Nice, very nice.
Chris: Yes, that was the name of Jeff Goldblum's character from one of our beloved shows.
Geoff: Sweet.
John: What is the scientist Bixby's first name?
Geoff: Is it William?
John: It’s William, yeah. We-
Christian: Bill Bixby?
[Laughter]
John: Bill Bixby, we have a theory in another series that guy gets exposed to radiation.
Geoff: And all Hulk breaks loose.
John: And he becomes a non trademarked- he becomes the Incredible Bulk.
Chris: Or become a crime solving magician!
Geoff: Hey, I'm trying to get that show back.
John: Yeah, the crime solving magician who turns into a giant green monster when you cross him.
Christian: This was the second to the last shot right here.
Marc: Yeah it was.
Chris: Oh was it?
John: Yeah it was, Friday night.
Geoff: You’re kidding, really?
Christian: Before we wrapped the season. Was me and Hardison and then I jumped outside, that's right.
John: In the basement of the theater.
Aldis: Remember the soup you were supposed to taste?
Geoff: You guys don’t look tired or beat at all.
Christian: Yeah, I was supposed to say, “Taste the soup.”
Geoff: Eat it all.
Aldis: The soup was something.
Christian: [Weird Voice] “Just taste the soup”
Chris: Now there was a fight here, there was a fight here that got cut.
John: Yeah.
Aldis: Nice.
Chris: It involved the billfold; it was-
John: Yeah, it was a lot of fun, but then we looked at the rest of the script and realized, there’s enough action.
[Laughter]
Geoff: Yeah, there’s plenty of-
Chris: There's never enough action, come on!
Geoff: Ass-kickery is the proper term.
John: It actually- it was one of those things we did because we were actually scheduling stunt men and running into trouble with the big, giant act 4 sequence, which you’ve seen.
Christian: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: If you're watching this, you've seen it. And it turns out him just saying his name and that guy being scared shitless-
Chris: Yeah, it worked.
John: Works better. That's one of those times the dialogue works.
Chris: It worked well.
John: Also, nice freakout there, Aldis.
Aldis: Thanks.
John: Very good panic, freak out. And a good reset.
Aldis: Nice pat on my back, boom.
[Laughter]
John: Little something for you, there you go.
Aldis: Feel like my life is complete.
John: You look good in a suit, too.
Christian: Yeah, I guess they've already seen this. We can talk about other scenes, ‘cause at this point they've seen it.
Aldis: They’ve seen it, they’ve seen it, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah they watch it all the way through and then they go back and watch the- yeah. Yeah, you can, absolutely. Also at the- we’ll skip over this, cause this is the standard spook a guy and take his wallet, we've done this a million times.
Aldis: Yup.
John: Christain, the day you told me you were actually playing a certain beat, like a certain idea in your head when you- the whole sequence with Moreau when he gets thrown in the pool. What was the- it was trying to do the math of how far you could push it?
Christian: That was exactly it. I was- I'm counting the guys and I'm also counting exactly how long Hardison could make it where I could revive him; not only hold his breath, but where I can revive him.
[Laughter]
Chris: Like in the abyss.
Geoff: He can actually die, but I can get him back.
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: Part of the plan was to die.
John: So in your head you are Ed Harris and you're…?
Geoff: Mary Elizabeth.
[All talking over each other]
Marc: It would just be with compressions though.
Aldis: I actually counted it out, I could hold my breath for that long.
Marc: No mouth to mouth, just compressions?
Christian: Yeah absolutely, no mouth to mouth, just compressions. Listen, it's not my fault if he doesn't hack it - he got himself into that.
Aldis: I mean mouth to mouth- there’s enough ladies there to get him.
John: Yeah, but we actually timed the dialogue out so in theory you could have held your breath this long.
Aldis: Yeah, I got lungs of steel people. Asthma I got it yeah, but screw that.
Christian: Well hopefully when it gets to that part you can actually see that, because I am counting in my head while I'm having the conversation with Moreau to see how long that Hardison can be under.
Aldis: Look at his eyebrow twitch and you see, every time it twitches, that's a second.
John: It's a twitch of compassion.
[Laughter]
Geoff: Oh my god.
Aldis: It's not constipation, which most of you probably thought it was.
John: We’ll go back to this scene for a second, because it was tons of fun just coming up with the little con and heist-y stuff to do in that scene. The little three way game it's like tinkers [unintelligible]. It's a great little scene.
Chris: Yeah.
Marc So this pool has been out of commission for years.
Geoff: Really?
John: Yeah, tell us about this.
Marc: Totally, for years.
John: This was empty when we came.
Aldis: It felt like it, too.
Marc: This was the bottom of the Governor and we rebuilt it for the show.
John: Filled it.
Aldis: It was like the bottom of the arctic; it was supposed to be hot; it was cold!
Chris: So was it disease ridden or-?
John: No no, you were cold cause you got thrown in the water.
Marc: You were the only one who was cold.
John: Actually puked in the mens room because it was so hot in there.
Aldis: No, the pool itself was cold!
John: Oh yeah, yeah, but you were the only one going in.
Christian: Nobody’s mentioning the girls in the hot tub.
Aldis: By the way, ~sexual chocolate~!
John: Very good.
Aldis: I'm just saying every time, boom.
John: I don't think you have to mention it every time we see him.
Aldis: No, but the ladies were awesome.
John: We actually had to dub that giant section because when the girls all stood up- cause they were actually in the hot tub-
Aldis: It was splashing!
John: It sounded like a waterfall.
Christian: There it is, that's the reveal right there.
Marc: See that's why we held off the reveal till the right moment to see our baddie.
Geoff: Our nice James Bond villain.
John: That’s a nice reveal, it is.
Christian: He did such a great job in this role.
Chris: He's the devil coming out of basically hell.
Geoff: That's right.
Aldis: Now in the original version we had three naked women coming out after him, but I mean it's a family show, people.
John: It is a family show, we want your kids to be able to watch this.
Aldis: Exactly.
John: And that's a nice play, trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on and catching up a little late.
Aldis: A little late?
John: Ah, the USB.
Aldis: The USB saves lives.
Marc: Everything.
John: It does. Well the thumb drive, the thumb drive is our friend on the show, thumb drive and cellphones.
Geoff: Best invention in the world. That and the cell phone.
John: This was also- I'm trying to remember where we came up with the last calls to figure out what exactly- who the next person should be. We just spent a lot of time in the writers room basically fucking around with cell phones trying to figure out what they can do.
Geoff: Yeah.
John: GPS enabling and everything like that.
Geoff: Yeah, I saw something recently that's gonna be fun, hopefully, if we can work it in the next year that a cell phone can do.
John: Oh what is it?
Geoff: Holograms.
John: Ahh nice, holograms.
Geoff: They project a three dimensional light construct.
Aldis: Nice.
John: Cool. Tell visual effects now.
[Laughter]
John: Tim actually insisted on meeting Tim Carhart because they were shooting separately so he could imitate the voice properly.
Marc: Yes.
John: He actually rehearsed the voice.
Christian: That’s great.
Marc: He did, he made him a CD.
John: Nice. Also Derek Frederickson, the fifth Beatle, gave us all sorts of great graphics.
Chris: They all look fantastic.
Marc: Great graphics.
Geoff: God, those guys are great.
John: That exchange was actually one of my favorite bits in the script. “I'm not handcuffed to anything.” That just annoyed-
[Laughter]
John: Eliot's plan is working fine! Don't see what the-
Geoff: We’re on schedule man, chill.
John: I never realized how many characters I have in this show drink.
[Laughter]
John: Just looking at these now, I just put a glass in everybody's hand and-
Geoff: And they're kinda evil, dude.
Chris: This moment’s great too, here.
Aldis: All except for me; I can't get this glass.
John: Nope. And that was an improv too, that was-
Aldis: No love for me.
Christian: Makes him mad.
Chris: And shooting him a look like you-
Christian: It was in the script: Eliot does not look at Hardison when he goes in the pool. You know how hard that was to do, even though I knew I wasn't supposed to do it, but just not watch him go in the water right here.
John: Well also because it's your friend Aldis getting pushed in a pool.
Christian: It's my friend Aldis, exactly. And he's handcuffed to a chair! I mean he's really-
John: That is actually Aldis handcuffed to a chair going into a goddamn pool.
Aldis: I was handcuffed, I got kicked into the pool.
Chris: It was not a model of him.
Aldis: No, that was-
Chris: I know we talked a lot about models.
Aldis: No, this is not CG, people.
John: This is a dude handcuffed to a chair.
Geoff: That was really a money issue, though, I mean we could’ve built-
Marc: I saw Christain drawing up schematics of a bigger trailer if we knocked down the wall-
Christian: I can't wait till we get to the train.
John: Don't get me wrong, Christain liked the scene, it's just that-
Christian: No, I loved the scene.
John: Just, you know. No, this was an enormous- you got your underwater shot Chris.
Chris: I did.
John: Chris Downey has been waiting three years to do a shot underwater.
Geoff: Seaplane!
Aldis: And there it is, hold up, wait for it.
Chris: Oh yeah, here we go.
Aldis: And oh no, there I go.
John: Oh and that is Aldis Hodge going into the pool.
Aldis: That’s me.
Geoff: Oh no Mr. Hodge, I expected you to die.
Chris: Now what was that like, was that scary at all?
Aldis: To get kicked back wasn't scary at all, but to do- we had to do the takes over for the underwater shot of- alright standing up in the pool and then I had to sink down to the bottom and sit there for a minute, wait for the water to settle, and then they yell action and then I'm under there doing all that madness right there, yelling and all that screaming in the pool, that was terrifying.
Chris: That’s scary.
Aldis: Because you're sitting at the bottom of a pool like, “Alright, I'm waiting here.” And you know the chair is weighted down, so.
Chris: Did they call lunch?
Aldis: Like, ok guys.
Marc: Norbert wasn't scared at all.
Aldis: Actually you'll see my tie, I had to keep moving that thing out of the way right before we shot so I'm sitting there for a good 10, 15 seconds before they start rolling the camera.
Geoff: It looks great.
Christian: You did hold your breath for a really long time, man, I was impressed.
Aldis: It was fun man, it was fun.
Geoff: It was great, and ultimately all that matters is it looks great.
Aldis: It is.
Geoff: You guys breathing, surviving, you know.
John: No, they're great.
Chris: And it's a great-
John: Seven cameras, I think, in that room?
Marc: Seven cameras.
Christian: See, and there's the count and I'm counting right there.
Chris: You’re counting, I can see it.
Marc: Underwater cameras, you name it.
Aldis: At the same time, I also had a great stunt guy, Austin Priest, I've worked with him for years. He gave me-
John: He doubled you for part of this, right?
Aldis: Yeah, he doubled for some of it; he gave me a break every now and then. I did a couple takes and then he ran down and did a few himself. Cause after a while I was like, “Oh, lord.”
John: Well, I mean, the trick is you gotta work the rest of the day.
Aldis: Yeah, right.
John: Can't have you just exhausted. I love this exit, love this exit.
Geoff: God.
Christian: It’s great.
John: This is very-
Geoff: He fixes his jacket!
[Laughter]
Christian: Fix the jacket, he's back!
Geoff: Like alright I'm smooth, I'm tripping, but I'm smooth, baby.
John: Just the kobayashi-
Aldis: Wait for it!
All: Yeah!
Christian: It’s a wet rag.
Geoff: With a wet-!
Chris: Classic handkerchief.
Geoff: Well done, my friend.
John: It was great. And then the accent. Where’d you come up with that man, just fucking around with the suit?
Aldis: The- what, the-
John: The napkin- the-
Aldis: Oh at first I asked- I was talking like, “Christain, dude you gotta have some napkins. Cause I'm gonna ask you for a napkin.” And we were like, where does he pull a napkin out of?
Christian: My jeans are too tight, dude.
[Laughter]
Aldis: Yeah, the great Nadine Haders was like, “hey, handkerchief.” I was like, throw one of those in the pocket and we’ll go from there.
John: That's actually the test onset is when Christain puts on jeans, you have to try to put shit in the front pockets.
[Laughter]
John: And if nothing fits then they are tight enough.
Aldis: Have you seen my jeans? One time I spent ten-
Christian: Yeah, that's right, you have tighter jeans than I do.
Aldis: I literally spent ten minutes jumping into a pair of jeans. I was like, c'mon, this ain't happening.
John: And just so you know, if you buy- the job of checking those pockets is actually part of the lottery on the DVD, so if you didn't get the slip in the DVD set to get that job, then you should go out and buy like four more.
Christian: Nice, that's exactly it, man.
Geoff: Oh wow.
Marc: We’re talking about, the guys-
Christian: And I'm really hoping a female gets that ticket.
Marc: Elisabetta on screen in a bikini.
Aldis: Well I was about to say just for that moment right there, hot dayum to all the bikinis in the room!
Geoff: Well done, Mr. Clooney.
Christian: George Clooney is a lucky man. [Transcriber note: George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis were dating at this point in time.]
Aldis: Yes.
John: Well because she's a lovely person too, it's not just the bikini.
Christian: Yeah she's great.
Aldis: She has nice, straight teeth.
Marc: This is a fantastic scene.
John: This was a bear.
Marc: Everybody was up on their game here, and big reveals and brilliant acting.
Christian: This is the first time I think you've ever seen anything emotional come from Eliot in front of the crew; he's done some stuff before, but never anything like this. And to do it in front of the crew, man this was a tough day for me.
Chris: Now how did you approach that- to get that vulnerability?
Aldis: He cried a lot, he cried.
Christian: If you'll notice, I really worked off of Tim right here to be honest with you. Tim gave everything back to me every single time, so I really worked off of Tim right here. And he helped me out with this a lot. And he didn’t do anything, just gave me his eyes, man, and it was really- I let- I felt like I let Nate down in that and I really used that in this scene.
John: Well it's a little like the second season finale, the one where he snaps in the conference room, cause I know he was anchoring off you in that, when you were trying to calm him down.
Christian: Yeah, right.
John: And he had the total meltdown.
Christian: Yeah.
John: That's what's great about television is the actors work together, they learn how to work with each other, and you get stuff you won’t get in a movie.
Geoff: From a fan perspective, before I came on this year, I was just a person watching this show and every season, the end of the season, there's always a moment like this where you guys gather, the characters gather, and something big is released.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Geoff: And this is, even though this is darker than the other ones, it's just like a big, nice compliment to the other two seasons.
Marc: This is my favorite beat, here.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: This is a great moment.
Chris: Yeah, this.
Marc: Just a great piece of dialogue.
Aldis: Kinda begs the question: who is next in line for a mental breakdown?
John: Yeah, yeah.
Marc: Me.
[Laughter]
Geoff: I have to say, that line of dialogue was written by Mr. Chris Downey and not by me.
Aldis: Ahhh.
Chris: No, no, I don't believe so, I think Dean, maybe-
Marc: I think Dean wrote that.
Geoff: Oh really? Okay.
Chris: Dean actually pitched this beat.
John: Dean pitched that line.
Chris: Dean pitched this beat.
Christian: Yeah, Dean told me about it coming in.
Geoff: Well done, Mr. Devlin.
Christian: This was tough for me, this whole thing was tough for me.
Chris: And I got a question: were you working your head off of what that thing was? I mean, you don't have to say, but were you-
John: As a matter of fact don't say, ‘cause we’ve got something in mind.
Chris: Yeah, don’t say but what's in your process?
Christian: No, I won’t say but yeah, I did, I had something yeah. It was-
John: Yeah, cause you look pretty goddamn heartbroken there.
Chris: Yeah.
Christian: Yeah.
John: Nice. And by the way, for those people listening that pay attention to the stuff we talk about on the other commentaries when we talk about writing, Hardison taking the iPad there is important. We use Hardison as the thermostat, the emotional thermostat for the audience. A lot of times the audience knows stuff is ok when Hardison acknowledges that it’s ok. And him accepting that beat allows you- is a subconscious cue that we’re ok to move past what Eliot’s done.
Christian: Right, right, right, I noticed that myself.
John: And the scene plays on. Even past the revelation which is nice, I mean this scene stays heavy all the way through, no break because this reminds- remember when we did the pilot in Chicago, the first time you go up to Nate - I'm talking to Christain - when Christain goes up to Tim and is like, “Hey, about your son, I'm sorry.”
Marc: At the pool table.
Christian: The pool table, yeah.
John: The pool table. You're like how do I play this? I was like you're two gunslingers who always respected each other and might not want to know who's better, but you're equals, you’re peers, and that's the vibe here.
Christian: It's a standoff.
John: They're playing a separate scene than sort of everybody else here.
Christian: And that helped me the most. Standing in front of Tim helped me the most on that. Cause, you know, I worked off of him and it was just- like I said, it was just four hours to film that and it was tough ‘cause I had to stay there the whole time. I went home and went to bed. I mean, I was tired.
Aldis: Not to mention, the distractions from the passers by on the street [high pitched voice] “Oh my god are you guys shooting a scene? Can we get a picture?”
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
[Laughter]
Aldis: “No, we’re filming!”
Chris: That always helps when you have those emotional scenes.
John: This by the way- that park ain’t empty. That’s all of us hiding behind trees.
[Laughter]
Geoff: That’s hysterical.
Christian: That’s true.
Marc Gary Camp with a steadicam.
Aldis: Remember they said action, and people scattered like roaches.
Marc: Give all the credit to the cameraman.
Christian: You have to.
Marc: But on this particular beat, all the actors have to hit their marks exactly or you're not gonna see them and you're not gonna timeout when they speak.
John: This actually is something we do in the writers room is we figure out one per, and then it makes the blocking easier. But there have been times we've kinda gamed this out in there.
Christian: I don't think people realize how difficult a shot the roundy-round is like this, when everyone’s got dialogue you gotta end up on every shot.
Aldis: Gary Camp kills this.
John: You see how Gary sped up that turn a little bit just to catch you 'cause he knew that dialogue?
Geoff: He's a maestro.
John: Probably the guy who knows the script- after you guys, he knows the script the best.
Aldis: Gary Camp, yeah.
Christian: Gary knows the script the best. I mean, he's unbelievable. We couldn't do it without him.
Geoff: I love the duality of these guys, too. The one that Eliot could have grown up to be versus what he ended up being.
John: And the fact that- that came late to the idea that “you got the job?” That they knew each other. We originally envisioned it as a different guy, a new guy who didn't know the reputation. But that- but having him know him and be jealous.
Christian: Yeah, anytime there's a past.
Geoff: It’s awesome.
John: Yeah, well also that guy is vaguely resentful he'll never live up to the Eliot Spencer legend.
Christian: Right, yeah, I mean he plays it very well, as an actor he chose that and he played it very well.
John: But then the ability to say, “I heard you'd gone soft.” He just- he sees a hink, this guy isn't the badass he thought he was, makes him feel better.
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
John: This was us, second unit, this was a fun day.
Chris: Yeah that’s right.
John: One camera, two actors banging the hell out of that.
Chris: That's right.
John: In the fine tradition of Marc Roskin, that’s the-
Marc There you go.
John: Keep talking, move fast.
Aldis: I actually drove past this set on my way to lunch.
Marc: The streets of downtown Portland.
Geoff: By the way, I'm from DC, this looks like DC, okay? It tripped me out.
John: I know, I know.
Marc: Paul Bernard's daughter.
John: Paul Bernard's daughter. And actually, unfortunately, we had a communication breakdown, we couldn’t talk- we were standing across the street shooting across the street, we couldn't talk to the actors because we had a problem with the radio, so I'm literally standing on a chair across the street going, “You love your daughter! Tell her you love her! Now hug her! Now go die!”
[Laughter]
Christian: Some of the locals that were on the stoop didn't know what to think about that.
John: And this was actually for those of you who were making your amateur films, those were Sony ex-1s bolted to the front of those cars. Perfectly good footage.
Marc: They come in handy.
Geoff: Oh, yeah.
John: And then the distraction, so he puts it into park so he doesnt go rolling away when his neck gets snapped, which was why we wrote this scene.
Christian: And he was great with this, too, he really trusted me.
John: Yeah, cause if the guy looks tense, it doesn't look good.
Christian: Yeah, and he really trusted me. I mean that's a tough thing to do, that's somebody's neck, man, and you gotta be really careful with that. It was a big safety issue, but he was great. He really sold it.
Geoff: Oh, you didn't actually kill him?
[Laughter]
John: No, the fact that he was found dead of a fall the next day is total coincidence.
Christian: No absolutely, absolutely.
John: That was his last scene and he went home.
Christian: Exactly, and it was weird how he fell in his trunk.
Geoff: [Laughing] He fell in his trunk!
John: People do that, they put tire irons and shit in his trunk and then ‘Oh! I've stumbled.’
Geoff: Lid comes down.
Chris: He was digging a shallow grave, it was weird. I wonder why he was doing that.
John: This was great, this was actually the morgue set from the hospital scene- the hospital the previous year, right?
Chris: In Order 23?
John: Oh no no, this was from a film that was shooting up there. This is a plug. That room is not a morgue; that room is a big empty classroom.
Geoff: You're kidding?
Marc: Big empty science room.
John: That we dropped those drawers halfway to cut it in half, and then Becca Molino and our fantastic production design propped it up and it looked gorgeous.
Christian: They do it every time, they do it, I'm surprised by how they do it.
Marc: I worship Becca, Becca is a genius.
Christian: It's an unbelievable crew that we’ve got.
John: I love the resentment, by the way, that Aldis is playing here. And it kinda ties into the resentment here that nobody quite understands how hard Hardison works.
[Laughter]
Geoff: Yeah, get a body.
John: Yeah, exactly. That’s just shit he does now.
Aldis: Get a body!
Geoff: It's not magic folks, it's not a magic trick.
John: There's the red wig. Which we almost had her do the entire second episode of this in.
Marc: Yes.
John: This was one of the ones where Gina said, “I wanna do it in a wig” and we’re like, “No” and she showed up in a wig and we said, “Damn, that’s hot.” And then we were worried that it would confuse the viewer coming in for the second set, so we just kept it for here. I love him reining her in like that, lovely. And then a little bit of pipe before we go to the fourth act. That's also crucial part of the script is reminding the audience, “Okay things have been moving very quickly, just to remind you this is what we’re gonna do in this act.”
Marc: Yes.
Aldis: Hot damn!
Christian: Yeah, that was a good day.
[Laughter]
Chris: What is he doing, playing online poker?
John: What is Moreau doing online?
Chris: What is he- he’s got a strange business model.
John: He's doing his Facebook status update, “Going to kill dudes; gotta go now.”
Marc: Also we had to put CG water in that hot tub cause it wasn't-
Geoff: What?
John: Oh! It didn’t work, that's right.
Marc: It didn’t work, as I said, we remodeled this and it was leaking.
John: This had been closed- that was like a hundred year old basement or something, yeah.
Aldis: Yeah.
Geoff: That's insane.
John: Yeah, the hot tub leaked, that was badly designed, that was poorly thought out. Yup, a lot of fun with this, banged out in the- that’s the parking lot of the studio.
Marc: Parking lot of the stage.
Christian: Is it really?
John: This is also a reminder that Sophie ran the crew when Nate was in jail. One of those little things that when you look at the show this year, they are much more peers.
Marc: And if at all possible, you can avoid shooting in an elevator, I would recommend it.
John: Oh sweet Jesus.
Aldis: That elevator was a beast.
Chris: Was this the one where the elevator sucked the camera down?
John: Yes, no, the light.
Christian: I remember a really bad day in an elevator.
Aldis: This, by the way-
John: No, not the one where you were attacked by a box.
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
Aldis: This guy right here, his name is Kevin Champion, he’s been my stand in, a trooper since the pilot and he finally got his just desserts.
Chris: He did a great job.
John: And by the way, he did great - fantastic job.
Aldis: Now who did we have on set to slate for him?
Marc Charles Barkley!
Aldis: Sir Charles Barkley.
Chris: Oh that's right!
Christian: That’s right.
John: Charles Barkley was in town
Geoff: Where was I when all this was going on?
Christian: Charles Barkley was on set-
Chris: I missed Charles Barkley, I was in a warehouse with you!
Marc: His first time acting with us and all of it-
John: Barkley showed up.
Chris: I was at the shoot out. Man, Barkley
Aldis: Barkley was a great man.
John: He was in town doing a fundraiser, swung by the set.
Chris: By the way, Charles Barkley, big friend of TNT.
Marc: This was a fun little beat.
Aldis: Yeah, I met him, I met him and I told him to come on down, he had a good time.
John: Really charming guy.
Chris: We better have Barkley on season four.
Geoff: I don't get to see the special things.
John: You don't get to see Barkley, I'm sorry. Just the elevator thing, what had happened is, was we stopped the elevator, we had lights in there to light it, and then all of a sudden the elevator just restarted, the doors closed and it started flying downstairs, pulling the wires after it into the-
Christian: Oh my god.
Aldis: Yeah, the elevator had issues.
Chris: Oh, this is a great reveal.
John: Nice little flash of the lift. And we've never seen Parker do the front lift.
Geoff: Yeah.
John: He actually- Kevin did a great job.
Christian: Kevin did a great job.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Very pleased. And by the way, there are ID’s that do this, that do the live tracking in the buildings.
Chris: Oh yeah.
John: Yeah, absolutely.
Marc: Technical green!
Christian: Technical green.
Aldis: [British Accent] “Technical green, mate.”
John: This was also a lab that was already there that we shot from the other room.
Marc: Already there.
Geoff: Wow.
John: Yeah we just built- yeah, all the equipment was there and we just built where the bomb had been, that was it. That was all we laid in there.
Geoff: You make this stuff up in the room, you hope for the best.
John: It’s- and you have talented people busting their ass to make it real.
Marc: The people at Portland State- that's a green screen back there.
Geoff: No way!
Chris: That’s right, that is terrific.
John: Yeah, that's not the airport.
Geoff: Get out of town!
Marc: That was a warehouse at a stage.
Christian: Yup.
John: Yeah, that's like a couple blocks from our stages, right? Yeah.
Christian: It’s weird- everything you see in there, though, it's the real deal.
Marc: Yeah, we got a lot of use out of this stage.
Christian: Yeah, I can't believe they let us use it with as many- we went 2500 rounds of a gunfight?
[Laughter]
John: 2500 rounds.
Christian: Inside a place with flammable material- I'm just saying!
John: On the list of stupid ideas.
Aldis: Now wasn't this also the day we found out that we got picked up?
Marc: That stores chemicals and paper rolls.
Christian: Exactly.
Chris: That's right.
John: Nothing can go wrong there.
Chris: And failed microbrew brands. I walked around there. It was like microbrews you never heard of.
Geoff: The opinions shared by the writers and actors are not necessarily shared by TNT or Electric Entertainment Company.
John: Or the insurance companies therein.
Aldis: The thing I love about this is usually when people do car scenes like this when they’re shooting out the back it’s a green screen, but this wasn't, we ran the traffic.
Chris: You can tell.
John: No. And all 200 pounds of me is folded up in the back of that thing.
Geoff: No!
John: I'm in the rear seat.
Aldis: John was literally in the trunk of that car.
Geoff: Oh my god!
John: Yelling through the backseat.
Aldis: Shouting out directions. We did it guerilla-style, people.
John: We stopped traffic, had a cop chase us through the streets.
Aldis: Now you see how wild she's driving. It was a bumpy ride for us and we were seated comfortably with seatbelts.
John: Yeah, I don't think we're gonna let Gina drive again, that's not good.
Aldis: John was back there, we gave him a pint of Guinness, he was alright.
Christian: She doesn't know what side of the street to drive on.
[Laughter]
John: That's what made it more exciting. This is a great- now the shadowy figures and we’re setting it up.
Marc: Shadowy figures.
John: This act is insane, this act really is crazy. It was tricky structuring it, each storyline had to have three acts in itself, so you had to be able to switch between development, execution, and aftermath in each plotline. No, this was a ton of fun. And shooting a real train.
Marc: A real train, just a neighborhood in Portland. And I don't know if you know this, but Portland is a huge biking community and we shut off-
Aldis: Yeah.
Chris: That's where I take my bike ride, spring break bike path.
Marc: Everybody takes their bike ride. They rerouted it, no one complained, everybody was gracious, it was nice.
John: That's where the camera truck drove, the camera truck drove on the bike path next to the train.
Aldis: People ride their bikes on the freeways there - it’s insane.
Geoff: Safely!
Chris: That’s true, in driving rain storms in ponchos.
John: That’s a nice moment there, that acting moment- this is the first time in a while we’ve heard Eliot go, “yeah, we’re fucked.”
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
John: It’s a nice beat. That's my actors on a bridge.
Aldis: Yeah.
Marc: And one of the busiest bridges in Portland.
John: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing, I was not- I was at the other set while they were shooting this, so I was- a lot of times I was watching the dailies I was like, “Oh wow, those stunt doubles are great- wait that’s-”
[Laughter]
Christian: See that right there, I really wanna concentrate on that - you’ve never seen Eliot kill anyone.
Geoff: Yeah, that’s true.
Christian: I just broke that guy's neck, he's dead.
John: Yeah, that guy’s gone.
Christian: That's the first time you saw and, you know it's-
John: It escalates the stakes; you realize whatever’s gonna happen next is not gonna be the normal thing.
Christian: Yeah, exactly.
Marc: CG DC in the background there.
Aldis: Yup, DC.
John: Real train under my actors.
Aldis: I begged you guys for days to let me jump down.
[Laughter]
Geoff: You must be high, are you crazy?
Marc: What was it like writing Eliot’s first shootout?
Geoff: We talked about it in the room, we bounced it around a lot, we wanted it to be a little bit over the top frankly and kinda John Woo-ish because every one of the characters is so perfectly- they're like the perfect example of whatever their thing is. And throughout the show, Eliot generally fights opponents that are numerous, but they're really not on his level. So to really show him doing what he does- it's kinda like that first episode where he has the teacup and the room full of guys. We didn’t see that, we saw the outside of that. This is what happened inside, basically.
Chris: By the way, can I just say something about that acting moment there? I loved that moment of picking up the gun.
John: Well the look to Tim.
Chris: You played three different emotions in a row, just on your face, of kind of the resignation and then you became a different person.
Christian: Yeah, well that's the point is once he picks up this gun- how's he gonna be in season 4? Cause now it's a whole box he never wanted to open again. I'll tell you, this is my favorite thing I've ever filmed in my entire life. This is my favorite thing I've ever filmed in my entire life.
[Laughter]
John: Two days. Two straight days for that gunfight.
Christian: You guys usually only give me 3-4 hours to fight and I got two days on this one.
John: Great shot here.
Geoff: Boom!
Marc: And boom!
Aldis: I swear I wanted to jump down, but at least-
John: That's our stunties jumping, but that's you on top.
Aldis: We were allowed to run on top.
Chris: Look at you go!
Christian: Them on a train, man.
Geoff: Which really you should not have been allowed to do.
Chris: There you go.
Aldis: Probably shouldn't have been, but it was gonna happen.
Geoff: Oh my god.
Chris: That's you!
Christian: On a moving train, on a moving train.
Aldis: Moving train.
John: This is- by the way, they got so excited, they came over the next day and I said, “What’d you do yesterday?” And Beth said, “I ran on top of a moving train without any safety equipment-! Oh, shit,” I was like, “That’s right! From now on, say it out loud just once!”
[Laughter]
John: “And if you say oh shit at the end of the sentence, don’t do it!”
Geoff: That's right.
John: No, but honestly guys, we can’t thank you enough for doing that for the show. Not a lot of actors would come out of their trailer to watch that happen, nevermind actually do it.
Aldis: Beth was hardcore about it, too.
Marc: This scene was shot over a period of two days.
Chris: Yeah.
John: Yeah, this is crazy.
Christian: By the way, everybody needs to know, that’s me. That’s only me, no stunt double, that's it, always me.
John: No stunties. I always joke - your stunt double has the easiest job in Hollywood.
Geoff: No joke.
John: “What are you gonna do today?” “Oh I’ll just have a latte, watch him bust his ass, have a good day.”
Christian: Nice punch right there, by the way, nice form.
[Laughter]
Christian: I'm serious! I'm being honest!
Chris: Now how did you- how much experience did you have doing gunfights on screen? I mean, obviously this is-
Christian: I mean, not that much, but I mean honestly I'm from Oklahoma, so-
[Laughter]
John: This, by the way: not a train. A fake train car we built on the set that we had interns- pardon me not interns, PA’s actually shaking and rocking and then strobing light, poorman’s process, through it.
Geoff: Poorman’s process.
Marc: Eric Bates built that bomb, he’s very proud of it.
Chris: There's a couple [unintelligible] on it.
Marc: This is my favorite-
Geoff: Love that! Love that!
Marc: Ohhh!
John: No look, no look it's fine.
Chris: Now here, oh!
Christian: That was so much fun right there man, that was so much fun.
John: What I love is the countermove by the guy in the back, actually.
Geoff: I would date this sequence if I was single.
[Laughter]
Marc: That's a shoutout on The Closer.
John: No that- oh The Closer, no they've never done a shootout like this.
Chris: Now how much of that is like you're 12 years old and you're in the backyard?
Christian: Oh all of it, all of it. This was my favorite thing I've ever done. This is the scene I came to Hollywood for and I'm not lying; I'm being dead serious.
Geoff: Hey!
Marc: Kevin Jackson worked so hard with you on this. It was great.
Geoff: Kevin is great.
Christian: Yeah.
Aldis: Yeah, Kevin Jackson, our stunt coordinator.
John: And we showed up, we showed up, we’d been shooting that other stuff and we showed up in that warehouse on, like, hour 16 and you had been doing the slide on the concrete floor like, “Again! Go again!” Like Jesus, boy!
Christian: Yup, yup.
Marc: Christain looked like an offensive lineman, you know.
[Laughter]
Marc: In an overtime game.
John: Soaked in sweat.
Christian: 2500 rounds man; 2500 rounds for the day.
Aldis: Jeez.
Christian: That's a lot for television, I'm telling you.
Aldis: Yeah.
Marc: And if a gun didn't fire, we added it.
Christian: Yeah.
Marc: There's a lot of-
Geoff: Oh really, you CG’ed in muzzle flashes?
Christian: Now this is- this was my idea, I brought this to Dean and John. This was my idea. I wanted to slide through the oil or the water or whatever you had, whatever it was.
John: Oh the sights, the double cock.
Christian: Double cock, I came up with that. I'd never seen it before, you never do it with your own guns because it ruins it, and I can't believe how cool it looks.
[Laughter]
John: Who cares if it's wrong, it looks cool!
Chris: Now how about that shot?
Marc: And Joe LoDuca’s music during this.
Chris: The push up here.
John: Slow push, yeah, that's a great shot, there you go.
Geoff: You are about to die.
John: Now I would also mention this was a wire assist at the end, but you did it without the wire the first time.
Christian: That's all me right there, that’s all me. I went- right there was as far as I went without wiring.
John: And you got a good- remember we were testing it that first day. And you're like, “I can do this!” And just banged it out and you got about 15, 20 feet even without the stuff on the floor.
Chris: By the way folks, even those of you in good shape, try and get- try and just get on your knees.
Geoff: Yeah, no joke.
Chris: On your knees and lean back like that. I did it on set.
John: It was not fun.
Christian: There's my Desperado shot; I had to have a little fun. John gave me that one.
Aldis: Dun-dun dun-dun.
John: And this is the CG explosion, little pop, and then a real explosion.
Geoff: Oh nice, oh man! I love that.
Marc That’s a model-
John: That’s what I mean, a model blow, a real blow.
Geoff: But bear in mind, also this is the end of the season, these guys have been jumping, getting punched, blown up, hiding for-
Christian: Oh I didn't walk for two days, man.
[Laughter]
Chris: That looked painful.
John: And this is where we pay off the taser.
Aldis: Paid off the taser!
John: We introduced the taser in episode one, do a runner throughout the whole season and this is what you've been waiting for, the moment to pay off why she's been carrying it. We totally planned that - that wasn't accidental at all.
Geoff: [Forceful Laugh]
Christian: No, absolutely not.
John: We didn't cook that up in a drunken stupor in the writers room one night.
Geoff: I meant to do that, I meant to do that.
Marc We’re actually driving cars on the bike path, removing fence.
John: And we did a blow.
Marc And blowing up trains.
Aldis: We did a blow.
John: Yeah, we actually did a blow in there. We video assisted it, but that was a real explosion.
Chris: Wait, that was a real blow on the train?
Christian: Yeah.
John: Yeah. We didn't take the door off, the door was added.
Christian: See if you can't tell that's a little hard getting up there on the knees. I'm not as young as Aldis, but-
Geoff: You're excused man, you did your job.
John: And this is the classic, this is really-
Geoff: Awesome!
John: I'm gonna say Johnny Toe instead of John Woo because that’s really more of a Johnny Toe shot. And the flame bar.
Chris: That's an iconic shot right there.
John: Yeah it is.
Chris: We’ll be seeing that shot in a lot of fan videos.
Geoff: That move, I love that.
Aldis: It’s clean.
John: Very clean, and he was worried he was too slow on the night, too.
Christian: I did, I was like, “Man, was it fast enough? Cause I'm tired.”
Geoff: Plenty fast enough, man.
John: But you had done-
Christian: This was important right here, I wanted to show that, you know, the guns are done, I still don't like ‘em.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But you practiced quickdraw on the other thing you did, what was it?
Christian: Oh man from Anywhere from Into The West to Crossfire Trail, we were always out there. I got that actually from Emilio Esteves, who is a friend of mine, who directed me on Close To Home and he was telling me about how they used to go out there and they- when they were all doing Young Guns they used to practice quick draw against each other to see who was the fastest.
John: Well Geoff Blake, who played Bixby, was on Young Guns.
Geoff: He's really good.
Christian: That's right, oh my gosh, that's right.
Aldis: I got a question, as far as season 4 for Hardison and Parker, cause you know, she just did the pretzels thing, the people are expecting something.
Geoff: What are you trying to say?
John: A lot of shirtless you.
Aldis: I gotta do push ups? Jeez.
John: We’re gonna advance the relationship.
Chris: But we'll do it at our own pace.
Christian: You know I haven't seen this scene yet, man, I can't wait to see it.
John: You haven't seen this?
Christian: No.
John: Had you not seen the full edit of this?
Christian: No.
Geoff: It’s tasteful, it’s tasteful.
Christian: I've been on a radio tour, man.
[Laughter]
John: Oh that's true. Kinda the whole music career giant international thing.
Christian: It’s- you know.
John: This was a ton of fun, and again, just a little bit of fun. It's tricky when you're showing the moves this fast, how to reset for each act just to make sure the audience knows at all times where you are, what's going on.
Christian: Again, Goran was always on his game, man. You couldn't have picked a better Moreau, he was great.
Aldis: Oh he was spot on, man.
John: Well it helps, he was physically intimidating too.
Christian: He’s like 6’6”! I didn’t realize how tall he was.
Aldis: Yeah, yeah.
John: He's like a paratrooper. And this was Dean’s idea to finally do, like, the threeway-
Marc: Do the triangle.
John: Do the triangle, yeah.
Christian: Just to let people know, when the gun goes off, one of the loads came out and hit Tim in the eye. We went down for about 20 minutes ‘cause it hit him right square in the eye.
Geoff: Wow!
Christian: And nothing against- it was just a weird shot, it wasn’t even pointed at him, it just- every once in a while- guns are unpredictable and it went off to the side.
John: That's why you have safety guys on set.
Geoff: And you don't do this at home, kids.
John: No, well I doubt they'd have the jet.
Christian: Right.
[Laughter]
Geoff: Some kids have a jet, you know.
Chris: Well they might have a bus up on cinder blocks in the backyard.
Christian: When I come running out here, you don't know how many times I hit my head on the bottom of this wing.
John: I know! I was counting, actually.
Christian: I hit my head four times on the bottom of this wing trying to get under it.
John: Every time you stood up, you didn't quite time it right.
Christian: I stood up early and damn near knocked myself out. It freaking hurt.
Geoff: So Marc, some of these shots are pretty complex-
Aldis: And there we go, Bonanno!
Geoff: What's the stuff that drives you most logistically, you’re like, how am I gonna do this, and you know-
Marc: A lot of it is where are we gonna shoot it, what we can get away with, and how much time we have. And this was tricky cause we had so many locations. We’re barely in HQ and in the finale, in 16, we are, but this ist a lot of locations. You’re in a train, you're in a fight.
John: You're losing light. The great thing about an outdoor set like this is you got that beautiful sky, the bad thing is the sun goes up, sun goes down.
Marc: Sun goes up, sun goes down.
Geoff: Right, no control.
Christian: We were working against the clock this day man, we were losing the sun.
Marc: But you know, you would think at the end of the season you would lose energy with the crew and with the actors.
John: Not at all.
Marc: And I think this is some of our best acting in these last two episodes.
Geoff: I agree, I agree.
Marc: And they're big emotional scenes, they're heavy page count, and we shot the hell out of it.
John: Yeah, this is three pages of Tim talking.
Marc: And it's not just tapping us on the back, most shows don't do coverage like we do, and spend the time to light it like we do, and have flashbacks and cutaways and special effects and greenscreens and CG, I mean.
John: We’re crazy.
Marc: We’re nuts!
John: Why the hell are we doing this?
Geoff: Rockwood.
John: By the way, I'd like to say: quick note because we just blew by it, Elisabetta, who had not acted a lot when she joined us in the first part of the season, the beat where she says, “You opened the envelope?” And she sounds actually kind of hurt? It's a really nice communicative beat.
Christian: Yeah it is.
John: She's really found her voice as an actor.
Aldis: Yeah, I liked that beat.
Geoff: She did a good job.
Chris: She was really great.
John: She really did a nice job. “Who are you?” And that is the best choice by Goran.
Christian: That is the best, I love that.
Marc: I just kept saying build, build, build, and it- just all the way to the end of 16.
Christian: You've never seen him not be in control, except that moment right there.
John: You never see him he's- he’s not out of control there, he's just impatient.
Christian: No, yeah.
John: That veneer is going.
Chris: Oh here we go.
Christian: Boom!
Geoff: You wiped out there?
Christian: Didn't do it that time.
John: He slammed his head. Look at his process right there, he's like how is this gonna go.
Marc: And I just love the little-
John: And the fuck you smile. That’s a great look from Goran.
[Moment of Silence]
John: Sorry, we all got lost in the show there for a second.
[Laughter]
Christian: Yeah, sorry.
Chris: Sorry, yeah now we’re like-
John: No, she did great, she did a great shot, we got a lot of footage of this. And it was really convincing. And then a little something for the ladies cause you gotta stop the blood flow somehow.
Aldis: Ah, there he goes, boom.
John: There's a whole box of rags right stage left, I mean.
[Laughter]
Chris: There's a whole first aid kit.
Marc: Could you imagine if you were doing pushups?
Geoff: What is wrong with people?
John: I mean, by god.
Marc: And a real plane taxiing away.
Geoff: Jesus.
John: What the hell were we thinking?
Christian: Did you see that? You saw on my shoulder right there, that’s where Tim stopped me a couple times. It was that really ripped up and bruised cause he had to stop me running full speed.
John: This was nice, by the way. I actually prefer this coverage, it's tempting to go into closeups there when he asked him not to tell the others. This is a very British shot to do this in a medium, because it allows the shot to kinda sit for a second, rather than forcing it.
Marc: Yeah, so we just thought we'd do it on a crane.
[Laughter]
John: Well that too. But I'm saying I liked the shot. ‘Cause it allowed you to set up the other shot. Also I love this bit, the little hurt look that Nate has when he finds out she wouldn't have done that for him.
Marc: Yeah.
Chris: And a very matter of fact, no; it was reminiscent of the flashback when he was getting strangled, his fantasy sequence. She's very bored and matter of fact about things like that
John: It's really- the character really did exactly we wanted her to be, which was a 1960’s spy character who was transplanted into the show. And this is something we almost never do. We've only done it twice - tie together the episodes, even in the season finales they tend to just end and you have no idea what we're gonna do next.
Christian: Right, this was fun to do. This was so great waiting on the second script.
Aldis: Yeah.
John: Yeah the walk- oh that’s right, cause somebody didn't quite finish the second script by the time you were prepping this.
Christian: Oh, that's right.
[Laughter]
John: Somebody was writing the script in Portland, say.
Geoff: I don't know who that would be.
John: And then the crane up, pull away, and you're out. Now this is cinematic as hell. And that’s 3x15!
All: [Cheer!]
Geoff: Nice!
Christian: Awesome.
John: Thanks for tuning in, and stay tuned 3x16!
Chris: Stay tuned.
John: You know you wanna watch them back to back, coming right up.
Geoff: Oh hell yeah.
Aldis: C’mon, people!
#Leverage#Leverage TNT#Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts#Audio Commentary#Transcripts#Parker#Alec Hardison#Elliot Spencer#Nate Ford#Sophie Devereaux#Season 3#Episode 15#Season 3 Episode 15#The Big Bang Job
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