#leverage tnt
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Top Tier comedy
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A 1AM THOUGHT aka SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE LEVERAGE CREW and THE CHARACTERS FROM ATLANTIS
The brown haired somewhat bumbling leader who makes an entire group of criminals feel bad about said crimes
Ethnically ambigious badass that everyone looks up to
The one who fools everyone into thinking he’s morally ambiguous
The one who’s never fooled anyone a day in his life
The blonde who thinks stabbing is a love language
#leverage#leverage tnt#Atlantis#Nathan ford#sophie devereaux#eliot spencer#alec hardison#parker#parker (leverage)#milo thatch#kidagakash nedakh#princess kida#kida (Atlantis)#vinnie#sweets#sweets (Atlantis)#helga sinclair#meme? I think it’s a meme#it’s 2am guys#character comparison
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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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#disclaimer: I do not think eliot is a monster but he thinks that of himself so this edit is fine#this scene is seared into my brain sorry#edits#my edits#leverage ot3#parker x eliot#parker x hardison x eliot#parker#eliot spencer#quotes#leverage edit#mine#stills#screencaps#watch leverage#leverage#the big bang job#leverage season 3#sorry if this is grainy I took screenshots from a YouTube video and cropped them to get the tnt logo off lol#leverage: let’s go steal a queue
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For people who like Avengers 2012 vibes, I highly recommend Leverage and it's revival sequel series Leverage: Redemption.
It's about former criminals seeking redemption by using their skills to right wrongs.
It has a grifter who can con people in real lifebut is terrible on a theater stage; a petite, orphaned gremlin woman of a master thief who legitimately loves vents; a cool, black, tech genius; a hitter with long hair and who constantly says things like a type of gun has a distinctive sound. And a former insurance agent who has a beef against rich people who are abusing power.
It's like Ocean's 11 vibes with vigilantism and heists and they say things like "Let's steal a casino."
They ARE the meddling kids.
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The good news: Librarians sequel series produced by Dean Devlin greenlit for 2023!
The bad news: created by the CW
#not the cw man anything but that#in all realness though I'm super excited!!#not sure how it's working with the strike but w/e#one of the writers listed also worked on the og Librarians and Leverage#no info yet on casting but Dean did say they're hoping for at least a cameo with an og librarian#(bet you 20 bucks itll be jake)#the premise is a Librarian from the past accidentally time travels to the present and releases a ton of magic#so he recruits a team of new Librarians to help him fix it#so like. im definitely not getting my hopes up yet but i will be watching#and long story short: Prepare to be Sick of Me#the librarians#jacob stone#ezekiel jones#cassandra cillian#flynn carsen#eve baird#jenkins#librarians#librarians tnt#can't wait for the fandom revival that's about to happen
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Alright I need some help getting my confidence back to posting my kinda okay writing. So I am asking you all to fill up messages/asks and send me requests for one shots or short stories that may or may not spiral into a series, or which of my series do you want a new chapter written?
I guess I should also mention my second page @coffee-shop-girl is where I would post my stories under and that is where they all live. Now you’re probably wondering why I am not posting this on that page? Well I don’t know how to get my message/ask section back. It seems to have disappeared a while ago and that kind of when I stop writing and posting. So for now this page still has access to messages/asks so fingers crossed I don’t lose it on this page.
So what fandoms do I write for?
* Supernatural
* Chicago Fire, P.D.
* Animal Kingdom
* Leverage
* 9-1-1
* Suits
* The Walking Dead
Are my top fandoms, but send me anything, it will be good exercise in the creative process. So read through my meteoric work, see my style of writing, and send me a prompt.
I am tagging a few accounts that seem to have recently found my works, or that I have started following or that use to follow me. hope you don’t mind, I just really want to get eyes on this. I promise I will only tag you in posts moving forward if you want to be.
Thanks again for reading
@dreamtofus @dinahjane97 @lucid315 @winchesterwild78 @hobby27 @dw19791967 @zepskies @spnexploration @clarinette07 @snffbeebee @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog @deanwinchesterdaily @deans-spinster-witch @deanwinchestersgirl87 @lyarr24 @jackles010378 @wotinspntarnation @prettybubblesintheair
#supernatural#fanfic#fanfiction#dean winchester#sam winchester#chicago fire fanfic#chicago pd#animal kingdom tnt#leverage#christian kane#adam ruzek x#kelly x reader#suits tv#9 1 1 fanfiction#the walking dead#darly dixon#asking for help#writing prompt
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Ezekiel Jones either is or would be a member of Leverage International.
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Just One More Job.
as loved by spacy
#cheers; or something { promo. }#leverage rp#elliot spencer rp#fandomless character#tnt leverage#overwatch rp#uhh it's been so long since I've started a blog from scratch#i hate blog making so it's all a wip but here bag it#okay time to enter an rpc i'm pretty sure is mostly dead but i love this man too much to get him out of my brain
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Redemption missed the mark on the noir feel of the original series and overlook the planning aspect of the cons that make the improv when things go wrong more suspenseful
#leverage#sophie devereaux#leverage redemption#alec hardison#nate ford#eliot spencer#leverage tnt#parker
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The Hospital Job
Nathan Ford x Eliot Spencer
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The slow and steady sound should be a comfort because of what it means (Eliot is safe, he’s alive, they got to him in time). That is the logical conclusion, but contrary to most of the rest of his life, Nathan Ford finds it impossible to draw the logical conclusion here.
Eliot Spencer, who’s supposed to be all muscle and action, and quiet thoughtfulness, and few words, but he isn’t in motion now. He’s laying still on hospital bed, pale as death, the shallow rise and fall of his chest barely visible. The only sign of life in the room is the steady beat of the heart monitor.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Every time he closes his eyes, Nate sees his mistakes, sees the steps he should’ve taken. They’re painfully obvious now, if only they had been mere hours previous.
The con should’ve been easy, get in, get out. Slip into some light method acting for 24 hours, and come out of the whole ordeal far richer than they had been previously. But then things had started going wrong, minor things Nate couldn’t anticipate but they kept stretching the con.
Nate leaned back in the chair, resisting the urge to get up and pace around the room, his throat burned for a drink. He hadn’t had a drink since this whole thing started and that was the problem.
Nate was shaking in his chair as he called out plays, the worst of the detox hadn’t hit yet, he could still do this and then, somehow, he’d find a drink.
“Sophie, go left, there’s a south facing door. Hardison shut off the security camera.” Nate’s eye flicked back and forth between blueprints of the building and the live security footage Hardison was feeding him.
“On it, boss.”
He traced the ventilation system with his finger. “Parker, behind you, there’s a vent. Follow it left, and then right. That should drop you exactly where you need to be.”
“Copy.”
“Tsk. Tsk.” Sterling sat on the desk next to Nate, “is this really the best use of your time, Nathan? They’ve all done this long before you stepped in to play mastermind.” Sterling held a shimmering glass of whiskey out towards him, “what makes you think they need you now?”
Nate swallowed thickly, he knew the glass wasn’t real, that this was only the cruel creations of his alcohol deprived mind, but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out. He watched it slip through his hand, the sound of glass shattering on the ground echoing in his mind even as he stared at the clean floor.
“Parker could steal this blind folded. Hardison doesn’t need you to tell him what to hack. Sophie has been conning people since before you got into the game. Face it, Nate, what do you really bring to the table?”
“Nate, we’re blown. I got eight guys on my tail.” Eliot’s voice crackled to life through the comms.
Sterling smirked, leaning closer to Nate. “And dear sweet Eliot, the loyal dog, begging for affection at his master’s heel. He could get that from anyone, you aren’t special, Nate.”
“Enough!” Nate roared, throwing his phone at Sterling. It passed harmlessly through him smashing against the opposite wall with a crash. Sterling laughed in his face as he vanished.
“Nate?” Sophie’s voice was on the comms now, “what happened? Is everything alright?”
“Nate.” Eliot’s voice was overlapping with Sophie’s. “I need an exit, I can’t take all these guys.”
“Uh.” Nate tried to steady himself, the plan that had seemed so clear only a minute ago was slipping through his fingers. “We’re blown.” He repeated to himself, mentally sorting through his contingency plans. Surely there had been one for this scenario, there was always a plan.
“Nate!” Eliot hissed more urgently, “I’m running out of room here. I need an exit.”
Nate’s eye flicked back to the security camera feed. “Eliot, go left.” His eyes flew back to the blueprint, frantically scanning the ventilation system. “Parker, back up two turns then go left. The stairwell’s your exit. Hardison, get the van in gear and bring her around back, we’re gonna want to make a hasty retreat.”
“On it, boss.”
“Nate, you got me a dead end.”
Nate’s blood ran cold as Sterling laughter rang in his ears. “No, that can’t…” His voice trailed off as he looked at the blueprints. He’d been looking at the wrong floor.
“Forget it,” Eliot’s voice was little more than a growl. “I got this, just get everyone else out.”
“Like hell.” Nate barked back, “Parker, go up a floor. Do you still have the charges?”
“Oh yeah.” The blonde responded, sounding like Christmas had come early.
“You’re gonna set them up on the eastern wall. Hang on, Eliot, we’re gonna make you an exit.”
“Great.” The hitter’s tone dripped sarcasm as he grunted. “Take your time, I’m doin’ great.”
Nate focused on routing the team out of the building, refusing to listen to Eliot growing progressively more winded as he took hit after hit.
“Parker,” Nate called as a particularly violent shudder had him grasping the table for support, he couldn’t remember when he’d stood up. “Are you in position?”
“Almost.”
Eliot grunted again, as the team was treated to something that sounded sickeningly like bone crunching under a boot.
“Done.”
“Eliot, get away from the wall.” Nate ordered immediately.
The hitter huffed something that might’ve been a laugh under normal circumstances, “say it like it’s easy why don’t ya.”
Nate could only pray that he’d obeyed. “Parker, now!”
The explosion echoed in Parker and Eliot’s comms, like some sort of sick duet.
“Nate?” Sophie is kneeling in front of him in the hospital room. Her voice is gentle as she speaks, as though he may shatter if she’s too forceful. “Parker and Hardison went to get food. Do you need anything?”
Nate glanced at the bottle of whiskey that’s been next to him the entire time he’s been here. He’d tried to reach for a glass when this whole thing had started, and they’d been rushing Eliot to the hospital.
Parker, scarily calm in the driver’s seat, rushing through traffic like a madwoman, Hardison routing GPS navigation to the nearest hospital, and Sophie sitting next to him, offering what comfort he could.
He wasn’t entirely sure where the whiskey bottle had come from, it had been pressed into his hands sometime between the job and the hospital. He’d uncorked it with shaky hands, grateful for something to dull his senses.
“Nathan Ford, ever the useless drunk.”
Nate’s jaw clenched and he lowered the bottle.
“Oh no, don’t stop on my account. I’m just along for the show. Cheers, mate.” Sterling tipped his glass to Nate and tossed back the whole thing in one go.
Nate’s throat burned as he tilted the bottle absently in his hands, but as he glanced at Eliot, sprawled awkwardly across the seat next to him, he felt further removed from the burn. His hand trembled slightly as he closed the bottle and placed it on the seat next to him, but he forced it to still.
“Nate,” Sophie tried again to coax gently, “you can’t do anything for him here, maybe it would help if you left the room for a bit, took a walk, stretched your legs. I could sit—”
“You really, really want to help me?!” Nate was yelling now, he tried to reign himself in a little, but he also couldn’t find it in himself to really care about how loud he was being. “For the love of God, give me something to do. Please, just give me something to do.”
Sophie was quiet for a moment, Nate felt something small and worn pressed into his hands. When he glanced down, he was holding his notebook. The small leather cover worn from years of rough handling and abuse.
“Make a plan,” Sophie said gently. “Do what you’re good at.”
Nate gripped the notebook tightly, his gaze sliding back to the bed.
Sophie stood, making a show of brushing dust off her knees, even though the hospital was probably cleaner than their offices.
“Sophie,” she turned on her heel to face him, “tell Hardison to find the guys that did this.”
She glanced at the bed as well and nodded. “Of course.” And she was gone with a click of her heel on the tile floor.
Nate got up from the chair, moving to stand next to the bed. “Maybe I’m a bigger bastard sober than I am drunk, huh?” Eliot would’ve rolled his eyes at that, if he’d been awake Nate thought, a small reaction sure, but better than the lifeless inactivity that lay before him.
He turned the notebook over in his hands again and again. For the first time in his life, Nathan Ford had no plan.
“You need to wake up so you can punch me in the face for putting you in danger and I can apologize properly.” Nate wants to lean over the bed and shake him awake, do something to make him wake up faster. Anything would be better than sitting here, feeling useless.
“God damnit, Eliot!” Nate’s throat burned with something other than the desire for alcohol, his eyes felt wet, and there suddenly wasn’t enough air in the room. “You can’t leave us alone like this, I can’t do this without you!”
“Do people wake up faster when you yell at them?”
Nate jumped at Parker’s voice as she appeared next to him.
He forced his hands to stay steady, though he was sure Parker had already noticed the trembling. “No, no they don’t.” He smiled wanly, “it’s solely for the benefit of the people who are awake.”
“Are you mad at him cause you didn’t tell him you loved him?” Parker took a sip of her juice box, as though this was just a random day at the carnival, and she hadn’t just pulled the rug out from under him.
“P—Parker,” Nate spluttered, suddenly annoyed that he hadn’t taken that drink when he’d had the chance. But once he’d gotten over his initial shock, he knew there was no point in denying it. Parker could be mercilessly blunt, but she was rarely wrong, and she knew it. And denying it would only lengthen a conversation that he did not want to have in the first place. “There was never a good time.”
Parker shrugged, taking another sip of her juice. “He knows.”
Nate nearly dropped his notebook in shock, few people in his life managed to surprise him and Parker was most of them.
“He smiles more, after you stopped sleeping with Sophie and started sleeping with him. You’re good for each other.”
Parker finished her juice box and tossed it in the trash can behind her without looking. “Make sure he keeps smiling.” She marched out the door.
Something unclenched in his chest as he stared at Eliot once again. He leaned forward conspiratorially, even though Parker was presumably long gone, though you never knew with her. “She likes you, you know?”
“I get knocked out for a couple hours and you’re already spilling your deepest secrets to me, shoulda done this ages ago.” Eliot’s voice was rough from lack of water and his gaze is slightly hazy from the pain meds, but he was mercifully awake, and alive, whispered the voice in the back of his head that sounded like Sterling.
“Eliot.” Nate breathed, he moved next without conscious thought.
Eliot’s lips were surprisingly soft, though slightly dusty (soot, his mind supplied helpfully) and Nate jerked back quickly. Eliot blinked up at him slowly, the combination of the kiss and drugs frying his brain.
Nate couldn’t resist the soft smile that swept across his face before he could stop it.
“Nate.” Eliot smiled at him, one hand groping the air uncoordinatedly, searching for someone to hold. Nate slipped his hand into Eliot’s gently, just as the latter’s brow began to furrow. He relaxed immediately at the contact, allowing himself physical tells that he rarely showed unless they were in a safe private environment (the hospital qualified as neither).
“Get some sleep, Eliot.” Nate whispered gently as Eliot’s blinks grew slower and further between, the hitter still needed his rest.
“Wanted to say…” Eliot’s sentence faded into unintelligible mumbles as his grip on Nate’s hand went slack.
Nate dragged his free hand gently across Eliot’s face, tucking the loose hair behind his ears. Carefully, ever so carefully, he extricated his hand from Eliot’s. He lay the hitter’s hand gently back on the hospital bed and tucked the notebook into his coat pocket.
The burn in his throat was growing more insistent and now that he knew Eliot would be alright, the temptation of alcohol was too much to resist.
“That’s not going to get rid of me, you know.” Sterling commented as Nate took the first swig of whiskey. “As long as there are people like him, that you care about, who can be put in danger, I’m gonna be in the back of your head.”
Nate snorted, “I make a shitty bedfellow, just ask Sophie. Hell, ask Maggie.” He took another swallow, “Eliot’ll say the same thing soon enough.” He pulled the notebook out, “I’m no good to anyone, there’s a reason why you shouldn’t get involved with your team.”
Nate laughs lightly, but there’s no humor to it, it’s far too late to undo this thing with Eliot, and even if it weren’t, it would take a stronger man than him to do it. The hitter deserved better, Nate knew that, but in this little dance of theirs Eliot had chosen him, and that had to count for something.
Nate took a gulp of the bottle, shaking his head slightly to drown out the sound of Eliot’s bones cracking as it echoed in his ears. His hand clenched around the bottle, suddenly seized by the mad desire to drink it all in one go. He had done worse surely.
Beep.
The sound of the heart monitor gave him something to focus on besides, the crunching in his ears. The rhythmic sound was more comforting now that Eliot had awoken.
Beep.
Crunch.
Beep.
Crunch.
Beep. Crunch. Beep. Crunch.
The hospital room was suddenly too small, too hot. The whiskey burned in his stomach, threatening to come back up the same way it had gone down.
I need some air.
Nate stuffed the bottle into his jacket hastily and grabbed the notebook. He only paused a moment on the threshold to glance back at Eliot, the others would keep him safe. He had a feeling that Parker was watching even now. A flash of blonde hair at the window confirmed his theory.
Nathan Ford had forgotten the smell of dew at night. Back before he found more mundane things to worship than a god, he used to sit on the grass at night. Reading bible passages to himself and staring at the stars.
One of those loves stuck, the other did not.
To this day, he’s fascinated by the stars. From a scientific standpoint, he knew little about them, but from an astronomer’s perspective, he was rather well versed. He knew which stars appeared in each hemisphere over the course of the year, but most importantly he knew the stories behind each constellation.
Stories were important in his line of work (if you could call thievery work that is). People came to him with sad stories, screwed over by big corporations, and he did his best to write them a happy ending.
Nate’s thoughts shifted to Eliot, as they were want to do most days. He leaned back in the grass, stretching out his legs, and took a small sip of whiskey. Just enough to get that pleasant burn back in his throat.
Happy endings were the hardest to write, and the messiest to predict. Coming from the backgrounds that they did was no help. Nate wasn’t naïve, he had no misconceptions about what Eliot had done before Dubenich had assembled them all.
A string of deaths and missing persons had followed Eliot wherever he took a job, and yet, from the moment they met, the hitter had been gentle. His hands were covered in blood and yet, they were tender to a fault. From the awkward head pats (and later hugs) that he’d given Parker, to the affectionate clap on the back or shoulder squeeze he’d exchanged with Hardison from time to time.
There was affection everywhere he thought he was allowed to give it.
Nate forcibly kept himself off that list for as long as he could, trying to lead to the team dispassionately (unable to completely fall in with thieves). In hindsight, he’d been kidding himself, their ragtag little team had been a family, since they’d allowed themselves to trust each other on that first con.
Caring had been both quick and inevitable.
“Bit of a close call today, wasn’t it?” Sterling sat next to Nate on the grass.
Nate shrugged, he really wasn’t in the mood to hash this out with the hallucination again.
“You can tell Hardison to stop looking, my guys tracked them down. They should be sitting in a Parisian prison by noon tomorrow.”
Nate glanced to his left, brow furrowing. “You’re not a hallucination.”
Sterling smirked at him indulgently and inclined his head slightly in agreement. “Did you miss me, Nathan?”
“Believe me,” he said, raising the bottle to his lips. “If I didn’t have to see your face, I wouldn’t have.”
An emotion that might’ve been concern on a normal person flickered across Sterling’s face. He stood, brushing bits of wet grass off his pants.
“Sterling?”
“Hmm.”
“Thank you.”
Sterling was turned away from him, but Nate could imagine his smirk. “Just don’t go racking up too many favors you can’t pay off, eh Nathan?”
Nate toasted Sterling silently behind his back, bringing the bottle to his lips one last time. “You know me, Sterling. I play high stakes, or I don’t play at all.”
“The universe does have a way of bending to your insane machinations.” Sterling finished brushing himself off. “Do me a favor and tell that hitter of yours how you feel. I didn’t get his attackers arrested just for him to die of old age before you actually talk to him.”
Nate spluttered indignantly, “did Parker tell everyone about that?”
“Goodbye, Ford.”
Nate followed the sound of laughter into Eliot’s hospital room.
Parker was perched on the side of Eliot’s bed like a large blonde cat. She glanced up immediately as Nate entered the room, she always had a sixth sense for that sort of thing.
“Are you gonna kiss and make up now?” Parker asked.
“I think so.”
“Good.” She hopped off the bed in one fluid motion and skipped out the door without so much as a backward glance.
“There’s something not quite right with that girl.” Eliot murmured affectionately as she left.
“So,” Nate began, wishing he had more whiskey left, to help him say what needed to be said. “It needs to be said, after today. I’m stepping down from the team.”
“Nate.”
Nate held up a hand placatingly, “I was compromised while you all were in the field. That’s inexcusable.”
“That’s a load of crap. You were in withdrawal, cause of the job. You never woulda done that on purpose.”
“Eliot—” Nate tried.
“No. You don’t just get to step down because you had a bad day and it scared you!” Eliot shook his arm, as though looking for something to punch. “We all have bad days and we still come back to the team. We need each other. I need you!” Eliot’s shoulders slumped, “you don’t want to run the team, fine! But don’t give some excuse, call it what it is. You’re a coward.”
Nate isn’t scared anymore, he’s angry now. “You don’t get to call me that! You have no idea what it was like for the rest of us, sitting here, waiting for you to wake up.” He closed his eyes for a moment, praying for strength, “I can still hear your bones cracking…” Nate admitted softly, “if I hadn’t been out of it, you never would’ve gotten hurt. I can’t stop thinking about what might’ve happened if—” but Nate doesn’t even let himself finish the thought.
Eliot’s expression softened, “anyone ever told you, you think too much?”
Nate huffed out a watery laugh, “once or twice.”
“I love you.”
Eliot’s lips are just as soft the second time around, but firmer now that he’s more awake. Pushing into the kiss with a desperate force.
They need to talk, and soon, but there’ll be time for that later.
#Nathan ford x Eliot spencer#Eliot Spencer x Nathan ford#Nathan ford#Eliot spencer#Jim Sterling#Nathan Ford & Parker#Nathan Ford & Jim Sterling#sophie devereaux#parker#alec hardison#Leverage#Leverage TNT#The 12 Step Job
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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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every character christian kane has ever played is a babygirl
#and#polyamourous#this post has been brought to you by:#my binge of#the librarians#also featuring#leverage#now for obligatory tags#christian kane#let’s get a fancam going#the librarians tnt#jacob stone#jake stone#leverage tag#eliot spencer#spencer#spn#supernatural#lee webb#technically#leo webb#and how could i forget?#secondhand lions#hub mccann#remember that#that’s where my love began
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I think my favorite part of the Leverage fandom is the way everyone agrees that Eliot fucks everyone and there's zero slut shaming (in fact I think some the fandom is living vicariously through our lil' hitter)
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I like how it seems Beth Riesgraf (Parker) made a really wild impression on the Leverage creators, executive producers & network, from all the interviews...
Leverage Cast: S4 Behind The Scenes - Auditions
Beth Riesgraf: I left the [audition] room and it was one of those moments where you go down to your car and something clicks, and you really get something that you didn’t get in the room. So I walked back up and they’re like "well, he’s got about five more people to see" so I was like "oh, awesome". So I waited. John comes out of the room and I’m like [suddenly very animated] "hi! so listen!" and by the time I was done, I had him like this [grabs Timothy Hutton, who’s seated next to her, by his lapels with both hands] and I didn’t even realise, but I got so excited that I was like "no no no, just let me do it again!" and John was like, "no no no, I think you’re fine… I think you got it. I think you got the character".
LA Screening Q&A with Devlin, Rogers & Downey
Dean Devlin: Fun story with Parker is that there were two actresses who came in for the final reading for the studio. And one of the two actresses - beautiful girl, very competent actor, very good […]. But after she left, we turned to the people at the network and we said, "she’s great, we like her - this next girl’s the girl we’d really like to hire. She’s not kind of the typical girl you’d normally hire in a show like this". So then Beth [Riesgraf] came in for the audition. Didn’t say one word. Just came in-
John Rogers: None of this "hi, I’m here", yeah.
Dean: She just read in character, and then walked out of the room. At which point the head of TNT turned to me and said, [whispering] "is she… crazy?". [normal voice] I said, "I don’t know, but I love her".
John: Her hair was in her face, remember? She came in and did like, the crazy, angry, just-hates-everyone Parker.
The way these link up so well is so funny to me & it gives such a hilarious picture of the Parker audition process.
#leverage#beth riesgraf#parker leverage#john rogers#dean devlin#wren speaks#leverageposting#in summary -#riesgraf: yeah i probably made a weird first impression oops#devlin & rogers: she made a weird first impression so we brought her in again. and she was weird again. so obviously we hired her#i do hate when ppl call parker crazy but then these are the same ppl who made the ep where parker says she *was never crazy* (white rabbit)#so ig they dont Mean It Like That. & they also call her 'broken' but never mean it as 'she needs to be Made Neurotypical' or that shes#missing something in that way. but rather that the world has hurt her & that she needs her found family & that she gets to heal.#plus theyre saying riesgraf seemed crazy here too and im sure they dont mean to offend their actors either lol. so yk. botd.
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