WWdN: In Exile

I am literally playing The Dead Meemaw Card so that you'll watch me on The Big Bang Theory tonight.

Yes, I am literally playing The Dead Meemaw Card so that you'll watch me on The Big Bang Theory tonight.

So... this is happening.

I spent a lot of time at Warner Brothers last week.

While I was there, I saw my friend Kaley, and we took a silly picture:

 

Then I remembered that I'm Evil, so we took another picture:

 

And if you haven't solved the puzzle by now, this is why I was there:

Check out how I totally play this cool, and don't let on that I'm squeeing like a tween meeting Bieber. Awww yeah.

Eureka: Of Mites and Men

In every rehearsal, when Parrish stands up to triumphantly announce that he's completed his 100 cranes, I did it in my best* Homer Simpson voice, like when he tries to fake out Apu with the lottery scratcher: "WOOO HOOO! ONE HUNDRED CRANES, BABY!"

This episode was more fun to film than I thought was humanly possible. Even though we were all crammed into a tiny set (it actually looks bigger than it was, because it was photographed with wide angle lenses) for several days**, I loved every minute of it. I remember thinking that I was so grateful that we are all friends and all get along, and that nobody in the cast is a diva, because it would have really sucked in that case.

Erica, Felicia, Neil, Niall and I all went to an origami class with a master origami folder so we could learn how to do cranes. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it***, but once I figured it out, I enjoyed it quite a lot. I also may have specifically inquired about the creating of origami dicks, because I'm twelve. When we were in that little chamber, we'd just sit there between takes, folding cranes and cracking jokes with each other. I can't say for certain, because I don't have a control to test it against, but I think filming this episode brought us all closer together than we already were.

From a character development standpoint, I think this is where we see that Parrish has a lot to prove, and getting to Titan is how he's going to do it. We had to cut so much stuff for time, we lost a couple of scenes where we got to see that Parrish is so completely focused on getting to Titan at all costs, he can't adapt to changing circumstances, and he can't put the team ahead of himself. I don't know about the rest of you, but that's not the kind of guy I want to have to rely upon when I'm {VAR==$miles.to.Titan} away from home. I hope Parrish can learn from the isolation experience in future episodes, because I'm still totally #TeamParrish.

Weren't the mites cool? And how much do you love Sheriff Andy?****

Fun fact: Three weeks before we filmed this episode, I nearly broke my ankle. I knew that we'd be doing this "take off your shirt, Coco" thing with me, so I had been exercising like crazy as part of Project Don't Be A Flabby Piece Of Shit On Television, but it turns out that not being able to stand without a cane for three weeks sort of gets in the way of that. Luckily for me, the producers were sensitive to my vain need to not inflict my Body By Guinness on the world, and let me wear a tank top underneath my jumpsuit. You're welcome, people who didn't have to see a flabby, pasty, nerdbody that you can't unsee.

A lot of viewers enjoyed the Number One line, and we've gotten a lot of credit for making a clever TNG reference ... but I don't think that was intentional. All of our characters were given numbers when we were in the chamber, and I think Parrish was just dehumanizing everyone to be a dick and work what he thought was some sort of psychological warfare. 

Or maybe it was intentional all along, and nobody told me ... it's all part of the test.

 

* Not very good

**  The show ran almost 25 minutes long, so a lot of very funny stuff had to be cut, but will show up on an extended cut for DVD someday.

*** The line where Zane says Parrish's last few cranes looked like ducks was improvised by Niall, based on me complaining that I was really bad at making cranes, but extremely good at making ducks.

 ****The answers are: YES and A LOT. Congratulations to those of you who passed.

I've never been so grateful to be so exhausted.

"How are you feeling?" The question sounded like it had been asked by a person standing at the other end of an aluminum tube, possibly while underwater.

"I can taste sound, and I can hear color," I said, only partially joking. "Can someone please turn down the sky?"

It was just before 8 in the morning, and I had been awake for close to 27 hours. I was standing in the airport in Vancouver, but my day had actually begun in Portland, because I'm working on two shows at once, playing Cha0s in the season finale of Leverage and Doctor Parrish in what it turns out is the series finale penultimate episode of Eureka.

This is a weird and awesome life, and I've never been so grateful to be so exhausted.

Because this happened in the middle of the night, and was only on Twitter, most of you missed it. However, it's hilarious to me and I wanted to make sure you saw it:

@TimHutton: return of the @BethJRiesgraf robot with an introduction by @wilw http://www.twitvid.com/9DSZG

and

@TimHutton: and now... almost live from west linn oregon, @wilw as mecha Chaos and... wait for it...... #Leverage http://www.twitvid.com/6X3ZW

We really do have this much fun when we work together (remember this and this from Eureka last season?) but we can still focus and get the work done ... though I'm not sure it's really accurate to call it "work", when we love what we do so much.

I was worried that I would be so tired and spacey by today that there was a real risk that Doctor Parrish and Cha0s would bleed into each other, so I made two lists on the back of a script page. One is titled Cha0s, and the other is titled Dr. Parrish. On each list, I wrote down all the defining charactaristics, as simply and specifically as possible, for each character, so I have it clearly in my head and available to me at a glance on the set. I also drew a thick black line all the way down the page, to remind myself that there needs to be a firewall between the two of them. And because I know it'll be a FAQ, the fundamental difference between the two of them is: Isaac is, in his heart, basically a good person who is a little insecure, and easily annoyed. Cha0s, though, is basically a bad person who is profoundly arrogant, and easily amused.

I have a mercifully late call to Eureka today, before I head back to PDX at ouch-it-hurts-me-are-you-fucking-serious-o'clock tomorrow ... and I couldn't be happier about that.

Saying goodbye to Eureka

Last year, my friend Amy told me she was moving from writing Leverage to writing Eureka. She asked me if I was interested in playing a scientist who was kind of a jerk. I said "yes" as fast as I could, and ended up playing Doctor Isaac Parrish for seven of the ten episodes in season 4.5. When season 5 was announced, I was invited back for more, and I said "yes" even faster this time, violating several laws of physics that I made up for the occasion.

Late last night, my Twitter exploded with people who were furious at the network formerly known as Sci-Fi for canceling Eureka. I figured that these people were talking about the news from last week, where we thought the show would have a six episode sixth season (that we would film in October), to end its run ... but it was unlikely that dozens and then hundreds of people would be spontaneously upset about news that was a week old all in the same few minutes, so I did a little digging on the googles.

It turns out that the network formerly-known as Sci-Fi changed its mind, and took back the six episode sixth season. Eureka will have to wrap up season five and the entire series with the episode that starts filming on Thursday. I know they'll have to do some rewriting, so I'm hopeful that Bob Newhart is available.*

At this point, I know as much as you do, because I found out the same way you did. I'm trying really hard not to be upset with the network for issuing a statement to the press before the cast knew, so we wouldn't have to find out the way we did; as you can imagine, it isn't exactly easy.

Jaime and Bruce (the show's executive producers) called me shortly after the news broke, to thank me for being part of the show, and tell me how sad they were that it was over. I could tell that they were as shell-shocked as I was. I feel comfortable telling the public what I told them: I'm proud of Eureka. I think it's an incredible show, and while I'm sad for them to lose something they've been working on for so long, I'm selfishly sad that I won't get to work with this cast and crew any more. Eureka is a tremendously fun show to make, and from the very first time I set foot on the set, the cast and crew made me feel like I was part of their family. To have that taken away so soon after it began makes me profoundly sad; I can feel the loss in my heart and what would be my soul if I had one and wasn't made of pure beardstuff from the sixth dimension.

At the same time, I'm grateful that I'm sad, because if I wasn't, that would mean I never had any good times working on the show. You know that thing they say about loving what you do means it isn't really work? Well, I've been lucky enough to feel that way on four different shows for the last several years, and Eureka is the one I've been able to call home the longest.

Please join me in thanking Amy Berg, Jaime Paglia, Bruce Miller, Matt Hastings, Todd Sharp, all the Eureka Writers, and especially the cast and crew for letting me visit their town and work for GD, even if it was only for a short time. I've had a wonderful time, bringing a great character to life with actors I love and respect. I've made friendships that will last the rest of my life, and done work that makes me genuinely proud.

Goodbye, Eureka. I have been, and always will be #TeamParrish.

*Kids, ask your parents.

 

Eureka: Up In The Air

Last night's episode of Eureka, Up In The Air, has my favorite moment of the entire season in it. I don't think it played as clearly in the edit as it read in the script, but it's when Carter gets so incredibly excited for a traditional bank robbery investigation, and then finds out from Andy that the bank was, literally, robbed. As in: it isn't there any more. When I read that in the script, I laughed so hard, I peed a little. In fact, I just had to go ahead and put on an adult diaper for the rest of the episode, because Colin's physical comedy was so perfect.

Even though we shot it a year ago, this episode stands out in my mind quite clearly because on the first day of production, during the first run through of the first setup for the first shot, I twisted my ankle so severely I had to walk with a cane for a month.

Remember when team Bravo is running those tires? Set dressing put them on uneven ground, and I was first in line, so while I was attempting to high-step through them, hold my sides, stay the correct distance from Felicia and the camera while rehearsing, I didn't see the slope underneath me. I'm not the most coordinated person in the world*, and I was probably at -10 or more to make this one ... so I ate shit. The crew all thought I was having a laugh (I have a certain reputation for comedy on the set), but I guess something about the way I was writhing in pain on the ground convinced them that I was serious, and not just committing to the bit.

So, to review: we haven't shot a single frame of film on this episode, and now I'm hurt so severely I can't stand up unassisted. The entire day is about us doing physical activity, and I'm in every single scene.

That sound you heard was the production manager having a heart attack.

The show, as they say, must go on, so we did some minor rewriting, changed the blocking on some scenes, and generally ensured that Doctor Parrish wouldn't be doing any physical activity**. In fact, if you watch the first scene with the three of us, you will see that I'm bent over, giving the impression of having just run the tires. In reality, someone from the crew is supporting me so I didn't put any weight on what was my rapidly-swelling ankle. When Fargo comes out of the tree and it looks like I walk away? I actually take one step, grab my cane from a PA, and take one more step so I'm completely out of frame.

Ah, the magic of making movies!

This episode also has my favorite pure character moment of the season in it, but it was cut up so much there's no way anyone in the audience could see it: when we're in the GD rotunda with Carter and Henry, talking about my Higgs Disruptor, Joe Morton and I had this exchange that I just loved. Doctor Parrish is talking about how his Disruptor is signed, but the authenticity of signatures from that era is questionable. You can barely see it, but during rehearsal, Joe and I realized that we're both scientists, and we're talking about a piece of antique equipment that was signed by Higgs himself! We decided that, being nerdy scientists, we'd get excited about that, and temporarily forget that there's a bunch of antimatter hanging out above Eureka waiting to deliver an Earth-shattering KABOOM***. Carter sees this, puts us back on track, and we figure out that he needs to go Up In The Air****.

It was exciting to us, as actors, when we found these beats during rehearsal, because we turned a scene that was pretty much an infodump to the audience (that set up the third act) into something that was an infodump with some real character moments behind it. In the final cut, though, a couple of lines were lost (I'm almost positive that the show was running long), and while the intention is still there, the exact character beats aren't. I'm sure this is a little Inside Baseball, but I learned a lot about who Parrish was during that scene, and how he feels about the people he interacts with at GD and in Eureka. Those little unexpected moments where I get some XP like that are one of the greatest joys for me as an actor.

In fact, this episode was when I finally got completely inside Isaac Parrish's skin and mind, and knew exactly who he was. I'm grateful to Colin, Joe, Felicia, Neil, and our director Alexandra for making all of that possible, because I could relax and enjoy being Doctor Parrish for the rest of the season.

Finally: Fargo is such a wanker! Way to abuse your power and force Isaac to do inventory so you get another shot at the girl, Doug. This isn't over. #TeamParrish

If you have any questions about this episode, please ask them in comments. I'll do my best to respond to them today.

 

* DEX is my dump stat.

** Doctor Parrish will be appearing at Kamp Krusty August 23-30.

***Doctor Parrish also owns an Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator, but he won't show it to you until the third date.

**** <familyguy>AHHH! There it is. </familyguy>

io9 really liked Glimpse! Go Team Eureka!

Alisdair Wilkins at io9 really liked this week's episode of Eureka:

"Glimpse" is my favorite episode of the still young season 4.5 - it had a great central threat, it did some nice, light work on the various relationships, it had some good jokes, and it gave plenty to do for the two main guest stars.

Yay! Go Team Eureka!

Oh, there's also this (he said, as nonchalantly as possible):

But really, this episode was almost completely stolen by Wil Wheaton, making his return as Dr. Parrish. One of the best ways to shake up a show like Eureka is to bring in a character whose energy completely contrasts with that of the cast. In previous cycles, that's generally meant bringing in someone mysterious and possibly sinister - James Callis last year, Eva Thorne before that - but Dr. Parrish is something else entirely: he's just a massive asshole. Wheaton is pretty damn brilliant in the role, giving no quarter to Fargo or Carter in his interactions with them while also revealing just why he's so thoroughly antisocial. His brief flirting with Holly was also great, being charming in the way that only a dude who is a total dick can be, and bodes very well for the mooted love triangle between Fargo, Holly, and Parrish.

Thanks, Alasdair! I think you're going to be very pleased with the rest of season 4.5.

EUREKA: Glimpse

Last night's Eureka, Glimpse, was my first episode as a non-enraged-by-the-enraginator-device Doctor Parrish. I had completely forgotten about Fargo's commercial for the Astraeus project at the top of the show; when I saw that, the excitement of shooting the entire season came flooding back to me all at once.

We filmed it so long ago, I don't remember much about it, but what I do recall, quite clearly, is how worried I was about finding the right "pitch" for Parrish's arrogance and irritation with everyone around him. He's supposed to be a guy you love to hate, a thorn in Fargo's side, and if he's just a straight out dick, I think we get tired of him really quickly.

The first scene I shot was actually at the beginning of the episode, in Café Diem, when I present the banana slugs to Fargo and Holly.* I was actually performing Parrish for the first time (remember, in All the Rage, he was only "normal" Parrish in two brief scenes before the enragenation enraginated), and I didn't really have a feel for his character beyond the notes I'd made in my script. Luckily for me, our producer Matt Hastings was on set that day, and I asked him to watch the choices I made during rehearsal. Matt assured me that I was portraying Parrish the way the writers and producers intended, and over the course of that day, I settled into him. Watching it last night, I saw a couple of moments I'd like to change, but that's just part of being an actor; I have to watch my performances with a critical eye, or I'll get lazy and stop learning.

Wasn't Felicia magnificent? I remember having so much fun with her and Neil when we shot the stuff in his office with Stan Lee**, but I had no idea that the three of us would grow so close over the next couple of months. I can't wait for Eureka viewers to see how the relationship among us develops in the weeks to come.

I also remember shooting the scene where Colin gets all that slug gel dumped on him. It was at the very end of a very long day, and none of us expected as much slug gel to come pouring out as we saw on TV. Erica and I were off camera for dialog, and I remember laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face. He kept improvising lines like, "you -- you're a bad, bad person" and "I ... I thought we were friends," and [mournful sobbing]. By the time that take was over (and we only got one), the entire crew was laughing as hard as Erica and I were.

My favorite scene in this episode, though, is the scene with Carter and Parrish in the police station. Colin and I found this relationship between the two of them where he is patient and understanding, while Parrish thinks he is just a stupid hick who doesn't know a damn thing about anything. That relationship plays out in future episodes, and it's something I just loved discovering.

Did you notice that Parrish set aside his arrogance and irritation and tried to work with Fargo when it was clear that GD was about to get all explodey? If you blink, I think you'll miss it***, but it was an important, if subtle, character modulation for me. Parrish thinks he's the smartest guy in the room (and he's usually right), but even he knows that there's a time to set personal bullshit aside and stop the world from blowing up.

If you watched the show last night, I'd love to hear what you thought about it. I'll also do my best to answer any questions you have about it ... and I hope you'll join me on #TeamParrish.

*For those wondering, the "slugs" were actually made out of figs and dates. You never really got to see them up close, but they looked totally gross, like they really were dried slugs. Parrish ate some in one scene that was cut, and they actually tasted pretty good.

**ZOMG STAN LEE.

*** Don't blink, you fools! The Angels have the phonebox!

 

on the delivery of technobabble

I was in three scenes yesterday, one of which contained a massive amount of technobabble.

For those who don't know what that is: on a sci-fi show, technobabble is what we call pseudoscientific dialog like "I'll have to run a level four diagnostic on the antimatter inversion matrix to be sure." It's pretty much the worst dialog an actor can have to deliver on a show, because it's rarely connected to anything in reality, and if we're talking about the inertial dampeners in a scene, we're pretty much infodumping to the audience, instead of doing something interesting with our characters.

...or so I thought until yesterday.

The thing about technobabble is that it isn't usually connected to reality. By that, I mean that though it does follow the logical rules of the show's universe, and references things the fans know about, for most actors, it's like being asked to perform in a foreign language that you barely understand (if you understand it at all.)

The other thing about technobabble is that the character delivering it is supposed to be an expert on the subject, and should have a point of view about it that stays alive through the whole scene. For example, maybe Doctor Hoobajoo is the leading expert in the galaxy on ion resonance within the subspace induction processor core, so when Doctor Hoobajoo talks about that subject, she's an expert. You can't ask her a single question about the subspace induction processor core that she can't answer. But for the actor playing Doctor Hoobajoo, she has to deliver a bunch of dialog based on something that doesn't even exist as if she's been studying it her whole life.

This is a tremendous challenge for the actor, because, unlike normal dialog that comes from an emotional place, technobabble comes from memories that don't exist. While the actor who plays Doctor Hoobajoo can draw on the emotional memory of being betrayed, or being afraid, or being in love to inform a scene, she can't draw on the memory of studying and mastering the twin fields of ion resonance and subspace induction. As an actor, it's easy to fall into the trap of delivering technobabble by rote, and for a lot of us, it's the only way we can remember those lines at all.

But sometimes, a scene is emotionally important, and is filled with technobabble. That's just the reality of working in science fiction. So when Doctor Hoobajoo is trapped in the power conduit with Commander Framitz, her former lover from her first deployment who left her for an android, and can only save them from certain depolarizaion by repairing a malfunction in the subspace induction processor core, the actor has a lot of work to do. Not only does the actor have to be an expert who can solve the problem and save their lives, she has to be emotionally connected to the scene and the history between the two characters. Oh, and she has to remember that the stakes in this case are pretty high. And she has to do this over and over again for several hours, during the master shot, the VFX shots, and all the coverage.

Boy, writing those three paragraphs just exhausted me. I'll be back in a little bit.

Okay, some coffee and steel cut oats seem to have revitalized me, so I can get to my point now, about what I realized yesterday:

I had a scene that was almost entirely technobabble. It sets up a lot of the action for the episode, tells the audience what's at stake, and gets them excited enough to sit through commercials for MegaSomething versus Giant Other Thing to find out what happens next. I drove the scene. Everyone else was reacting to me and the information I gave them, and I think I had one line in two pages that wasn't technobabble. It was challenging, and I knew from experience that I was going to have trouble remembering the jargon, so I did a lot of extra homework to make sure I was totally prepared. 

As I did my preparation, I realized that while the technobabble is just a dump of information, it's information that Doctor Parrish has an opinion about. The function of the scene is to get the action going and give the audience some important information, but that doesn't mean it has to be an infodump. The way Doctor Parrish feels about the other characters affects the way he talks with them regardless of the words. It affects who he chooses to give certain bits of information to, and it affects how he delivers the information. So I found ways to be emotionally connected to the scene and the characters, while caring about the information I was giving them, so it wasn't an infodump. A scene that could have been tedious and boring became a scene that was a lot of fun to perform.

Still, it was really hard to remember all the technobabble I had, and at one point, when I blanked on a line, my Star Trek skills automatically sprung to life, went into failsafe mode, and made me say "blah blah emit blah pulse blah blah blah." (The fun of technobabble is that a lot of the words are interchangeable. The frustration of technobabble is that we can't paraphrase or use any of the interchangeable words, because a subspace matrix is different from a subspace array.)

It honestly could have been boring and exhausting to spend much of a day delivering technobabble, but when I realized that I could keep it interesting by endowing the technobabble with emotional resonance, the whole thing came to life in a surprising and unexpected way. It was like I'd detected anomalies in the starboard neutrino emitter, and instead of adjusting the warp plasma induction subroutine to compensate for multiadaptive fluctuations, like you'd usually do, I thought about it, and equalized the portable phase transmission with a self-sealing warp core transmuter.

I know, right? I bet you never thought to do it that way. Well, I did, and it worked.

Various thoughts on The Ho Ho Ho Job

First things first: during tonight's webchat at TNT.tv, I wore a pretty awesome T-shirt. It's in this picture, if you can tear your eyes away from Beth for a second to look at it. It would be entirely understandable if you missed it the first time around.

Anyway, during the chat, a lot of people wanted to know where I got it, and what it's from. I got it at GenCon, and it comes from Kill Vampire Lincoln Productions.

Second things second: I am damn happy with the way this episode came together, and I'd forgotten some of the fun improvs I did during the shoot. That "Dammit, Hardison" thing was just part of me riffing on Kane, saying all the things Eliot says. I guess the amazing spacework I did where I imagined I had Kane's luxurious long hair to flip around and lovingly brush while humming a country tune was cut for time. We also had this whole thing were I just went on and on about how great it was to "be inside Lucille", which led to that line about "I wrecked that van." I'm glad they kept it, because even out of context I think it plays pretty well.

All those tunnels were under a sewage treatment plant, so we spent an entire day literally surrounded by hundreds of thousands of gallons of shit water. While it was pretty awesome in an intellectual way to be around this marvel of engineering that makes life as we know it possible, in a practical way it was pretty gross and very unsettling.

The mall scenes were shot in Portland at this place that has seen much better days. It was heartbreaking to see so many empty stores. It was just a few zombies away from Dawn of the Dead in there.

Finally, blasting Hardison's van was a lot of fun, and you can't see it, but I was strapped into that van with a whole mess of safety harnesses and stuff. Even though I knew I wasn't going to get hurt, it took a few takes before that knowledge made it into my lizard brain.

Here's a picture of me in the van that Roskin took on that day:

I'm not sure if Cha0s will be back next year, but I hope he is, because I'd love to work with the Leverage gang again, but mostly so we can see how Hardison tries to get back at him for wrecking Lucille II.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them here, and I'll do my best to answer them. Rogers is also doing the usual post-show Q&A at his blog.