1 June 2010
Posted in Writers - John McNamara & David Eick
"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once." Robert A. Heinlein
Based on the Graphic Novel Six by Michael Oeming & Daniel Berman
What: They’ve landed; they’ve assumed our form; they’re taking over.
Who: The handsome Cain Johnson is a keen observer and an enforcer. His latest case is that of twenty-something Adam Laurie who, according to his therapist Ezekial Smits, may have gone over to the other side, something that will endanger the very structural fabric of the Central Command. When Adam walks into the local television station and begins firing his revolver and ranting into the camera all hell breaks loose.
Adam: I have an important message… for the people of Earth…
Several terrified studio workers react – God, no, that kind of lunatic…
Adam: (into the studio cameras) …I’m… from another world. Another plane of existence. (moving closer to one camera) We’ve made ourselves look like you, sound like you. Home, we have no bodies. We’re energy… light… no tactile or emotional sensation. For us, there is no such thing as touch or feeling… no difference between this –
--he kisses the anchorwoman, startling her –
--and this –
-- then SHOOTS the Anchorwoman in the leg, sending her into a seizure of agony and the studio into PANDEMONIUM.
Cain must do everything in his power to eliminate him, not because he is crazy, but because the truth of what he says threatens the very existence of their group, for they are, indeed, aliens; and Adam has broken the fundamental rule – he fell in love and learned to feel human emotions.
Cain’s inability to capture Adam brings the wrath of his other world in the form of a Sector Chief from Central Command. As the Sector Chief gradually assumes human form, he instructs Cain that now, instead of killing Adam, Cain, the enforcer, must bring Adam to him for a “debriefing,” a “debriefing” that will be as terrifying as it will be painful. Their bodies are almost indestructible; unless the injury is “sudden and catastrophic” triggering the “self destruct gene,” the body will heal instantaneously. But, in an effort to assimilate human traits, injuries will result in extraordinary pain. When Cain succeeds in capturing Adam, Adam is rescued by unknown hijackers. Even more infuriated, Uriah Selleck, the newly created human version of the Sector Chief, proclaims that Adam, when ultimately captured, will not be immune to the torture inflicted on him and will, Selleck assures them, reveal his comrades in the nascent rebel group.
Each cog in the wheel of the Central Command is given only enough information to do its job. They are brought to the doorway which, in Cain’s words are
Cain’s Log: (V.O.) Where we cross over. Where life on our home world ends… and life here begins… A life where we receive orders. Obey without question. And know almost nothing about how many of us are here, what we’re doing or why. So when things go wrong, it’s difficult to know how to respond.
A lack of knowledge that is illustrated further by Uriah, the newly created human.
Uriah: Do you know why we’re here on this planet, Cain?
Cain: To help its people.
Uriah: And how are we doing that?
Cain: I don’t know.
Uriah: (to Paul) How many other cells are there?
Paul: I don’t know, sir.
Uriah: Abigail Denver, how long have we been here, what goals have we achieved in the overall operation?
Abigail: I don’t know sir.
Uriah: Exactly. You know what you need to know. A single Rogue won’t stop us. He can’t. He doesn’t know enough. Which is precisely the point.
But Adam isn’t a single rogue; he knows that they aren’t there to “help” earth; and he also knows more of the Central Command mission than they believe is possible. Others in the rebel group now also know, but will it be too late to stop the Central Command?
No Meaner Place: It’s difficult to dissect all the layers present in this piece. Eick and McNamara have carefully constructed a classic 50’s horror play in the vein of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” that keys in on the psychological paranoia subtext while at the same time slyly and subtly referencing controlling cult religions such as Scientology and the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. And yet on another level, or maybe on the same one, this is the Cheney/Bush administration where our phone records and internet messages were secretly read, where government was no longer transparent and we were told that access was denied for reasons of national security; where torture was used in defiance of the Geneva Convention; and no one division of the government knew what the other division was doing; and all of it was for the good of the people.
Yet within this paranoid other worldly Sci/Fi drama is infused humor and especially one humorous thread that runs throughout the pilot and will, presumably, through out the series. Recall that Uriah, the Sector Chief appeared out of nothingness before he assumed human shape, since the aliens have no form other than light and air on their home planet. Upon assuming human form, there is a naming process for each new alien:
Uriah studies himself. Arms. Hands. Chest. Abigail moves to him with a leather-bound book.
Abigail: Welcome , sir. I’ll choose a name for you.
Naked Man: I’ll choose my own.
Silently affronted, Abigail hands him the book. Cain watches the Naked Man take it and stab a finger at random into a page.
Naked Man: (reading) “Uriah”
Ezekial writes this down as the Naked Man casts aside the leather book – which we now recognize as a BIBLE – and moves to a table. On it, magazines, hundreds of them, all the same – TV GUIDE. He chooses an issue at random, opens it and says the first surname he sees there –
Naked Man: “Selleck.”
Ezekial: Uriah Selleck. Excellent choice.
Uriah: One old book that never changes and an infinity of periodicals that never stop. What a world.
Life Lessons for Writers: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” And is there anyone more paranoid than a network executive?
Conversation with the Writer:
Neely: I’m so sorry we weren’t able to coordinate with John on this, but I know you’ll be able to give his perspective.
David: John, I call him Mac, has a very unique perspective, so I hope I’ll be able to approximate it one way or the other.
Neely: You and John have known each other a very long time.
David: Yes we have. As a matter of fact, my boys are now getting old enough that I can show them my crappy old TV shows and I was showing them the first thing Mac and I did together on a show called “Spy Game” for ABC. They seemed to like it. They’ll understand later that they should not have enjoyed it.
Neely: But this only goes to prove, you have to show it to the audience it’s intended for in order to get the true perspective of how it works. How old are your boys?
David: It’s probably true that “Spy Game” was intended for people 10 and under.
Neely: Okay, I see your point. That is a demographic that is not valued a great deal, at least in mainstream television – Nickelodeon, maybe, ABC, probably not.
“Them” was based on the Graphic Novel Six by Michael Oeming & Daniel Berman, but how did the two of you come to collaborate on it?
David: Mac and I went to dinner at La Loggia (Note: this is the same restaurant where Legan and Wilding came up with “The Cell”) and we were just talking and he sprung it on me. He said he was looking for something to do for a pilot and he had gotten a hold of this graphic novel from David Engel, a manager at Circle of Confusion. He’d gotten it into his head that we should write this together. This really shocked me because all I had written up to that time were two stories and one story and teleplay for “Battlestar Galactica.” And here was Mac coming to me and asking me to cowrite a network pilot with him. I was very flattered. We actually pitched this on the phone to Craig Erwich in broad terms and described how we would adapt it; Craig just loved it. I think he just loved the graphic novel. Our whole thing was that we were going to use it as an allegory for this new, present day cold war-esque neighborhood fear; what everyone was feeling – not knowing if those guys down the street were terrorists. I think Craig was literally giddy about that as a metaphor or prism for a sci-fi show that the rest of it, including that I was co-writing it, didn’t matter to him.
That being said, I have to admit that if you were going to take a flyer on someone who hadn’t done a lot of writing and what you wanted to do was a post 9/11 metaphorical sci-fi piece, certainly having done “Battlestar Galactica” gave me street cred.
Neely: I loved the sophistication but this could also be taken at a literal level. Did they get it or did you have to explain it? You’ve already alluded to the answer, in that Craig loved it at the pitch and was enthusiastic about the allegory possibilities. But how much did you have to explain what you wanted to do?
David: I understand why you’re asking because there’s a possible version of this scenario where maybe we went in and pitched a kind of “My Favorite Martian” television show and then sneakily and underhandedly made it a metaphor for post 9/11 paranoia. But the truth is, we wrote what we pitched. We were very excited about the idea that this thing could be addressed as an alien culture that was sent to take over Earth and conduct some sort of clandestine assignment and found themselves, nevertheless, inexplicably falling victim to the creature comforts of our culture. This seemed so amazingly appropriate, timely and exciting for what was happening in the real culture that I think that everybody (meaning Mac and Craig and the people at the network) was just thrilled. That was the objective and that’s what we did.
Neely: That’s a really interesting aside because it dovetails so nicely with the script that was recently featured on the blog entitled “The Cell” which was a satirical look at a cell of terrorists sent to Chicago to blow up a power plant and instead end up so loving the social environment that they become totally integrated into society and have no intention of doing any harm to their new found land.
David: Interesting parallel.
Neely: David, you are a true lover of Sci/Fi and most of what you have written or worked on is in that genre. Isn’t that correct?
David: It’s not correct as regards to where I come from or why I got into the business in the first place, but it is correct that it is the pigeon hole I seem to have been placed in. And as I sit here in my home office surrounded by movie posters from Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese and Bob Fosse films, it’s ironic that science fiction is the thing I’m known for.
Neely: What draws you to the genre? What can you do in Sci/Fi that you can’t do in other genres?
David: If you look at “Battlestar Galactica” or the things I was doing when I was running Sam Raimi’s company, which wasn’t hardcore sci-fi but more cult fantasy with “Xena” or horror with “American Gothic,” or action adventure with “Spy Game,” or some of the other goofy stuff we did, none of it was “CSI” or westerns. It was all pretty much in the vanguard of comic book fare. I think the leap from comic book fantasy and horror to science fiction was easy for the people who came to me with the “Battlestar Galactica” title because it seemed like science fiction and fantasy worked together. I was looking at the opportunity of “Battlestar Galactica” as a chance to make the kind of science fiction that I liked which was not the kind of science fiction that was being made on television. I couldn’t get through an episode of “Star Trek;” I never watched “Andromeda” or “Stargate” and to tell the truth I can’t even name all the sci-fi shows that were on TV; and while I enjoyed science fiction movies like anybody, the big flashy popcorn action films like “Men in Black,” they weren’t really science fiction to me. I wanted to do with “Battlestar” what I had enjoyed about “Blade Runner,” which nobody went to see, or some of the novels I read by Heinlein and Azimoff and Philip K. Dick. It was really an opportunity to use the genre to tell allegorical fiction about our time. This was not a new idea; please, this is an old idea but I didn’t see it happening any more in the genre.
Neely: You mentioned westerns earlier, and I’ve always viewed a lot of these sci-fi shows, even some of the books, as westerns far in the future because oftentimes they have the same characters and same dilemmas. I think if you tear sci-fi down to its roots you will find a western by a different name. They are both, in their own ways, morality plays; sci-fi is generally just a bit more allegorical or certainly more metaphysical. And even though I profess not to be a particular fan of the genre, one of the things that’s especially appealing to me in sci-fi is the portrayal of women, even though it seems to be such a testosterone-driven genre. The female characters are usually exceptionally strong, much stronger than in other contemporary storytelling.
David: I find that to be especially true in “Battlestar” and in “Them,” both of which were born out of partnerships. From my own perspective, I was raised by a single mom and I am eternally fascinated by the female perspective in drama, so when you give me something that is considered to be a sort of muscley genre like science fiction, it’s always been fascinating to me to see what would happen if you plant women in traditionally male roles. That being said, it was Ron Moore’s idea to make Starbuck a female and to make the president of the colonies a woman. But certainly they were among my favorite characters to write when I began writing on the show. And when Mac and I got together on “Them” I probably put in on myself to ask if we wanted to put some focus on the female characters. Mac is like Lee Marvin in a writer’s body, he’s a dude who’s going to write men and they’re going to be really strong and really cool. And I knew I was never going to be able to compete with that, but maybe what I could bring to the table was a view of the other half. So for sure, women are something I’m deeply fascinated with within the genre.
Neely: You mentioned that you took it to Craig Erwich at Fox. Did you take it to anyone else before that or did you have a deal there?
David: No. In fact, much of this had already been teed up before I was even brought into it. Someone, either Mac or Dave Engle from Circle of Confusion, had had these preliminary conversations with Craig prior to our pitch. Craig had read the graphic novel by the time we got on the phone with him; so he knew what it was. He’d read it, he loved it, he knew the players, he knew the officers, he got it. It was an extraordinarily simple pitch.
Neely: In the graphic novel, is the subtext there? Or did you bring the subtext to it?
David: I’ve done a number of adaptations – “Battlestar” was one, “Bionic Woman” was one (in its own way), and I wrote an adaptation of the novel of “Children of Men” for television (which was also adapted as a movie); adaptations are funny animals. I’m doing one right now for HBO based on a graphic novel and I tend to barely glance at the book. I want to know names, I want to get a sense of the structure, I want to know what the big idea is, but I get away from it as fast as I can because I don’t want to be overly affected by it. In the case of “Battlestar” I never actually watched any of the old shows. I had no idea what the old show was.
Neely: I don’t think anyone else did either.
David: As far as the subtext, I don’t know. I tend to think the book wasn’t as intent on telling a metaphorical story about terror cells. I could be wrong about that. I just read it as quickly as I could, got a sense of the big picture ideas and then fleshed it out with Mac without any evidence of the graphic novel in the room or nearby.
Neely: The pilot got made, didn’t it?
David: Yes it did.
Neely: Were you happy with the cast? With the director?
David: I loved the director, Jonathan Mostow. At the time I was doing another pilot for NBC that I didn’t write but that I had put together as a producer and I was not happy at all with the creative gathering that was taking place on that one. I was going between Universal and CBS Radford and every time I got to Radford, I was like Dorothy opening the door and everything was in color. I would feel so happy and so at home and everything was awesome. Jonathan directed this like a 1960s paranoia Frankenheimer thriller like “Manchurian Candidate” or “The Seven Days in May.” There was a point at which we were arguing with the studio about the set and the cost of building the set was higher than normal because we needed to have a ceiling. The studio couldn’t understand why we needed a ceiling because no one ever used a ceiling; and the answer was that in order to create the kind of paranoid mood Jonathan wanted he needed cameras to be very low to the ground and they needed to use very wide angle lenses – meaning you were going to see the ceiling.
Neely: Very claustrophobic.
David: Exactly. I was so happy to work with a director who had a vision, who had a film language reference that was very deep and varied. I did feel our cast was very strong, but as I look back, I don’t thing we really nailed it. I think we may have come off as a little too cold, too sterile and distant, and a bit too much of an odd “think” piece. In a way, kind of like the graphic novel was. The allegorical nature didn’t poke through as much as it should have. It wasn’t the kind of scary “Oh my god, they’re talking about terrorists, not aliens.” There were some things that didn’t come through and I don’t think it was directing and I sure hope it wasn’t the script. I think we probably needed to cast it a little differently.
Neely: Did this get close to getting picked up?
David: It was terribly close. We had Craig saying “As God is my witness, this is going to be on the schedule.” I think he meant it, I don’t think he was bullshitting. There was a tremendous amount of support for it; it was back and forth and back and forth and back and forth; it got recut and recut and recut trying to get better picks. I know that it was just one of those things where the people at the network who had been involved in its development were terribly in support of it and willing to throw themselves on grenades to get it done. Those who had not been involved in its development but knew about it were kind of going “What the hell is wrong with you people?” They thought it was just weird. In television sometimes you get on the schedule anyway because they’re willing to take a flyer – and sometimes not. I know that at that time they were in discussions about Peter Liguouri moving upstairs and Kevin Reilly coming over. There were internal discussions obviously taking place about management shifts and maybe if that hadn’t been happening we might have gotten on. In that unstable atmosphere I don’t think they were going to take a flyer on something they thought was so obscure.
Neely: I looked up what Fox put on the air in the 2007-2008 broadcast season, and they premiered 2 dramas – “Prison Break,” which was a hit and “K-Ville,” which wasn’t. Pity.
Digressing for a moment into something trivial – Ezekial is always eating pie. What is that supposed to reveal or indicate? Is it a humorous reference to “eating to forget,” “eating because you’re depressed,” “eating because you’re happy,” “eating because you’re bored” (as you can see I’m an expert on this topic) or he just likes pie?
David: Mac might have had different perspective on this one, but as I recall, and it may have actually been in the graphic novel, it was just to have a random addiction – the more random the better in order to make the point that it wasn’t necessarily to be about any particular idea. It was just to be the notion that we have things on Planet Earth that are yummy and good and fun and if you didn’t have the mechanism to control yourself you might become addicted to that. Pie was just silly and arbitrary and worked.
Neely: Are there any other plans for this brilliant script? Do you have the rights to make a feature, because it would make a fabulous feature? Could you interest Fox in giving you back those rights or working with you on a feature project?
David: We actually haven’t discussed this. Mac went off to do “In Plain Sight” and I went off to “Caprica,” and neither of us has even had two minutes to think about what new we might do next or when or if we’ll work together again; I like to think that Mac and I will. I hadn’t really thought much about the pilot until you called me wanting to talk about “Them.” It reminded me that it got a lot of people’s attention and that doesn’t happen very often. Maybe it is worth kicking the tires again whether it’s remaking the pilot or trying to get the right topic for a feature.
Neely: Well, of course, one of the primary reasons I started the blog was how frustrated I am that you can write something fantastic and if it doesn’t get on the air that year it’s dead forever, unlike the situation in feature films. You worked on “The Philanthropist” which NBC touted as the first (of what was supposed to be many) international co-financed co-production. “Them” seems like the perfect international co-production. If you can’t get it back on the air here, go to the rights holder and say “Hey, let’s set this up with an international partner, either with German television (they’re wild about sci-fi) or even British TV – do this over there and make it a hit over there as an English language production and bring it back. Or do it as a co-production in New Zealand or Australia (and then you could hire Cliff Curtis as Cain who was so ill-used on “Trauma”).
David: It’s so funny that you mention Cliff Curtis. When I was working for Sam Raimi we saw a New Zealand movie called “Once Were Warriors” starring Cliff Curtis and from that film we cast him as a Centaur in “Hercules,” which we were filming in New Zealand. And he was magnificent, if you can imagine using that word when referring to “Hercules” – but he was it. Anyway, one of the reasons that really prevented us from pursuing Fox was because Kevin Reilly was the guy who came in and ultimately made the decision not to pick up “Them.” So it’s sort of feels like a well we’ve already been to. I kind of feel that we’re going to need a different regime at Fox or do a feature or take it to a different network. Going back to Fox would be a non-starter. There were a brief series of meetings with Kevin and his new team to talk about remaking the pilot, and Mac did a rewrite to try to accommodate their notes but it just withered and died. So, that’s why not Fox. But somewhere else…sure.
Neely: You probably have to go to Fox first because they produced the pilot and own all of the rights, but go to them and say “here’s what we want to do; we want to take it someplace else, you’ll have an ownership interest, it won’t reflect on you if it fails and it will reflect on you if it succeeds. Why don’t you let us try this; let us do something different here.”
David: I think that at the times when Mac and I could have brought it up we were just too crazy busy to get into a deeper conversation. Mac is steelier and more inclined to say “No, dammit, we failed so let’s take our failure like men. Don’t go sniveling backwards and begging them to give you another chance to fail again.” Whereas I’m much more pathetic. I’m more inclined to say “Oh come on, let’s just ask one more time. Are you sure you don’t want this?”
Neely: But it wasn’t a failure. It just wasn’t the new team’s vision. That happens with features all the time. But in any case, NBC’s idea of co-financing co-productions with an international company was a good idea; they just didn’t know how to do it, or they picked the wrong project. At the root, it’s a very good idea. Present this idea to your agent, Paul Haas; he’s one of the best in the biz. Let him sell it.
David: When Mac comes up for air, I’m sure this will be one of the first conversations we have.
Neely: How did you get started in TV and what propelled you to the next level?
David: Two key things happened. First I got a job as an assistant to Richard Lindheim who was the number two executive at Universal Network TV back in 1990. This was during Kerry McCluggage’s regime. I got to go to all the meetings and meet everybody and second, two of the people I got to meet were Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert who had just done this movie called “Darkman” which the TV side of Universal thought could invoke a television sensibility so they signed Sam and Rob to a TV deal. Soon after, Kerry and Dick, my boss departed for Paramount and Dick sort of left me on Sam and Rob’s doorstep on the way out. Sam and Rob knew me and they had this new TV deal and they agreed to let me spearhead launching a new company. All of a sudden I was thrown in the deep end of the Sam Raimi pool and that was the next key thing that happened to me. From there, 6 years later, I left to do a Kamakazi experiment and run development for USA Network and the SciFi Channel under Steven Chao and Barry Diller. But in that 6 year period with Sam and Rob we put 6 shows on the air. So before I became an executive, I’d had a lot of producing experience under my belt thanks to Sam and Rob. I was an executive for about 2 ½ years and hated it and went back to producing. That was when David Kissinger talked to me about “Battlestar Galactica”
Neely: You mean you started as an assistant and moved from there to running Sam Raimi’s company?
David: Sam and Rob were Indie filmmakers and they didn’t know the bureaucracy. Where they came from in Detroit, if you wanted to be a producer you produced. You don’t spend 7 years getting coffee, you just do it. So their philosophy to me was “If you want to do it, then do it. Go out find something, get something together and we’ll produce it.” So I did. I find it a shame that the entrepreneurial spirit of that environment doesn’t exist more often. I suppose there’s a place for hierarchy and NBC pages and PAs, but there’s something to be said about being shoved into an editing room and being told you can’t come out until you make the pilot work. It was a great opportunity, a great experience. We got a lot of stuff on, not all of it good, but we got stuff on and I learned how to be a producer while I was being a producer.
Neely: David Kissinger gave you “Battlestar.” Was that as a production executive or as a writer?
David: I had just left USA and SciFi as an executive, and in planning to leave I spoke to David and told him my intentions. Having known me as a producer long before I became an exec, he very kindly helped orchestrate the transition of my exec deal back into a producing deal. But the pilot I did with Shawn Cassidy didn’t end up on the air. So here I was, out of a job and the phone rang and it was David. He said, “Someday you’ll look back on this conversation and remember that it got you your house in the south of France.” I didn’t know what he was talking about and he proceeded to tell me that they had had this crash and burn experience with Bryan Singer at Fox where they had tried to do an update of “Battlestar Galactica.” There was a script but that Gail (Berman) didn’t like it, and Bryan had to leave the project and go do “X-Men 2.” Was I interested in taking it over?” I said “Yes and no. Yes I’d like to take over developing the title and no I’m not interested in that script.” And he said, “Fine, I don’t care. We’ll do it in house, move it to SciFi instead of Fox. Gail let it go, so have at it.” And so I set about looking for a writer and the rest is history. That was a great opportunity.
Neely: At what point did you decide you wanted to write?
David: I had developed a couple of pilots, but I always felt it was my obligation as an executive and producer that when I got a writer in the room I needed to have an idea, a property, or something that I could pitch to the writer, not the other way around. I was always looking through magazine articles, personality profiles, newspaper stories and I would hire writers; but I found that they just didn’t do it or want to do it the way I wanted to do it. At a certain point my agent Paul called me and said “Dude, you’ve got to stop bitching and moaning. If you want to be that specific or that exacting about how you want to do something, then do it yourself.” I spoke to my partner Ron Moore and said I wanted to write an episode and we agreed that probably the best way to approach it was for me to write a story first and have someone else do the teleplay. I did that the first year of “Battlestar” and the next year I wrote a full episode, and then the next year another one. I developed “Bionic Woman” and wrote one of those; and then I co-wrote “Them” with Mac.
Neely: What an unusual journey. Why did you want to be in this crazy business in the first place?
David: I saw “Dirty Harry” when I was 7 years old and it completely traumatized me. The only way my Mom was able to calm me down was to explain that they were just pretending; and something about the idea that you could pretend for a living was like shooting a bullet into my forehead. From there I became an actor and I directed theater in college. I graduated from the University of Redlands which was the only school in Southern California I could get into. My first job, as I mentioned previously, was with Dick Lenheim at Universal TV. I knew a lot about theater and a lot about films, but I didn’t know shit about TV. But he hired me anyway and that was my break.
Neely: Now you’re on “Caprica,” correct?
David: Yeah, my new show is “Caprica” the prequel to “Battlestar.” They’ve aired the first half and will air the second half sometime in the Fall or in the Winter; we don’t know yet. There’s much discussion about season 2.
Neely: Are you showrunning “Caprica”?
David: Yes, but I’m not the head writer. When “Caprica” was starting up, I was the head writer/showrunner of “The Philanthropist.” Katherine (Pope), who had brought me on to replace Tom Fontana, was then replaced (actually re-replaced) by Angela Bromstad who was the exec who had originally bought the show from Tom. Angela came to me and said “Look, you’ve got your own show on the air and Tom’s got his show, which you are doing, why don’t you just go and do your show and let Tom come back and do his show.” And I said fine. I’m on a deal here so it kind of doesn’t matter which show I’m working on. It made sense for me to do my own show as opposed to an inherited one. Tom came back to “The Philanthropist” and I went back to “Caprica”…
Neely: And you got the better deal.
David: And on “Caprica” we already had a writing apparatus in place.
Neely: Is Ron Moore also on “Caprica”?
David: He is. He has been busy lately writing movies so we didn’t work together in quite the same way as we did on “Battlestar.” The important thing was that he was there at the beginning, co-wrote the pilot with Remi Aubuchon, and directed one of the early episodes. Ron was very involved in the genesis.
Neely: What are you working on now?
David: I’m working on another pilot called “Awakening” for HBO. Guillermo del Toro and I are co-writing the story and I’m going to write the teleplay.
Neely: David, I really appreciate you taking the time with me. I know that you worked hard to fit me into your schedule and please thank you assistant Tara for helping to make it happen. Good luck on your pilot and please give John my best regards.
