411 Movies Interview: The David Eick Interview
Posted by Al Norton on 10.12.2007
Two Tivos To Paradise talks with David Eick, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, and The Gathering, a four hour mini-series debuting this weekend on Lifetime.
David Eick is the executive producer of the upcoming Lifetime mini-series The Gathering, the NBC series Bionic Woman, and the Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica. Recently he took time out of his clearly busy schedule to discuss his many projects and the current landscape of television.
TTTP: How did you come to The Gathering and how did it end up on Lifetime?
DE: It was a pilot called Coven that was an idea I had on an airplane going back and forth to Vancouver during the first or second season of Battlestar Galactica. I was spending a lot of time on planes and when you do that, you're spending a lot less time with your family, and I sort of fantasized about the oddity of my life. You go from being a Dad, a husband, living in a house, having two dogs – the picture of domesticity – one week, and then the next I'd be in a foreign country, living in a condominium, responsible for my own laundry (laughs), my own meals…it was surreal, this feeling of having this sort of duel life.
I started thinking about that one night, wondering what if you woke up one morning and your spouse was gone, but it wasn't planned like these trips were all planned, it was a total surprise with no signs of foul play and no Dear John letter…a complete and utter mystery. And what if you eventually found out the person you were sleeping next to was not the person you thought they were all those years.
I've always been a fan of horror, and movies like the Exorcist and Rosemarie's Baby, which introduce horror into an otherwise exceedingly normal everyday life. An environment that feels very accessible, very much like our own, to strip the viewer of the ability to distant themselves…You're not in the creepy mountains, you're not in the dark woods, you're not walking into the haunted house…You're not watching characters do something you wouldn't do, you're in fact watching them do things you do every day….
TTTP: Making it that much scarier.
DE: Right, and it becomes traumatic as opposed to cathartic and not as much fun, and I love it! I love how not fun those movies are. They are fun, but in a different way.
The notion was, can you do a naturalistic horror tale about a witch coven in New York City that's responsible for this family being torn apart because they didn't know each other as well as they though?
We (Eick and writer John Shiban) both had a lot of fun with the paranoia, talking about how there's a small part of you that always kinds of wonders if you know your spouse as well as you think, that kind of stuff. We wrote it as a one hour pilot for NBC and they loved it…but it just didn't fit the profile for what the network was going to do that year, and in an act of rather uncharacteristic generosity for a major studio, they gave it back to me…Maria Grasso is a friend of mine who's in charge of drama development at Lifetime and she told me, "at Lifetime we are looking to do something that presents a male protagonist at the center of it, because we haven't done a lot of that stuff", and this sounded like it was a woman's story, told from a man's point of view…Although they didn't think they could do it as a pilot, they thought they could do it as a mini-series…
TTTP: Is it easier to get big name talent to do a mini-series than a regular series, since the commitment is less?
DE: I went through this a little bit on Battlestar Galactica, which began as a mini-series, because it is a different list of names, so it affords you some opportunities and possibilities you wouldn't have otherwise, but ultimately it's other people's jobs to think in terms of strategic casting…I've always tended to think in terms of who's right for the role. In this case I was very pleased with the entirety of the cast. It really was something that came together organically, I never felt like we were being forced into considering anybody who wouldn't be right for the role.
TTTP: It's just hard to imagine Peter Fonda (who appears in The Gathering) doing a series.
DE: Well, I don't know. If The Gathering is a success, and the network decides it wants more of them in some other form, maybe we end up having that conversation with Mr. Fonda.
TTTP: Is that on the table?
DE: As far as I'm concerned, it's always on the table. If it's a success, and the network feels like there's an opportunity, whether that opportunity is another four hour installment, or a two hour movie, or maybe episodes in a series…There's always that possibility when something's a success. You never want to rule any of it out.
TTTP: Why do you think we're seeing so much more science fiction and supernatural programming on TV right now?
DE: It's funny, when we starting working on the development of The Gathering, one of the first things I had us do was a top sheet that would introduce to the reader what we're trying to accomplish with this, that it really was not just to be another scary movie or Halloween film but something that was in the spirit of 70's films that were really about reflecting our times back at us. About paranoia, about distrust, about not being sure you know everything you think you know about your family, your neighbors, your friends…And there's something in the culture right now that is distrusting and that is a little paranoid and afraid. There's a lot of fear in the culture right now and those are the moments in time when storytelling that somehow gives a voice to that tends to flourish.
In the 60's and 70's you did see a sort of upswing in horror, thrillers, violent crime films…Movies that may have been about a serial killer but in their own way were more…Pauline Kael wrote a devastating piece about how Little Big Man was really about Viet Nam and when you watch it with that in mind, you realize it's sort of a comic yarn with Dustin Hoffman but it really has this undercurrent of "what does it mean to be human" to it…You don't realize at the time always but a lot of these things are allegorical and I do think there's a lot of horror and supernatural and science fiction right now in part because the country's at war, there is a lot of civic and political unrest, and people are afraid.
TTTP: Switching gears to another of your current projects, Bionic Woman, did NBC bring it to you or did it just kind of happen?
DE: It was a rather unorthodox route. I knew the pilot was sitting there, that no one had figured out a way to crack it. There had been several attempts at the USA Network to sort of update it, remake it …That was a few years ago…I had been noodling on this idea about a female anti-hero in the spirit of Tony Soprano, to see if you could tell a story from the female point of view. I developed the pilot and that didn't really go anywhere but I was still stuck on this idea of, "can you tell a traditionally male story from a female point of view? Are the rules different for girls?" I started thinking instead of doing this as an anti-hero, maybe do it as a straight ahead hero, thinking, "can you do Peter Parker as a girl?" The unwitting, callow youth who has suddenly imposed upon them these incredible powers that they then have to decide what to do with. And that's when it occurred to me to wrap that around the title Bionic Woman, and that seemed to get everyone excited.
TTTP: Any chance we will see a Lindsay Wagner cameo?
DE: (Laughs) No immediate plans for it.
TTTP: Did you have any idea the press storm that would occur when Isaiah Washington was cast?
DE: The honest answer is, when you make these television shows, you tend to not have a lot of time to watch other television shows. Honestly, I knew there was some controversy because someone had told me, but I didn't know what it was, and I didn't really care because I figured the network was very excited about him so whatever he did must not have been that bad. Then I saw his reel and realized I recognized him from movies I had seen and thought he was a sensational actor. Only after deciding I was really excited about him, and I think I had met with him – had dinner with him – only then did I go on the internet to find out, "what the hell did this guy say anyway?"
By the time I figured it out it - it obviously wasn't the smartest thing in the world to say -but he was obviously duly reprimanded for it, and it didn't really seem like it required any more comment.
TTTP: Right, because by the time you knew the story, you knew the person.
DE: To me it was, "this guy is sensational". He's a fantastic actor who's going to lend an element of gravitas and depth to the show, which is what I believe the show needs to break out of its title.
TTTP: The original press reports were that he was going to do 5 episodes. Is that something that has been extended?
DE: We're still discussing that now. There's no update on that just yet.
TTTP: Switching up yet again, has there been any final call on the scheduling of the final season of Battlestar Galactica?
DE: Not that I know of. I'm not always privy to the decisions they make.
TTTP: Any update on the status of Caprica (the BSG spin off that is in development at Sci-Fi)?
DE: No. Ron Moore and I are still waiting patiently for some encouraging news on that front. I know it's still a consideration of theirs and they haven't moved off of it, but I don't have any updates on that either, unfortunately.
TTTP: Not that you don't have enough going on but are there other projects on the horizon?
DE: There are several pilots in development at the networks, one of which I am writing, but we're waiting for an announcement about that stuff so I don't want to tip my hand too much…I am happy to say though that one of the more high profile projects now in development at NBC is another sort of re-imagining, and I am anxious to make that announcement.
TTTP: Can you give me the decade the show is from?
DE: (Laughing) No, I can't.
TTTP: When you got started did you see yourself in TV or did you think you wanted to do movies?
DE: I always wanted to produce movies…I just happen to fall into it (television). The first job I got was in this particular medium and so I chose to make the most out of it. Growing up I was a real move brat. I immersed myself in that culture and didn't really watch TV much at all.
TTTP: I'm not used to hearing people say they wanted to produce. I'm used to hearing that people want to direct, to star, to write.
DE:…I've always loved the process of standing behind the director, looking through the monitor after he's already made his choices, and then telling him everything he did wrong (laughing). That I can do.
TTTP: Obviously you go into every project wanting it to do well but did you have any idea the way fans would latch on to Battlestar Galactica with such passion, that it would be so embraced by so many people?
DE: No, I think we were really genuinely shocked…We knew we were doing something a little unusual and we knew we were doing something unexpected. Doing the unexpected is the thing for me; more than genre, more than sci-fi, it's, "how do you cut right when they expect you to go left?" That's the interesting thing to me. So if you're doing Battlestar Galactica and everyone remembers it as a kind of goofy, escapist good time, than do it a nihilistic piece about the human condition in the aftermath of a holocaust (laughing). If I were going to adapt The Prisoner, maybe I'd do it in a light hearted, Fletch kind of way. It's all about the cutting against the grain and against expectation that interests me.
Don't miss Bionic Woman on Wednesdays on NBC, and The Gathering, which premieres in two parts this Saturday and Sunday at 9 on Lifetime.
