JULY 5, 2007

BLOWING STUFF UP IS COOL

We shot the pilot for Burn Notice over 17 days in November and December of 2006. Three weeks into the shooting, I got a call from the studio announcing that they wanted me to pitch some "backup scripts." I said "Great! What's a backup script?" They explained that they're scripts written to accompany a completed pilot. The network looks at them and sees how the show would work from week to week. It's part of the pilot pickup process. In a roundabout way, they said "these are the scripts that will determine whether your show gets picked up."

Although they ultimately wanted three backup scripts, first I had to send them story pitches. They explained that they needed them more or less immediately, and that I should hire another writer – did I have anyone I liked? As it turned out, at the time I was good friends with exactly one TV drama writer with big series credits: Alfredo Barrios. As luck would have it, his series had been cancelled the week before. Alfredo already knew the show since he had given me notes on the pilot plus the studio and network liked him...we were able to hire him the next day.

Meanwhile, I had to run off and come up with ideas for backup scripts. I went to my trailer (or, technically, my third of a trailer – it's a cable show, remember) and came up with three ideas, which we sent in to the Network. They picked their two favorites, and as soon as I was done with the pilot I jumped right into writing the shows.

We went to the Coffee Gallery café in Altadena, which graciously let us commandeer their back room – the first iteration of the Burn Notice writer's room.

I had written the pilot over the course of about a year and a half. A new experience, to be sure, but I had a while to climb the learning curve. Now I had three weeks to write my first-ever episode of television, at the same time we were editing and doing post-production on the pilot. My third child, Matthew, who was born during the pilot, was doing the newborn thing. And my other two children, Charlie and Esme, had been without me for a month on the pilot and needed some serious daddy time.

This was actually a perfect introduction to the world of television. Take a reasonable amount of work, double it, double it again, add some more work, and that's what it's like.

I have to say, though, it was fun discovering how an episode of "Burn Notice" would work. Getting into the characters more, exploring more detailed stories. In the pilot, we had to spend so much time on the spy business, there wasn't a whole lot of time to spend with the client or the bad guy. Now we needed to get into how a "case of the week" would work.

"Identity" grew out of a couple of things. I have long been fascinated with con artists as well as spies. As Michael says in the episode, they do a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same skills. They just do what they do for different reasons. I liked the idea of putting Michael up against a con artist and seeing if he could beat the guy at his own game. I also wanted to do something that would really demonstrate the difference between Michael and the average P.I. or cop. Michael's not interested in getting the guy busted by the police. That would be easy. He wants his client's money back. That's a much, much harder (and more interesting) thing to do.

Shooting the episode was a pleasure. Jeff Donovan got to do, for the first time, something he does a lot on the show – impersonate someone. He leapt in with both feet, and did a fantastic job. It's sort of breathtaking, watching him. He shows up, says "I'm gonna do it this way, is that cool?" and then he just GOES. Wow.

Mark Pellegrino, who plays Quentin, had come in for the role of Michael on the pilot, and gave a great read. I'm a big "Dexter" fan, as well, and loved his work on that show. I think he nailed the character, turning him into someone who could be charming one moment, dangerous the next, cool and then enraged. Rod Hardy, the director, did an amazing job, and sacrificed his knee for the show – we wanted to have him back for another episode, but he had to get surgery after nearly killing himself to make "Identity."

One of my favorite things about this episode was the opportunity to hook up Sam and Fiona and have them interact. They never meet in the pilot, so exploring their history was really fun. Putting Bruce and Gabrielle in the same scene for the first time was GREAT. It was like they'd been acting together for years.

We also got to spend some more time with Madeline. She had sort of a thankless role in the pilot, so it was great to be able to give her more to do. Sharon Gless is an amazing actress, and through her we get to explore where Michael got some of his skills, as well as his difficulty dealing with interpersonal relationships.

I have two favorite moments in the episode. The first is the scene between Michael and Quentin where he gets Quentin's account numbers. Watching those two play off each other was just amazing. I wrote a lot of that scene right before they played it, scribbling it on a piece of paper. They took my handwritten rewrite of the scene, memorized it in about three minutes, and then jumped right in. Fantastic.

My other favorite moment in the episode was when Sam unwittingly blows up the car. Bruce was a little unclear how big the explosion was going to be, asking before we shot "Am I going to know when it blows?" The director called action, he dialed the phone, and BOOM – the explosion was HUGE. Bruce's performance in the scene was helped a lot, I think, by the fact that the explosion startled the hell out of him.

Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better experience with my first episode of TV. And the moral of this blog is: don't be afraid to surprise your actors, especially when explosions are involved. It's genius.