JULY 16, 2006
THE INSIDE MAN
Hi! Shawn here, again, for my weekly blog.
The script for our episode "Inside Man" was originally titled "Objects of Faith" after the name of the museum exhibition. I'm not sure why we changed the title, but then Spike Lee's "Inside Man" movie came out which I thought was awesome. I don't think that had anything to do with our changing the name, other than we liked Johnny having to use his powers in a way we hadn't seen before where he literally has to become part of a team of thieves and, on faith of his powers, jump in to risk his life to save Purdy and keep him from getting hurt.
We hadn't really done a robbery-type episode in this way before. In Season One, we did an episode called "Siege" which was sort of a "Dog Day Afternoon" hostage bank situation where Johnny basically tries to keep Sarah from getting killed, keep people from dying and keep himself alive.
"Inside Man" is another robbery situation, but we take it to the next level: Johnny's literally having to pretend to be someone else. And, because all the thieves were not known to each other, the premise was uniquely interesting for Johnny and his powers.
I think that the thing I love about Johnny and Purdy is their relationship, both in terms of their faith in each other and how they need each other, but also in terms of how much Johnny always cuts Purdy some slack. Johnny is constantly being surprised and disappointed by Purdy, but he ultimately forgives him for what he's done, because Johnny has faith in Purdy's good intentions and Purdy's core goodness. Purdy is the kind of guy that believes that sometimes the end justifies the means, and Johnny -- as a good friend as almost a son -- has to call him on his crap a lot.
Purdy is such a great character because you never know what he's up to and the lengths he'll go for certain things. I think meeting Johnny has been a real crisis of faith for him, someone who is confronted with a divine being face-to-face. I think, if any of us were ever truly faced with someone like that, it would challenge our beliefs and cause us either to doubt or to truly accept our faith.
Purdy has done a lot of things in the series for himself and for his organization. I think he has a lot of guilt and a lot of secrets and, like all men in power, has made compromises for the greater good or for his own sake to get where he is today. That carries a lot of weight and guilt and generates basic regrets. The idea that Purdy engineered this exhibit in order to obtain this little relic for himself, for his own personal use, seemed to make sense and sort of exemplified Purdy's willingness to bend the rules to suit his own interests when he could justify it.
Suddenly, when you see the big guys at Enron or other television evangelists as just regular guys, you and I can relate to those moments in our own lives when our faith is tested, or when we're faced with a choice. This relic is a temptation that was put in front of Purdy that he just wasn't strong enough to resist.
But, ultimately, Johnny helped him make the right decision to help someone from this foreign community that really needed this artifact as a symbol of what they believed in, what they had risked and what they had lost. In the end, I think, Purdy is redeemed and, as always, Johnny helps him with that.
There's another great episode toward the end of the season called "Revelations" which brings Johnny and Purdy even closer. In it, we will learn more about Purdy's backstory and their faith will be tested in a way that we haven't seen before. I just enjoy those two characters.
When David Ogden Stiers and Anthony Michael Hall get to be in conflict, get to be in all those scenes together, it's just so much fun to make, so much fun to edit and so much fun to watch.
Our production designer Lance King -- along with myself and Robert Petrovicz and the director Michael Robison -- spent a lot of time working on the design of that museum set, the design of the glass case and all of the bits and pieces that have to go together to engineer not only the plot of the theft, but how someone would go in and break into this case, how they would disguise themselves in firemen's outfits, and how the jaws of life -- which is something firemen use -- wouldn't look suspicious being taken into a building. Ultimately, this became sort of a way to do a robbery in plain sight of everyone.
Karl Schaefer, who wrote the episode, along with Tommy, spent a lot of time trying to figure out the timing of all the different realities, as Johnny is making small changes and then getting a vision and making more small changes. So, there was a lot of attention paid to the details and the sets, the props, the set decoration and the elements of the robbery, with Johnny at the center of each of those elements.
Seeing how changing one detail could have a different outcome in terms of what happened and what Johnny had to do next, the Prop Department, Set Dec, Production Design, and Construction -- as well as the director, the writers and all the producers -- had to really work in lock step to make sure all the pieces were available that told the story we needed to tell. So, there were lots of detailed meetings on all of those elements.
Most of the episode took place on the stage in that one set, but we obviously went to other locations that sort of felt like they were connected to our main exhibition room set (but in reality they were in other buildings). The things we built were, obviously, the major exhibition room and the control room with all the monitors, but a lot of the hallways were practical. The exhibit hall was pretty much half of one of our big sound stages and we filled it with every different type of religious artifact from various periods in history; Lance and the art directors did a lot of research on this set, trying to give a fully rounded tribute to belief and religion and faith to deserve its title "Objects of Faith."
Until next week,
Shawn Piller
Executive Producer
Past Entries:
- (7/9) Articles of Faith
- (7/2) Panic
- (6/25) Independence Day
- (6/18) Forbidden Fruit
