Post by Forever Xena on Sept 7, 2005 6:08:31 GMT -6
Fandom.Com interviews Ira Behr. Below are the transcripted parts relevant to The 4400. Ira also talks about his work on DS9 and the radio interview lasts for 80 minutes.
IB:People ask me how the 4400 is the same as DS9 and I say 'Because you never know, tuning in, what you're gonna get.'
Fandom:Right
IB: So I think that's kinda...
Fandom: Absolutely. For those DS9 fans out there that are not familiar with the 4400 in detail, you absolutely have to watch it. That's all there is to it. As you know, Ira being emmy nominated. It's for a very good reason. This show's been called fantastic, mesmorizing, captivating, out of this world. It's such groundbreaking wonderful stuff, in terms of it's subject matter and I guess we can skip right to that. Tell me how all that came about. How your involvement came about. The birth of the 4400.
IB: I wouldn't call it fascinating, but Renee called me up and said 'Hey! How'd you like to have an easy job for a couple of months. I'm gonna be running this show and I need someone who I can talk things over with and you can do your kind of, conciallary thing. And it's gonna be simple, you know?
Fandom: Right.
IB: Simple job. Simple, simple, simple.
Fandom: Oh sure, right Renee.
IB: So I said, yeah ok. We talking two months here, or something? And he said, yeah, yeah, something like that. Maybe three, but that's it, you know. Finite. It's just a mini series. So of course, after I said yes, he left the show and suddenly I was running it and suddenly the hour pilot. Well I guess I knew this going in, but the hour pilot, had to be turned into a two hour pilot and suddenly all this stuff started to be shrapnel, started to fill the air and I'm going, what the hell is going on here? This was supposed to be my laid back, waiting for something choice to come along and now suddenly I'm in the trenches big time. So that we all, that is literally how it came to be. But then it became the challenge of writing the two hour. Getting the two hour to the point where it would be accepted by the network. Then work on the other four episodes and get the go ahead on that. So it was always steps, steps, steps, steps. So we took all these steps and at one point we had these weird deadlines like, they had to greenlight the four episodes on a specific day. So we had to have all four scripts, the other four scripts, ready after the pilot, for them to see by a certain day. At one point, Craig Sweeny and I were working on four scripts at once. Doing rewrites. Juggling all these scripts to get them to the network, so they could say yes or no and they said yes. So we did the six episodes and the rest is, you know...
Fandom: That's fabulous.
IB: 4400 history I guess.
Fandom: Yeah, and then some. So really, was it just intended to be a mini series? I'm sure the network had ideas that it would go further than that at the beginning.
IB: Yes, but you know, it's always, everything's done with a strong motor of fear attached to it. So they were like, you know, you have to write a two hour that could stand alone.
Fandom: Right.
IB: Just in case we don't go forward with the four episodes. So it's like, ok, we're gonna write scenes that are never gonna get filmed, so we're gonna have to waste our time doing that. And of course it would have been awful if they had just done it as a two hour. We would have had this mickey mouse ending. Suddenly it all ends. Then it was, 'Ok, it's gonna be a six hour miniseries.' What if it doesn't move forward? You've gotta give a way, a big ending, a big surprise.
Fandom: But what if it does move forward. It can't be too big a surprise.
IB: That's what I kept saying. Cut us at least a little slack. But that's television.
Fandom: I remember
IB: The biggest difference I find between the 4400 and let's say DS9 or Dark Angel or whatever, is that, I'm amazed at how many people, who are not genre people, watch the 4400. People who don't watch space opera, science fiction, who would, who don't give much of a hoot about the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or any of that stuff. The 4400 seemed to strike a cord with what they call more mainstream, whatever that means, tv viewer.
Fandom: Right.
IB: So that's kinda nice.
Fandom: Because it's Earthbound scifi?
IB: Well, not just because it's Earthbound, but because, I think at it's heart it's a story about people and it's character driven and it's about family. There's a lot of room for the audience to kind of connect with the characters and understand what they're going through. Whether they have abilities or not. So in that sense, it's been a lot of fun and with all the nice story moves that we're making...In the last episode, I have to tell you, people are going to get blown away by the amount of things we leave dangling. The questions we raise, the ideas we raise. I mean, we had to end the episode, we're now a five act show. We had to end the episode at the end of act three, more or less. Cos we needed two acts, just to wrap up all the storylines and come up with the holy mother funga thing. When you then go, 'Oh damn! I didn't see that one coming' And then two seconds later, 'Wait! Wait! Who's that? Who's that? Who's that standing naked? Hold on now. He did what?' It's one after the other. 'Who's that? This is gonna happen? What does that mean?' So it's vast. And the fact that the network is letting us do it. I have to take my hat off to USA, cos we're getting away with stuff, that's very difficult to get away with on network television, in terms of how we tell the story. And how we kind of, play with the franchise. So in that sense, it's been a very, very creative experience. It's nowhere near as fun, let me just make this clear. It's been nowhere near as fun as DS9 and I don't go to work with the same enthusiasm. For one reason, we shoot up in Vancouver and I'm down in LA, so I can't come down to the set and hug people. So that is a big difference. Huge difference. We're stuck in this office and we never get the hell out of the office. So it's a little disconnnected. But in terms of the creative juice. In terms of the feeling of, 'Am I wasting my time? Am I just earning a paycheck? Is this gonna last? Will people watch this five years down the line? Four years down the line? Three years down the line? Ten years down the line? I can at least fool myself into believing that the answer is yes. As opposed to being on a tv show with something like Dr Vegas, where you know you're just doing disposable television.
Fandom: Right.
IB: Like so much of it. Like, the mass of mediocrity. It really makes you feel bad. You know.
Fandom: What blows me away consistently, as I watch, is the character growth. And you have really hit the ground running, I think, with the first episode. With setting people up with room and ability to grow in their characters. Diana, from where she started out being all business and now her motherhood to Maia. Lily and Richard have gone through so much gorgeous stuff. And now of course, Kyle, which is keeping us all on the edge of our seats. How is it working with the actors? Do you have much back and forth with them? They're filling out your work, so beautifully.
IB: Yeah, we have great people and they're all doing such great stuff. And this year, Patrick Flueger, who play's Shawn, is just doing some great stuff and Joel is just doing absolutely great stuff. And Jeff Coles. I'm back with my boy, Jeff. The only DS9 actor, who I actually go to movies with and dinner with and I actually hang out with. I feel like I'm in the midst of this whirlwind kind of a thing. And it just started out this way, cos it was just a six hour miniseries. We are what I call an accelerated TV series. We have done now, 19 episodes, right? That's it! 19 episodes. Not even a full season. 13 this year. 6 last year. And yet, I feel like we're on episode 40, because we've moved the characters so far. We've changed things, we've mixed things up. We've revealed things. I feel like the show is on this accelerated, kind of 21st century pace, you know.
Fandom: Right, it absolutely is.
IB: And that feels a little odd, in a way, because everything just seems hyper. You watch an episode and it moves...
Fandom: It moves so quickly.
IB: It moves so quickly. There are so many scenes. One of the big problems we've had production wise, is just getting the godamn show shot, cos we usually have so many storylines going on per episode, so many different locations, and to cram it all into 41 and a half minutes, which is the only reason I wish I was on HBO, or on Showtime, to have ten more minutes to be able to tell a godamn story. To get it all into 41 and a half minutes, is nigh on impossible. There is no time for chuffa, what we call chuffa. There is no dead air scenes. There are no connective tissue scenes and I have to tell you, I watch the show with my kids, cos it's the first show I've done now my kids are old enough to really follow it closely and really get into it. And so I'm watching it as if I'm watching it with an audience, cos my daughter is 17, my son is 13 and so they're adults. They're becoming adults. I see how this thing just kind of hit's them in a wave and they're holding onto their seats like, turning to me and going 'Dad! When does it stop?' So I understand this is not a show in order to sit back, take your shoes off and go to sleep. Or talk on the telephone or go on the computer. Or do whatever stuff, you know? Paint your nails. Whatever it is you do, while you watch tv. You kinda just gotta hold on, clamp down and go right into the middle of the maelstrom and I think it's not for everyone, I guess.
Fandom: Everyone I know is completely addicted to this show. In fact there's lot's of questions on this. Why Jordan Collier? Why did he leave?
IB: Well Billy Campbell, who I adore and had the greatest rap party last yea, was hanging with Billy Campbell and hearing his stories about being a civil war reenactor and all the other crazy things that he loved. Billy got it into his head that he was going to travel on a ship for 18 months. A tall mast ship as a crewmember and for 18 months he was going to sail around the world. He was leaving and that's it.
Fandom: Instead of being an actor on the show.
IB: Instead of being an actor on any show. It was just like, 'I love the show! I love the show! But I just have to do this.' And I'm talking about being a crewmember. Climbing the riggings. All that Captain Blood stuff or whatever the hell you do on a ship.
Fandom: Do you have a sailing around the world clause in the contract?
IB: I guess not. Maybe we should. He gave us plenty of time to know this. It wasn't like he signed to do 13 and then said 'I'm only doing 6' He said, 'I'm going to do this, but I'm only doing six and then it's up to you. You guys do whatever you want, but I'm going on my ship.' So as is often the case, like when Terry Farrell didn't wanna do the last season. So we felt we had to do something big.. Plus we knew it was the middle of the season, cos we were only doing 13. So it seemed like this is what had to happen. We killed the sucker without quite knowing who was gonna do it.
Fandom: Really? In that episode?
IB: As we were doing it and finally in a meeting, I said as a joke, that who should really kill Collier is Kyle. Because there'd been a lot of talk about what the hell we were gonna do with Kyle this season and that was a separate conversation. But it was still hanging in the air.
Fandom: Cos, he had some of the more tender moments. I was thinking the only downtime was that step with Corinna and Joel and then him. There was that family sweetness where we could breathe for five seconds. So we can't keep that.
IB: Who wants to see that on the 4400, I guess? So I said, 'Why don't we have Kyle kill him? I thought everyone was gonna hoot me down and somebody said, 'Yeah, why don't we do that?'
Fandom: Just tell me a little bit about the Richard and Lily relationship and what's happening with that. Where that came from and how you see it developing. It's fascinating and beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. He's vulnerable and brave and she's managed to retain her vulnerability, whilst still being extremely strong.
IB: Yeah well, that's what's so great about Laura Allen. That's exactly the thing. She seem's to be fragile and that's an interesting quality to have and at the same time she's protecting her baby and she has very strong beliefs. The thing that kills me about Ali, is that he's a guy from the 50's and he play's this kind of 50's male thing. Yet at the same time he has all this empathy. So there's this formality about him.
Fandom: He's a gentleman, actually.
IB: Yeah, he's a gentleman, exactly. And can be very tough when he needs to be. He has this soft side, cos he has been where no-one else has gone. He has been over the rainbow.
Fan Question: Were the tree's bowing to the baby in the episode White light?
IB: In our minds, and it was Robert Wolfe who came up with the idea, we thought the tree's were bowing to the baby. Everyone then seemed to come up with ideas. 'It's Lily! No, it's Richard! Richard is the one controlling. Lily is the one. Everyone has a theory and we thought it was so simple. Who else could it be that the tree's are bowing to. They're bowing to the baby. But yet, as with all this stuff, people's imaginations just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. In this case, the idea was at the moment of inception, that they were bowing to the baby. I don't know if that screws up anyone's theories. And now there's some site on the net, which I'm not gonna say what it is, cos I don't think people should go there. But there's this whole crazy site, about how the 4400 is the work of satan and there's all these bible things. It's spooky. I mean, it's really bizarre.
Fandom: You know, I did get one letter saying that it's clearly a parallel to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center. Has that come across your path yet?
IB: As we did with DS9, this is a show about faith. Different types of faith. What is faith and why do we believe? How can faith be used both positively and negatively. I am certainly aware of scientology. I won't lie and say that I'm not aware of it. But at the same time, we don't do enough with it. We cannot spend hours, and hours and hours about the 4400 center. So I would say that the 4400 center is getting more and more complicated as with everything else. It was one thing under Jordan, it's another thing under Shawn. I think it has the potential to do tremendous good and to do tremendous harm. I think that we all, in the society that we live in, because we do have a rather nice standard of living more or less, compared to what most people in the history of the planet. It gives us the time to ponder the metaphysical thing, rather than just have to find enough food and shelter. So in that case, I think the 4400 center is open to uh.... The 4400 does try to dissect this age of celebrity that we live in. It's gotten so out of hand, that even a tv writer can be sitting talking on the radio to a bunch of people. It's just bizarre. The whole celebrity thing has gotten so freaking weird.
Fan Question: Why would the tree's bow to the baby? Is he Jesus?
Fandom: Well it's a she.
IB: Well yeah, that's the biggest thing. That right there. His name is Isabelle, so I don't think he can be Jesus. People always wanna make it simple, you know? The whole concept of Jesus is impossible to deal with. So no. I don't think the baby is Jesus or Mrs Jesus.
Fandom: Tell me a little bit about how Maia's storyling is developing and where you might see it going if you can, within the next.
IB: The one thing about Maia, really say's a lot about Diana. Not everyone will wanna live with a kid who can look at you and say, 'No! Don't pick up that cup! Watch that! Don't go out to work today!' It's like, what is up with Diana, man. As we're discovering at the end of last night's episode, there's a lot of betrayal going on all over the place.
Fandom: Natasha Gregson Wagner is fabulous in it, as well.
IB: Yeah, she's great, I really loved her. But, you know, I think Maia is a terrific character. I think she's very poignant. I love that fact that she has, like Richard, she has this kind of 1940's kid. I mean, look at her room, it's so neat. She's a kid who does listen to her parents. She's got that formal thing. It's a different vibe. It's so interesting, cos you either have that, like Ali has that, or you don't. You can't have someone to suddenly pretend.
Fandom: She was perfect, even in that pilot episode.
IB: One of the nice things in last nights episode, was the scene she had with Shawn. Cos you haven't really seen her talking too much to other people with 4400 powers. I think there's a lot that can ultimately be done with the girl. I think we have to be careful. One of the things we tried this season not to do is that everytime she opens her mouth, it's got to be something big. Which is why you're talking about the stuff with April. It was so nice, because it's the little things. It's the winning the $20 on the scratcher. It's the 'do you like me for myself, or do you like me for what I can tell you?' She's gonna have a hard time with men when she get's older. It's funny, but when you say, five years from now. She's only ten and I'd love to see her into young adulthood. Of course, men, the stories there would just be endless. It's not going to be an easy thing.
Fandom: Did you write the promo where she leads the kid and they catch the baseball?
IB: We don't write promo's. No of course not. That's just some very intelligent ad people. We knew that we were going to do a campaign about a character and that Conchita was gonna be involved, but let's give props to the people who deserve it. It was a brilliant ad person who came up with a great thing. It's funny, my kids love the one where she's passing the expecting mothers and she knows what each one is gonna have. They loved that one. So I loved those commercials. I think they're great. I think they're wonderful. But we had nothing to do with them.
Question: What would your talent of choice, your ability of choice be, if you were a 4400.
IB: If I was a 4400, well the only one I could actually say on the air, either I would want to be the greatest center fielder in the history of the New York Yankee's. I would hate to be a precog. I don't know, I don't have, my head doesn't go that way. There's one thing I wanna say before I go. I was in a bar in Montana and Wheel of Fortune was running. It must have been an old episode with the sound off. The phrase that they were trying to solve was' It's an honour just to be nominated.' [Talking about his emmy nomination] Now if that wasn't somebody telling me that it's just an honour to be nominated and don't worry about winning, because maybe that's not in the cards. I agree with the wheel of fortune. It is an honour just to be nominated.
IB:People ask me how the 4400 is the same as DS9 and I say 'Because you never know, tuning in, what you're gonna get.'
Fandom:Right
IB: So I think that's kinda...
Fandom: Absolutely. For those DS9 fans out there that are not familiar with the 4400 in detail, you absolutely have to watch it. That's all there is to it. As you know, Ira being emmy nominated. It's for a very good reason. This show's been called fantastic, mesmorizing, captivating, out of this world. It's such groundbreaking wonderful stuff, in terms of it's subject matter and I guess we can skip right to that. Tell me how all that came about. How your involvement came about. The birth of the 4400.
IB: I wouldn't call it fascinating, but Renee called me up and said 'Hey! How'd you like to have an easy job for a couple of months. I'm gonna be running this show and I need someone who I can talk things over with and you can do your kind of, conciallary thing. And it's gonna be simple, you know?
Fandom: Right.
IB: Simple job. Simple, simple, simple.
Fandom: Oh sure, right Renee.
IB: So I said, yeah ok. We talking two months here, or something? And he said, yeah, yeah, something like that. Maybe three, but that's it, you know. Finite. It's just a mini series. So of course, after I said yes, he left the show and suddenly I was running it and suddenly the hour pilot. Well I guess I knew this going in, but the hour pilot, had to be turned into a two hour pilot and suddenly all this stuff started to be shrapnel, started to fill the air and I'm going, what the hell is going on here? This was supposed to be my laid back, waiting for something choice to come along and now suddenly I'm in the trenches big time. So that we all, that is literally how it came to be. But then it became the challenge of writing the two hour. Getting the two hour to the point where it would be accepted by the network. Then work on the other four episodes and get the go ahead on that. So it was always steps, steps, steps, steps. So we took all these steps and at one point we had these weird deadlines like, they had to greenlight the four episodes on a specific day. So we had to have all four scripts, the other four scripts, ready after the pilot, for them to see by a certain day. At one point, Craig Sweeny and I were working on four scripts at once. Doing rewrites. Juggling all these scripts to get them to the network, so they could say yes or no and they said yes. So we did the six episodes and the rest is, you know...
Fandom: That's fabulous.
IB: 4400 history I guess.
Fandom: Yeah, and then some. So really, was it just intended to be a mini series? I'm sure the network had ideas that it would go further than that at the beginning.
IB: Yes, but you know, it's always, everything's done with a strong motor of fear attached to it. So they were like, you know, you have to write a two hour that could stand alone.
Fandom: Right.
IB: Just in case we don't go forward with the four episodes. So it's like, ok, we're gonna write scenes that are never gonna get filmed, so we're gonna have to waste our time doing that. And of course it would have been awful if they had just done it as a two hour. We would have had this mickey mouse ending. Suddenly it all ends. Then it was, 'Ok, it's gonna be a six hour miniseries.' What if it doesn't move forward? You've gotta give a way, a big ending, a big surprise.
Fandom: But what if it does move forward. It can't be too big a surprise.
IB: That's what I kept saying. Cut us at least a little slack. But that's television.
Fandom: I remember
IB: The biggest difference I find between the 4400 and let's say DS9 or Dark Angel or whatever, is that, I'm amazed at how many people, who are not genre people, watch the 4400. People who don't watch space opera, science fiction, who would, who don't give much of a hoot about the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or any of that stuff. The 4400 seemed to strike a cord with what they call more mainstream, whatever that means, tv viewer.
Fandom: Right.
IB: So that's kinda nice.
Fandom: Because it's Earthbound scifi?
IB: Well, not just because it's Earthbound, but because, I think at it's heart it's a story about people and it's character driven and it's about family. There's a lot of room for the audience to kind of connect with the characters and understand what they're going through. Whether they have abilities or not. So in that sense, it's been a lot of fun and with all the nice story moves that we're making...In the last episode, I have to tell you, people are going to get blown away by the amount of things we leave dangling. The questions we raise, the ideas we raise. I mean, we had to end the episode, we're now a five act show. We had to end the episode at the end of act three, more or less. Cos we needed two acts, just to wrap up all the storylines and come up with the holy mother funga thing. When you then go, 'Oh damn! I didn't see that one coming' And then two seconds later, 'Wait! Wait! Who's that? Who's that? Who's that standing naked? Hold on now. He did what?' It's one after the other. 'Who's that? This is gonna happen? What does that mean?' So it's vast. And the fact that the network is letting us do it. I have to take my hat off to USA, cos we're getting away with stuff, that's very difficult to get away with on network television, in terms of how we tell the story. And how we kind of, play with the franchise. So in that sense, it's been a very, very creative experience. It's nowhere near as fun, let me just make this clear. It's been nowhere near as fun as DS9 and I don't go to work with the same enthusiasm. For one reason, we shoot up in Vancouver and I'm down in LA, so I can't come down to the set and hug people. So that is a big difference. Huge difference. We're stuck in this office and we never get the hell out of the office. So it's a little disconnnected. But in terms of the creative juice. In terms of the feeling of, 'Am I wasting my time? Am I just earning a paycheck? Is this gonna last? Will people watch this five years down the line? Four years down the line? Three years down the line? Ten years down the line? I can at least fool myself into believing that the answer is yes. As opposed to being on a tv show with something like Dr Vegas, where you know you're just doing disposable television.
Fandom: Right.
IB: Like so much of it. Like, the mass of mediocrity. It really makes you feel bad. You know.
Fandom: What blows me away consistently, as I watch, is the character growth. And you have really hit the ground running, I think, with the first episode. With setting people up with room and ability to grow in their characters. Diana, from where she started out being all business and now her motherhood to Maia. Lily and Richard have gone through so much gorgeous stuff. And now of course, Kyle, which is keeping us all on the edge of our seats. How is it working with the actors? Do you have much back and forth with them? They're filling out your work, so beautifully.
IB: Yeah, we have great people and they're all doing such great stuff. And this year, Patrick Flueger, who play's Shawn, is just doing some great stuff and Joel is just doing absolutely great stuff. And Jeff Coles. I'm back with my boy, Jeff. The only DS9 actor, who I actually go to movies with and dinner with and I actually hang out with. I feel like I'm in the midst of this whirlwind kind of a thing. And it just started out this way, cos it was just a six hour miniseries. We are what I call an accelerated TV series. We have done now, 19 episodes, right? That's it! 19 episodes. Not even a full season. 13 this year. 6 last year. And yet, I feel like we're on episode 40, because we've moved the characters so far. We've changed things, we've mixed things up. We've revealed things. I feel like the show is on this accelerated, kind of 21st century pace, you know.
Fandom: Right, it absolutely is.
IB: And that feels a little odd, in a way, because everything just seems hyper. You watch an episode and it moves...
Fandom: It moves so quickly.
IB: It moves so quickly. There are so many scenes. One of the big problems we've had production wise, is just getting the godamn show shot, cos we usually have so many storylines going on per episode, so many different locations, and to cram it all into 41 and a half minutes, which is the only reason I wish I was on HBO, or on Showtime, to have ten more minutes to be able to tell a godamn story. To get it all into 41 and a half minutes, is nigh on impossible. There is no time for chuffa, what we call chuffa. There is no dead air scenes. There are no connective tissue scenes and I have to tell you, I watch the show with my kids, cos it's the first show I've done now my kids are old enough to really follow it closely and really get into it. And so I'm watching it as if I'm watching it with an audience, cos my daughter is 17, my son is 13 and so they're adults. They're becoming adults. I see how this thing just kind of hit's them in a wave and they're holding onto their seats like, turning to me and going 'Dad! When does it stop?' So I understand this is not a show in order to sit back, take your shoes off and go to sleep. Or talk on the telephone or go on the computer. Or do whatever stuff, you know? Paint your nails. Whatever it is you do, while you watch tv. You kinda just gotta hold on, clamp down and go right into the middle of the maelstrom and I think it's not for everyone, I guess.
Fandom: Everyone I know is completely addicted to this show. In fact there's lot's of questions on this. Why Jordan Collier? Why did he leave?
IB: Well Billy Campbell, who I adore and had the greatest rap party last yea, was hanging with Billy Campbell and hearing his stories about being a civil war reenactor and all the other crazy things that he loved. Billy got it into his head that he was going to travel on a ship for 18 months. A tall mast ship as a crewmember and for 18 months he was going to sail around the world. He was leaving and that's it.
Fandom: Instead of being an actor on the show.
IB: Instead of being an actor on any show. It was just like, 'I love the show! I love the show! But I just have to do this.' And I'm talking about being a crewmember. Climbing the riggings. All that Captain Blood stuff or whatever the hell you do on a ship.
Fandom: Do you have a sailing around the world clause in the contract?
IB: I guess not. Maybe we should. He gave us plenty of time to know this. It wasn't like he signed to do 13 and then said 'I'm only doing 6' He said, 'I'm going to do this, but I'm only doing six and then it's up to you. You guys do whatever you want, but I'm going on my ship.' So as is often the case, like when Terry Farrell didn't wanna do the last season. So we felt we had to do something big.. Plus we knew it was the middle of the season, cos we were only doing 13. So it seemed like this is what had to happen. We killed the sucker without quite knowing who was gonna do it.
Fandom: Really? In that episode?
IB: As we were doing it and finally in a meeting, I said as a joke, that who should really kill Collier is Kyle. Because there'd been a lot of talk about what the hell we were gonna do with Kyle this season and that was a separate conversation. But it was still hanging in the air.
Fandom: Cos, he had some of the more tender moments. I was thinking the only downtime was that step with Corinna and Joel and then him. There was that family sweetness where we could breathe for five seconds. So we can't keep that.
IB: Who wants to see that on the 4400, I guess? So I said, 'Why don't we have Kyle kill him? I thought everyone was gonna hoot me down and somebody said, 'Yeah, why don't we do that?'
Fandom: Just tell me a little bit about the Richard and Lily relationship and what's happening with that. Where that came from and how you see it developing. It's fascinating and beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. He's vulnerable and brave and she's managed to retain her vulnerability, whilst still being extremely strong.
IB: Yeah well, that's what's so great about Laura Allen. That's exactly the thing. She seem's to be fragile and that's an interesting quality to have and at the same time she's protecting her baby and she has very strong beliefs. The thing that kills me about Ali, is that he's a guy from the 50's and he play's this kind of 50's male thing. Yet at the same time he has all this empathy. So there's this formality about him.
Fandom: He's a gentleman, actually.
IB: Yeah, he's a gentleman, exactly. And can be very tough when he needs to be. He has this soft side, cos he has been where no-one else has gone. He has been over the rainbow.
Fan Question: Were the tree's bowing to the baby in the episode White light?
IB: In our minds, and it was Robert Wolfe who came up with the idea, we thought the tree's were bowing to the baby. Everyone then seemed to come up with ideas. 'It's Lily! No, it's Richard! Richard is the one controlling. Lily is the one. Everyone has a theory and we thought it was so simple. Who else could it be that the tree's are bowing to. They're bowing to the baby. But yet, as with all this stuff, people's imaginations just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. In this case, the idea was at the moment of inception, that they were bowing to the baby. I don't know if that screws up anyone's theories. And now there's some site on the net, which I'm not gonna say what it is, cos I don't think people should go there. But there's this whole crazy site, about how the 4400 is the work of satan and there's all these bible things. It's spooky. I mean, it's really bizarre.
Fandom: You know, I did get one letter saying that it's clearly a parallel to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center. Has that come across your path yet?
IB: As we did with DS9, this is a show about faith. Different types of faith. What is faith and why do we believe? How can faith be used both positively and negatively. I am certainly aware of scientology. I won't lie and say that I'm not aware of it. But at the same time, we don't do enough with it. We cannot spend hours, and hours and hours about the 4400 center. So I would say that the 4400 center is getting more and more complicated as with everything else. It was one thing under Jordan, it's another thing under Shawn. I think it has the potential to do tremendous good and to do tremendous harm. I think that we all, in the society that we live in, because we do have a rather nice standard of living more or less, compared to what most people in the history of the planet. It gives us the time to ponder the metaphysical thing, rather than just have to find enough food and shelter. So in that case, I think the 4400 center is open to uh.... The 4400 does try to dissect this age of celebrity that we live in. It's gotten so out of hand, that even a tv writer can be sitting talking on the radio to a bunch of people. It's just bizarre. The whole celebrity thing has gotten so freaking weird.
Fan Question: Why would the tree's bow to the baby? Is he Jesus?
Fandom: Well it's a she.
IB: Well yeah, that's the biggest thing. That right there. His name is Isabelle, so I don't think he can be Jesus. People always wanna make it simple, you know? The whole concept of Jesus is impossible to deal with. So no. I don't think the baby is Jesus or Mrs Jesus.
Fandom: Tell me a little bit about how Maia's storyling is developing and where you might see it going if you can, within the next.
IB: The one thing about Maia, really say's a lot about Diana. Not everyone will wanna live with a kid who can look at you and say, 'No! Don't pick up that cup! Watch that! Don't go out to work today!' It's like, what is up with Diana, man. As we're discovering at the end of last night's episode, there's a lot of betrayal going on all over the place.
Fandom: Natasha Gregson Wagner is fabulous in it, as well.
IB: Yeah, she's great, I really loved her. But, you know, I think Maia is a terrific character. I think she's very poignant. I love that fact that she has, like Richard, she has this kind of 1940's kid. I mean, look at her room, it's so neat. She's a kid who does listen to her parents. She's got that formal thing. It's a different vibe. It's so interesting, cos you either have that, like Ali has that, or you don't. You can't have someone to suddenly pretend.
Fandom: She was perfect, even in that pilot episode.
IB: One of the nice things in last nights episode, was the scene she had with Shawn. Cos you haven't really seen her talking too much to other people with 4400 powers. I think there's a lot that can ultimately be done with the girl. I think we have to be careful. One of the things we tried this season not to do is that everytime she opens her mouth, it's got to be something big. Which is why you're talking about the stuff with April. It was so nice, because it's the little things. It's the winning the $20 on the scratcher. It's the 'do you like me for myself, or do you like me for what I can tell you?' She's gonna have a hard time with men when she get's older. It's funny, but when you say, five years from now. She's only ten and I'd love to see her into young adulthood. Of course, men, the stories there would just be endless. It's not going to be an easy thing.
Fandom: Did you write the promo where she leads the kid and they catch the baseball?
IB: We don't write promo's. No of course not. That's just some very intelligent ad people. We knew that we were going to do a campaign about a character and that Conchita was gonna be involved, but let's give props to the people who deserve it. It was a brilliant ad person who came up with a great thing. It's funny, my kids love the one where she's passing the expecting mothers and she knows what each one is gonna have. They loved that one. So I loved those commercials. I think they're great. I think they're wonderful. But we had nothing to do with them.
Question: What would your talent of choice, your ability of choice be, if you were a 4400.
IB: If I was a 4400, well the only one I could actually say on the air, either I would want to be the greatest center fielder in the history of the New York Yankee's. I would hate to be a precog. I don't know, I don't have, my head doesn't go that way. There's one thing I wanna say before I go. I was in a bar in Montana and Wheel of Fortune was running. It must have been an old episode with the sound off. The phrase that they were trying to solve was' It's an honour just to be nominated.' [Talking about his emmy nomination] Now if that wasn't somebody telling me that it's just an honour to be nominated and don't worry about winning, because maybe that's not in the cards. I agree with the wheel of fortune. It is an honour just to be nominated.