Producer Dean Devlin Goes (Back) to Space

Welcome back to the Board. It goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bond from dreditor at the Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be joined today by Dean Devlin. Now Dean Devlin, United’s kids out there like me, you’ll remember Dean Devlin as the one half of the Devlin and Roland Emrick team made classic sci fi movies like, you know, Independence Day, Stargate, universal soldier.

In recent years, mister Dublin is focused more on TV, shows like leverage, the librarian series. He’s got a new one out on the sci fi network. The arc, which I think folks will be into, you know, it’s it’s kind of a throwback to the original battle star Galactica, that sort of thing. But I’m very excited to have him on the show today. Thanks for being with us, mister Dublin.

Thanks

for inviting me.

So, you know, I’m I’m really excited to have you on because I grew up loving the Devlin Emrick movies and then, you know, moving on to the librarians and leverage and and all that sort of great stuff. But this is a business of show biz podcast first and foremost. And the thing I’m most interested to talk to you about today is how the business has evolved over these thirty years or so. I mean, I feel like I I feel like, you know, you have lived through two different sea changes in the in the the the state of the industry. So, you know, just from your POV, how has getting new stuff, you know, be it movies, TV shows, whatever, changed over the years.

Right? Or to put it another way, like, how was getting to a green light different now than it was, say, thirty years ago?

Well, I I think you have to kind of put it in this context. Okay? When I was growing up, there were three networks. That divided the pie in three ways. And later they added a four.

So then there were four channels. Right? So it wasn’t uncommon for a show to have twenty million viewers. You

know, that wasn’t like insane in those days. And because of that, the networks were incredibly nervous about

losing their share of that audience. Right? So shows were very controlled and and and predictable in a way because you don’t wanna take chance. You don’t wanna screw it up. You don’t wanna be too controversial.

You you know, so it was very hard to do that. But meanwhile, at that exact same time, people thought the movie industry was almost over. And so they handed the keys to the kingdom to these hippies. Who suddenly made these insane movies, these incredible movies, and brought movies back to life. Right?

So you have all this incredible work, this this kind of in ingenious work happening in in movies. But television was very predictable, very, you know, Well over time now, what’s happened is movies now cost a hundred and fifty million dollars to make and another hundred million to market. And they’re so expensive that no one wants to screw that up. No one wants to be responsible for taking down a studio with a with a flop. So those movies are the ones that have become incredibly, you know, handled by groups of people and market research.

And but on the other side, with all the streamers and all the cable channels. And suddenly, there’s five hundred places to go watch your entertainment. And the only way to make a name for yourself or to be seen is to do something innovative and interesting and out of the box than unusual. So we’ve we’ve literally flipped the the script on on where creativity blossoms. So I think that’s probably the biggest sea change from when I started.

Yeah. Well, I mean, do you do you feel like you have more freedom working on a show like the arc? I mean, do you do you feel like you can just kinda get in there and do whatever you want? Or is it is it still you know, are you do you still have the studio studio exec sending down a a note or two?

Well, here here’s the thing. And

and this is why talking to me about this is a little bit out of the box in that since two thousand and four, we’ve been the studio. Mhmm.

So, you

know, with the with only the exception option is when I made the horrible mistake of making Geo Storm or or the sequel to independence day. Those are the only two experiences at studios. That I’ve had in all these years. So we’ve been our own studio. So that has afforded an enormous amount of freedom And we’ve been very fortunate that the networks that we’ve worked with, you know, we’re at TNT.

Now we’re at on freebie and sci fi channel. We’ve had the most creative and and supportive executives that I’d ever had in my life. So we haven’t run into the kind of things that is typical. You know, many years ago, I had done a TV series that Fox was the studio and Fox Network was the network. And they were at war with each other.

And

I thought,

wait, you’re all thoughts. Why why why is this happening? And and one show wanted to make this peaceful, beautiful show that was uplifting, and the other one wanted Independent State of TV series, and they were constantly battling. And I was stuck in the middle. And that’s not an untypical situation for showrunner.

Where the studio wants one thing, the network wants something else, and and now you’re you’re in hell. But since we’ve become the studio and we own all of our own shows, it takes a whole layer of of bureaucracy out of the out of the way creatively. Yeah. So

we’ve

only been dealing with network executives and we’ve had this incredible fortune of working with really good and creative executives. So yeah. The arc has been a dream. Well,

let’s let’s talk about the arc a little bit because I I I we have watched the first four episodes now. That’s we we got screeners for the first four, and it’s it’s really entertaining and kind of a almost a throwback sort of way. Remind you know, looking back at leverage and the librarians. Right? Those are almost throwback shows as well.

Right? Leverage just kind of throwback to mission impossible or like caper of the weak style shows. And then you have the librarians, which, you know, had strong Indiana Jones vibes kind of. I mean, if I was Mixed

in with doctor who.

Yes. Mixed in with doctor who. Yeah. I mean, it’s but it here with with the arc, you know, what what did you have in mind? Because it definitely feels like maybe old school, like old school battle stargile actica, not really new school, the old school, like the original kind of humanity on the run trying to figure out how to how to make it work.

I I’m I’m just curious what your what your what the vibe you were going for with this this show was.

Here’s the thing. I think it has become really fashionable, especially with critics. To embrace these incredibly dark grounded and edgy shows. And don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed many of them.

I found them very compelling, but I only enjoyed making that. You know, I’m at my heart, I’m a nerd who went to sci fi conventions, and I like my sci fi to be fun. I like my entertainment to be fun. I like to cheer. And I also like to cry a little bit, but I like to have a lot of fun.

In my in my genre entertainment. So, you know, yeah, I would

say

the art definitely has roots in the original battle star. I think it also has roots in silent running. If you remember that movie back from the seventies? Sure. You know, this goes back to the kind kind of science fiction I fell in love with as a boy and I’ve always wanted to make myself.

So I think my stuff is kind of, you know, I don’t know, if if you ever get chance to check out my show almost Paradise. It’s it’s very much a throwback to the old kind of detective show, except it takes place in the Philippines. So yeah, we try to find things about it that are fresh and new and make it feel not like another show, but I also like my shows to be kind of like a comfortable old shoe. As soon as you’re watching you, oh, I feel I feel good wearing this. This is that’s my favorite sweater.

Well,

definitely, there was definitely, again, a familiar vibe to it. You could see some of the DNA poking through. When you’re sitting down with the writers and the and everybody and working through what the the plot lines of the season are. Was there any at any point where you like, no, that’s that’s that’s too serious. That’s too dark.

Let’s bring it back a little or or, like, the other way. I mean, would did you ever were you ever, like, a little bit too goofy. Let’s pull it let’s pull it back a little bit more towards reality here. Well, you know, I think

that the thing is is it’s really about execution. In other words, someone said a a critic actually said this about leverage. You know, our new version of leverage leverage redemption, said, you know, if you strip away the fun, high stuff. These are incredibly dark stories they’re telling, you know, what is it? You know, is about malestasia, that other one is about drug companies poisoning people, but the way in which we tell it is is important.

So we don’t really shy away from anything on the art but we’ll look at how we’re how we’re portraying. If we’re getting too silly that the that the that the melodrama doesn’t hold anymore because we’ve become too silly or is the melodrama too heavy that we can’t enjoy ourselves anymore? You know, at the root of the show, is that Jonathan Glasner and I were really optimistic. And we wanted to do a show that in in its core is about the triumph of the human spirit that you can put us in these pressure cookers. We can go to war with each other.

But we come out the best versions of ourselves ultimately. We may go through hell to get there, but we always do come out the best versions of ourselves and and better than the previous dinner. Pressure. And that’s kind of what the arc is really about. It’s it’s a microcosm of our world in this pressure cooker and exacerbating every single issue to to a life and death situation.

But I think the fun of the show, the thing that makes the show worthy of watching is seeing how these people were not ready to be leaders. So we’re not ready to be the the front line of this, having to become the best versions of themselves in a very small period of time, or they’re all they’re all parrish. Yeah. And that

to

me is is is really what separates the show from other science fiction shows.

Yeah. You you mentioned you used the word melodrama there, and I and I love that because a lot of people shy away from the word melodrama. They they consider it an apathy, you know, oh, this melodrama means unserious, but it that’s that is that’s crazy to me because I mean, Melodrama means fun. Melodrama means,

you know, we

glipping and entertaining. You know,

we live in a time where we just relabel everything to make it sound better. You know, it’s like that. We used to say skipping breakfast, and now it’s intermittent fasting. Exactly. You know, at the end of the day, You get the little comedy, you get the little melodrama, and you got a nice show.

The other thing that you mentioned there that I love is the the sense of optimism. You know, I One of the things I I find very frustrating about a lot of modern especially space exploration shows weirdly enough, is just this this this real hesitance towards the idea of exploration of human expansion or whatever. I mean, humanity is often treated as a disease, you know, something that is, you know, spreading like cancer or whatever. And I I’m I’m I’m glad to see something that’s a little more optimistic and pushing back against that. Is it was that specifically what you were thinking about when you guys were making the show?

Just this idea of human human growth and and progress. That’s that’s the heart and soul of the show. But, I mean, I’ll I’ll

tell you the thing is I’m a big doctor who fan. And one of the things that I love about doctor who is that the doctor doesn’t kill people. He

doesn’t

shoot them with guns. He’s he he he’ll make bad guys they’ll punish bad people. But he doesn’t kill them, he doesn’t shoot them again. He he he’s somewhat of a pacifist. And why that’s interesting is that if if I pull up a gun right now, Right?

We’ve got drum. I’m pointing a gun. There’s drum. But if you’re not allowed to do that, it’s a much harder thing to pull off. It’s a much harder thing to write.

You know, how are you gonna make this conflict

work? How are you gonna resolve it? How are you gonna you don’t have these very easy tools. And I feel the same way about

things that are uplifting.

Because

it’s so easy for uplifting to become cheesy and and make you roll your eyes. And because of that, people don’t wanna try it. It’s like it’s like uplifting is old fashioned. If you nail it, it’s the greatest thing in the world. It’s just it’s really easy to screw it up.

So we went down the path of we wanna show that’s ultimately uplift, ultimately, and it makes it a lot harder to write. And it’s a lot harder to direct than, you know, we’re in the editing room constantly going, oh, did we go too far? Did we have to pull it back? And but I think that when you nail it, there’s nothing better. Can

you can you think of an example from your or somebody else’s work where the uplift goes too far, where you’re like, ah, this doesn’t this this doesn’t work the audience doesn’t doesn’t necessarily buy it.

Yeah. I made a movie called

Godzilla.

We kinda we kinda messed out. So the scene that we thought everyone was gonna go, oh, they’re, you know, they’re they’re all moved. They’re all rolling their eyes away. Okay. Well, let’s not let’s do that again.

Alright. Fair. Fair enough. Fair enough. You know, as a as a former actor yourself, And you were in two of my favorite nineteen eighties movies, AMC classics, I like to call them, my bodyguard and real genius.

What did you what do you look for when you’re when you’re casting, especially a show like this where it’s mostly unknowns. It’s a big ensemble cast. You’ve got a lot of parts to fill out. You’re not you’re not, you know, you’re not putting Will Smith in there. Right?

It’s it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a fewer fewer know lesser known names. What are you looking for from a performer when you’re filling out those roles? I’m

looking for courage. Being able to risk looking stupid, I’m looking for their ability to play jazz music. And and what I mean by that is that they’re not overly married to the way that they decided to do it. Very often, while I’m casting, I will actually give the actor a completely horrible direction. Just to see if they can alter what they planned.

Mhmm.

A lot of people, you know, they’ve got their one way to do it and that’s it. But I have found if you have a group of actors who are really listening to each other, we’re really present. This kind of jazz music starts happening. And and things happen that you didn’t plan as a writer or as a director. And that not only becomes magical in front of the camera, but it also inspires writing a future up because you go, oh, what was that look he gave?

When he talked about his dad and he looked at her, there was something going on there. Alright. What’s the dad backstory? And now we’re suddenly writing something. We weren’t planning on writing.

So, yeah, I look to actors who are who are really present who who aren’t afraid to look bad, you know, that their ego is involved in their performance. And, you know, we got so lucky with this cast because, you know, especially casting in the time of COVID, you’re doing it like you and I are right now with Zoom. And it’s not quite the same. And we felt very excited every time we cast one of these people, but until you put them on set, you don’t know, is are they gonna mix together? Is this gonna be and and I directed the pilot, so I’m on set.

And, you know, I I I’ve never said this publicly, but, yeah, I was terrified before the first day of shoot. I was like, well, what if what if there is no alchemy between them? That’s gonna make making the show a million times harder to try and create that. And we got so lucky because they to a person, we didn’t have one one sour note. They all had that ability to to flow with whatever was going on on set, and it was great.

Yeah. You mentioned COVID. I mean, were you guys shooting what what

Let me I just asked him the most basic version of this question. What what were the restrictions you guys were shooting under now? Is everybody still masking? Are you guys do you have different teams? You know, only with each other.

Like, how is how is that, especially on a big, ensemble picture like this where you’ve got tons of moving parts, tons of actors. How does that work with with in the age of COVID that we, you know, still kind of exist in?

It’s enormously burdensome. But at the same time, you’ve got to protect your cast and your crew. But, yeah, we have to test everybody three times a week. We have to divide the crew into different segments where very few people were allowed to cross over. Everyone had to have masks song.

The actors have to put on the mask in between every take. I mean,

it

was it was it was very burdensome, but I will say that it would have been worse if we had had people who resented doing it, but I think everybody so wanted to make the show and everybody wanted to to each other that, you know, everybody did what they have to do, and and we didn’t, you know, we didn’t have to shut down, we didn’t have to nobody went to the hospital, So, yeah, I mean, it worked out. But, yeah, it added a lot of money and a lot of time. So, yeah, it’s tough. You

mentioned the money, and I I I’m I’m excited to have you on for a very prosaic reason, which is that I again, business of Hollywood the business of COVID testing and protocols and all that has added enormous expense to shows and movies. Right? I mean, from just from a from a like bottom line pure dollar standpoint, what are what are you looking at as a producer in terms of cost and all that

stuff? Well, depends on the production, but it it was probably an additional five million dollars to the budget on the last season of Leverage Redemption. I mean, it it it’s it’s just it’s a lot of money. And you have to hire people to monitor it. You have to have people who are sterilizing things.

You can’t shoot the the same amount of hours we used to shoot, which then adds days to the shoot schedule with — Mhmm. — you know, unlevered redemption, I think, a day of shooting is close to three hundred thousand a day. So, you know, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a lot. Yeah. I

mean, it’s it’s just it’s wild. It’s when somebody writes the financial history of this period, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be crazy. You you know, you’d mentioned the the fractured nature of the the market in TV now. How do you differentiate yourself with a show like the arc? Because I you know, with with something like stargate or Independence Day, you have big star power.

Right? Or, you know, the librarians and leverage were in in a slightly a slightly less a edited landscape where it’s basic cable instead of basic cable plus networks plus streamers plus, you know, everything else. With the arc, I mean, there’s a million shows up there. How how do you get folks to be like, alright, I’m sitting down and I’m watching probably five episodes of the arc in a row, because I missed the first couple and I wanna catch up on it. What how does that work for you

guys? Well, you know, honestly, we don’t think about it. You know, I I and I think that when people overly try to think about these things, they they forget the art of storytelling. You know, our our hope is if we make something good, people will find it. You know?

And and I’ve always approached every show I’ve done. From a pure fanboy perspective. You know? To me, it’s I

always

sit down at the beginning and go, what do I want to go watch? And if no one’s making it, then I go make it. You know? But it’s always I always start there because I feel like if you don’t have passion for your own work, it’s impossible for anyone else too. And even if you do have passion, It’s not guaranteed that that’s going to be infectious, but it can only be infectious if you start from that place.

So, you know, this show started because I really wanted to make a spaceship show. You know, I I wanted I I wanted to be on that set. I wanted to be on the bridge. I wanted to see people in those costumes. You know, I I couldn’t wait to do it.

And my hope is there’s other people wanna see a spaceship show the way that we’re doing it. I don’t know if there is. I don’t do any market research or or or listen to advisors or to me, I just tell the stories I want to tell, and I hope that other people like it and get involved. I will say that, you know, we we have a kind of terrific fan base from our other shows. And they tend to at least at least give our shows a shot.

Doesn’t mean they’ll stick with it if they don’t like it, but they tend to give it a shot. And so then then, you know, from our point of view, it’s like, okay, they gave us a shot. We gotta live up to it. And on this particular show, I don’t know why, but to me, it’s like, soon as we start working, I was like, this has to be on the side by chance. Just has to be.

This is this to me as a fan is the show I wanna watch on sci fi channel, you know? And as so, yeah, we went out wide, but the place I was hoping was I finally come on. Come on, baby. And when I got the call saying, yeah, we really wanna do it. You know, I was over the moon.

The first call I made was to Jonathan Glasner and said, dude, you you gotta you gotta get on the show with me. I I need you. And luckily, I I had some polaroids of him that, you know, I I was able to force him into it. So

That’s great. It’s it’s interesting that you describe this as a spaceship show because I I love I love that description because it makes me think that you’re just sitting there. Alright. What do I want the space to look like. What do what do did you did you sit down there and, like, build a model yourself?

Were you doing sketches? Like, alright. Here’s here’s we need we need gravity well here. We need the this is what I want the bridge to look like. How was that design process like for

you? Well, the first person I brought in to talk about it was Randall Groves who who did the librarians and leverage for me. And I I said that so we’ve got this dual problem. On one hand, there has to be a pressure cooker. You have the you have these people kind of like shoved together.

Right? And and and we want that to be as intense as possible. I said, but the flip side of it is, this entire show takes place on a spaceship. It can’t get overly claustrophobic, or I’m not gonna wanna watch it after an episode or two. So I need I need to breathe, I need a variety of of feelings.

I need I need that when they’re in this place, it feels like this. But when they’re over here, it feels totally different. I need to have a whole world and yet still feel like they’re stuck on this spaceship. So that that that took a that was a real tough challenge to to to Randall. And that’s when he came up with the idea of the observation deck with the giant windows, which could be a a more relaxed place, and then other places that were very intense in cost orthofobic and other places that were busy and chaotic.

And then, of course, having our our farm gave us a kind of one place that actually has nature, which provided us a completely different environment. You know, we the show only takes place a hundred years from now. So it’s not thousands of years from now. So we try not to do kind of, you know, magic sci fi. Mhmm.

So everything in the show is based on some real science. But we’re also not as overly grounded show or we couldn’t have gravity. And if we couldn’t have gravity, you know, we couldn’t afford to make the show. Right. So — Right.

— you know, we’re using the the the the spinning sections of of the ship to to indicate how they’re creating gravity. Even though we don’t have that technology, they wouldn’t quite work the way we have it. But, you know, so we are we are taking some leaps of faith. But, again, every single thing that we’re doing in it is connect it to some type of real science that’s going on or real research that’s going on. Yeah.

I did you were you ever worried about losing the audience or or alternately holding their hands too much in terms of the science and and making sure that everybody could kind of follow along with what was what was happening? Well, you

know, I think the thing is, there is no science fiction show that lives in Quebec. Right? Every science fiction show you watch today somehow is going to be related to the shoulders that’s standing on. To some other science fiction show you’ve seen before. It it Normally, is it impossible?

I don’t even think it should be because by living on the shoulders of the of what came before, you can have these shortcuts. Where people understand things very quickly because, oh, well, I saw that — Mhmm. —

three other

shows — Mhmm. — you know, I saw the original aliens. I saw them wake up in sleeper pods. I get what sleeper pods are. Right?

And then, oh, there was passengers recently. They had sleeper pods too. So now that’s a conceit of this genre. You know, there’s certain things that that lived in other shows and that allows the audience to to to understand things very quickly. Now if you’re not someone’s ever seen a science fiction show.

There are gonna be parts where you’re gonna go wait a minute. How does that work? Because we chose not to sit there and make it a science lesson, you know. But again, I think our show, because we don’t have space aliens, there’s not laser battles with, you know, stormtroopers. This is a very human drama show.

So you don’t really need to understand the science to get off on this show. This show is really about people trying to survive who weren’t ready to be in

the command positions that they’ve been given. Mhmm. Mhmm. Let me let me ask, just in terms of the the the broad grand arc of the show, is is this a show that ends when they get to their planet that they’re colonizing? Or is it a a show that you think is this is the first, you know, couple seasons and then we’re gonna keep going after that?

Well,

you you’ll have to see where it goes. But I but I’ll I’ll tell you this, you know, Jonathan Glasser and I had a lot of talks about this. And we both really believe that it’s a mistake when a show overstays its welcome, you know. But so you’ve seen shows and it’s got, like, this has gone on too long. They’re trying to squeeze another story out of this and it doesn’t work anymore.

So we kinda laid it out and said, look, after eighteen seasons, no more. That’s it. We just stopped no matter how much more we want. So two

two hundred episodes or so and then No.

That’s it. That’s it.

That alright. That I think that’s a that’s a good goal for that’s a good goal for anybody. To aim for. We’re we’re running up against our time limit here. I always like to close the show by asking if there’s anything I should have asked.

If there’s anything you think people should know about your show, about the the business of show biz, whatever, anything I I failed to ask in my in my my questioning.

No. This is I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today that I think this has been a very thoughtful conversation, and and I and I appreciate your time.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Mister Dean Devlin, the executive producer on the ark, Everybody you should check it out. It’s on sci fi, the s s y f y network, sci fi network. Go go check it out.

My name is Sunny Bunch. I’m culture editor at the Bulwark, and I’ll be back next week with another episode. See you guys now.

It could be information to change your life forever, or that something you should know podcast could just be something interesting. Talking about the fits of play. My guest is Joanna Fortune author of the book. Why we play? How to find joy in meaning in everyday life.

Playfulness in the life of adults in terms of its psychosocial impact is under studied if anything, but the research that is available does point to a myriad of pro social benefits and psychological benefits. Something you should know wherever you listen.