Television:Exclusive Interview: DIRECTOR JON CASSAR ON HIS FINAL SEASON OF '24,' JACK FINDING PEACE AND 'FOREVER KNIGHT'
Here's what the producer/director had to say as 24 wraps up its seventh season tonight. Plus, who knew Jack Bauer and Nick Knight had so much in common?
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN and CARL CORTEZ, Contributing Writers
Published 5/18/2009
Once upon a time, 24 executive producer/director Jon Cassar got a directing break on the late-night vampire cop show FOREVER KNIGHT. It turns out there are some similarities between Cassar’s present and past gigs as he talks about helming Season 7 of 24 (his final as producer/director), what to expect in tonight's season finale (airing tonight at 9:00 on Fox) and if Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) finally finds peace with what he does.
iF MAGAZINE: How was it returning to 24 with the huge break between seasons six and seven due to the Writers Guild strike?
JON CASSAR: Two things could have happened when the strike happened. [The audience] could have forgotten us and not wanted to see us, or there’d be such anticipation after a year and a half that people are doing what they’re doing now. There’s been great response to having us back, and so we’re very excited that out of the two options, it turned out like that. It’s really funny for us, too, because usually [in January] we’re only halfway through shooting the season, and I was editing Episodes Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four. We finished shooting we finished before Christmas. It’s really interesting for us to watch the opening shows again, because we virtually shot, without exaggeration, almost fifteen months before they aired. We were almost watching it as viewers again, as opposed to someone who had a hand in making it.
iF: This season of 24 is set in Washington, D.C. How often did you go to Washington on location?
CASSAR: We only did it once, in November [of 2007]. We went out before the writers’ strike, basically. In fact, the writers’ strike happened while we were in Washington. We came back and the writers’ strike was on. So we did three weeks there, we shot portions for about nine episodes, so that’s the only time we went. We don’t have a lot of directors on the show – I do about half of them, and we have Brad Turner, who does the other half. Between the two of us, he shoots some of my stuff and I shot some of his, but basically, it was only our episodes that were involved. So we just shot seven. I was there for a week-and-a-half shooting, and he was there for a week-and-a-half shooting.
iF: How would you say this season was different as a whole for you as a director than previous seasons? It felt like a much bigger palette, especially with the location being in Washington.
CASSAR: That was the biggest change for me -- trying to fool the audience into thinking we were in D.C. The other change was the FBI instead of the CTU – [it was a] new set, new characters, but I found both those challenges to be fun to overcome.
iF: I'm still amazed you can keep the tension with "moles" on the series. I was surprised Tony was actually a good guy at the beginning of the season and you got me again when he was revealed to be the Big Bad. As a director, how do you try keep the audience on their toes visually, so you don't tip the hat too soon?
CASSAR: Well I think my work is in making sure the script doesn't tip it first. If on the first reading I'm fooled then I know I can fool the audience, but if I smell a rat, then I assume the audience is smart enough to smell one too. As far as the actors, I just have to make sure they stay true to the characters at that point in the story and not play the future, or what they know the character will become.
iF: There was a lot of talk of this season being like a '70s thriller like THREE DAYS OF A CONDOR and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN -- did you do any specific visual nods to those type of movies on the episodes you directed?
CASSAR: No, I didn't really. Although I'm a real movie fanatic and watch approximately 20 a month -- new and old, I never reference any of them directly. I try to make 24 its own thing without copying any visual cues of past films.
iF: What will people expect in the final two hours of the season? It seems like there's a lot of balls in the air -- as always -- and a lot of things to resolve very quickly?
CASSAR: I think the audience can expect closure. 24 has been very good at wrapping up the years stories, we leave a little cliffhanger now and then, but after you see the finale you’ve felt like the year had a beginning, middle and end. Let me put it this way, we answer more questions than we ask in the final [two hours].
iF: Will the season end on a hopeful note for Jack -- considering every year he ends up an even more broken man than before?
CASSAR: Yes, I can't explain that, but yes. If nothing else, he has faced his potential death and has used it to reflect on himself and the people he has affected.
iF: What can you tease for fans of 24 for next season. It's already reported the show is moving to New York -- without giving away any details, what style of story are you and the producer/writers looking to tell?
CASSAR: I wish I could tell you but I've officially left the show and will not in any way be part of Season 8. I'll be watching like everyone else on Monday nights.
iF: What do you think a New York locale will bring to the show?
CASSAR: It’s always great when you can change your setting -- it re-juices the franchise.
iF: As an audience member, it always sucks when you kill off a character we love. As a director and a mainstay of the series from the beginning, was there any particular character that really hurt when you found out they were going to bite the big one. For me, it was Bill Buchanan.
CASSAR: You know I've always said it hurts us [the crew and cast] more then it hurts you. We not only lose an established character in the show, we lose a friend that we don't see at work everyday. I think characters that I birth and kill are always the hardest for me, like Reiko Ayklesworth who played Michelle Dessler. I directed her first and last scenes. It was also great to have Carlos [Bernard] back, because he's one of my closet friends on the show and I really missed his sense of humor on a daily basis and so did Kiefer.
iF: Do you think Jack will ever find peace with himself and with what he does?
CASSAR: He does by the end of this year. I'm not sure if he forgives himself, but he understands what he's had to do better then he ever did.
iF: Do you think in the world of 24, the characters will ever come to terms with the importance of what Jack does and how he does it?
CASSAR: Once again his explanation to Renee [Annie Wersching] in episode 24 answers that question -- then its up to you to make the decision as to whether Jack and his methods are important in today’s dark grey world.
iF: Speaking of work you did awhile ago, do you have any recollections of working on FOREVER KNIGHT?
CASSAR: Oh, absolutely. It was one of my first shows as a director. Up to that point, I was a camera operator. In fact, I was a camera operator on FOREVER KNIGHT for the first season, and Episode Thirteen was my very first directing gig. So yeah, I remember very well. I did as well as I thought I was going to do. They loved me right away. The problem was that they promised me all these other episodes in the second year, but then if you remember this –we were late-night, ‘Crime Time After Prime Time’ [the title of the programming block], and then Letterman came over to CBS. From first year to second year, almost like what happened this year with the strike. It was a year. So I had to go back to camera operating, and then came back and when the second year came, I went and did three episodes in the second year. And then did the third year. Geraint Wyn Davies [who played vampire lead Nick Knight] is also a very good friend of mine. Actually, I talked to him today.
iF: Do you in any way feel like you’ve come full circle, because Nick certainly committed a lot of violence, felt terrible, was really depressed – does he remind you of, say, Jack Bauer?
CASSAR: Yeah, there are a lot of similarities there. There really are. A lot of regret. It’s kind of the same character, in a very strange way, but somehow related. You know Geraint Davies was on 24. It was fun to have him on the show. Nigel Bennett [who played LaCroix] is next. We’ve got to get him on. We actually wanted him years ago, but he didn’t have his [U.S. work permit].
iF: FOREVER KNIGHT was relatively low-budget for a weekly TV series …
CASSAR: Oh, very small [budgets]. We did some pretty interesting shows with a very, very small budget [laughs]. And it was also one of the first American [produced] shows to be placed in Toronto and it [acknowledged it] was Toronto, which was very, very rare. I worked on DUE SOUTH, and we were pretending to be Chicago and other shows were pretending to be other cities, but it was actually an American show, set in Toronto, shot in Toronto. So you can see the CN Tower.
iF: Do you ever miss the low-budget production ethos?
CASSAR: No. Because you could ask anybody and anybody’ll tell you they’re low-budget. Even though [on 24] we have probably, I would hazard to say, four times more money than we had on FOREVER KNIGHT, we’re still trying to do things that are so ambitious that you’re still working in a low-budget kind of way. We can’t do the CGI, we can’t do the big scenes that a feature film can do, yet we’re known for that and we have to land a plane on a freeway and we have to figure out how to do that, so you have to do that in a low-budget way. I mean, you can’t do that with the expense of a feature film.
iF: Do you have someone whose job it is to find a freeway where you can afford to land a plane?
CASSAR: Mine. [laughs] It truly is my job. A location scout actually does that, but you have to send him out to look for things. When the writers come to us, they’ll always come with their heads down low, going, ‘We want to land the plane on a freeway. Can we do that?’ Because of course, that’s incredibly expensive. And it’s our job – Michael Klick, the line producer, Brad Turner, the other producer/director, we have to go, "Okay." And then Joseph Hodges, our production designer, will go, "What are the four shots? How can we do this and tell the story? One CGI shot, we’ll put a plane on a runway, but then we’ll build a barrier to make it look like a highway." It’s our job to translate what they write. Because we never want to restrict them. We love the fact that they can just think outside the box as much as they can. And we try to give them everything they write. And we’ve actually done a pretty good job.
Link: iF Magazine.com
No comments:
Post a Comment