Tim Minear

At the Screenwriting Expo in LA this past weekend I had the opportunity to interview Tim and armed with a suspect voice recorder from the early ’90s and a $9.99 Radio Shack microphone I did just that.

Please note that at the time Drive seemed completely dead and now, a day later, it’s fate is up in the air again — network politics, you’ve gotta love ’em.

Jackal: Okay, so Drive hasn‘t been picked up. That’s questions twenty-one through twenty-five out...

Tim Minear: (laughs)

J: Okay, we’ll just assume it’s going be picked up...: In Drive you were going to create different areas of the US when filming. How were you going to do that on a TV budget while filming in LA?

TM: Because technology has progressed. If you look at the opening sequence, which I realize most people reading this won’t have, you will see that it appears... What did you think of [the opening]?

J: It was great.

TM: It’s pretty cool. None of those people are really driving on the road, so any time you see them driving, the actor’s on a green screen stage. The way that was accomplished was by going onto that highway with the cars to shoot visual fx plates, back and front. We put our actors on a location they were never really in. And that was how we would have done it in series: we’d put them onto virtual highways. It means that if we wanted to show them in a particularly recognizable piece of terrain, from a different part of the country, we were going to send out second unit to shoot these places for virtual fx plates. Our actors would always be in LA on the green screen stage. But we could show them driving through whatever part of the country we needed them to. That was going to be one aspect. The other aspect was, for instance, the pilot takes place in Florida but we never went there, we just doubled California for Florida. So we would be dressing sets and dressing locations to mimic wherever we wanted to go.

J: Who did the score?

TM: It was a temp score, which is normally what you do for a pilot. You pull music from other soundtracks and temp it in. We did an actual expensive sound mix and we had a music editor who cut the music, but we pulled a lot of the score from things like The Italian Job. Stuff that had a certain fun quality, but that also had some suspense in it. Something that had a “wink” in the sound. And a lot of the score was songs. We use a lot of songs.

J: Would you have used Rob Kral if it got picked up?

TM: I don’t know actually, we never got that far.

J: When you started writing it how did you and Ben Queen divide writing duties?

TM: Basically it was his idea and we developed it together. We didn’t break it into acts.

J: Do you think Fox may still pick it up?

TM: Y’know it’s still technically at Fox. They picked up the options on the cast, so it’s still their’s so I don’t know. I’ve heard rumors that it’s not dead. I think they’re still trying to figure out what it is — it’s rather unusual. These serialized dramas tend to take themselves very seriously and there is a certain irreverence which I think confuses the born-in-captivity television executive.

J: Why didn’t you direct the pilot?

TM: The network wouldn’t let me.

J: But you could direct The Inside’s pilot because of the delay in production?

TM: Interestingly enough, on The Inside they wouldn’t let me. Then a version was shot which they didn’t like, so they wanted it re-shot and I said “just let me do it.” And they let me. So it was like the third time we shot it. I just want to add that when [directing Drive] wasn’t even going to be an option, I wasn’t just going to choose someone the network liked, I waited a few weeks to get Greg Yaitanes and that worked out well.

J: So, The Inside: Howard Gordon was credited as being co-creator yet he never wrote an episode of the show. What was his contribution?

TM: He was a consulting producer. He was more support and was doing 24 so he didn’t really have time to write episodes. Occasionally he would take a scene and rewrite it when we fell behind. But most of the time he’d be cheering me on. He would show up when we were breaking stories and he would be my sounding board, so he was available to be involved conceptually.

J: If [The Inside] had gone on what would have happened with Web, my favorite character from the show?

TM: We hadn’t quite got that far. You know, if you’re doing a series, you want it to be a franchise and you want the parts to be moving parts. This wasn’t really a serial, it was more a standalone procedural, although it became more continuing story as we went along. That’s what it would have evolved into. But I think Web would have continued to fulfill the function that he was there to fill.

J: Has there been an update on the DVD release for The Inside?

TM: I don’t think so. I pushed and pushed and pushed and apparently they have market research people at studio level who crunch the numbers to decide whether or not it would be financially feasible for them to invest in something like that and they decided they didn’t want to.

J: Standoff, you’re a consulting producer on that. What does that entail? The day to day on the set or...

TM: Not on the set. I haven’t been on the set yet. What it involves it what it sounds like... I consult. Which is a producer... I mean I actively consult on the show, which means some writing and breaking stories with the staff and the executive producer and looking at cuts and making notes. You know, just giving my input.

J: Is that the same as when you consulted on Angel?

TM: It’s actually more.

J: Because Angel was already a running machine?

TM: Yes. I mean when I was on Angel in season four I was actively there until episode seven. But when Firefly was going I was completely out of the loop until after Firefly was cancelled and then I was back in for whatever that Faith episode was after Christmas.

J: Okay, when you pitched for Buffy one of your pitches involved Xander trying to lose his virginity...

TM: Yeah, yeah.

J: What were your others?

TM: I’m trying to remember. There were like six. Six or eight ideas and I honestly just don’t remember.

J: Did you have to do the same thing for Angel?

TM: No. No, no, no. There was no Angel at that point. I mean they picked up the show and they just made me an offer, I didn’t have to come in and pitch any ideas. In fact when they asked me to come in for Angel I said no about five times, which I think just made them want me more.

J: Going back to Drive — if it had been green lit what would the episode structure have been? For instance, Lost has flashbacks - would you have had anything like that?

TM: We would have avoided those to get away from comparisons. I’d broken, I don’t know, six or seven episode ideas. The action would have focused on two or three characters out of a larger ensemble and you would find out sort of why they were in the race and that’s how the stories would go. For instance, a lot of the stories would come from the racers and we wouldn’t rely too heavily on the puppet master aspect of the people running the race, but we’d find out what would happen to Alex’s wife. That kind of thing. All those questions would be answered.

J: So would each story have had a thematic tie to Alex?

TM: No.

J: Any plans to write any Firefly comics?

TM: No. At the moment, no.

J: What’s been your worst online or offline fan incident?

TM: Well... I’d say the worst experience: when I was threatened with castration at Worldcon by someone in a large audience during a Q&A — he was angry because of the bad messages my work is sending to America.

J: Would you ever get so frustrated with TV that you’d leave and move onto film?

TM: Well film has got its own set of frustration. In development it’s a lot of time and a lot of people weighing in. You can work on things for ages that never actually get made. In television, stuff gets produced. Even with the frustration of constant cancellation, if you only make thirteen or fifteen episodes per season or whatever, that’s still a lot of work. You’ve still been able to... I dunno... How many feature films would thirteen episodes be?

J: About six.

(John, Tim’s assistant, points out that a lot are three hours long these days)

TM: That’s like six or seven features. So, and as a writer in TV you have a lot of power and in movies you don’t. So I’m not tired of being cancelled, I’m tired of maybe being at the same place year after year and not finding it a very friendly place for what I do.

J: Is that the network or is that with the studio?

TM: I’m with the studio and obviously I’m consulting with something that’s on that network right now, but I think that if I were to... Like the next time I go out to pitch another idea I think I will not be taking it there.

J: Will Twentieth be okay with you not pitching to their sister company?

TM: Twentieth will generally want me to take things there, but they’ve said they’d support me and they’d understand if that’s not where I want to go. I like the people at the network, but I think their brand has changed a bit. At one time, the sorts of things I do would have been quite at home there, but now I look around and see the environment elsewhere might be more appropriate. It’s difficult, because in some ways what I do isn’t generic enough to really fit in at a lot of places.

J: You worked on Wonderfalls as a show runner and Bryan Fuller was a creator. How much influence did you have on the creative direction and story arcs?

TM: Completely. Bryan and me and...

J: Todd Holland?

TM: Todd in a slightly different way. The three of us together was kind of a magical convergence. Bryan and I worked out all the story arcs, all the episodes and every beat together. There was a question as to how you make that pilot into a continuing series and I came in to help on that score.

J: Obviously you can’t divulge any of the plot points, but what were the themes going to be in the Faith and Spike spin offs?

TM: It was going to be one thing initially. Are you talking about the movies?

J: Yeah and the Faith TV show.

TM: It never really got that far. One thing we’d talked about was Faith’s thing on UPN, back when UPN was UPN, and that was right after Buffy was canned and right before Eliza took Tru Calling. So she had a choice to make between doing Faith and doing that and she did that. She didn’t want to just keep doing the same thing over and over. But, I mean we had talked about doing these movies - a Spike movie, possibly a Faith movie, and then Drive got green lit and the Spike movie derailed because of that. But there’s talk that those could be revived somehow. Joss still has ideas for that.

J: Was Drive the only reason it didn’t happen or were there studio and financial reasons?

TM: It was really... I became unavailable right when we talked about doing it and I’m sure there were studio politics and financial issues mixed in in some way, but we were not talking about doing it for any specific network. It wasn’t a network thing.

J: Straight to DVD?

TM: That was one idea.

J: Now The X-Files... “Mind’s Eye”, was that your spec?

TM: No that was not my spec.

J: Was that your idea or did you develop it in the writers’ room? How did the writers’ room work on that show?

TM: The X-Files?

J: Yeah.

TM: It was tough. I mean they were very thorough. There was a lot of scrutiny on that series and we would work them and work them and work them until, you know, Chris or Frank Spotnitz decided that they liked it. And it could be grueling. It was like a marathon. I do remember that what was interesting was when we were working on “Mind’s Eye” I had thought of Lili Taylor as the character. So I was just using her as a template in my head as I was writing the episode. Then her manager called us up saying “Lili wanted to do TV. Do you think there would be anything on The X-Files that would be right for her?” And we said we were writing it right now. So I knew we were going to have her while we were writing it, which was unique and wonderful and she got nominated for an Emmy from that.

J: Okay, an Angel question, which is just something I’m personally curious about... The Senior Partners: did you ever have an idea for what they were beyond what was established in the series? Or was it always going to be a bit mysterious?

TM: It was always going to be mysterious.

J: No set mythology then?

TM: No, I mean basically... No. You just want them to feel shadowy.

J: Do you know anything about the sixth season, if it had happened?

TM: No, I don’t.

J: You were fully gone by then...

TM: Yeah.

J: Any plans to bring back any of your series in some form?

TM: No, no plans. I mean there could be some Whedonverse thing, I just don’t know what it would be. But as far as I think - just post-Angel - no, there are no plans.

J: Non-Firefly comics... if they did a post-season six Angel thing would you do that?

TM: No, they’re doing some Buffy comics right now and I was asked if I wanted to do that and it just feels like work and I try to not do that.

J: So nothing in development for next season?

TM: No, not yet. My deal is a development deal so I’m theoretically coming up with all these brilliant ideas that will be rejected soundly, but at the moment consulting on this series takes up all my time.

J: There was something Chris Buchanan said he was working on with you...?

TM: Chris and I and Loni talked about stuff we were developing. We’re still talking about that.

J: So is that a secret thing or...

TM: It’s not a secret it’s just so like un-formed that I can’t really say anything.