Tim Minear

Tim Minear is best known as executive producer/showrunner and/or creator of a number of series for Fox - FIREFLY (created by Joss Whedon, with whom Minear previously worked on ANGEL), WONDERFALLS and THE INSIDE - all of which achieved beloved cult status despite being canceled midseason or earlier. Minear, who earlier worked as a story editor on THE X-FILES and LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, hasn’t let that run him off the road. He’s now back at Fox as executive producer/creator - with series originator Ben Queen - on DRIVE, an action/comedy/drama with conspiracy aspects about a cross-country illegal road race, with drivers who are coerced into participating by mysterious players. DRIVE’s two-hour premiere is this Sunday; then the series settles into its weekly slot on Mondays at 8, leading into 24. Minear took time out to give iF this exclusive.

iF MAGAZINE: How and when did you join the DRIVE development process?

TIM MINEAR: Ben [Queen] had been working with the people at the studio [Twentieth Century Fox], and he had the rough idea, which was the pitch, which was, a secret cross-country road race populated by regular people. And Jen Salke at the studio thought that we would make a good team and that that might be an idea that I would spark to and, as is often the case in development, when somebody who has less television experience comes up with an idea, they [the studio] want to try to team them with somebody who can run the show. So we got together and we created it together.

iF: What was your first thought when you heard the pitch?

MINEAR: Well, my first thought was, ‘No thanks.’ My first thought was, ‘That’s a really good idea for a show, but I’m not really interested in collaborating right now.’ I wanted to just go off and do my own thing. Then I thought about it - for not very long, actually - and called Ben and said, ‘You know what? I changed my mind. Let’s do this.’ Because I just thought it was such a great idea. What appealed to me about it was the larger concept, which is exciting, it’s an adventure, it’s a thriller, but in each of these cars, you could literally have characters like the characters from WONDERFALLS or stories like the stories on ANGEL - I don’t mean paranormal stories, [but] I had just come off THE INSIDE, where there was humor and a certain twisted approach to the material, but I had done this science-fiction/spaceship show, FIREFLY, then I had gone on to do WONDERFALLS, which was a quirky, almost romantic comedy, and then I did this dark procedural [THE INSIDE], and I felt like this concept [DRIVE]could bear the weight of all that stuff. It could be scary, dark, funny, romantic, human, emotional, melodramatic - all those things. And it was something that a network could launch. Because it’s difficult to launch a show about horses in space or talking souvenirs or even an elite team of serial killer trackers, although I guess on CBS, that really isn’t a problem. But this really felt like something that was meant for Fox.

iF: At the risk of asking a stupid question, given the urgency of the road race, how do you justify getting these people out of their cars long enough for them to have any kind of interaction?

MINEAR: That’s the trick, actually. The way that I think we’ve solved it is, it’s not just getting from Point A to Point B as fast as you can. That is an element, but the game itself is more complex than that. It’s almost a psychological exercise as much as it is a race of speed. It’s a game of strategy. Think of the tortoise and the hare. This isn’t, ‘Get across the country as fast as you can,’ which would take a matter of hours. This is a long haul, [the drivers] don’t know how long it’s going to take and they don’t know where the finish line is. So each leg of the race has its own complications, and the notion is, if you’re up against, say, seventy other cars, on the first leg, you may come in at thirty-two. But you might do better on the next leg, and the idea is to start to try to figure out where the finish line is, and maybe even go directly there if you can, but to improve you’re ranking as you go along, so that by the end of the long haul, you’re number one. [The drivers stop to find clues] to some degree, but they also stop overnight, people get run off the road, they have to stop for gas, people are sabotaged by the players, the police pull them over, that sort of thing.

iF: Amy Acker, who was Fred/Illyria on ANGEL, is playing the wife of your lead Nathan Fillion, who also starred in FIREFLY.

MINEAR: Yes.

iF: So are you rehiring everybody from ANGEL and FIREFLY who’s not currently on a different job?

MINEAR: No, no. Would that I could. She was right for the role, that’s why.

iF: Well, Adam Baldwin starred for you on both FIREFLY and THE INSIDE - is he likely to show up?

MINEAR: Oh, I imagine that one might see any number of people show up. It’s a big show, with a big cast, and people will come and go, and I’m always looking to hire my friends.

iF: Are you directing any of the episodes?

MINEAR: I probably won’t direct any of the first thirteen. The workload is just too large at the moment. But if the show is successful and if it continues, I absolutely will be directing episodes.