Tim Minear

The co-creator of Fox’s new high-octane drama Drive takes a pit stop to give CS Weekly a peek under the hood of his thrilling new serialized drama about an illegal cross-country race and its diverse participants.

A veteran of cult classics like Angel, Firefly, and Wonderfalls, as well as the co-creator of the short-lived FBI procedural The Inside, Tim Minear has brought his experience as a television scribe to the Screenwriting Expo for the last two years where his classes on breaking story have received rave reviews. Before his new Fox series Drive hits the air with a two-hour debut on Sunday (followed by a third hour in its regular Monday-night slot), Minear offers CS Weekly a look behind the scenes of the series that finds a disparate group of characters lured into a mysterious race with enigmatic rules. The pilot introduces the audience to the concept through the eyes of Nebraska landscaper Alex Tully (Nathan Fillion), who hopes to find his kidnapped wife (Amy Acker) at the finish line, while his competitors, including housewife (Melanie Lynskey), desperate to find her baby; a parolee (Kevin Alejandro) bonding with his half-brother (J.D. Pardo); and others glimpsed briefly in the first hour all pursue their own agendas along the way.

How did you get involved with Drive?

I have this overall deal with Twentieth Century Fox, the studio, and Jennifer Nicholson Salke, the head of Fox’s TV development, had a relationship with Ben Queen, who had this idea about an illegal cross-country road race. When they have an idea pitched to them by someone who has less practical experience running a show, they put that writer together with someone they have a deal with who has more experience running shows. Jenn said I should meet Ben and hear his idea. It was development time, and I was quite burned out from having just gone directly from Angel (1999-2002) to Firefly (2002), back to Angel (2003), right to Wonderfalls (2003-2004), to redeveloping The Inside (2004-2005), to being put on an accelerated schedule for that. I kept making these shows during the off times of the year. I wasn’t really around during development time, so I never really had anything to pitch development-wise.

So, Ben had this idea (eventually titled Drive), which I thought it was a good idea. Ben’s idea was a show about an illegal cross-country road race, with regular people, who are not racecar drivers, competing in their own cars. But I didn’t feel like I wanted to get involved with someone else’s thing. I was really ready to do a show on my own, so I initially said no. But then I thought more about the idea, and I figured, "Well, what the hell?" It is a great idea. So I told Ben that I changed my mind.

When I’m looking for something to develop, what I’ve learned is that you want an idea that is broad and specific at the same time. CSI is the perfect example of something that is incredibly specific: they’re the ones who dust for prints, they’re the science guys-but that’s such a broad idea that you can tell any type of crime story within that concept. Drive felt specific-it’s a secret cross-country road race with regular people-but it’s also incredibly broad. Is it a comedy? Is it action? Is it a thriller? Is it a drama? Is it a melodrama? Is it Magnolia? Is it North By Northwest? My feeling was that it was all those things. It could be all those things because each of these little cars were worlds unto themselves, which would be pinging off of each other in the landscape of the larger concept. That’s what appealed to me about it.

With such a large cast to introduce in the pilot-you nearly 20 regular or recurring characters show up in the first 45 minutes-what were the challenges of making sure the viewers would have a grip on all the various characters?

The answer was that they can’t. You have to focus on a couple of characters and tell the story through the points of view of those characters, then allow the balance of the ensemble to exist in the world you’ve now set up. You get a little taste of who they are, but then you’re going to really explore those other stories. That’s why Drive is a series and not a movie. We really focused on three characters in the pilot and got into the concept of the race through their points of view-primarily, through Alex, the Nathan Fillion character. Alex has as much information as the audience does, so he’s learning about it as we are and that’s the person’s head you want to be in.

Drive had a rather on-again-off-again time with Fox. Why do you think they had a hard time getting behind it from the get-go?

We all did, to some degree. It’s a deceptively complicated concept, and really, the most complicated thing about it is how do you film a race that’s not a race? They’re not going around a track. It’s a challenge to tell this ensemble drama and still keep this idea of the race alive. It’s not The Amazing Race; if you want these characters to interact, you have to get them out of the car. If there’s a starting pistol fired in an episode, and they have to go some place, then that becomes their entire agenda. It’s tricky to break these stories.

In terms of the network, certainly Peter Liguori, who is the president of Fox, always saw what was valuable in this show for his network. He’s always been foursquare behind it, it was just a matter of getting the show on the schedule. Initially, Fox picked it up, and then didn’t. When Peter cleared the path so that we could go on the air, everything became so accelerated that now we’re sort of caught on this train that’s left the station.

Presumably, the race itself is a McGuffin to explore characters engaged in it. How do you walk the line between personal stories and the overall arc of the race?

You almost, by necessity, have to stop the action of the race in order to tell a story, but you can’t. So, what’s interesting is the urgency with which people approach the race-like how far behind they are, how far ahead they are, where the next checkpoint is, where’s the final finish line-all that stuff colors every scene. Balancing it is the trick, and that’s what we’re learning. There are a lot of different ways to do it.

As with The Inside, you re-shot the pilot for Drive. Aside from several cast changes, what were your goals with the structural changes? The fact that we now show some backstory about these characters in the beginning was the biggest thing, actually. It’s the same story. In the first version of the story, you start with a guy whose wife is missing and he goes to Key West thinking he’s either going to find her there or have a ransom demand or something, and he finds he’s been brought down there for this race. In this version of the story, instead of getting that exposition out as we go, we’re frontloading it so that you’re invested in these people sooner. What we found was that there was kind of a disconnect with the viewer. They were watching this thing and understanding the story, but not really in the point of view of anybody. That’s what we tried to do here.

The title Drive has an immediacy that arrests you when you see it on print or on the screen. Did the title arrive with the concept, or is it something you worked toward?

I don’t think [Ben] actually came to me and said, "It’s called Drive." I think what he said was, "Here’s the idea," and we both went, "...and it’s called Drive." The title for The Inside was terrible. It was called The Inside because, initially, it was about somebody who worked "on the inside" as an undercover agent. That’s not at all the show I made. That concept was gone, so we were fishing around forever for a title that would tell you, in a blink, what the show was, and we never landed on it.

The thing that you bring up here is interesting, because it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to. I think Wonderfalls was great and I think Firefly was great, but those titles did not help those shows. Wonderfalls doesn’t mean anything and Firefly doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but you have to introduce the show by getting viewers there and showing it to them. When Heroes was first being promoted, I could look at a print ad that said "Heroes" with a photograph of that cast in those iconic poses and I knew what that show was. No one had to explain it to me. Then, when it aired, it delivered on that. It was exactly what it said it was. I felt that this show could have that same kind of blink recognition. You can promote a thing called Drive, explain very quickly what it was, and people will understand.

How do you approach writing an episode? Do you start with a character and emotion you want to explore?

Whenever we were breaking Angel or Firefly, that’s exactly how we would approach it. What’s the story I really need to tell to get across who this person is? That really is how we break these stories, too. There’s also an element of "What’s the race of it?" Think of the race aspect of this show as the procedural aspect, the context of the case they are working on this week. That’s the same thing here. What’s the leg of the race they’re on this week, and how’s that going to help me metaphorically get to the heart of this character stuff? Now, it’s not as simple as that, because you’re talking about 10 to 12 characters that all have different things that they need, want, that kind of thing. So, one particular checkpoint may mean something very specific to one of the participants, but not every participant may end up getting to that checkpoint.

The concept has an obvious ending point with the finish line and with Tully getting his wife back, which presumably will happen about the same time. How do you develop a show like this as an ongoing concept with that apparent ending hanging over your head?

I want there to be that constant anticipation-we’re getting closer to something. What is it? I think we’re going to have to deliver on that. They’re going to have to get to a finish line.

So, after a certain number of episodes, they reach a finish line?

That’s pretty much the idea. Initially, we talked about making the first 13 take us to a finish line, but what we’re finding is that the stories are taking longer to tell, and that’s good. It feels like a season-a proper 22 or 24 episodes would get you to a finish line.

At which point, you’d re-invent the idea of the race like 24, which goes on to another day in Jack Bauer’s life?

Yeah. It would be another race and some people will be dead by then and new people would be introduced and then other people would fold over to the next season in different ways or their agendas would change or whatever. There will be winners and losers and stakes and consequences.

How many episodes are you doing this year?

Thirteen is the order.

And three of those are airing in two days?

Which is great. I always talk about Fox not promoting me-now I wish they’d stop (laughs). Stop promoting it and stop giving us three episodes in two nights-I’m running out of episodes already!