Exclusive Interview: THE NEW 'DRIVE' OF TIM MINEAR - PART 1

One of the men behind Joss Whedon's FIREFLY and ANGEL talks about his new series with Nathan Fillion

By JOE FABISH, Contributing Writer

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 previous worked on ANGEL), WONDERFALLS and THE INSIDE - all of which achieved beloved cult status despite being cancelled mideseason or earlier. Minear, who earlier worked as 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 orginator 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 wehn 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 and 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, melodramtic - 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 really 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 toroise and the hare. This isn't, 'Get across the country as fast as you can,' which would take a matter of hours. This is along 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 our 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 monent. But if the show is succesful and if it continues, I absolutely will be directing episodes.

Exclusive Interview: TIM MINEAR AND WHAT IT TAKES TO 'DRIVE' TO SUCCESS - PART 2

How does this show compare to FIREFLY & why does he love Nathan Fillion so much?

By JOE FABISH, Contributing Writer

Tim Minear, erstwhile executive producer on ANGEL, FIREFLY, WONDERFALLS and THE INSIDE, continues his exclusive discussion of his new Fox TV series DRIVE, with insights into effects, casting and what he wants the series to be like. DRIVE is 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 was this Sunday; then the series settles into its weekly slot on Mondays at 8, leading into 24. Minear took time out to give us this exclusive.

iF: In terms of dealing with green-screen and special effects house Zoic, which also did FIREFLY, how does this compare in compexity to FIREFLY?

MINEAR: Well, it's interesting. There was the most sophiticated gree-screen that I've ever done with Zoic in our [DRIVE] pilot. Which is interesting, because we weren't doing alternate universed, we weren't doing magic, we weren't doing spaceships, we were doing people driving. But, as I mentioned [at the Television Critics Association Fox press panel], you can get away with a lot when it's something that is in your imagination. But since everybody understands what it feels like and what it looks like to drive on the road, because that's the real world, that stuff's actually harder to do in a way. But Zoic just brilliantly aquitted themsleves on the pilot and we're going to be working with them a lot. We're trying to make it so it's not just the green-screen equivalent of rear-screen projection. We;re trying to also just do some exciting visual things, too.

iF: How many main characters do you actually have? I'm a little confused.

MINEAR: Well, let's count them. Alex, Karenna, Wendy, Rob and Ellie, Lee, Susan, Ivy, JOhn and Violet, Sean and Winston - that's twelve - Mr. Bright - that's thirteen - Detective Erhle - that's fourteen - I would say it expands and contracts everywhere between twelve to eighteen.

iF: With that many main characters to service, do you intend to focus on several per episode?

MINEAR: Yeah.

iF: Does having so many characters make it more difficult for you to layer the characters?

MINEAR: Yeah, it does.

iF: How do you solve that?

MINEAR: Some stories center more on a couple of characters who come to the foreground in an episode, and then they might retreat more to C stories in other episodes.

iF: Why wasn't your current lead Nathan Fillion cast in the pilot? I'm guessing you guys were looking to work together again after FIREFLY.

MINEAR: Yeah. He just simply wasn't available at the time. He's always been my first choice.

iF: You;re filming in Valencia, about an hour north of Los Angeles. Does Valencia offer everything you need in terms of locations?

MINEAR: It offers an awful lot. But you can go a lot of places virtually with the green screen. So you try to find places within the [thirty-mile] zone [beyond which cast and crew need to be paid more for travel and time] around town, a street that you can fake for New Orleans of Florida or wherever it is you need to go.

iF: You had said - jokingly, I think - that an alternative title for DRIVE could be FIERY BALL OF DEATH. Are there regular times you're going to kill characters simply let the audience know that can happen, or are you holding that in reserve for plotlines that don't pan out very well?

MINEAR: No. If I'm going to do away with a character, it's generally not me doing away with an actor. Generally. It's been known to happen. But mostly you go where the best story is. And there are casualties in my philosophy.

iF: So you have who's staying and who's going pretty well mapped out for the first thirteen then?

MINEAR: No.

iF: How far have you mapped out in the storyline?

MINEAR: We;ve got an overall plan for the first thirteen that is with success in mind, so that it's not just thirteen, but we want to feel like we've arrived someplace by the end of thirteen.

iF: And do you think Fox is going to let you actually play out at least the whole thirteen?

MINEAR: I believe they're supporting the show and they're going to give it every shot, and hopefully it will connect with the public, and if it gets the numbers, it will be within their interest to continue airing it. But I don't think they ever cancel things just to be mean to me. Even when we tested the first pilot - which is substantially the same story [as the aired pilot] - the test audience's reaction was uniformly, 'Wow, there's nothing like this on TV.' So, because we are a serial, because we are an ensemble, because there is a certain near-genre aspect to it - it's a bigger than life thing, it's a conspiracy - it's going to get the inevitable comparisons to, say, LOST or HEROES. There's nothing you can do about that, and I love those shows, I'm definately inspired by those shows - but those shows have very different structures. I weould almost say that we're one part HEROES and one part 24. The urgent racing part, the just straight-ahead adrenaline action part, is 24, but the juggling act that you have to do with all these characters who are sort of all moving toward the same goal and finding out secrets about each other, is sort of more in the HEROES vein. But that being siad, now that I've compared it to HEROES, it really does have its own tone. And it really is its own thing. It's probably got more in common with WONDERFALLS and ANGEL than it does with HEROES and LOST, It really is its own thing. And that's what I'm most happy about.