Voices From Krypton

AL GOUGH on "SMALLVILLE"

As Smallville enters its seventh season, Clark Kent moves ever closer to his ultimate destiny of Superman, helped along on his journey by his newly-arrived cousin, Kara Zor-El (Laura Vandervort). In an exclusive interview with Voices From Krypton, co-creator/executive producer Al Gough details the genesis of Kara's arrival and reveals that in season seven, she will be giving Clark flying lessons.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ELIZA DUSHKU INTERVIEW

As Dark Horse gets ready to launch its second arc in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “season eight” comic, which is written by Brian K. Vaughn and, coincidentally enough, focuses on Faith, it seems like the right time to reach into the archives and pull out Edward Gross’ interview with actress Eliza Dushku. Said interview was conducted in between the actress choosing not to reprise the Faith role in a proposed spin-off and, instead, taking the starring role in Tru Calling.
   

Kicking vampiric ass as Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, waving her pom-poms in Bring It On or travelling backwards in time to try and prevent certain murders from occurring on Tru Calling just seems like another day in the life of Eliza Dushku. And whether she’s tapping into her dark side or playing someone a little lighter, all of it is somehow related to who she is as a person at any given moment.
    “It depends on what comes up, where I am and what I’m giving off,” says Dushku. “Sometimes they seem to be different manifestations of my different personalities. I think we all do have interesting people in us. I try to mix it up, keep it fun, keep it real, keep it interesting. But it’s always a circumstance where the grass is greener. When you’re on a comedy, you’re like, ‘I need to do something serious.’ I was doing The New Guy and City by the Sea pretty much simultaneously. It was night and day. The characters were so different. It makes it fun and kind of interesting. For me, I think I have to see a street-wise element to the character. I like to see intelligent young women in roles and as characters. I gravitate towards that street-wise element.”

THE MAKING OF DARK COMMANDOS

Online Entertainment magazine offered up a behind the scenes look at the making of Dark Commandos, tracing the show's origins and interviewing key players. Clicking below will bring you to a pdf version of that article, which is available for downloading.

Download DarkComm.pdf

BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH BOB GALE, PART 2

Production of the original Back to the Future was marred by a bit of controversy, which arose when actor Eric Stoltz, who had been hired to portray Marty McFly, was let go from production several weeks in. Replaced by Michael J. Fox, it was a situation that the acclaimed Stoltz deals with to this day. In the second part of Edward Gross’ exclusive interview with writer/producer Bob Gale, the details around the situation are revealed.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: The one disappointment for me about the DVD box set was that we didn’t get to see any of the Eric Stoltz footage.

BOB GALE: Well, I’ll explain that to you, because Bob and I had a long talk about that. And I was actually lobbying to get just one scene in there, without any dialogue, just of him walking around the back lot. We reviewed the footage, and Bob said “Look, this is not going to do Eric any good, it’s going to make him look really bad, and he went through enough pain over this movie that I don’t want to hurt him again.” Then he said, “Quite frankly, it makes me look bad for casting him in the first place.” We saved the footage, we actually had the opportunity to destroy the negative, and destroy it all, and we talked about it, but we decided we shouldn’t destroy it, because it is a rare historical opportunity to have this, but I think we all need to be in our 60s before we release this to the world.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: It’s interesting, because at one point Eric Stoltz was interviewed by the Saturday Today Show, and Jody Applegate asked him about Back to the Future, something along the lines of, “How did it feel?” and he just looked at her with anger in his eyes, and said, “What an insensitive question to ask somebody.”

          

BOB GALE: Well, it is an insensitive question. It’s like you see those newspaper reporters going up to someone after a tragedy and asking, “How did you feel when you heard your family was killed?” “Well, screw you!”

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I guess knowing these movies so well, it’s a natural curiosity to wonder how someone else would have tackled the role…

BOB GALE: And we understand that, we’re aware of it, but there’s a human cost. There’s no reason to cause pain, and that’s why we didn’t do it.

MEDIA GEEK & ORIGINAL VISION

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DARK COMMANDOS - Episode One

In Episode 1 of Dark Commandos, the kidnapping of the Vice-President's daughter entangles the kidnappers, the police, and the Undead Brigade in a high speed chase.     It's wall-to-wall action from the very first frame, as a careening van dodges police cars and helicopters, until -- years before Bruce Willis did it bigger and better (and for about a hundred million dollars more) -- an airborne car actually takes down a helicopter.

DARK COMMANDOS Trailer

With the David Greenwalt interview, below, we mark the official launch of the Dark Commandos blog: Vampires and Slayers.   If you're not familiar with DARK COMMANDOS, it is the vampire web series originally launched several years ago, at a time when hardly anyone was doing live dramas on the internet.    We produced eight episodes, before concluding that without a way to generate income from it, we could not afford to keep producing the series in its original form.   Since then, we have developed a comic book based on the property and are looking at a possible animated version. 

Here's the original trailer:

Executive Producer David Greenwalt on "Moonlight"

In the new CBS series Moonlight, debuting this fall, Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin) is a private investigator who has truly seen it all after being bitten by his vampire bride on their wedding night 60 years ago. He now lives between two realities, fighting his adversaries among the undead while being in love with a mortal woman. St. John must cautiously balance these two lives before they clash, proving that life's gravest dangers are found in the moonlight.

The series is created by Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, with Angel co-creator David Greenwalt serving as executive producer.

In our audio interview, Greenwalt discusses the series itself and traces his own involvement with it.

MEDIA GEEK: IN COLOR!

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BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH BOB GALE, PART 1

Several years ago when Universal Home Video issued the Back to the Future trilogy on DVD, co-writer/producer Bob Gale sat down with Voices From Krypton’s Edward Gross to reflect on the making of the trilogy, in particular the struggle to get it made and the controversial casting and then recasting of the role of Marty McFly, first by Eric Stoltz and then by Michael J. Fox. This is the first in a three-part interview.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Do you find it amazing that people still hold these films in such high regard?

BOB GALE: It is. I hadn’t seen the movies myself until we re-mastered them. I guess the last time I’d seen them was when we had the big trilogy screening in LA. We had them in about 15 screenings around the country, and that was the last time I’d seen part one and two, and I guess I’d seen part three afterwards, in a foreign situation. But I was actually amazed at how well they held up myself, and I think the reason is it’s basically just a human story. The idea that your parents were once kids is something that crosses all cultures, it crosses everything. When your kid suddenly comes to the realization that mom and dad were once children, that’s such a big idea for a little kid to understand and make sense of. I think that’s the appeal; it just goes past all the other stuff.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: That works for the first movie, but after that it becomes something different, doesn’t it?

BOB GALE: It does, and all I can attribute it to is that you just love those characters so much that you want to spend more time with them.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Obviously there’s no way you guys could have imagined this thing becoming what it became…

BOB GALE: Oh, no chance. We wrote Back to the Future right after Used Cars was released, we pitched it to Columbia in September of 1980, and we wrote two drafts there. I think the second draft we did at Columbia was dated March or April 1981, and they passed on it. They said they wanted something raunchier. It was too nice, it was too sweet. We submitted this thing everywhere. We got over 40 rejections on this project over a period of three years. So yes, you’re right, we had absolutely no idea that anyone would want to see this movie. At the time we were coming out, we were perceived as a movie in trouble because we’d re-cast the lead role. Within the industry, everyone said that just smells bad. And the movie everyone thought was going to be the big, big hit that year was Joe Dante’s Explorers. Nobody had the slightest clue that Back to the Future was going to make a dime.