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Interview with Scott Peters, the creator
Topic Started: Aug 28 2005, 02:38 PM (342 Views)
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Scott Peters Interview
HNR Chats with The 4400 Creator/Executive Producer
August 27th 2005 02:00am | Posted by: Robert Falconer HNR Senior Editor



Interview by Robert Falconer | HNR Senior Editor

Pulling together all the elements necessary to create a successful television series is – for want of a better analogy – a birthing process under the most ideal conditions. The usual creative conundrums, the back-and-forth teething pains with colleagues, the inevitable notes of suggestion from the network; all are issues best left to those stout of heart, thick of skin, or, at the risk of tossing in another cliché phrase, crazy of mind.

Factor science fiction into the mix, and the complexities increase exponentially. Hitting on the “magic formula” requires talent, determination, innovative thinking…and of course, a certain amount of luck.

For two seasons now, USA Network’s The 4400 has managed to capture that magic formula, one not seen since the departure of The X-Files in 2002. It’s a reasonable example, since The X-Files is often cited in comparisons with The 4400, though creator/executive producer Scott Peters is quick to point out that any similarities are purely coincidental.

We’re inclined to agree with him. Though both shows deal with peculiar circumstances investigated by a male and female duo of government agents, that’s about as far as the comparisons can reasonably go. For The 4400 is a far more “human” drama, unafraid to show the quiet, tender, uncertain moments of its characters’ lives in natural, unassuming ways—something The X-Files only touched upon in later seasons.






Then there’s the wonderful, high-concept hook that resonated so strongly with viewers in the first place, and made The 4400 the highest-rated and most-watched new series premiere ever on basic cable: 4400 abductees returned to Earth by a glowing orb, with no memories of their experience, yet each with an extraordinary ability and a mysterious role to play in ensuring the survival of future humanity.

I sat down recently to talk with Scott Peters—a former Canadian who has spent the last 16 years honing his skills in LA as a writer, director and producer on various shows such as The Outer Limits, Highlander and Tracker, among others. In this exclusive interview, Scott talks about his career, the origins and development of The 4400, and where the show is headed as season two comes to a close…

Robert: I want to begin with your career. We know you’ve had a lot of experience in genre television, including writing for shows like Highlander, The Outer Limits and Tracker. Can you tell our readers when you first began writing, how you broke into the business, and whether or not you’ve always had an interest in genre material?

Scott Peters: Actually, I have always had an interest in genre material. I was a huge fan of the Twilight Zone and those kinds of shows. As far as the business goes, I broke in back in 1992. I wrote, directed and produced a student film in the Masters program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I organized the screening and invited a lot of agents and people in town, and was signed by an agent the next day after the screening, which was really thrilling and exciting, believe me.

Unfortunately, they just sort of sat on things for about a year, and so I kept looking around for myself. I saw this show on TV called, Are You Afraid of the Dark? It was a Nickelodeon, half-hour, single camera, eerie kids show. I noticed that it was produced in Canada – and I’m Canadian – and I thought, “Well I can direct this,” because at the time I was looking to be a director. I called my agent – who in turn called them – and they told us that all the directing slots were filled, but that if I wanted to write an episode, they had some openings. So I sat down and wrote a pitch, and they loved it and decided to buy it. I also wrote the script for it, and the next year I wrote a couple of more and they let me direct.

The writing work really began to take off from that point, and eclipsed the time I had to do any other directing, which was a bit of a drag, but it’s starting to come back now; I’m starting to wean myself away from writing and a little more back towards directing again. This year I directed the second to last episode of The 4400 and had a great time and it turned out really well.

But I do remember at one point in my career writing for five shows at the same time and trying to get all the drafts in on time without my head imploding.

Robert: It sounds as though when things began to happen, they really mushroomed.

Scott Peters: Yeah, they did. The bottom line is that once it took off, it really took off.

Robert: Tell us a little about how you and Rene Echevarria first met and how the genesis of The 4400 came about?

Scott Peters: Actually, I had come up with the idea about six or seven months before I met Rene, and had taken it to American Zoetrope Television – which is Francis Ford Coppola’s company – and the president of that company at the time was Maira Suro, who now also happens to be an executive producer on The 4400. She really loved the idea, and together we developed it and went out to the networks. On our first network pitch we sold it right there in the room to Fox, which was also thrilling for me as it was my first network pitch. It was a hell of a way to start, very exciting.

Robert: How did they receive the material?

Scott Peters: The guys there absolutely loved it. There were a couple of people at the top who were not as convinced as the guy who we were dealing with, until we worked with them through the development process. What’s funny is that they didn’t pick us up, but they wouldn’t let us go, either. They just kept asking for more and more development. At some point we thought, “Well, we need to bring in a show runner anyway…” and so decided it might be a good idea to do that at that particular point. So we interviewed a few people and talked to Rene. We hit it off right away and he seemed to “get” the project. We got together and began to do more drafts of the script, which again, Fox – even though they absolutely loved it – decided that ultimately it wasn’t the way they were going to go with their new pickups. They released the show back to us, and we were able to go to other networks, like USA, who were very interested right off the top – and that’s where it ultimately landed.

Robert: And Rene left the show after season one…

Scott Peters: What happened there was that Rene wasn’t able to finish what we started, because he ended up selling a pilot of his own to Fox, and moved on to do that.

Robert: You’ve been quoted before as saying that the events of 9/11 were creatively influential in this series. Can you tell our readers how, and in your estimation, how this particular genre – as it applies to a show like this – must strive to be different today than when The X-Files first aired?

Scott Peters: I was a fan of The X-Files as well. I thought it was a terrific show and I thought it was well done. Clearly, I didn’t want to do that again – though there are some people who did sort of want to do that again [laughs] – but what really influenced me as I was playing with this idea of 4400 people being returned, was the metaphor for the show, which is 9|11. What happens when a single unprecedented event occurs…how do we react to it…how does it change us and challenge us…and how does it ultimately define us? And that’s precisely what 9/11 has been doing. In fact, in the dialogue in some of our episodes you’ll hear the words “everything has changed,” which is very true. It strikes a chord of reality and has a certain immediate relevance that I think the audience responds to. I think it’s part of the reason for the success of the show – it’s not just about creepy things happening and odd circumstances and strange characters. There’s a gravitas involved that’s not overt. Certainly, there’s not a perfect counterpoint to everything since 9/11 in our show, but it is the heart and soul of where the project found its inspiration for me. And by centering everything around the ripple effect – which we’re all experiencing now, and will for quite some time – that’s what really drives the show and the creativity behind it.

I believe we’re also evolving as an audience – and we’re an even more sophisticated audience than we were 10 years ago when the X-Files was on – and everything that’s happened since then grounds our show in a very particular way and helps keep it interesting. You’ll see sub textual things like prejudice and fear and the role of government and religion in our lives that play well in our show, that also are entirely relevant to what you see on the news everyday.




Robert: Do you think that for science fiction on television today to remain relevant, that it’s almost impossible not to draw from the events of the world around us?

Scott Peters: I think it’s interesting, because I believe most science fiction over the years has inevitably drawn on current events. I remember very distinctly with the original Star Trek that there were many episodes that dealt with the social topics of the day. For example – for those who remember – there was an episode with Frank Gorshin where he and another humanoid alien come aboard the Enterprise, one with black on one side of his face, the other with white on the same side [“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”]. Sure, it was extremely overt – because it was the 60s – but they were trying to shine a light on racism and how ridiculous people can sometimes be about superficial differences, and I think that’s what the best science fiction always tries to do, hopefully without being too “on the nose” about it.

Robert: There’ve been lots of discussions comparing Tom and Diana to Mulder and Scully, and beyond that, there have been plenty of X-Files comparisons, as we discuss in the lead in to this interview. To what extent – if any – did the X-Files influence this show, beyond its obvious and broader influence on contemporary genre television in general?

Scott Peters: Certainly, I think X-Files is ingrained in the common culture now, but I think that’s where any important similarities to our show end. I definitely wasn’t looking to do an X-Files rip-off. I think that when you look at teams of two who are going to work together, your options are two males, two females, or a male and a female…and certainly a male and female make for a more interesting dynamic. Mulder and Scully didn’t invent that, nor did we. On the other hand, if you want to use two guys – or even two women, for that matter – then it becomes kind of a “buddy” show and doesn’t leave you open to as many story possibilities.

What’s interesting from last year to this year, is that we were very heavily compared to X-Files last year, and this year a lot of that has fallen away. The 4400 is becoming its own show with its own fans. One of the things that we’ve really tried to do, that I really like about our series, is to show the domestic lives of these characters. In the early years of The X-Files, we only ever saw Mulder and Scully in their “work clothes,” solving cases. Whereas with The 4400, you very much come home with our characters, even at night when they’re putting their kids to bed, or having a discussion about school or whatever other commonality runs through their lives. What’s interesting about Tom, for example, is that he’s a man very much torn between his job and his home life, personified by his familial connections to the 4400, which also happen to be his job. It’s an interesting dynamic. Diana was drawn into that as well with her adoption of Maia, so she experiences both sides of the equation too. I think this all helps to flesh out the characters and layer the stories.

Robert: The idea that the 4400 were kidnapped – not by aliens – but by our future descendents is an interesting twist. It reminds me a little of an old novel by John Varley called “Millennium,” in which people were abducted in the final moments of a disaster – like an airplane crash – and transported to the future where they were desperately needed. The interesting twist here is you postulate at the end of season one that the 4400 were sent back as part of a complex jigsaw puzzle to alter current events in a bid to modify the future somehow. J. Michael Strazynski had a full five-year story arc mapped out for Babylon 5. How much of this show do you have figured out – and do you know who these future descendents of ours are, and what their ultimate goal is? Or have you left that open-ended in your own minds?

Scott Peters: There are a number of big issues that we have a very strong idea about. And obviously as you move through 12 episodes of a season, you try to figure out where you want to end up at the end of the season, and then try to tell the stories between where you are now and where you hope to end up. I’m a very strong believer in having an end goal, and there are other shows – some of which I’ve even worked on – that didn’t really have an end strategy; they were just sort of “winging it.” And I think what happens is that you are restricted in a way, because you don’t really know where you’re going and it becomes harder to develop stories in the broader context. The difficulty with that is that the audience can start to catch on very quickly when things don’t “line up,” as it were, and they can feel ripped off.

So I think it’s important to have a very solid goal to be aiming for – and that may change as time goes on – but I think it’s a little foolhardy to be racing through episodes and not really know where you’re headed. I also think the idea of a five-year arc is great, in fact, when I went into Fox to pitch this series, I had a five-year arc in mind myself. Unfortunately, it ended with me revealing that we were dealing with future humans at the end of year five, not the end of episode five [laughs]. But what’s interesting is that now that we’ve gotten that big revelation out of the way, we’re back to following the original pattern that I first laid out.

Robert: So far, the series has been dealing with individual stories that are ostensibly linked into a larger, master plan. Are there going to be any major revelations for humanity on a national or global scale as the series progresses – or any events that take place on an epic scale…something that speaks in a grand sense to the master plan for which these abductees have been returned?

Scott Peters: Yes. There are hints along the way, there are pieces of the puzzle that are revealed, and there are characters who are being introduced late in the season who are dropping hints about what went on and what happened. You’ve already seen an episode that dealt with where they were taken and what may have happened to them [“Life Interrupted”]. We’re trying to keep it a bit nebulous right now, because obviously we want to stretch it out for a while and have fun with it.





Robert: Are each of these “gifted” people we’re introduced to part of that bigger puzzle, or are some just subjects of interesting stand-alone stories?

Scott Peters: We’re certainly tying a number of them together. By the same token, we haven’t sat down and said, “OK, the future people have plotted out perfectly what each of these returnees and initial trajectories are going to accomplish. If they were able to do that, I think they’d be able to solve their problems without going through all of this. The idea is that they have 4400 chances to alter whatever is coming down the road, and I think there are different people with different abilities that could create different outcomes. As future humans, not aliens, they are fallible, even though they’re much more advanced than we are. I don’t think they have it all figured out yet.

Robert: Do these future humans give a damn about us, or are they only interested in the net effect that will benefit them?

Robert: I think they view it the way we might view an action today: that there is a necessary evil involved in preserving the greater good, which really brings us back to 9/11 again. Remember that they were prepared to shoot down a planeload of innocent people in the event that the plane was going to be used as a weapon against the White House or Capital or some other target.

Robert: Let’s talk a little about Tom and Diana. How would you describe these two characters?

Scott Peters: I think their hearts are in the right place, but I think that they’re flawed as well – just like the rest of us – in the way that we all go about trying to achieve our goals. They’re trying to find their way with this whole 4400 scenario. Neither of them have an owner’s manual on how this works. Tom was the one who got closest to it by getting information from his son, Kyle, but he didn’t get very much. So he’s trying to figure out what the best way is to deal with this. He learned at the end of season one that something is going to happen, that someone is going to do something, but he’s faced with the quandary, “Do I stop them, or do I help them?” even though it may kill a child, for example. After all, that could be the thing that has to happen to save a thousand people, and he just doesn’t know.

It’s a very difficult place for Tom to be, and it becomes very frustrating. He has to attach his own morals and values to whatever it is that he’s being asked to do and try to figure it out.

And I think Diana finds herself in that same sort of conundrum, because now she has a child that is a member of the 4400, so now here priorities and perspective have changed dramatically from the first season. She, too, wants the best for everybody, but just doesn’t know what the “best” is yet. So it’s an interesting dynamic to watch them figure it out and try to do the best thing for both our time and the future.

Robert: I want to ask you about casting the primaries for this series. For example, Joel Gretch truly has a presence on-screen, which many of us first became aware of in Steven Spielberg’s Taken miniseries. How did he come to be cast for The 4400. And what was it about Jacqueline that drew you to her for this role?

Scott Peters: It’s a funny thing about Joel, because we looked at a lot of “Tom’s,” and Joel came up – and we all immediately knew who he was – because Taken was not that old of a project.

Let me digress for just a moment. Before we began shooting, I talked to a friend of mine who is a director, because we were looking for directors early on to do our pilot, and he told me about this miniseries he was doing called Taken. Well, I almost had a heart attack, because it sounded very similar to what we were doing, and ours had been in development for almost two years prior to this. In reality it wasn’t the same thing at all. In any event, we all knew Joel from Taken. We saw him on tape, and he came in to audition, and we thought, “Boy, we really like this guy but he’s never going to go for it because he was just in Taken.” So we put him aside and looked at a bunch of other people. But we really didn’t see anybody else we liked, so we finally decided to let the network tell us “no,” if they felt so inclined. So we put him forward in the pile, and they didn’t flinch at all; they didn’t have a problem with it, even though we were afraid that they might think it was weird to have him in a project so similar in tone, so soon afterwards.

But he’s just a terrific actor; that’s really what it comes down to. And he’s a wonderful person as well, as are all the people in our cast. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to go to work with all these people. The whole cast has actually gotten together at Jackie’s house on Sunday nights – because it’s not on in Canada yet – and watched the DVD at 9:00 PM like everyone else, and partied.

Jacqueline came in and auditioned with a lot of other people as well – we saw so many people for these roles – and she just owned the room from the moment she walked in. She’s Australian, and has a very pronounced accent, but what’s cool is that she will remain in the “American tongue,” if you will, all day long while she’s shooting the show…and even all week long, because if she slips in and out, it’s difficult to retain the American accent. What’s so odd is to go out to dinner with her on a Friday night, because then she’s just full-on Aussie [laughs], and when people come and guest star they have no idea that she’s from Down-Under.

But she brings a heart and soul to this character in spades, which is exactly what we were looking for.




Robert: I have to ask you this: Is Isabelle evil, do you think, or just fulfilling a greater destiny that only appears evil from our limited perspective?

Scott Peters: [Laughs] Well, I dunno. What do you think of Jordan Collier?

Those two characters – Isabelle and Collier – are so much fun to work with, because on an episode-by-episode basis they can be evil, or they can be good. In fact, Billy Campbell has often asked me, “Am I evil or am I good, because I feel like I’m evil.” And I say, “Really? Because next week you’re doing something really good.” It’s really fun to flip those traits back and forth; you can make a great argument for good, and conversely, you can make a great argument for evil.

But the short answer to your question is: I can’t answer that. It’s part of the fun of what’s coming.

Robert: There’s lots of speculation about what happened to Jordan Collier’s body after he was shot. Billy Campbell was wonderful in the show. Can we expect to see him again?

Scott Peters: You never know. All I can say is stay tuned to the end of the final episode this season.

Robert: Much of this series takes place in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Was this a conscious choice as you developed the show, with the thought that you might shoot in Vancouver? And how have you enjoyed working in Vancouver?

Scott Peters: Actually, the series was originally set in San Diego because I didn’t want to live out of the country. That’s half of it. I also wanted to stay away from that whole X-Files look and thought it would be really interesting to see something that takes place in Southern California – or at least the South West – with deserts instead of rainforests, different lighting, and all of that. In fact, the original draft – the original idea for the story – was that the ball of light would land over Joshua Tree, and explode out from there into the desert; I don’t think I’ve ever told that story before, actually.

Robert: That sounds like it would have been a very cool visual.

Scott Peters: Yeah, it was. But listen, I couldn’t be happier with the beautiful mountain and lake location that we used, but it would have been a bit of a different show I think, and that’s how it was originally conceived.

I have to say I love Vancouver, though. I was up there for two years working on Outer Limits, which I think were the two years where there was the most recorded rain in the city’s history [laughs]. It was depressing. It was raining and gray all the time. So when we made the decision to take The 4400 up to Vancouver, I just made a conscious decision not to fret or complain about the weather, and of course as we shot the first season, it was the best, most wonderful, and most incredible season Vancouver’s ever had; warm and spectacular.

Also the dynamics were much different. This is my own show, I absolutely love this cast, the people that I work with – along with the crew – are wonderful, and I had an absolute blast. So that changes one’s perspective somewhat.

Robert: Can you give us any hints about what we can expect in the final episode?

Scott Peters: All I can say is that there are several tremendously cool revelations that we have at the end – beginning with the second to last episode. We haven’t seen all the characters we saw last year, but we are going to see pretty much everybody we’ve seen in the show before the end of this season. And the final episode will also leave a cliffhanger for season three with several “tree-bending” moments.

Robert: Beyond merely entertaining the audience for an hour, what would you like people to take away from this series?

Scott Peters: Good question. In these really difficult times in which we live – where we have people blowing up subway lines; where people have to take their shoes off at an airport to make sure there’s no concealed bombs – I think our show tries to show that there is hope, even as we try to echo some of these themes, and that humanity wouldn’t have made it this far without some benevolence in the world. It’s not all bombs and it’s not all terror; there’s more to life than that, and I think you see that reflected in our characters. Even though they have a lot of struggles to deal with, there’s also a lot of good from what they’re doing, and they believe in a cause.

Robert: Given the times in which we live, I’ll happily take that answer.

Scott Peters: Well, I don’t want it to sound pretentious – because it’s only an hour of television – but if there is anything one could ever hope for in our show, I would want it to be a kernel of that.

Robert: And I think that’s a wonderful note to end on. I want to thank you for taking the time out to speak with us, Scott…and continued success with the show.

Scott Peters: You bet. And thank you.

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