Post by leadinvestigator on Jun 15, 2005 14:35:41 GMT -5
Posted on Tue, Jun. 14, 2005
‘Shield' writers are just two of the boys
Pembroke Hill grads have their say on gritty crime drama
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
The Shield,” basic cable's roughest and rawest show, is written and shot in L.A. But the drama set around cops who don't always do the right thing has almost as many Kansas City area connections as Sam Brownback, who would doubtless be shocked at all the four-letter words and graphic gore “The Shield” serves up each week.
Now imagine what Brownback would think if he knew the meanest script this season was penned by two nice women who graduated from Pembroke Hill.
“The Shield” wraps up its fourth season with a relatively subdued episode at 9 tonight on FX. But for many fans, the most indelible memories from this season are of the intense 90-minute episode that aired May 24.
That show included a scene of a city councilman forcing a hooker to simulate a humiliating sex act he was once forced to perform on another man. In an interrogation, a crime lord was told that his son had been sodomized in prison and not against his will. Later a cop taunted the crime lord for having a gay black son — but in more colorful terms. A husband and wife called each other unprintables before getting into a knock-down-drag-out at the police station. And the Lord's name was taken in vain what seemed like a hundred times.
Liz Craft and Sarah Fain wrote that script. They're from here. So are Jay Karnes, formerly of Lawrence, who as the nebbishy detective Dutch is one of the co-stars on “The Shield,” and onetime Unicorn and Mo Rep player David Rees Snell, who plays the mostly quiet cop Ronnie. (See Aaron Barnhart's interview with Karnes on Page E-8.)
Chatting by phone, Craft and Fain are courteous, straightforward and good-natured. Trademark Midwestern qualities, all.
And yet they wrote that super-sized swearfest for “The Shield.”
Fain laughs.
“You should've read the first draft!” she says. “It got pulled back a lot. That's one of the things we like about the show. You don't feel a sense of restraint. The show doesn't flinch from things, and that's really appealing to us as writers — not women writers.”
Fain and Craft, however, walk a line of their own. They know they were expected to bring a female voice to one of TV's most testosterone-charged programs. But they also were eager to fit in on a hit show they'd been trying to join since they saw an advance tape of the “Shield” pilot in 2002.
It was in 1998, over beers at the Point, when the two writers decided to join forces. Fain, who had been teaching creative writing in North Carolina, and Craft, who edited teen novels in New York City, almost immediately relocated to Southern California. They gradually found work writing for network shows, starting with the WB show “Glory Days” in 2002 and then the last two seasons of “Angel.”
Their calling card was a “spec script.” Spec scripts usually don't get turned into shows but give producers a measure of someone's writing chops. They submitted a spec script for “Oz” to Shawn Ryan, creator of “The Shield.”
For those unfamiliar with “Oz,” it was on HBO and took place in a prison. It was kind of like “M*A*S*H,” except that instead of Hawkeye Pierce stuffing a rubber chicken into Major Winchester's teapot, you might see him stuffing a sock into Winchester's mouth to muffle the screams while being sliced with a razor.
Ryan, who had worked with the women for one season on “Angel,” was sold on the “Oz” script.
“The first five pages were twice as nasty as anything that had been written on ‘The Shield,' ” Ryan said last week. “Bad cops live in a very masculine world, and that tends to be the kind of material I like. That said, I want the universe of ‘The Shield' to expand. So bringing on Liz and Sarah just added a tremendous amount to the show.”
For their first month on the job, though, the women were a bundle of nerves, Fain said. It didn't help that Ryan had scored a casting coup by landing Oscar winner Glenn Close for a whole season. Close would play Monica Rawling, the new captain in charge of the precinct house. As such, she would be the boss of the baddest, baldest cop on the force, Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis, who won an Emmy for his portrayal.
Craft and Fain had no idea Close was about to sign on to “The Shield” when they joined the writing staff. But they didn't have much time to think about it.
“I think Sarah and I try to argue a woman's point of view if necessary,” Craft says, “but really (we want) what's best for the show, male or female.”
And in fact, Fain notes, the most feminine characters on the show are guys. She mentions the ongoing dynamic between two troubled detectives, Curtis Lemansky and Shane Vendrell (played by Kenneth Johnson and Walton Goggins).
“For some reason we really felt strongly about Lem,” Fain says.
Craft adds, “He is probably the most sensitive character on the show.”
Fain agrees: “It wasn't about the women so much as Lem the sensitive guy.”
Still, their touch was unmistak
able to others on the show.
“I remember,” Craft says, “that there was a line in a script that Michael Chiklis in rehearsal actually said, ‘Well, one of you guys wrote this, because only a woman would write this!' He was absolutely right.”
Ryan noted another strength the two bring to “The Shield.” They can write reams of dialogue. That came in handy when it was time to craft the May 24 episode.
“I wanted this to be a lot of interrogation with Vic, Monica and Antwon,” Ryan said, referring to the sulky crime lord played with surprising intensity by comedian Anthony Anderson, another fourth-season hire. “If we could build up to an episode where we got the three of them in a room with very high stakes, I thought the results could be explosive.”
For all the talk in the press about what Close did for “The Shield” — ratings are up 30 percent this season — the insiders lavish as much praise on Anderson, whose previous TV credit was a short-lived family sitcom on the WB.
“He just got better and better,” Ryan said. “Whether it's Jim Carrey, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks, people who are known primarily as comedic actors know how to do the serious stuff.”
Fain calls Anderson “a terrific villain,” while Craft notes that whenever his scenes were filmed on location, “fans would be there shouting his name.”
While Close will be written out after tonight's episode (she decided against returning next season), Fain and Craft will be back for Season 5. They've managed to stay employed since that first job on “Glory Days.”
“We're lucky,” Fain says.
Craft agrees, thinking back on the Point and the evening when they decided to pitch caution to the wind: “Something about it felt right. And it was right. I'm glad we met that night.”
During the off-season, they're teaming on another project: a two-book deal for Little Brown with decidedly softer subject matter. The first is about a group of friends just out of high school.
“ ‘The Opposite of the Shield,' it could be titled,” Craft jokes.
Reach Aaron Barnhart at (816) 234-4790. Or visit TVBarn.com.
‘Shield' writers are just two of the boys
Pembroke Hill grads have their say on gritty crime drama
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star
The Shield,” basic cable's roughest and rawest show, is written and shot in L.A. But the drama set around cops who don't always do the right thing has almost as many Kansas City area connections as Sam Brownback, who would doubtless be shocked at all the four-letter words and graphic gore “The Shield” serves up each week.
Now imagine what Brownback would think if he knew the meanest script this season was penned by two nice women who graduated from Pembroke Hill.
“The Shield” wraps up its fourth season with a relatively subdued episode at 9 tonight on FX. But for many fans, the most indelible memories from this season are of the intense 90-minute episode that aired May 24.
That show included a scene of a city councilman forcing a hooker to simulate a humiliating sex act he was once forced to perform on another man. In an interrogation, a crime lord was told that his son had been sodomized in prison and not against his will. Later a cop taunted the crime lord for having a gay black son — but in more colorful terms. A husband and wife called each other unprintables before getting into a knock-down-drag-out at the police station. And the Lord's name was taken in vain what seemed like a hundred times.
Liz Craft and Sarah Fain wrote that script. They're from here. So are Jay Karnes, formerly of Lawrence, who as the nebbishy detective Dutch is one of the co-stars on “The Shield,” and onetime Unicorn and Mo Rep player David Rees Snell, who plays the mostly quiet cop Ronnie. (See Aaron Barnhart's interview with Karnes on Page E-8.)
Chatting by phone, Craft and Fain are courteous, straightforward and good-natured. Trademark Midwestern qualities, all.
And yet they wrote that super-sized swearfest for “The Shield.”
Fain laughs.
“You should've read the first draft!” she says. “It got pulled back a lot. That's one of the things we like about the show. You don't feel a sense of restraint. The show doesn't flinch from things, and that's really appealing to us as writers — not women writers.”
Fain and Craft, however, walk a line of their own. They know they were expected to bring a female voice to one of TV's most testosterone-charged programs. But they also were eager to fit in on a hit show they'd been trying to join since they saw an advance tape of the “Shield” pilot in 2002.
It was in 1998, over beers at the Point, when the two writers decided to join forces. Fain, who had been teaching creative writing in North Carolina, and Craft, who edited teen novels in New York City, almost immediately relocated to Southern California. They gradually found work writing for network shows, starting with the WB show “Glory Days” in 2002 and then the last two seasons of “Angel.”
Their calling card was a “spec script.” Spec scripts usually don't get turned into shows but give producers a measure of someone's writing chops. They submitted a spec script for “Oz” to Shawn Ryan, creator of “The Shield.”
For those unfamiliar with “Oz,” it was on HBO and took place in a prison. It was kind of like “M*A*S*H,” except that instead of Hawkeye Pierce stuffing a rubber chicken into Major Winchester's teapot, you might see him stuffing a sock into Winchester's mouth to muffle the screams while being sliced with a razor.
Ryan, who had worked with the women for one season on “Angel,” was sold on the “Oz” script.
“The first five pages were twice as nasty as anything that had been written on ‘The Shield,' ” Ryan said last week. “Bad cops live in a very masculine world, and that tends to be the kind of material I like. That said, I want the universe of ‘The Shield' to expand. So bringing on Liz and Sarah just added a tremendous amount to the show.”
For their first month on the job, though, the women were a bundle of nerves, Fain said. It didn't help that Ryan had scored a casting coup by landing Oscar winner Glenn Close for a whole season. Close would play Monica Rawling, the new captain in charge of the precinct house. As such, she would be the boss of the baddest, baldest cop on the force, Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis, who won an Emmy for his portrayal.
Craft and Fain had no idea Close was about to sign on to “The Shield” when they joined the writing staff. But they didn't have much time to think about it.
“I think Sarah and I try to argue a woman's point of view if necessary,” Craft says, “but really (we want) what's best for the show, male or female.”
And in fact, Fain notes, the most feminine characters on the show are guys. She mentions the ongoing dynamic between two troubled detectives, Curtis Lemansky and Shane Vendrell (played by Kenneth Johnson and Walton Goggins).
“For some reason we really felt strongly about Lem,” Fain says.
Craft adds, “He is probably the most sensitive character on the show.”
Fain agrees: “It wasn't about the women so much as Lem the sensitive guy.”
Still, their touch was unmistak
able to others on the show.
“I remember,” Craft says, “that there was a line in a script that Michael Chiklis in rehearsal actually said, ‘Well, one of you guys wrote this, because only a woman would write this!' He was absolutely right.”
Ryan noted another strength the two bring to “The Shield.” They can write reams of dialogue. That came in handy when it was time to craft the May 24 episode.
“I wanted this to be a lot of interrogation with Vic, Monica and Antwon,” Ryan said, referring to the sulky crime lord played with surprising intensity by comedian Anthony Anderson, another fourth-season hire. “If we could build up to an episode where we got the three of them in a room with very high stakes, I thought the results could be explosive.”
For all the talk in the press about what Close did for “The Shield” — ratings are up 30 percent this season — the insiders lavish as much praise on Anderson, whose previous TV credit was a short-lived family sitcom on the WB.
“He just got better and better,” Ryan said. “Whether it's Jim Carrey, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks, people who are known primarily as comedic actors know how to do the serious stuff.”
Fain calls Anderson “a terrific villain,” while Craft notes that whenever his scenes were filmed on location, “fans would be there shouting his name.”
While Close will be written out after tonight's episode (she decided against returning next season), Fain and Craft will be back for Season 5. They've managed to stay employed since that first job on “Glory Days.”
“We're lucky,” Fain says.
Craft agrees, thinking back on the Point and the evening when they decided to pitch caution to the wind: “Something about it felt right. And it was right. I'm glad we met that night.”
During the off-season, they're teaming on another project: a two-book deal for Little Brown with decidedly softer subject matter. The first is about a group of friends just out of high school.
“ ‘The Opposite of the Shield,' it could be titled,” Craft jokes.
Reach Aaron Barnhart at (816) 234-4790. Or visit TVBarn.com.