'Drive' sounds like 'Lost,' with cars
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
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Long before its debut, "Drive" already seemed turbo-charged.
Its ads kept zooming into "American Idol," and now it just might speed its way to popularity with viewers.
"Drive" is fast and fascinating and quite perplexing. Even its creators and actors have trouble explaining it.
This started with screenwriter Ben Queen. "He had this idea for this secret, illegal cross-country road race," says producer Tim Minear. "It seemed to me that this was a great and very broad canvas in which to tell a lot of stories."
The characters use regular vehicles, on regular roads. They might or might not be arrested. ("Some police are in the pockets of some of these people," Minear says.) They don't know where this will lead.
"The whole spirit of the show is: We have no idea what's going to happen to us next," says Emma Stone, who plays a teenager on a wild adventure with her dad.
Some are there for the adventure or the $32 million prize. Many have stronger reasons.
"There are different motivations for characters to be involved," Minear says. "Some of them are coerced ... every character has either a desperate reason or a mysterious reason."
Minear has produced shows — "Firefly," "Wonderfalls," "The Inside" — that some people loved and Fox quickly canceled.
This time, however, he has a huge buildup. There have been all those "Idol" ads, plus a two-hour opener tonight, leading into the regular spot on Mondays.
He also benefits from a world in which viewers are used to "Lost" and "24," with layers of complexity.
"The game isn't just a race," Minear says. "It's also a web that starts to connect some of these characters together."
He originally made a pilot in the "Lost" style. It started with the race, planning to tell the back-stories of characters later.
Then came a second pilot with a mostly new cast. It introduces three people before the race:
Soon, Salazar is teamed with his half-brother (J.D. Pardo) and Tully is with an angry stowaway (Kristin Lehman) who knows things.
Viewers gradually meet a handsome soldier (Riley Smith) and his girlfriend (Mircea Monroe). They meet three zestful young women who survived Hurricane Katrina (Taryn Manning, Rochelle Aytes and Michael Hyatt).
And they meet a quiet guy and his 17-year-old daughter.
"I'm in charge and make none of the decisions," says Dylan Baker, who plays the dad and has a 13-year-old daughter in real life. "So it pretty much mirrors life."
Stone, as the daughter, finds that fun to play. "She's really, really brazen with him ... She's just kind of a controlling girl."
For many actors, the driving doesn't come naturally.
Fortunately, they don't really have to drive. Stunt drivers do the actual stuff, and specialeffects people do the rest.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR HAS O‘AHU TIES
"It's like 'Cannonball Run' but with much higher stakes. It's a life-and-death race. It's a little bit twisted too," says Robert Scott, the first assistant director of "Drive."
Scott was born and grew up on O'ahu, then moved to Los Angeles with his wife, Kim Nakakura, in 1989 to work in "the biz." A graduate of the University of Hawai'i before it established the Academy for Creative Media (he got a communications degree), he kicked off his career when he won a "Magnum P.I." internship through UH's Student Video and Film Association, as part of the Directors Guild of America training program.
"This show is extremely different from any show I've worked on," says Scott, whose last two jobs were with the long-running "JAG" and the short-lived "E-Ring." "We're always on location. We film L.A. for Florida, Georgia — an entire cross-country race." And, he adds, the show's crew has created a whole new approach to the way driving is filmed.
Scott says special-effects supervisor Loni Peristere, co-founder of Zoic Studios, took on the job because of the show's groundbreaking visual effects work. Peristere won an Emmy for his wizardry on "Firefly."
"Drive" pushes the special-effects envelope in the mixture of stunt work and computer-generated background combined with the actors' dialogue scenes.
"They filmed this scene where people are driving to the finish line and this car comes out of nowhere and T-bones them," says Scott from his L.A. home. "The woman in the front seat gets sucked out the back of the car, like the back window of a hatchback, while the car was tumbling down the hill. Even knowing how it was shot, it was still a surprise to the people on the set! You look at the dailies, and you're just freaking out."
Besides the special-effects fireworks, there's something else about "Drive" that stands out for Scott: "I've been on so many shows where I've been on the good side of the law. It's kind of refreshing to be on the other side."
— Lesa Griffith
FIRST A.D. DUTIES
“I’m the guy who says, ‘Rolling!’ and ‘Quiet, please.’ I’m there to help realize the details of the director’s vision.
"If he or she wants a pink elephant, I call the prop guy to hire the elephant, ask the production designer what color pink to use, let the Teamsters know we're going to need a truck to pick up the elephant, have a safety meeting regarding elephants on set and warn the craft service person to bring a shovel to pick up after the pachyderm. (Why our industry has the guy who handles our doughnuts be the one to pick up all the poo on-set, I'll never know.)
"I'm a manager and motivator. A lot of people in my position can be screaming jerks, but coming from Hawai'i, that's just not my style. ... Sometimes I gotta let 'em have it, and when I do, because I rarely raise my voice, they know they better cool it."
— Robert Scott
