Date of publishing: 1st March 2008

Josh Friedman is an American screenwriter best known as the writer of the 2005 film adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Friedman also publishes the blog "I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing". He is now executive producer and writer on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the sequel to the Terminator movies (excluding T3).

Brian Austin Green is an American actor, best known for his role as David Silver on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210, a character he portrayed from 1990 - 2000. Brian, of Scottish, Cherokee Indian, Hungarian and Irish descent, grew up in North Hollywood, California, and attended North Hollywood High School, after attending the Hamilton High School Academy of Music. Currently, Green guest stars in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles playing Derek Reese, the uncle of John Connor.

Question: The show’s ratings have been pretty good, maybe not great, but pretty good. But I also understand it’s a very expensive show to produce and I’m just wondering what you think the odds are of renewal given the rating situation and the cost of production?
Josh Friedman: Well, let me take the second part. You know it’s not actually an expensive show to produce. In fact, I think we’re below the budget of many action shows that are on TV right now. In fact, our budget is much more in line with your basic drama that you would find on any network. So I don’t think that cost at this point plays much of a factor. As to the ratings, you know I don’t know what to make of it, really. I think that the show has done well for a new show and for a new drama. There are not many that do very well or haven’t been doing very well, certainly in the last strike era. And we do very well in certain demographics. We do very well in DVR. We do very well on downloads. I think for our type of show that is a big chunk. We were one of the top five shows being TiVo’d right now, which is how I watch the show because otherwise no one would know that I’m watching.

Question: At what point did you decide that the point that you’re reaching in the second episode on Monday was the right point for the finale and what sort of finale is it in terms of the tone you want to leave viewers with?

Josh Friedman: Well, you know it’s serendipitous. I wasn’t there. I was on strike and so this is the number of episodes that we had reached; we had only written up to this number and produced up to this number when I went out on strike. So it happens that a lot of stuff locks in and comes together during these last two episodes and frankly, that’s just dumb luck. If we would have gone one episode more or one episode less I think it would be probably less satisfying.

Question: This is not the point that you guys slated at when you initially pitched the first 13 to FOX.

Josh Friedman: No. But I don’t know that four episodes from now would have been a much better finale than the one that we have.

Question: But there’s still some cliffhanger point that you’ll have to get to next season, hypothetically.

Josh Friedman: Well, yes. I’m kind of thinking about that all right now. Again, the strike is such a weird situation, but the school of thought is, well, you could start next year picking up almost where you left off, but sometimes what the next episode, episode ten isn’t necessarily right for a season-two premier. So I think you have to rethink how much continuity, not continuity, but how much carryover you’re going to have from where you plan or it gives you a chance to sit back and say, alright, what can we do for season two? I have a plan going forward. It’s just how we integrate that into the beginning of season two.

Question: Is there anything you can tell us about the upcoming season finale? Of course without giving too much away.

Josh Friedman: First of all, TV is also my pacifier so—

Brian Austin Green: It’s a really hard question.

Josh Friedman: A hard question; I’ll just say there’s a lot of chickens and a lot of roosting.

Brian Austin Green: You know, it’s funny, I was online last night going through some of the chats just to see what people were talking about, and this is one of those shows, unfortunately—I mean it’s unfortunate for me in the sense of whenever I do an interview that if you give any little bit of anything, people will talk enough about it that they’ll start to figure out what’s going on. So it’s a very fine line of what you can and can’t talk about.

Josh Friedman: It’s cool. I’m kind of with Brian. I’m a fascist about spoilers. I’m the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotion department, and I think they were very happy that I was on strike for 14 weeks. I seemed to be—

Brian Austin Green: … around you?

Josh Friedman: Yes, they … whatever they want to do and since I’ve gotten back I get these little e-mails and they say, “Can we show this?’ And I say, “No.” If I had my way the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with the words “Sarah Connor” on them.

Brian Austin Green: I actually did a talk show one night and the only clip we could get of me on the show, because I hadn’t premiered on it yet, was the teaser from the episode before, so it was like “Next week on the Sarah Connor Chronicles” and it showed my running and fighting, everything that everybody else had seen. We couldn’t get anymore footage than that. I knew at the end of it all that was Josh’s doing.

Question: That keeps it interesting for the fans, so—

Brian Austin Green: It does keep it very interesting for the fans.

Question: Is that in the past that people just assumed it was very difficult to make the time travel jump, which is why we haven’t had so many jump backs from the Terminators and stuff, and why there’s always been limited instances of it. But now in the series it seems like there’s almost like a highway going back and forth in time travel highway. How do you keep that highway in check at the point where you’re not stepping on yourself by creating potholes all over the place? Why don’t they just send everybody back and just do this, or just drop a nuclear bomb just in the middle of something to just get it done with, or send something back with a thousand chips in it so they can build all these robots? How do you try to stay away from all that?

Josh Friedman: I try not to abuse the time travel too much. I think we think about it all the time. I’ve been in the writer’s room and there will be points, it happens at least once a day where all of a sudden we just go quiet and everyone stares at each other because we completely tilted like a pinball machine because we can’t wrap our brain around what we’re trying to do. I think that I have a pretty specific idea as to what I believe the rules of our universe are and I try not to violate them. I think that chaos theory abounds and that’s always my argument, a specific geek argument, why doesn’t Skynet just send—well they can’t send a nuclear bomb back. I think even Skynet probably at this point understands that the causality is so complicated that it’s unclear as to what any one thing might do. So I think to do something en masse is a very—they might end up destroying themselves, when they need the humans as much as the humans need them to kind of—well, they need the humans more right now, until later, once they’re created, then who knows.

Question: Do you think that’s something that might eventually come up in maybe in the plot if there is a second season or so? Or is that something that’s just fans will have to just kind of assume is there and just argue it out?

Josh Friedman: Well I think it’s great to argue it out. When it’s the movies, there’s that sense of refrigerator logic where you sit down, you watch the movie, it’s a big chase, it’s adrenaline and it hits you when you’re driving home or later, you’re like, “wait, wait, he just sent his best friend back to birth himself”—you can go crazy just off the first movie and with a series obviously there’s much more time. One, there’s more time to analyze it, and two, over time we have to introduce more elements so it becomes more complicated and it starts to fold in on itself. I just try to keep it clear and I think stay true to the basic ideas of the movies. It’s a lot to wrangle.

Brian Austin Green: I don’t think you abuse the time travel thing at all. You’ve had the opportunities. We had the conversation too, of the possibility of bringing Kyle Reese onto the show instead of Derek. But then within that was the whole concept of, okay well then at what point are people actually dead and at what point do we have to realize that a character is gone. I mean that’s—

Josh Friedman: Yes.

Brian Austin Green: It’s a weird, confusing line. I don’t know how specific you can really get with any of it because at the end of the day it’s something that’s completely nonexistent at this point. So who knows how one thing can overlap into another and how one decision can affect another? It will probably be an argument we’ll be having until the end of time.

Question: Brian, do you know of any plans to keep you going in the second season at all, if there is one?

Brian Austin Green: That’s a question for Josh. I have no idea.

Josh Friedman: All I’ll say is that I think Brian is doing an awesome job and I think he’s brought more to the series than I even imagined that he would. So I’m really happy.

Brian Austin Green: I can carry heavy things. I think that’s what—

Josh Friedman: He moves furniture.

Brian Austin Green: I’m hauling furniture—

Josh Friedman: He’s like a grip.

Brian Austin Green: I’m really helpful with cleaning days and stuff like that in the house.

Josh Friedman: That’s why they kept him on 90210 so long actually. At some point he was just walking around carrying Shannon Daugherty’s gondola or whatever that thing is called.

Brian Austin Green: That should be episode one of season two, I’m just in the house with an apron on lifting furniture and just cleaning underneath things because I’m strong enough to do it. That would be awesome.

Question: Have you or will you consider writing in any scenes to be shot at actual locations from the films in season two?

Josh Friedman: I hadn’t thought about it. I’m just happy when I get to go outside and shoot anywhere.

Question: Brian, where was the future war battlefield location shot, and did you have a good time with that?

Brian Austin Green: Oh, I had a fantastic time with that and that was sort of shot all over. Most of the battle stuff was in downtown Los Angeles, and it was actually a concrete recycling factory. So it was helpful, they didn’t have to bring the actual cement in, just everything else.

Question: Right. Did you get to keep your outfit?

Brian Austin Green: I wish. Because if I did, I would actually have it on one of those mannequins in my movie room or something, here. It was the coolest thing ever. The blaster alone, the fact that I was the only one with a green scope on it was pretty cool. But there were a bunch of specific little things all through the costumes that—just little details that you really didn’t pick up, but everybody had Terminator Kills on their sleeve, these little badges. And they were just little Terminator heads but everybody had one for every kill. Some guys had one and I think I had seven, which was pretty cool.

Question: What’s it like to be in a scene with an actress that really as a machine can’t react to you the way a normal actor would be able to react to you?

Brian Austin Green: Well, it’s fantastic for this job. Summer is so good at completely staying in those moments and I think that oddity is what sort of creates the tension and excitement in the scenes. You do scenes all day long with people that react and when you have somebody that just sits there and blankly stares at you they almost end up becoming these staring competitions. And Summer and I will sort of laugh by the end of them if we haven’t made it all the way through, just because it’s an interesting relationship between the two of us. They’ve both known each other for a long time and there’s a lot of tension within it.

Question: So the character of Derek, how is it for you, Brian, knowing that you are officially now a member of the Reese family, that your character has kind of become a member of the mythology of the show? Have you thought about what it would be like that maybe your character might get integrated into other things like novels or comic books down the road?

Brian Austin Green: No. I hadn’t thought about that at all. Again, it’s almost like wrapping my brain around actual time travel. It doesn’t really—people have asked me that before and just going into the first episode that I had, Josh knows, I was really worried about how people would respond to me playing this character. I was a huge fan of the films and I was a huge fan of Michael Biehn and Kyle Reese as a character. So I knew I was kind of holding a heavy weight in taking it on.
At this point it’s not really how involved in the franchise or how big a part of the franchise I am or not, it’s really for me just the daily stress of making sure that I’m being true to the character in the franchise. So that’s the most important thing to me at the end. When I go on your site or any of the others that the fans don’t have a feeling that I have somehow let them down as far as what they would expect from Terminator as a franchise. So that’s all I really think about. If I end up being part of a comic book, that’s bad “….” If I don’t, what I’m doing now is bad “….” So at the end of the day this is all just really cool.

Question: Brian, what were some of the acting challenges you found for stepping into this role, and how does seeing your character grow and develop in the episodes you’ve done so far?

Brian Austin Green: Oh my God. That’s a very in-depth question. The challenges—I’ve got to say the biggest challenge going into the show was the fact that I was hired the night before I started work. So I really knew very little of the character except for the first script that I had in my hand, which is the first episode that everybody saw of my character. So the big challenge for me as an actor was the next day on set whenever I’d see Josh, just asking him as many things as I could. Just trying to get as many answers to questions as I could, because picking up a script and not knowing what happened before, and it’s like, okay, what the hell is a Turk and what—there’s so much involved in every script. The scripts are so detailed. And I really had no reference. That’s been the hardest thing for me as an actor is trying to make sure that I have enough back-story to really understand what Derek is doing and what his thought process is. Development wise he went from living in the future where he was fighting every day to survive to now being in a world with a blue sky and grass, and fighting for a different reason. It’s at times just a huge rollercoaster for him. He still really has no grasp of it. I mean, he’s just coming out of nearly dying. So he’s got a lot of growing to do I would say.

Question: In the last episode when Summer is doing ballet and there’s this whole thing about they start to want to have our culture and they want to have what we have, are we heading towards the thing where the Terminators are going to by like ... and they’re going to have more emotional stuff going on? Because it seems like there was a hint of that.

Josh Friedman: Well, first of all, I would argue, with all due respect, to Ron Moore that ... have wanted to be like Terminators for many years. But— Probably all of them wanted to be like Blade Runner. But I think she is a more advanced model and she has more ability to at least mimic emotion and do some things. I think any time you have any form of cyborg, android, ..., whatever, there’s always a temptation by the writers to start exploring that whole humanity thing. How far it goes and where we go and what her limitations are is something I’m still exploring. It’s interesting because I think that for where—there are two groups of people I think who watch these shows, there are the real sci-fi people who watch these shows and then there’s everybody else. It seems that everybody else has probably never seen BattleStar Galactica and probably can’t remember Blade Runner and couldn’t tell you what was going on. So they’re all fascinated by it, and then you have the people who’ve seen every episode of Star Trek and watch that episode where ...—and they’re like, oh they’re going down this road, because we’ve seen this road, and you sort of have a responsibility on the one hand, I think, to try to explore it in the ways that it most obviously occurs. And then I think to the people who’ve seen these things before, which includes me, you want to keep those people interested so you want to explore it in the ways that we haven’t seen it before. It’s a delicate balance and we only had nine episodes in and everyone has a different idea as to where, what Summer should be doing, and what Cameron’s attitude should be, and is she feeling emotion or is she just pretending to feel emotion? If you continue to pretend do you eventually feel? How is that possible? It’s something that we toss around a lot and we’re working through it. But when I was writing the show I would not watch Battle Star. I said to Ron Moore, honestly I had to avoid Battle Star for like a year because I couldn’t handle—they do those things so well, or at least I think they do, that I really wanted to go off on my own and not think about it.

Question: Have you actually officially been renewed for season two yet?

Josh Friedman: No.

Question: You haven’t? Are you expecting an offer on that any time soon or—?

Josh Friedman: I hope so. The first year show is sort of the ritual for first year shows is to come back into the network and tell them what season two is. Things are just a little weird this year because of having the strike so we have to readjust what our season two plans are. We’re going to go in and sit down with the network and we’ll do a post-game on season one and talk about season two. They’ll make the decision. FOX, they haven’t made a decision on any shows yet. So I fully expect to get in there with them pretty soon and hopefully have an answer pretty soon because we need to start writing.

Question: You said that maybe episode ten might not be a best start for season two, so are you planning on still integrating the last three episodes from this season that you never got to make, into the second season somehow?

Josh Friedman: Well, that’s what I’ve been sitting around and I’ve been thinking about. Some of those episodes were—I can’t tell you what episode ten is, but episode ten was a fantastic episode ten and an absolutely horrible season premier for a season two. “….”, it is heartbreaking for me. I just wish I’d gotten—I really, really wanted to do episode ten, it was like one of my favorite ideas and I can’t do it. I really can’t do it because it would’ve been a terrible season premier. So you know—

Brian Austin Green: It was a really cool episode though.

Josh Friedman: Yes. But it’s not doable. Yes it’s going to take some re-jiggering but I think there are ideas and beats from those episodes that we had planned and hadn’t filmed that will definitely be making their way in. It’s nice to—I’ve got a little perspective on the show and when we were working on episodes 10, 11, 12, 13, we had yet to air episode one. So it’s nice to actually now have seen the show and sort of educate yourself on your own show on what works and what doesn’t work. It’s like you have a second chance with a look at it.

Question: Will it be just a half season as well or are you looking at maybe going like a full like 24- or 22-episode season or will it still be like a half season?

Josh Friedman: Again, that’s up to FOX. I don’t know. Last year I had 22 planned and we switched it to 13 and we did nine. So I’m always—when I sit down and plan a season out, until someone tells me otherwise, I plan for 22, and if it’s not going to be 22 I make adjustments. But I always plan for 22. I’ve had ideas for probably the first three or four years. I’ve got arcs for them. Sometimes it just a matter of moving things up or moving things back or seeing where it goes.

Question: Josh, now originally you wanted to bring back Kyle Reese, we know. I was just wondering how did you plan on portraying that or how far did you have that mapped out before Derek joined the picture?

Josh Friedman: I’m not going to say how I was going to do it but I had an idea but it was one of those things that probably worked really well on paper, and I could easily explain it to you if we sit down for ten minutes. But I think if it was probably something that was a bit of bridge too far for an audience, and again, Kyle is sort of a sacred cow and I think one thing to see him in the future and it’s another to see him in the present. I don’t know, I still hold out hope that somehow I’ll figure out to get him back, but every time I ever brought it up everyone looked at me like I was completely insane. I listen to everyone every once in a while when it’s unanimous.

Question: I’m kind of excluding Cameron from this question, but my question is, is nothing funny in the future?

Josh Friedman: In the future or in the present?

Question: In your present. Cameron gets all the comedy but nobody else ever seems to be anything but angry. Well, I mean, I can’t see it’s the end of the world.

Brian Austin Green: She gets the comedy though by chance. She’s not like Jerry Seinfeld. She’s not standing up there with one liners and—

Question: “I call nine millimeter.” Come on, guys. It was awesome.

Brian Austin Green: Yes, it was. That was just an awesome line. That just worked out well.

Josh Friedman: I think that—it’s weird. In the pilot there’s absolutely no humor at all and I say that having written it. And then I sat down and wrote the second episode and I put a lot of jokes in it and most of them were Cameron’s. Everyone ... the table read and when read, it was like, I was really funny. And everyone’s laughing; it was like we had a sitcom taping. And it was like, God, first of all no one thinks that I’m ever funny and I know for a fact that I’m hysterical. They wouldn’t—everyone was like, wow, that’s really funny, it’s really funny and I remember Lena came up to me and she’s like, Josh, this is really funny, I’ve got to do comedy in here. Now you never told me I was going to do comedy. I was like, well, let’s go for it. Every time people just put on the boots and the leather jackets it just seems people get pretty serious. I’m going to try to get more comedy next season. It’s one of my vows, is that we explore more of the dark humor of the situation. I think there are shows—Buffy did a great job with that many moons ago. I always thought it was a great balance. So if it’s not funny, that’s really just my fault for not getting there. Every time I sit down to do it just comes out the other way.

Brian Austin Green: I laughed in the pilot when she hit Cromarty with the truck. That’s was actually …. I got a huge laugh from—

Josh Friedman: It’s always funny when somebody gets hit with something but you end up with Three Stooges humor or Cameron says something odd. But I think there’s never more—

Brian Austin Green: You never know when humor is going to be funny until you shoot it or really until we’re on the day, on the set doing it. You read it and you don’t really pick up the humor until you’re doing it. There are just a lot of odd moments that become really humorous, that are just humorous out of being so odd, I think. Those are the ones I always laugh at.

Josh Friedman: Yes, they’re strange, there’s just not a lot of ha-ha. But I’m going to work on it, I promise everybody.

Question: Will we ever find out what happened in the room that they took Derrick to before he was released? And if that house is the house that Sarah and John are living in now?

Josh Friedman: That is not the house that they’re living in now, I will say that. I will actually give a definitive answer. That is not the same house. And it is certainly my goal that we find out what happens down there. I originally planned on doing four episodes—if we had a 22-episode order of the first year, I had pitched doing four episodes that took place in the future out of those 22. Then when we had an order of 13, we were going to do two, and then I was still planning on doing a second future episode out of one of the four episodes that was not filmed because of the strike, was going to be a future episode where we probably would have explored that. But we didn’t get there. Hopefully next year.

Question: Now, Brian, do you know?

Brian Austin Green: Do I know what happened in the—?

Question: Yes.

Brian Austin Green: I do.

Question: Josh, you touched on this briefly saying you had kind of fallen behind on Galactica … What other current shows are you watching right now?

Josh Friedman: American Idol on FOX. I love that little Daniel what’s-his-name. I watch, and I’m not up-to-date, so no one spoil it for me, I’ve not seen the last Liar but I’m a religious Liar watcher. Every time they ask this question I completely blank out on what I watch. What else—?

Brian Austin Green: I’m not watching any television, really, at all except for this show, to be honest.

Josh Friedman: Good answer.

Brian Austin Green: No, it’s actually the truth. It’s the only thing I am TiVo’ing and watching really just out of the excitement of it, being on set and shooting what we shoot and then sitting back and seeing how it all comes together. For me I can read a script ten times and there are still things that I miss that I don’t really completely understand until I watch it. But it’s really the only thing that I’m watching weekly.

Josh Friedman: I also really like the New Adventures of Old Christine. I do. It’s funny. But I watch the Liar and I love Dexter when Dexter’s on. The same shows that everybody else likes.

Brian Austin Green: I’m always just waiting for shark week.

Josh Friedman: Oh, yes.

Brian Austin Green: I spend most of my time waiting for shark week.

Question: So Brian, what would you say are some of your all time favorites shows?

Brian Austin Green: Oh, ... I watched BattleStar Galactica when I was a kid. I had the toys and it was the coolest thing in the world when Universal Studios had the ride, where the tram went through and the Cylons were out and all that was going on. Now, God, I’ve always been more of a movie watcher really than a TV watcher. I think when I watched television it would tend to be more on the comedy side. I’d watch a lot of Three’s Company and shows like that.

Josh Friedman: Dude, you’re talking like you’re 100 years old.

Brian Austin Green: I am 100 years old. Are you kidding? I’ve been in this … business longer than most of our cast has been alive.

Josh Friedman: I know.

Brian Austin Green: It’s ridiculous, you know. I’ll hang out with Thomas and he’s 20 years old, I’m like, really? Yes, my SAG-card, I’ve been a member since ’85. It’s just my life dates me. There is no real way of making myself look any younger within it all. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, ultimately. I’m Star Wars to the end, until I die.

Josh Friedman: Yes, so am I. I’ve even—

Brian Austin Green: I’m in my room right now with all my movie memorabilia and I have so much Star Wars ... I’m such a nerd. I’ve got Darth Vader’s helmet and Princess Leia’s gun, and I’ve got Han Solo’s gun and then all the light sabers, all in cases, the signed editions. It’s retarded.

Josh Friedman: I have the little Darth Vader Lego with the cape hanging on my keychain right now.

Brian Austin Green: Do you really?

Josh Friedman: Yes.

Brian Austin Green: Dude, I’m such a—

Josh Friedman: Yes. I still spent like $100 on Star Wars Lego stuff at WonderCon just for my three-and-a half-year-old.

Brian Austin Green: Yes, I saw the bag. You know what was really sad was like I almost got in a fight with Megan over wanting to get stuff for my son. And she was like, “He doesn’t need anymore. All you ever do is buy him Lego Star Wars stuff.” And I was like, “Yes, but I’m sure there’s a Jawa there and it’d be awesome, he’d love it.” I’m a total—I’m a nerd and my son is a big Star Wars nerd now also. I’ve destroyed him.

Question: Will we ever find out who painted all those doors at the high school?

Brian Austin Green: I’ve read a lot of that question myself, Josh.

Josh Friedman: I hope so. I know. So I hope that you know. I don’t know if anybody can tell by the way that we put the show together but I really do try to plant things and pay them off and I really hate television shows that abandon ideas; whether it’s sort of carryover emotionally from episode to episode. That’s one of the reason the show is so serialized is I just feel compelled to constantly track these things through. That story line—that’s it, that story line is part of the story line that was certainly supposed to be resolved and I was going to continue with it and resolve it in the first season. There’s been some high school stuff that we shot that actually explored that stuff more that ended up on the cutting room floor. High school stuff is one of those story lines that whenever—

Brian Austin Green: It’s touchy, right?

Josh Friedman: What?

Brian Austin Green: It’s touchy, isn’t it?

Josh Friedman: Yes. High school is one of those weird things where it’s like either there’s fans that they don’t want any high school stuff and there’s fans that like the high school stuff and I kind of have my own opinions about high school and what it’s there for. So whenever I go to high school stuff I kind of want it to be important so I definitely had this whole big story that I was working on. Some of it got dropped for time during editing and I wasn’t around to edit, so it happened. I don’t even know that I disagree with it. So the answer to that is a very longwinded way of saying I don’t know. But I haven’t forgotten about it and there was a plan. There’s always a plan. Executing the plan is a whole different matter.

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