ANTHOLOGIES ATTACK! The Lost Room with Richard Hatem

no doubt sampled this man's wares. He started his writing career with the end of Decent Stephen segoal Flick's That Was under Siege two Dark Territory, and he managed to make Chapstick a horrifying notion in the Mothman prophecies. In the intervening years, he has been a writer and or producer on some of the best television of the past quarter century. He could mic drop with his involvement with season one of Eric Kripke's endlessly running series Supernatural Alone.

But wait, there's more. He's lent his unique voice to the Dead Zone, The Gates. He created that one too, Heavenly Grim, which is of East End, Damien, The in Between, and most recently on the DC Comics television series Titans and While I certainly encourage you to check out all of his work. For an immediate dose of mister HadAM, check out his podcast, Richard Hadam's paranormal Bookshelf, part memoir,

part horror story, part book review and recommendation. Their Tale, Their tales, well told by a raconteur par excellence, and he's here today to answer all of my questions about the Lost Room. Welcome to Midnight Viewing, Richard.

an executive producer. This is a sci fi mini series. We don't know, you know, usually those things go three nights, but just read the script and see if you like it, and we'll kind of go from there. So, as I had done a million times before, I started reading the script and something different happened. And I've said this before, and it delights me to say it. I don't like anything.

I don't like anything that I read. I have never I can almost say I've never read anything that I've been that has been submitted to me to either rewrite or deal with on some level that I have said, oh my god, I love this. But with this thing, which at the time was called Motelman that was the script that I read. It was called motel Man, and I'm like, okay, well that just sounds goofy and great reading it. Yeah, And bit by bit I became more

and more involved. And then there was the scene. You've watched the miniseries, so you know what I'm referring to multiple times.

Now you get scared because you get to a point and you're thirty pages in, four pages in, and and you're like, wait a second, this is the greatest thing ever. Then you get scared because you're like, Okay, well now now it's got nowhere to go but down. It's gonna fumble it. It's gonna it's gonna fumble the concept. Something is going to go off the rails. Otherwise they I wouldn't have this. And by the way, let me be clear,

they weren't showing it to me to be rewritten. It was like, hey, this has been chosen. Lions Gate is producing for the Sci Fi Channel. They're they're they're going they they want this, So I'm i going boy, home boy. And then it got better.

In the ensuing years, I've met two other people who got that script before me and were like, I don't get it and said no, and I know, And one of them was like a guy I sort of knew, and I'm like really, and he's like, yeah, but I mean I thought it was kind of weird, but you know, but but you know, it came out great, And I'm like, how do you not this is the best thing ever? Like, this doesn't.

But it doesn't matter because it's still great, And any one of your listeners can literally have the best weekend of their lives with six hours of something you've never heard of, a cast out of heaven and a story in which a world is care that's our world, and a mythology is created that's made up of things in our world. And it just gets deeper and more layered and more interesting. And it's one of those wonderful shows. I was just rewatching it this afternoon. It's one of

those wonderful things that just it doesn't happen. I wanted to say, it doesn't happen nowadays. It doesn't happen ever there where you're watching a show that starts teaching you its own rules, and then you start playing along and producing You're like, oh, right, but if that's the rule, then this is going to happen. And then we see that situation play out. Or wait a second, they said this, which means that's not going to work. Oh, but they

thought of that. So you're interacting with the show as it's happening, and it's so fun. It's just it's it was a blast from beginning to end.

The thing is you mentioned, like the rules of the show as it examines the as it sort of lays them out. It lays them out so elegantly and so economically and so visually. It's like, here's the object and then we see what that does and go, oh, okay, So another thing from that room? Does that? Oh okay? And as you said, they really do think of everything. It's just it's endless the applications of these items.

they say, oh, really, what's that? And then I would say, do you have five minutes, which which retroactively should have included me in that that This was not a you know, you say one line and everyone's like, I got it. But if your audience doesn't know, I'm going to try to explain what the show is at okay.

something strange is happening with the suspect. He keeps disappearing, you know, running up to doors and disappearing inside rooms, and it's not making sense. When a little bit of the cloud of mystery begins to dissipate, what we learn is that there is this key, a motel room key, an old fashioned one, not a not a card, but one that has you know, had a little plastic thing hanging off of it, and it looks like a key,

and that there's something weird about this key. It fits any door that has a doorknob and a you know, a lock that you can stick a key into. But it fits any one of those, Okay, But when you're using that key and you open that door, it will always open into a motel room. The same motel room that's located in Gallop, New Mexico at the Sunshine Motel and has existed out of time since the nineteen sixties,

so this is already an esthetic that I love. There's nothing I love more than a roadside motel from mid century Okay, so okay, So what happens from there? Well, the key to this motel room is one of only one of many many objects that have been stolen from this motel room from various people who have the key. When objects are taken out of this motel room, and it's basically empty, almost everything's been taken out of it. When those objects come out of the motel room into

our world, they have weird, random, almost pointless powers. A pencil tapped on a table produces pennies, but the pen it has like a lightning power in it, So if you jab someone with the pen kind to cook them. And then there's the cone scissors, and the clock and the box watch and the bus ticket. The bus ticket. You tap someone with a bus ticket and they immediately are transported to a roadside somewhere outside of Gallup, New Mexico.

And so it it. But you're you're sort of learning this stuff as our hero learns this stuff, and the characters involved are really sort of offbeat. And what you begin to realize is that the people who live among us, who know about all this stuff, become obsessed with it. They become obsessed with with possessing or collecting these various objects if they can. Some of them are very valuable. People have lost their lives and it's very sort of almost like low level gangster kind of shit where where

people are are stealing the objects from each other. And then and then you learn that over the day decades that human beings have been aware of these odd things. And it's all America based. It's all right here in our current modern world.

There's the Legion and the Order and the collectors and there, and they're people, you know, some people believe that that these objects are all like part of God, almost like horcruxes, and if you put them all together, you will meet God. And then there's another group that that just wants to

get them all off the market. They just believe they're the legion and they just believe, Look, these things always in in bad news, and we've just got to get all of them out of circulation, put them back in the room, throw the key away, and banish this thing

into obscurity. Then there's other groups and other people, and all these people have their agendas, but they're all kind of you know, they're almost like again, like low level grifters, you know, and that's what just makes it feels so real and so delicious and by the way, so funny. So I read the script, I tell my agent, I don't know, I really love this. What do they want?

They just need someone to work with the writers just to make sure that this stuff is producible, and you know, interact with Lionsgate and Sci Fi Channel and get this thing produced because they want to make it right away. It's March and they want to be in production in three months. And I'm like, okay, this is a tall order, Okay, but I love it because let's do it. You know, I'm always I'm up. And this is in two thousand and six. This is eighteen years ago, young man. So

it's like, great, so we're going to do this. So I go in for the meeting and I'm meeting with the Lionsyate executive and I'm telling her, you know, I think it's fascinating. I'm telling her all the things we're talking about. And then I'm like and it's hilarious, and she's like, I love it. She's like, you got to meet the writers. And when you do tell them that, I'm like, okay, of course. And so I meet with them. And so these writers are Chris Leoni, Laura Harkem and

Paul Workman. These three people and I don't know who they are. They've never worked before in terms of writing something that's been produced. And I meet them and they seem like splendid people. So very quickly the deal gets made and I sit down with them and I'm like, look, I think this is great, and they're like, well, what did you read? And I said, I read this. I read this first script. I guess it's two hours, right, And they're like, yeah, so we're going to make ten

hours of this. And I was like oh, ten hours, and they're like, yeah, we've got the first eight sort of worked out, and then you know, and the second

two hours are written, the third two hours, making it six hours we have outlined, and then also an outline for some other stuff. And I'm like, well, okay, so more material needs to be generated on the page, but we've got something to begin with. So we'll spend the next few weeks getting getting all that stuff ready so that we can go back to Sci Fi Channel and Lionsgate and go okay, so here's the plan. And early on I think sci Fi said we don't need ten hours.

Eight hours would be great, and I'm like, great, So we mapped out our eight hours. They were very familiar with the first chunk, but we had to sort of go into the studio and the network and say, okay, so here's the rest of it and here's how it ends. And it was pitched and they loved it and we were on our way. So which was fortunate again because they were moving very very quickly. So let me tell

you about Chris and Paul and Laura Wheeze. Okay, because I had questions, I'm like, wow, what is this, like, what is this based on something like is this a graphic novel or something. They're like, no, it's just this thing we came up with. What it was was that

Chris and Paul went to school together. I believe it was Carnegie Mellon, but they went to school together in Pennsylvania, and they both worked at the library and they worked late shift, and they worked this sort of job where there were a lot of hours unaccounted for, a lot of hours that were not busy dealing with people. So they were just talking to each other, and as you might do when you're two guys in college, you start

talking about what great superpowers would be. But Chris and Paul, being Chris and Paul, two of the funniest, most creative people I've ever met, very quickly dismiss invisibility and flight and strength, and they're like, in our own personal life,

what do we need? And one of them said, it would be great just to have access to a motel room like that we could just go to and would almost be outside of time because they're in college and they're like, sometimes I just need to sleep, but my roommates are coming in and out and people are making noise, and I just need my own place, because when you're in college, like a motel room is basically a proxy for I want an apartment.

And there was probably a time travel aspect to it, you know when they were talking about it, but they just continue talking about it, and just for their own self entertainment, they began building the mythology of the motel room and building the rules, and well, can you like put all your stuff there? And it's like, well, no, anything you put there, once you leave, it's gone. And when you come in it's like a real motel room.

It's like we all have the feeling of walking into a motel room and it's been fixed up right, perfect motel room, right. I mean it's like, oh, the bed got made, you know, all the stuff got put away. The hotel room yet magic. It's the magic of roadside hospitality. It's the magic of hotels, which which are magic?

not all Motel six. They're not all radisons. They're you know, they're crazy. They're just the you know, the Lumberjack, the Lumberjack, the crazy Lantern, the you know, sleep away whatever. I mean, just there's a there were a million of them. Anyway, that was part of our childhood. That and that, and these guys are younger than me, but it was still part of their their cultural imagination. So so they talked about this and then and then I guess it kind

of went away. And then years later Chris and Laura met and became writing partners, and and then and again I don't I'm a little fuzzy on all the details in my recall right now, but but Chris brought up this thing that he and Paul talked about, and then they all sort of got together and decided, well, let's just write this and see what happens. And they did, and they got into sci Fi Channel and they got it to the network first, and the network liked it, and so they it got laid off on Lionsgate to

produce as the studio. Ah okay, and sci Fi at that time did these yearly December little mini series like three night events, and they had done the Triangle, which was all about the Bermuda Triangle.

Universal Studios. So if you're going into Universal Studios off Lancasham and you're driving up that big sort of that big street that goes up right, So if you know that just when you begin that drive upward underneath the big archway that says Universal Studios. There's this giant building

on your right, a high rise. We're in that building, twenty stories up, and we're in a conference room with these giant windows looking north up the freeway and up Ventura and across the valley, and we're working on the Lost Room. Is the greatest, It was the greatest. It's march.

I'm literally every day I'm looking down because in La if you're not familiar, in the springtime there is the there's these things called jacaranda trees, and jacarata trees are purple, these crazy lavender purple trees that that they they sort of bloom in the spring for about a month and

then they die out, but they're gorgeous. And so every day I'm looking out that window as we're working, and I'm counting the jacaranda trees because they're just sort of randomly placed, you know, everywhere, and it's like, oh, there's one, Hey, there's one over there, Hey there's another one over there. So I'm counting the jacaranda trees and we're doing the Lost Room. But we got to get into casting now. So the casting process begins with a woman named Mary

Joe Slater. Mary Joe Slater is Christian Slater's mom.

And she's got lists of actors and some of them we know and some of them we don't. But she brings these people in and we're watching these these auditions and we're like, oh my god, Roger Bart, oh my god.

how about Roger Bart? And Jim Kalf, one of the executive producers, knew Roger also, and I'm like, oh, I know Roger. I did a mini series with him a few years back, the Lost Room, and I was like, well, let's bring him in. We brought him in and he was great. I mean, we just sort of like gave him the role and it was so fun to see him again. And then he's done other things in the intervening years, and every once in a while he'll say, Hey, I'm going to play at the Passing in the Playhouse.

You know, that's just down the street from you. Come on down and see me and we'll hang out. So so anyway, Roger Bart lovely guy, great actor, Dennis Christopher, star of I mean, come on, Breaking Away one of the greatest movies of all time.

stuff was the pawn shop, which opens the movie. So he gets there. Of course he's there, you know, bright and early in the morning. He shows up in the afternoon. He's not needed until the evening. So I get a message Dennis Christopher's here and he'd like to talk to you. And it's right around lunchtime, which is again six hours in and then you've got six hours later. So I go to meet with him. But I'm like, we're not going to you know, we don't need him for hours.

So I go and meet him, and we have our dinner together, and I'm like, when it makes sense he might have a few questions. He had a few questions. I answered them. Then we chatted and I love Dennis Christopher and I want you to understand this is the story is told with love. He then proceeded to talk to me for three hours and we're filming. I mean, lunch is long over. Yeah, but while this is going on, I'm like, oh, this is part of his process. This is his first day. He doesn't know anyone. He's in

the location, he doesn't know. It's a big role, big role. And as we're talking, I'm like, oh, and this is my job as executive producer. My most important job right now is to be is to meet him in this emotional space that he's in, which you know, is energetic. Is it nerves? I don't know, it's it's something, but it But it comes very clear to me I'm not needed on the set. I needed to engage with this

guy because he's ramping up. He's ramping up to his first minute in front of the cameras on this show. So I'm like, I'm you know, everything he needs. Yeah, I call Chris and Laura and I'm like, I'm with Dennis. Let me know if there's a problem. Until then, I'm with Dennis. And so we hung out and we had the greatest evening. He told me the story of his life. It was I mean, I was I benefited from it. I was like, this is the greatest thing. And by the time that three hours was over, we were bonded

as friends. He was comfortable. Any residual energy he had was burned off. He was in his zone. And then suddenly it's like, mister Christopher, you're needed on set. He walks on set and then just nails it and sailed through the rest of the mini series and it was beautiful.

any joking. I'd never seen Kevin Pollack do a performance where there wasn't a joke, just w And it's not like he's not funny. In the situations he's in aren't funny. But this isn't a comic performance from him at all, and it sings there there.

performance is lovely. I will tell you that. For me, it was heartbreaking in a way because I was a fan. I am a fan, and so I was really looking forward because I know when you're doing stuff, you're on set and you're filming for three percent of the time and the other ninety seven percent of the time you're standing around and you're talking and sharing stories and joking. I'm like, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna hang out with Kevin Pollack. I'm gonna hear everything. Kevin Pollack

had no interest in talking to me at all. He was the opposite of Dennis Christopher. He was like Hi. I was like, oh, hey, mister Pollack, So how you doing good? Okay, you're the other end of the spectrum. You are not here to chat. You are here to focus, concentrate, get it done. I back away and go mister Pollack, let me know if you need anything, And that may have been the last thing I ever said to him in the course of three months. Yes, and he did his thing. That's how he works.

be the star of every TV show. Talented, funny, warm, human, humane, uncomplicated, no ego, comes in, does his job, does it well, makes everything easy for everyone, A great number one. Mostly what I remember of him is just joking around and being in that hospital. Okay, quick story, the hospital where he meets Wally. That was all night shoots, so we were blasting light in those windows, I mean on giant cranes,

because it was a real location in Santa Fe. It was a real hospital, and it was really haunted, like no joke, legitimately haunted. It's written up like I had guide books, you know, Haunted New Mexico that talk about this hospital. I know, it's hard to believe, right the shirt Adam's paranormal bookshelf, but there it was. And we as soon as we get there, I'm telling everyone, I'm like, you know this place is haunted, right, And they're like, oh,

I know. Every the locals were telling us, they're like, are you really filming in there at night? You sure you want to do that? So upstairs we're joking around, Peter's joking around, we're all having a good time. But then hours later, middle of the night, we hear, oh, it's no joke. The grips, the electric grips. They had to go into the basement to tie in. In other words, there's always a central point of power on every set where you're drawing all your power for lights and cameras,

that everything you're doing. And so they're these enormous generators and you know, and there are electricians who are professional electricians that are on your grew at all times to make sure this stuff is safe and that it works, because without electricity, you're screwed. So it's like, I don't deal with it a lot. It's just a thing that always happens. These are the guys hauling cable at five am.

right off the plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So I'm just waiting to hear if more people have.

want to do it, and they'll do it. And we kept getting amazing person after an amazing person, top choice after top choice after top choice, and she's like, it's because of the script. They love it, and we're like, okay, okay, we'll believe it. That's great, And then on a certain level we're like, we would go back into our conference room and go, you know what, it makes sense because

these are not roles that anyone gets offered. These are not it's not the normal Oh, I'm the hero cop, I'm the you know beautiful It's like these are weird, quirky but well written, realistic characters. Like you're not going to get to play this stuff every week. This is once, maybe twice in a lifetime kind of material. And we had people begging. I had agents calling me. This never happened, certainly, not on never on anything I've written that we're begging.

It's like, please please, my client loves this. I just want you to know. And the number of people we had to say, hey, you know, obviously I'm sorry, the role's been cast or we're going with someone else. So that was really wonderful, and that was a sheer gift of the scripts.

that time. Like, because here's the thing, everybody, An event took place in that room in nineteen sixty one that fractured time space, I guess, making this room some sort of central nexus, some link between our world and some others, and all of these objects are now sort of magically possessed because of it. And here's the thing. So clearly

the series was just going to continue along. We were never going to find out what that event was, right, No, last, Now here's the thing, Rich, I'm sure our listeners would like to know. When people sit down to write a mystery series, did you guys know where you were going?

about the room. And he's learning from all of these sort of untrustworthy, you know, kind of street level characters who know a little bit or there's a rumor about this or that, and they're all in different groups, and they're all against each other, and they all want something, and he's got a sort of by dealing with them in a very smart and canny and sort of a

heroic way. He's got to try to piece together who's telling the truth, who's lying, and who ultimately has the answer that will allow him to get his daughter back. Wants his daughter's back. He doesn't care about the key, the motel room, the objects, anything. He just wants his daughter back. But to get her back, he has to go into this hidden world, this hidden economy of objects and meet all these weird people, all of whom want to kill him because he has the key. He's the

motel man, so holding on to that. Now, there were moments I'm like, I'm so blown away. It's like there's I mean, has it. He doesn't even say it, because if you haven't seen it, I don't want to ruin anything. All I'm going to say is there are moments, and this is the greatest experience you can have as an audience. There are moments when something surprising happens, and then one second later you go, oh, of course, because that's the rule. And they told us. They just told us, Oh, that

is so smart. They because Joe, the main character, he's learning how to play the game too. He's like, Oh, here's how the objects work, here's how they don't work. Here's what you do, here's what you don't do. Here's how you can manipulate people who are looking for this object or that object. And again, the interaction of audience and lead character as they're figuring this out. And the

fun thing is it's like there's no sci fi. They're really like, there's no monsters, there's no costumes, there's no spaceships, there's no anything. It's just a hotel room. And I remember saying we were having some trouble with well, I can get into the trouble we had making this, and

that's part of the story too. But I remember sitting down at a certain point with the studio and our line producer and saying, we have no spaceships, we have no aliens, we have no monsters, we have no Bermuda triangle. You know what we have. We have a motel room and we have a door and it opens up into various environments where it shouldn't. That's the only effect we have to carry off. And the room is just a

built room, so that doesn't even count. The only magic is he uses the key to go into a public restroom in Pittsburgh and then one second later he closes the door and then opens it up inside a house in southern California, for instance. That's the only magic trick we have to pull off. Now, don't tell me we can't pull that off. Figure out how to pull it off. Now, what was difficult about making this? Okay, it takes place in Pittsburgh, right, it takes place because that's where they.

New Mexico. We're serious about making an investment in New Mexico. All this is decided before I come on. So now I sit down with the people at the studio and I'm like, why are we doing this in Albuquerque? It takes place in Pittsburgh. And I've been to New Mexico a bunch and unless I'm I'm mistaken, there really is not a good way to even sort of fake it, and they're like, it doesn't matter. We're not. We're filming in Albuquerque. That's that's a given. So we'll have to

figure it out. We'll have to shoot carefully and maybe put in some backgrounds. We'll figure it out. I'm like, okay, the one. But I went back upstairs to Chris and Paul and Laura and said, I have an idea and it might be the only way we can do this financially. The motel that you guys have on a highway in the hills of Pennsylvania. I pitched something, let's put it in New Mexico because that's where we're filming. It's so much better. And I'm like, let's make it. I mean,

you know, the Southwest has a Root sixty six. There's a tradition of these kitchy motels. It doesn't change the story at all, it doesn't change a single scene. It just changes set deck and some production design. So let's do that, and let's have the bus tickets send them to Gallop, New Mexico, so that we because we'll be right there and not every single, single single scene will be an insurmountable hill. And let me tell you something

about producing stuff. Nothing is more frustrating and infuriating than spending money to do something that is not impressive. So when you're in Albuquerque and you're spending time and money and blood, sweat and tears to convince somebody that they're looking at a street in Pittsburgh, You're like, this is not helping us. This is just we're spending money on something that's not going to impress anyone. It is a production burden that does not result in creative joy. We're

just stuck. And so now we're all this money that we could be spending on a lot of other stuff. We're spending on plate replaced right, and and oh, we're gonna get our our art director to reskin a building to make it look more like a deli or something in Pittsburgh than a you know, a boba coffee shop

that got built in nineteen two on a street corner and Albuquerque. It's like, you know, this is not where we should be spending our money, but we don't have a choice because guess what we were told we're filming

an Albuquerque, So I guess we're filming an Albuquerque. And every problem that came along with that was now our problem and came out of our budget and came and reduced all the cool stuff that we wanted to do because like, well, we can't because we have to spend that money convincing you that a street corner is actually in Pittsburgh. So that was very frustrating.

producer Paul Kurta. I remember just sitting in a diner on a location scout, and I was just spiraling because I'm like, I can't go back to LA until Chris and Paul and Laura that we were gonna have to make another compromise for this show. It's I can't do it. There's I don't know what we're gonna do. And we're

sitting at there. There's this big table and there's ten of us and all the people who are on a and I'm sitting at one end of the table and Craig Baxley's at the other, and I'm like, we're never gonna get it. We're just never going to get it.

And I see Craig Baxley writing something down and then he tears off a part of his paper place Matt, and he folds it up and he hands it and I see the note being passed all the way down to the table, all the way down to me, and I open up the little piece of paper and it says, don't worry. I promise you we're gonna get this, but he didn't say how. Three days later, there's a big meeting, and in that meeting, Craig Baxley's like, we got to build it. Sorry, I know it's not on anyone's budget,

but it's important. There's a giant sequence.

got to do everything. He's like, well, we're never gonna find it in our world. We will never find it. Let us build it. Let us build it to exactly our specifications, and I promise you we'll shoot it out in two days. And they listen to that logic, and I'm like, oh, that is right, that is correct. We got to build it. It's like, sorry, guys, you're the studio. You're the ones who stuck us in Albuquerque fucking build

us our set, and they had to. The boy today hate it, and you know, I will tell you the whole summer of two thousand and six, I was just like, God, Lionsgate is the worst. They're the cheapest, most miserly studio in the world. And I was certain of it until I worked with every other studio and then I realized, Oh no.

He's going to tell me what the event is that was driving the series.

any more than that. What was interesting to me, what was interesting to Laura and Chris and Paul and what the show would have become about, was the people and these little hidden groups that are fighting for control of these objects and how far will they go? And that's it. And that's all this was. And you know, I told the writers, I said, you know, no matter what happens,

this is yours. You will get credit for this, because I'd been through credit threats in my career and one of the first things I told them was, if you it literally, if the studio comes down and puts a gun to our heads and says, I don't care what you guys say, Richard is rewriting all of this, I said, I don't care if I rewrite every single word of this. I will never ask for credit. I am executive producer.

You are the writers, and that'll never change. So don't even harbor that as a fear in the back of your mind. Six months it's never going to happen now. Add to that, while we were filming, I took a shot at writing a chunk of an episode that needed to get done, and completely shit the bed, I mean, was unable to match their tone, unable to match their voice, unable to match their events. And my work was correctly

thrown out. And then they came in when they're you know, when they got a breath and were able to pick up and then write those scenes in their voice, in their way, which was a million times better. So that was the genius of them. What the event was. Who knows how people react to those things, That's what we cared about. I added one line, The one line I added to the entire six hours was Julianna Margally's saying to Joe to you know.

cursed objects. This is you think this is the monkey's pot. You think you know how to use it, You do not know how to use it. And and it was a way to, in a very succinct way, tell the audience what the theme of the show was. And it was already there and it just came out of conversations. But I'm like, let's have a character say it so that we're clear that this is not just avarice, that she's coming from a place of I don't love these objects.

I actually have seen them ruin people's lives, and I think they should be banished from the face of the earth. And I'm like, to me, that's fascinating because the audience is programmed to think it's wish fulfillment, and it is because in your own mind, you're like, well, if I had that, I think I could come up with something to do with it. But the show does such a good job of going, no, no matter what you think you're gonna do with it, it ain't gonna work out the way you planned.

shaped eye. And he was like, oh no, it's just this piece of glass. It's just like this this sort of shell, this outer shell that you just place on the dead eye that looks like a real eye, so a glass eye looks more like a guitar pick that's sort of rounded. And we're like, oh yeah, but they said, they said, you know what I love about this show. You know what the romance of the show is. It's about the stuff on your dad's desk. And I just about fell over. I'm like, my guy, have you nailed it?

Because my dad had the little the pen box that opened up and had the little the little tray with the section for the little paper clips and the and the stamps and the little and I'm just like, that's when you're a kid my age and you were looking at your dad's desk and all those weird little chi and brass and golden figurines, and you're just what is dad all about? And I'm like, you're one hundred percent correct, And we knew, we knew we had a new member of the team.

those are dormant objects. Their power hasn't been discovered yet. So now it's a whole new level. You're like, oh right, sure, Like like the watch if you set an egg, if you just the watch just sits on your desk with the watch band and you've set an egg in the middle of it, it cooks the egg and they make a drugs. How did they discover that? I have no idea. But then later you realize, oh, the toothbrush, we still it's been decades. We still don't know what it does.

It could do anything, it could do something wonderful, it could do nothing, but we don't know.

No there's no monster. Yes it's good, No there's no fight. I don't know what to tell you. Just watch it. And then people watch it and they either like it or they don't. But the people who like it, the ones who get it get it. My show Miracles, people who get it get it. Same thing with the Gates, same thing with this. It's very hard to just go, oh, it's you know, you know, er meets twenty four or something. It's like, okay, whatever, It's like, no, you have to

watch it. It's an actual creation. And this, more than anything, more than anything I've ever dealt with, is something that it's like, trust me, carve out some time this weekend, get six hours to yourself where you've got nothing else to do, and you will not be the same person. At the end of those six hours. You will have part of your brain will will open up, and forever you will never look at your own desk the same

way ever again. Okay, so let me jump in here and explain the If the listener has been listening carefully, I said that it was an eight hour mini series, and yet we know there's only six hours. So what happened? Okay? What happened was the budget. There was a certain budget, and a budget depends on time, and it also depends on you know, what is what is to be filmed in those two hours, you know, to create those two hours,

which of course takes two, three, four weeks. Okay. At a certain point I went to Chris and Laura and Paul and said, you know, we haven't really figured out the final two hours and the third two hours are a wonderful sort of concept, but it's a bit of a narrative detour. What if we just made it six hours and we compressed everything. I think in six hours

it's much easier to make the money work. We could figure this out, and I think it would take a lot of pressure off the studio time wise, because we're we're up against a December date and we have post production and things to do, and another two hours, I mean that's weeks of post production. What if we just go to them and say, what if we could do our story in six hours three nights, the way you usually do, I think they'll go for it, and I think it could take a lot of pressure off us.

We have a big meeting and literally, this is the weekend we're all showing up in New Mexico. This is we're way into it, and we still haven't figured out the budget, and they're hammering us. And we finally sat down with them and said, would it work if we just did the whole thing in six hours? And you know that's you know, one less director, a whole, one less production cycle. Just reduce everything by twenty five percent. And we talked it back and forth and they're like, okay,

that can work. And so for a minute, the foot was off our throats in terms of how are we going to produce this? And so for a little bit of time we felt like this is doable. Of course, then it's never doable. Nothing is ever doable. And often when you're doing a television show that's got a season, maybe another season, you can sort of finagle things because you can say, well, we'll make up that money later, or we'll do a bottle episode in the end of

the season. But this is more like a movie. It's like, okay, so now it's six hours, but it's got a beginning, a middle, and an end. So you can't really rob Peter to pay Paul. Everything needs money, and that last two hours needs a lot of money, because that's your big conclusion. So and these aren't traditional episodes. It's sort of a six hour story. So it within a few weeks we began to realize, oh, we're heading into all the same money problems we ever had, and every day

there's a new money problem. And because the novelty of the show required that every hour introduce us to a new aspect of the mythology. So we're going to go to a new location with a new cast member, new sets. We're never repeating anything like TV depends on. Half of the scenes will be shot in the hospital where they all work, or in the police station. You know, if we ever need to, we can just move that scene. I know it's supposed to be in a restaurant, and

he's going to propose at the fancy restaurant. Why doesn't he just propose in the break room at the police station that we own, and we've already paid for and decorated, and we've got all the camera angles worked out and we can shoot it in an hour rather than spending three quarters of a day in a restaurant that we have to pay for. We have, no, the only repeating set we have is the motel room. And so then they kept saying, well, can you put it in the

motel room. We're like no, we kept put in the motel room.

to do, and I'm like, oh my god, you guys. I know that's what you think an executive producer is, because when you see Aaron Sorkin or David Kelly or Steven Botchko or Joss Whedon, that's what they are. But that's not what I am. I'm the guy who's getting punched from all directtionstions, and I'm trying to protect them as much as possible, although that was not possible at all times. They were dealing with production problems all the time. By the way, they were great, like smart creative, and

they weren't kids. These weren't twenty year old people. They were full grown adults with thoughts and ideas who were finally getting a chance to do their dream project. And they weren't being idiots. And they were on set making really good points and really good suggestions and really smart ideas in the moment. So we had the benefit of

their brains and the benefit of my brain. But I just got to tell you, man, there's this one night at the end of there was our last night of filming, the second two hour block, and Paul Kurda and I and and you know, the it's our final day, so you know, they bring in some champagne and you know, they bring in a cake and everyone sort of, you know, you do a little celebrate because you want to keep

everyone's spirits up. It took a month to to the first two hours, a month due to the second two hours, and it was going to be another month in Albuquerque to do the third two hours. That's a long time, and people are away from their families, and it's not New York and it's not La it's Albuquerque, and your options for entertainment run out pretty quick. So Paul Kurda and I, and he's the line producer, so he's really physically responsible for figuring out the sets and the actors

and the money and everything. So he and I were working closely the whole time. And we were sitting in his office and it's late and we're drinking champagne, going what did we do wrong? We're eating cake and drinking champagne and going fucked and everyone's mad at us did we fuck up? And I remember sitting there for over an hour as we went back and went, okay, now, wait a second. The first problem was this, and so we had to do that. The next problem was this,

So we did that. We solve this by doing that we did this. The decision we made there was this. We we we retraced our steps. I've never done this before, by the way, I have never been so beaten down and so done.

And we're still the enemy of the studio and the network and are are being looked at as as criminals who are wasting their money. And I got to tell you, the production of it became rasily demoralizing because of the studio. Primarily because of the studio. Now, yeah, you have a budget, you're trying to work with a budget, but for this sort of thing to make it a successful execution of this creative idea. There were just certain things where it's like, no,

we can't. We cannot just do this or just do that with your other shows. Maybe that works, it's not going to work here. And it got brutal, and it frankly never got better, and it ended people were burned out and not in a good mood by the end of that of filming. And it was too bad because we were all friends and we all enjoyed what we

were doing. But at a certain point it was like, this is difficult for the sake of being difficult, and I'm sorry, but it's like, if you're talking fifty grand, no, I'm not gonna I'm not going to do back flips to save the production fifty grand when that fifty grand is going to be on the screen making the product better. And they just didn't want to hear it. And then I was like, did they hire me because they thought

I would just do whatever they said? And I think they were very disappointed at a certain point when they were like these new writers and this fucking nobody executive producer and they're fighting back against us, and I'm like, yeah, that's what you hired me for. You didn't hire me to agree with you. You hired me to produce a good, a great mini series, a mini series that delivers the promise of the script. That's all you can ever do, and that's what we're trying to do. And everyone on

that crew did backflips. The cast did backflips. Everyone actually doing the work did backflips. And the studio on the network, for the most part, stood. They're shaking their heads and planning on how they could make sure we never worked in this town again.

Enjoy what we suffered through. Watch the Lost Room.

fairly low key and more character driven. We wanted to be the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc and that's where a bunch of weird objects are. And by the way, that show came out great, people loved it, well done, entertained millions, and more power to them, more power to creative people making creative stuff. But when

you look at it from our point of view with the network, we're like, really, so there you go.

to every scene she's in. And we did not hang out. I mean I chatted with her and she was great. The cast was great. We didn't have a problem with anyone. They showed up. They were happy to do it, happy to work. I made friends. I made the first ad Jim Swartz were I'm friends with his entire family. His daughter was our assistant and now she's grown up, gotten married, child, had a career. I mean, it was all eighteen years ago and I'm still friends with Jerem I see Jerem Weekly.

So a lot of great things, and people who've worked in television a long time or in movies, they all have that same story. I made that friend during that shoot. I made that friend during that shoot, And I made a lot of friends during a lost room. And it came up fast, and it was. I read the script in March, it was on the air in December. It was and boom it happened, and then it was gone. And yet every time someone brings it up, they have

a great memory. And when I watched it this afternoon, I'm only halfway through and I'm going to go finish it. It's beautiful.

away eventually. I have my copy. When I found out we were going to be talking Rach I was so excited I was able to dust these DVDs off.

main one. They're all fun, they all have a great cast, and you're just like, how is this all gonna come together?