Hank Moody eases his convertible sports car onto the long and twisting road that snakes through Hollywood Forever Cemetary, making his way past the ponds, tombs and exotic birds that roam the grounds. A cigarette dangles from his lips and it looks like he might have had one too many drinks the night before and perhaps, just moments ago, kicked some strange woman-child out of his bed. He pulls up to a church and promptly douses his cigarette in holy water.
Hank is having what he calls a crisis of faith and thinks perhaps God can help ease his writers block. No such luck. Instead of uttering the usual Our Fathers or Hail Marys, Hank gets a blowjob from a nun. Sweet baby Jesus, he says. Hank is going to Hell. Welcome to Hanks world. Welcome to "Californication," Showtimes new hit series.
When writer Tom Kapinos sat down to write the character of Hank Moody he broke all the rules. Writers arent supposed to write about other writers, especially writers with writers block in Hollywood. But somewhere in breaking that rule, Kapinos created a character so oddly appealing, the audience cant seem to figure out whether they love him or hate him. All the audience knows is that they can't ignore him.
David Duchovny shines as Hank, a disgruntled writer facing a mid-life crisis and trying to find his way in the City of Angels after his last novel was devoured by the Hollywood machine. As Kapinos explains, Hank is a 70s anti-hero of sorts, one whos books are titled after Slayer albums, lives in a world where sex is matter of fact, and has a terrible tendency to not lie.
Also on the show is a character named Dani -- an agents assistant by day, and SuicideGirl for life. Kapinos contacted Missy to help turn actress Rachel Miner into DaniCA Suicide by giving her the right attitude and of course the right look. Check out the video of her amazing transformation here.
Erin Broadley: So how has the reception to Californication been so far?
Tom Kapinos: Its been great. The reviews were fairly mixed at first but it seems to be growing on people every week. I keep hearing better and better things so its pretty cool.
EB: Well, it is a controversial show. The first episode opens up with the blowjob from a nun sequence! But, thats not necessarily a bad thing.
TK: I think that first scene was inspired partially because I loved Al Suicides nun photo set. That was probably floating around in my head.
EB: Oh, cool. Yeah, I wondering if it was a personal experience that worked its way into the script or just a fantasy sequence.
TK: Its all SuicideGirls related. We even used that photo set on the show, although it ended up getting cut out for time. David Duchovnys character Hank is trying to write but he gets bored, starts surfing the net and he goes to SuicideGirls.
EB: He gets seduced by the Internet. Have there been any other controversies surrounding any other scenes in particular?
TK: You know, here in America its been people just whining about the sex part of it or people saying hes a complete misogynist. In Australia its been fascinating because thereve been Christian groups that are holding candlelight vigils outside the network headquarters when the show is on. Theyre trying to convince them to pull it because its so blasphemous.
EB: A candlelight vigil, thats great press.
TK: I know, I think its amazing. Its so funny and its all over some scene in a church thats actually a dream sequence, really.
EB: You originally crafted this project for a feature film. What led to it being formatted for Showtime?
TK: It all started because my only other job in television besides this was writing for Dawsons Creek, which is a world away from this. I came off of that show and I was miserable because it was a great learning experience but it was never a big ambition of mine to run someone elses show. It was just kind of foisted upon me and I ran with it. It was like TV boot camp for four years but kind of miserable and it screws with your career because all anybody wants from you when youre done with it is more of the same. I had actually written a spec screenplay that got me on Dawsons Creek in the first place and that never got made. It was really dark and edgy and it was really more along the lines of this. So I felt like it was time to write something like that again. So I sat down and wrote Californication as a movie but I didnt even think of getting it made. I just thought of it being a new writing sample to get people thinking of me in a new way. It wasnt very good. The first 60 pages were fine but I took a left turn at some point and never recovered. I just thought it was terrible and I left it on my desk for a year. Then my wife read it and shes like, Youre right, it does suck, but the first 60 pages are great. I started to think, Okay, well I had been watching a lot of Sopranos and Rescue Me. I was watching stuff like that and being a lazy writer I thought, Well, I have 60 good pages here. I should put them to use in some way. So I just kind of refashioned it as a spec pilot, thinking again it would just be a writing sample -- something my agent could send out like, Okay this is definitely not the Dawsons Creek guy. Thats a good thing. So it sort of made the rounds and it went to Showtime as a sample for some project they had in development and they really liked it. In a nutshell, thats what happened.
EB: When you write, what comes first for you: the character development or the plot?
TK: Its all character, especially with this. I just wanted to write about a guy I hadnt seen in the movies or on screen in a long time, like the 70s anti-hero. You know, I was thinking about movies like Shampoo. At the same time a lot of friends I have were getting married and having kids and these guys I knew -- who just spent their 20s completely wasted -- were now having to answer to their wives to just simply go to the movies. I started to envision this guy who wasnt going to go so gently into the good night of domestic bliss.
EB: Right. This character, hes from New York and he comes to LA and he kind of gets disenchanted when his novel gets eaten up by the Hollywood machine. I just loved the way the book title gets changed from God Hates Us All to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Its hilarious. Im a Slayer fan so
TK: I actually named all of his books after Slayer albums.
EB: Really?
TK: Yeah. In the episode last week he was a guest on this Henry Rollins radio show and Henry starts talking about his past books like South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. A few people get it.
EB: [Laughs] Thats awesome. Were you worried about the clich of setting up that dichotomy between the two cities Los Angeles and New York, where people accuse Hollywood of devouring peoples creativity?
TK: Not really. I was really just kind of writing about my own kind of love-hate relationship with LA. Im from New York originally but Im not from the city, Im from Long Island. So theres a part of me that romanticizes the city because I never really got to live there. I kind of moved essentially from my parents house out here. Theres something about LA that I simultaneously love and loathe because, you know, its this weird, fake, plastic place, but at the same time
EB: You end up loving things for the same reason you loathe them, you know.
TK: Yeah, when I first moved out here I loved the idea of living in this place that was fake, in the sense that this place manufactures things. I couldnt deny that I loved it. Then when I got married and I had kids, I could never have imagined I would raise kids out here. But here I am and I dont see myself going anywhere. I was just writing about my own sort of ambivalence toward it in a way. I had no interest in writing about the film industry, really. I just wanted to use it as a backdrop but I wasnt interested in exploring the restaurant of the week. I like the idea of setting the show in Santa Monica and Venice, which I felt like I hadnt really seen on TV or even in movies that much before. You see a lot of Hollywood and stuff like that, but theres a grungier aspect of Venice that I liked that I hadnt really seen.
EB: In this city there are tons of horribly intriguing stories that are just so seedy but just so entertaining at the same time and then underneath that all these are real people and these are their lives and theres real heart there.
TK: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.
EB: I think thats what youre really able to accomplish with the Hank character.
TK: Yeah, like I grew up loving Motley Crue and Guns N Roses and the stories of bands about guys going out west to make their fortune. So in my mind theres that sense of you go to LA to reinvent yourself and seek your fortune.
EB: Yeah, those bands were the cowboys of the entertainment industry.
TK: Yeah, Hank went out there thinking that he was going to get something out of it and it sort of destroyed his soul, but at the same time he shouldnt be whining about it because he signed the check. He cashed the check. I was also writing about myself in the sense that you came out here to be a writer and you have all these ambitions and you end up on a show like Dawsons Creek. Yes, you make money and all that stuff, but at the same time its kind of not really what you have in mind. But you cant really get away with whining because people will say, Well whyd you do it then?
EB: Is the Tom and Katie reference in the show because you worked with [Katie Holmes] on Dawsons Creek?
TK: Oh yeah, definitely. That whole group of people was a trip. They were miserable brats.
EB: [Laughs]
TK: I like to take pot shots at them whenever possible because they were little monsters.
EB: I applaud you on that, sir.
TK: You cant really sympathize with kids who get famous at 19, 20, 21 and
EB: Yeah, kids who are famous for pinching their eyebrows.
TK: Exactly.
EB: What was your initial experience here besides Dawsons Creek[? Were there other experiences of yours that informed the writing for this show?
TK: You know the biggest thing that informed the writing was my first job out here. My dream job when I moved out to LA was working at Tower Video on Sunset Blvd. I must have filled out five applications and I couldnt even get so much as an interview. But at the same time I interviewed to be a script reader at CAA and I got that job easily.
EB: Thats so weird.
TK: I know. It was just easier to get a job at CAA than it was at Tower Video. So for about two years I just read scripts and thats what helped me the most in terms of being a writer. You read and observe and learn not to be boring because thats sort of the enemy of all this stuff is just like making people want to fall asleep before they get to page ten.
EB: Well, yeah, I mean obviously you kind of fine-tune your bullshit detector. You know, you hear all the water cooler talk about what people like reading and what they dont like reading.
TK: Yeah, yeah exactly. I kind of learned to grab people immediately, which is how you get an opening scene with a nun giving a blow job in a church.
EB: Now, reading another interview you said you wanted to create a show where sex was a matter of fact.
TK: Yeah, when I wrote the script, I didnt think about the sex part of it. I just thought, heres a guy who is miserable and is having a ton of sex, but hes not being predatory about it; its just kind of falling into his lap. I looked around and a lot of people I know are having a ton of sex. So thats what I meant about matter-of-fact. Whats the big deal? I mean heres an adult wandering through the playground of nighttime LA and theres a lot of sex to be had.
EB: Yeah, hes not abusing anyone; hes not a sexual predator.
TK: No, thats the weird thing about a lot of the critical reaction I got. I did an interview a couple hours ago where this woman told me that he was the most horrible creature ever because he was having sex with all these women and wasnt calling them. This is my first experience dealing with critical reaction of something thats so incendiary. I was surprised by it because I just dont really get it, it just feels like, I mean, especially the media, when you talk to people from newspapers and magazines across this country, all they want to talk about is, How could you possibly so casual about sex? I mean this show is about a guy, going through -- for lack of a better phrase -- a mid-life crisis. Sex is just one thing hes indulging in along the way.
EB: Yeah, exactly. I read that you dealt with a fair amount of writers block prior to coming up with this script.
TK: Yeah, in a way. I just didnt, I was sort of writing and selling pilots as a result of having been on a successful TV show but none of them were anything that I completely loved. I was kind of blocked, so I started this as an exercise and said, Alright, well, Ill write about a writer who has writers block. I just kind of started from there. You know thats why I thought it would never go anywhere because I kind of broke every rule. Youre not supposed to write about writers.
EB: Right. Well, I read some bit of trivia that said the script kept Duchovny up at night. What was that about?
TK: Yeah, it was funny. I met him for lunch. He had read the script and his agents and manager said, He read the script and liked it and wants to meet you but dont be surprised if it doesnt go anywhere because he doesnt want to do TV right now. I said, Okay, cool. We met and we had a nice lunch but it was kind of non-committal. Then he wrote me a letter that his agent passed on to me. It was all of his thoughts and concerns about the script and at the end of it he said, I apologize. I cant think of anything more annoying than an actor giving a writer notes on a script hes considering playing. But this piece is keeping me up at night. So fuck you.
EB: When somebody does that I think, Ah ha, a challenge!
TK: Exactly. So then he encouraged me to sort of write him a letter back about what I intended with things. I wrote him back and then before we knew it he had started negotiating. So it was neat as a writer to be asked to engage with someone via writing as opposed, because so much of Hollywood is based upon performing in a room and impressing people with your charisma. This was just an actor wanting to exchange thoughts. Hes an interesting guy in the fact that hes an actor but hes also a writer. Hes done a ton of writing. Hes written a lot of screenplays. Hes done pilots. He wrote the movie he directed. So he really does understand writing and hes really good at it.
EB: Right, well, we talked about SuicideGirls earlier. Again, how did that development come about in the script?
TK: Yeah. I dont remember when I first stumbled upon the site but when I did I was a huge fan. I guess when I started writing the second episode I was like, Oh, itd be kind of cool if Evan Handlers assistant was someone from that world. You know, its not like Im trying to co-opt what you guys do. I like the show to be an example of all the little things in the world I think are really cool. But also there was a theme when I started to write the season about how LA was kind of destroying the female population in the sense that everyone was being encouraged to be unnatural. I like the thought of putting that sort of subliminal message in there with Rachel Miners character, instead of having the assistant who wants to be an actress or whatever. She is really comfortable with who she is in the world.
Californication airs every Monday night on Showtime. For more information go to http://www.sho.com/site/californication/
Hank is having what he calls a crisis of faith and thinks perhaps God can help ease his writers block. No such luck. Instead of uttering the usual Our Fathers or Hail Marys, Hank gets a blowjob from a nun. Sweet baby Jesus, he says. Hank is going to Hell. Welcome to Hanks world. Welcome to "Californication," Showtimes new hit series.
When writer Tom Kapinos sat down to write the character of Hank Moody he broke all the rules. Writers arent supposed to write about other writers, especially writers with writers block in Hollywood. But somewhere in breaking that rule, Kapinos created a character so oddly appealing, the audience cant seem to figure out whether they love him or hate him. All the audience knows is that they can't ignore him.
David Duchovny shines as Hank, a disgruntled writer facing a mid-life crisis and trying to find his way in the City of Angels after his last novel was devoured by the Hollywood machine. As Kapinos explains, Hank is a 70s anti-hero of sorts, one whos books are titled after Slayer albums, lives in a world where sex is matter of fact, and has a terrible tendency to not lie.
Also on the show is a character named Dani -- an agents assistant by day, and SuicideGirl for life. Kapinos contacted Missy to help turn actress Rachel Miner into DaniCA Suicide by giving her the right attitude and of course the right look. Check out the video of her amazing transformation here.
Erin Broadley: So how has the reception to Californication been so far?
Tom Kapinos: Its been great. The reviews were fairly mixed at first but it seems to be growing on people every week. I keep hearing better and better things so its pretty cool.
EB: Well, it is a controversial show. The first episode opens up with the blowjob from a nun sequence! But, thats not necessarily a bad thing.
TK: I think that first scene was inspired partially because I loved Al Suicides nun photo set. That was probably floating around in my head.
EB: Oh, cool. Yeah, I wondering if it was a personal experience that worked its way into the script or just a fantasy sequence.
TK: Its all SuicideGirls related. We even used that photo set on the show, although it ended up getting cut out for time. David Duchovnys character Hank is trying to write but he gets bored, starts surfing the net and he goes to SuicideGirls.
EB: He gets seduced by the Internet. Have there been any other controversies surrounding any other scenes in particular?
TK: You know, here in America its been people just whining about the sex part of it or people saying hes a complete misogynist. In Australia its been fascinating because thereve been Christian groups that are holding candlelight vigils outside the network headquarters when the show is on. Theyre trying to convince them to pull it because its so blasphemous.
EB: A candlelight vigil, thats great press.
TK: I know, I think its amazing. Its so funny and its all over some scene in a church thats actually a dream sequence, really.
EB: You originally crafted this project for a feature film. What led to it being formatted for Showtime?
TK: It all started because my only other job in television besides this was writing for Dawsons Creek, which is a world away from this. I came off of that show and I was miserable because it was a great learning experience but it was never a big ambition of mine to run someone elses show. It was just kind of foisted upon me and I ran with it. It was like TV boot camp for four years but kind of miserable and it screws with your career because all anybody wants from you when youre done with it is more of the same. I had actually written a spec screenplay that got me on Dawsons Creek in the first place and that never got made. It was really dark and edgy and it was really more along the lines of this. So I felt like it was time to write something like that again. So I sat down and wrote Californication as a movie but I didnt even think of getting it made. I just thought of it being a new writing sample to get people thinking of me in a new way. It wasnt very good. The first 60 pages were fine but I took a left turn at some point and never recovered. I just thought it was terrible and I left it on my desk for a year. Then my wife read it and shes like, Youre right, it does suck, but the first 60 pages are great. I started to think, Okay, well I had been watching a lot of Sopranos and Rescue Me. I was watching stuff like that and being a lazy writer I thought, Well, I have 60 good pages here. I should put them to use in some way. So I just kind of refashioned it as a spec pilot, thinking again it would just be a writing sample -- something my agent could send out like, Okay this is definitely not the Dawsons Creek guy. Thats a good thing. So it sort of made the rounds and it went to Showtime as a sample for some project they had in development and they really liked it. In a nutshell, thats what happened.
EB: When you write, what comes first for you: the character development or the plot?
TK: Its all character, especially with this. I just wanted to write about a guy I hadnt seen in the movies or on screen in a long time, like the 70s anti-hero. You know, I was thinking about movies like Shampoo. At the same time a lot of friends I have were getting married and having kids and these guys I knew -- who just spent their 20s completely wasted -- were now having to answer to their wives to just simply go to the movies. I started to envision this guy who wasnt going to go so gently into the good night of domestic bliss.
EB: Right. This character, hes from New York and he comes to LA and he kind of gets disenchanted when his novel gets eaten up by the Hollywood machine. I just loved the way the book title gets changed from God Hates Us All to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Its hilarious. Im a Slayer fan so
TK: I actually named all of his books after Slayer albums.
EB: Really?
TK: Yeah. In the episode last week he was a guest on this Henry Rollins radio show and Henry starts talking about his past books like South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. A few people get it.
EB: [Laughs] Thats awesome. Were you worried about the clich of setting up that dichotomy between the two cities Los Angeles and New York, where people accuse Hollywood of devouring peoples creativity?
TK: Not really. I was really just kind of writing about my own kind of love-hate relationship with LA. Im from New York originally but Im not from the city, Im from Long Island. So theres a part of me that romanticizes the city because I never really got to live there. I kind of moved essentially from my parents house out here. Theres something about LA that I simultaneously love and loathe because, you know, its this weird, fake, plastic place, but at the same time
EB: You end up loving things for the same reason you loathe them, you know.
TK: Yeah, when I first moved out here I loved the idea of living in this place that was fake, in the sense that this place manufactures things. I couldnt deny that I loved it. Then when I got married and I had kids, I could never have imagined I would raise kids out here. But here I am and I dont see myself going anywhere. I was just writing about my own sort of ambivalence toward it in a way. I had no interest in writing about the film industry, really. I just wanted to use it as a backdrop but I wasnt interested in exploring the restaurant of the week. I like the idea of setting the show in Santa Monica and Venice, which I felt like I hadnt really seen on TV or even in movies that much before. You see a lot of Hollywood and stuff like that, but theres a grungier aspect of Venice that I liked that I hadnt really seen.
EB: In this city there are tons of horribly intriguing stories that are just so seedy but just so entertaining at the same time and then underneath that all these are real people and these are their lives and theres real heart there.
TK: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.
EB: I think thats what youre really able to accomplish with the Hank character.
TK: Yeah, like I grew up loving Motley Crue and Guns N Roses and the stories of bands about guys going out west to make their fortune. So in my mind theres that sense of you go to LA to reinvent yourself and seek your fortune.
EB: Yeah, those bands were the cowboys of the entertainment industry.
TK: Yeah, Hank went out there thinking that he was going to get something out of it and it sort of destroyed his soul, but at the same time he shouldnt be whining about it because he signed the check. He cashed the check. I was also writing about myself in the sense that you came out here to be a writer and you have all these ambitions and you end up on a show like Dawsons Creek. Yes, you make money and all that stuff, but at the same time its kind of not really what you have in mind. But you cant really get away with whining because people will say, Well whyd you do it then?
EB: Is the Tom and Katie reference in the show because you worked with [Katie Holmes] on Dawsons Creek?
TK: Oh yeah, definitely. That whole group of people was a trip. They were miserable brats.
EB: [Laughs]
TK: I like to take pot shots at them whenever possible because they were little monsters.
EB: I applaud you on that, sir.
TK: You cant really sympathize with kids who get famous at 19, 20, 21 and
EB: Yeah, kids who are famous for pinching their eyebrows.
TK: Exactly.
EB: What was your initial experience here besides Dawsons Creek[? Were there other experiences of yours that informed the writing for this show?
TK: You know the biggest thing that informed the writing was my first job out here. My dream job when I moved out to LA was working at Tower Video on Sunset Blvd. I must have filled out five applications and I couldnt even get so much as an interview. But at the same time I interviewed to be a script reader at CAA and I got that job easily.
EB: Thats so weird.
TK: I know. It was just easier to get a job at CAA than it was at Tower Video. So for about two years I just read scripts and thats what helped me the most in terms of being a writer. You read and observe and learn not to be boring because thats sort of the enemy of all this stuff is just like making people want to fall asleep before they get to page ten.
EB: Well, yeah, I mean obviously you kind of fine-tune your bullshit detector. You know, you hear all the water cooler talk about what people like reading and what they dont like reading.
TK: Yeah, yeah exactly. I kind of learned to grab people immediately, which is how you get an opening scene with a nun giving a blow job in a church.
EB: Now, reading another interview you said you wanted to create a show where sex was a matter of fact.
TK: Yeah, when I wrote the script, I didnt think about the sex part of it. I just thought, heres a guy who is miserable and is having a ton of sex, but hes not being predatory about it; its just kind of falling into his lap. I looked around and a lot of people I know are having a ton of sex. So thats what I meant about matter-of-fact. Whats the big deal? I mean heres an adult wandering through the playground of nighttime LA and theres a lot of sex to be had.
EB: Yeah, hes not abusing anyone; hes not a sexual predator.
TK: No, thats the weird thing about a lot of the critical reaction I got. I did an interview a couple hours ago where this woman told me that he was the most horrible creature ever because he was having sex with all these women and wasnt calling them. This is my first experience dealing with critical reaction of something thats so incendiary. I was surprised by it because I just dont really get it, it just feels like, I mean, especially the media, when you talk to people from newspapers and magazines across this country, all they want to talk about is, How could you possibly so casual about sex? I mean this show is about a guy, going through -- for lack of a better phrase -- a mid-life crisis. Sex is just one thing hes indulging in along the way.
EB: Yeah, exactly. I read that you dealt with a fair amount of writers block prior to coming up with this script.
TK: Yeah, in a way. I just didnt, I was sort of writing and selling pilots as a result of having been on a successful TV show but none of them were anything that I completely loved. I was kind of blocked, so I started this as an exercise and said, Alright, well, Ill write about a writer who has writers block. I just kind of started from there. You know thats why I thought it would never go anywhere because I kind of broke every rule. Youre not supposed to write about writers.
EB: Right. Well, I read some bit of trivia that said the script kept Duchovny up at night. What was that about?
TK: Yeah, it was funny. I met him for lunch. He had read the script and his agents and manager said, He read the script and liked it and wants to meet you but dont be surprised if it doesnt go anywhere because he doesnt want to do TV right now. I said, Okay, cool. We met and we had a nice lunch but it was kind of non-committal. Then he wrote me a letter that his agent passed on to me. It was all of his thoughts and concerns about the script and at the end of it he said, I apologize. I cant think of anything more annoying than an actor giving a writer notes on a script hes considering playing. But this piece is keeping me up at night. So fuck you.
EB: When somebody does that I think, Ah ha, a challenge!
TK: Exactly. So then he encouraged me to sort of write him a letter back about what I intended with things. I wrote him back and then before we knew it he had started negotiating. So it was neat as a writer to be asked to engage with someone via writing as opposed, because so much of Hollywood is based upon performing in a room and impressing people with your charisma. This was just an actor wanting to exchange thoughts. Hes an interesting guy in the fact that hes an actor but hes also a writer. Hes done a ton of writing. Hes written a lot of screenplays. Hes done pilots. He wrote the movie he directed. So he really does understand writing and hes really good at it.
EB: Right, well, we talked about SuicideGirls earlier. Again, how did that development come about in the script?
TK: Yeah. I dont remember when I first stumbled upon the site but when I did I was a huge fan. I guess when I started writing the second episode I was like, Oh, itd be kind of cool if Evan Handlers assistant was someone from that world. You know, its not like Im trying to co-opt what you guys do. I like the show to be an example of all the little things in the world I think are really cool. But also there was a theme when I started to write the season about how LA was kind of destroying the female population in the sense that everyone was being encouraged to be unnatural. I like the thought of putting that sort of subliminal message in there with Rachel Miners character, instead of having the assistant who wants to be an actress or whatever. She is really comfortable with who she is in the world.
Californication airs every Monday night on Showtime. For more information go to http://www.sho.com/site/californication/
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
On another note, it sounds like something I might enjoy.