24 is back. Because of the writer's strike last year, they only completed half of the season. They couldn't just air twelve hours of a twenty-four hour story, so they had to wait a whole year to finish the job. They used the extra time the extended schedule allowed to shoot a TV movie airing this weekend, 24: Redemption. It's still real time, it's just not a whole day's worth of it.
Technically the standalone movie should be called 2, but let's not get too persnickety -- we'll take two hours of Jack Bauer anytime. In Redemption, Bauer has moved to Africa to work as a missionary. Instead of finding solace through simple acts of charity, of course, he ends up having to stop a corrupt militia recruiting child soldiers. But, despite the stressed out intensity of Bauer, Sutherland always exudes Zen-like calm.
Question: We've really been missing 24. How will this TV movie give us our long-awaited fix?
Kiefer Sutherland: As difficult as it was for us to take the break, because of the strike, I think the audience was affected the most. It was something that no one wanted to do. I don't think the writers wanted to do it, the actors didn't want to do it, and [producer Jon] Cassar didn't want to do it. It happened nonetheless. I think FOX made a very smart decision with regards to 24 because I think it is at its best when it's released continuously so you can watch all 24 episodes in a row. So we waited until January. The one benefit if you are looking for a silver lining is that the most difficult thing for 24 is the writing. It gave the writers an unbelievable amount of time to really craft this season. We as actors had scripts available to us, which we've never had in the past six years of making the show, and I believe it's the best work we've ever done. The stuff we did in Africa is really some of the stuff I'm the most excited about in regards to 24.
Q: Will new fans be able to follow it?
KS: We are certainly going after them, so I hope so, yeah. It was an idea that we had to start out Season Seven and we couldn't make it work. The fact that we've been off the air now for as long as we have been, we wanted to have something out in November instead of just January, and it was a great way to incorporate a storyline that we all love in a standalone two hour deal that would set up Season Seven. It sets up the conflict. The conflict that starts in the prequel is the conflict carried through all the way through Season Seven.
Q: An African militia is a new enemy for Jack Bauer to face. How does he handle that?
KS: Well, certainly in the prequel it is. Mostly by running fast, you know?
Q: Do you hope 24 can make a difference too, by raising awareness of issues like child soldiers in Africa?
KS: Well, I certainly think people are very aware of that, but what it can do is we can tell a story that maybe will personalize it more for you and give you a different sensibility about that. So yeah, we certainly hope that we would shed a light on it that would have some kind of positive effect.
Q: When did you become aware of this particular issue?
KS: I think probably about eleven years ago, the whole situation with Rwanda I became unbelievably aware, and then after that, you don't stop following. It literally moved completely East and South through Africa, through the entire continent, and the terrible problems that you're having in South Africa right now, when you have all of the refugees coming out of Zimbabwe, and literally wars all along those borders and people being burned alive, for jobs. Look, there's no question that there's an unbelievable economic depravity on the continent of Africa and there has been a level of violence that is really unparalleled to anywhere else in the world. The truth is, one of the things that was said in the prequel, which I think has been a massive problem with how the Western World has dealt with Africa, no one can justify going there, because they have no viable reason -- meaning oil or money. Here [the president's] response is a human one. We can stop a genocide. I think that that's something that Bill Clinton apologized for not doing with Rwanda and we centered a show around that.
Q: Are we going to see a new Jack Bauer in this two hour prequel and Season Seven?
KS: No, it's a Jack Bauer that you'll be very familiar with, but one of the great things I think about the show was that every season has always impacted how that character develops, and you're going to see a Jack Bauer that's carrying the weight of the last six seasons. What was most important was he was disillusioned with how he'd been manipulated to do things that he didn't like for himself, and that he was really leaving his world behind. From that sense, yeah he's a much freer person than certainly the end of Season Six.
Q: Twenty-four episodes a year is already a lot. With this on top of it, how do you stay awake and able to work?
KS: Before I started 24 I'd made a lot of films that I was very proud of that were seen by no one, maybe eight people. When I started doing 24, and I started doing shows that I was very excited about and a lot of people started seeing them, and people were generally excited about the show, that gave me a kind of excitement just to know that whatever you were going to do, people were going to see. If you did it really well, that it would be appreciated and consequently if you didn't do it well and there was mistakes, they would let you know that too. It gives you a kind of -- half of it is fear, half of it is adrenaline -- joy. It's a kind of energy that has really sustained all of us. When 24 is going well and you get a sense of the reaction that we have from an audience, there's no better juice in the world.
Q: Do you pay attention to criticism or just keep moving forward?
KS: Absolutely not, I'll carry that with me to my grave.
Q: So what's your response to critics of last season?
KS: I thought in all fairness, a lot of them were accurate. I disagreed with a few as well. I actually thought Season Six was one of our best seasons, but we did hit an issue that we've had in seasons before, but we really got it handed to us with Season Six. There's generally two kinds of major conflicts within the context of a season and transitioning from one conflict that ends and moving into the other has been the muddy area for us, and last year we struggled with it. This year, the thing that I think has really allowed us to kind of fight that, it'll be the first time we've actually been able to complete twenty-four episodes before one will air. I think that that has allowed us to really take our time to work those dangerous episodes, which are generally 13, 14, 15 and 16, because the first twelve and the last eight for us generally are really strong.
It's that transition area and we've had a lot of time to work on it. We all took that really personally, and I think [writer] Howard [Gordon] and I and Jon Kassar, we've talked about it, and we felt that some of them were very fair and legitimate. There was a lot of criticism about the White House and how that was handled, from a writing point and performance point, and we did find that that was not as fleshed out as we would have liked it, and that on some level, the CTU stuff, kind of went over the top in the kind of silly direction, that kind of undermined the intensity of the rest of the show. Those two things, specifically the ones that stood out for me during that four episode transition, we just started reaching for stuff that we thought might work and it wasn't really as well thought out as we would have liked.
Q: Of course your fans still remember Lost Boys and Stand By Me. When you look back on those films, what have you learned since then?
KS: Well, the lessons learned never stop. It's a really deep question. Stand By Me was the first film I got to do in the United States. I remember when I first went to go see that film I thought my career was over. Then the film became the success that it was, certainly at that time it was a part of American film history, and I realized the first thing was that I should probably not watch my work. The best thing for me to do was to just make it and the audience would be the judge. That has served me quite well. The journey from there to now, 24, has been an unbelievable experience for me. I think that acting is almost like working out. It's a physical exercise that one has to go through. The more that you train and the more you use whatever that instrument is -- it's your body, your brain, your voice, and all those thing combined. It's been an unbelievable tool for me to figure out things that work and don't. That was a huge learning tool.
Q: You thought Stand By Me would end your career? Have you ever been that wrong again?
KS: The one film that surprised me was Flatliners. I literally thought we were going to make the medical version of Paper Chase, and it was going to be done out of Harvard and it was going to be really serious. I had gotten the script in England and I just read it the way I read it, and Joel [Schumacher] and I talked on the phone. I thought it was going to be really serious, like Coma was really serious. It was in the real world.
The first scene I did was running to the gurney that we were doing the experiment on, and there was this huge grate and steam was coming up from it. It looked like an AC/DC show. It was the most unsanitary, ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. No medical student would ever perform any experiment over a subway grate. I don't care how cold it is in Chicago in December. Joel was going, "It's going to be alright," and I was like, "No, it's not." Then, the next scene, Kevin Bacon was climbing out a window, repelling down the side of a building. I was like, "This is bad! This isn't good at all!" The last straw was that I was running through the university and I was like, "What the f*ck?" There was a huge Statue of Liberty's head right there, and then across the way was this steel box with rubber gloves sticking out, and I had a breakdown. I was like, "I can't do this! You've got the wrong guy. I thought we were going to make Paper Chase!" [laughs]
I was 22, and Joel pulled me outside and said, "Kiefer, if you don't think that there isn't a night that I go to sleep where I know your future is in my hands, you're crazy. You're going to have to trust me." I was raised as an actor, from the beginning of my career until now, that you work for a director. You make that choice when you go in. You swing for that person until you come out the other end. So, I said, "Okay." I went and saw that movie, and it was the first time I realized there were people who were a lot smarter than me because I loved it. I was so taken aback because I was so ready to just bury my head in my hands, and I loved it. I thought it looked beautiful. He was right. He created this fantastical world that wasn't real, so you could accept all of these other things. I had a very similar experience with Alex Proyas on Dark City.
Q: Have you ever been right when you thought something would turn out badly, and it did?
KS: [laughs] Each one has its own telling points. There was one moment, and it was a first-time director. I won't name him because he was a nice enough guy. The camera operator and the cinematographer had gotten in an argument about crossing the line, which is camera technical terminology. When you're in a scene, there is a line that's created between you and the other person, and you can't cross and the camera can't cross, once you've established that line. Sometimes, given some movement, it can get complicated. So they were having this argument, and I looked off and in the corner was the director, sitting down, trying to figure it out. Then, he just went, "Oh, forget it," and threw up his arms. [laughs] So, at that moment, I knew I was in deep trouble.
Captured In Africa: The Paley Center For Media in Beverly Hills, CA is currently hosting an exhibition of photos taken during the 24: Redmeption African shoot. Curated by Entertainment Weekly deputy photo director Michael Kochman, the collection features works by 24 executive producer/director Jon Cassar, director of photography Rodney Charters, producer Michael Klick, unit photographer Kelsey McNeal, and star/executive producer Kiefer Sutherland. The exhibition can be viewed through January 11, 2009 in the Bell Family Gallery.
Technically the standalone movie should be called 2, but let's not get too persnickety -- we'll take two hours of Jack Bauer anytime. In Redemption, Bauer has moved to Africa to work as a missionary. Instead of finding solace through simple acts of charity, of course, he ends up having to stop a corrupt militia recruiting child soldiers. But, despite the stressed out intensity of Bauer, Sutherland always exudes Zen-like calm.
Question: We've really been missing 24. How will this TV movie give us our long-awaited fix?
Kiefer Sutherland: As difficult as it was for us to take the break, because of the strike, I think the audience was affected the most. It was something that no one wanted to do. I don't think the writers wanted to do it, the actors didn't want to do it, and [producer Jon] Cassar didn't want to do it. It happened nonetheless. I think FOX made a very smart decision with regards to 24 because I think it is at its best when it's released continuously so you can watch all 24 episodes in a row. So we waited until January. The one benefit if you are looking for a silver lining is that the most difficult thing for 24 is the writing. It gave the writers an unbelievable amount of time to really craft this season. We as actors had scripts available to us, which we've never had in the past six years of making the show, and I believe it's the best work we've ever done. The stuff we did in Africa is really some of the stuff I'm the most excited about in regards to 24.
Q: Will new fans be able to follow it?
KS: We are certainly going after them, so I hope so, yeah. It was an idea that we had to start out Season Seven and we couldn't make it work. The fact that we've been off the air now for as long as we have been, we wanted to have something out in November instead of just January, and it was a great way to incorporate a storyline that we all love in a standalone two hour deal that would set up Season Seven. It sets up the conflict. The conflict that starts in the prequel is the conflict carried through all the way through Season Seven.
Q: An African militia is a new enemy for Jack Bauer to face. How does he handle that?
KS: Well, certainly in the prequel it is. Mostly by running fast, you know?
Q: Do you hope 24 can make a difference too, by raising awareness of issues like child soldiers in Africa?
KS: Well, I certainly think people are very aware of that, but what it can do is we can tell a story that maybe will personalize it more for you and give you a different sensibility about that. So yeah, we certainly hope that we would shed a light on it that would have some kind of positive effect.
Q: When did you become aware of this particular issue?
KS: I think probably about eleven years ago, the whole situation with Rwanda I became unbelievably aware, and then after that, you don't stop following. It literally moved completely East and South through Africa, through the entire continent, and the terrible problems that you're having in South Africa right now, when you have all of the refugees coming out of Zimbabwe, and literally wars all along those borders and people being burned alive, for jobs. Look, there's no question that there's an unbelievable economic depravity on the continent of Africa and there has been a level of violence that is really unparalleled to anywhere else in the world. The truth is, one of the things that was said in the prequel, which I think has been a massive problem with how the Western World has dealt with Africa, no one can justify going there, because they have no viable reason -- meaning oil or money. Here [the president's] response is a human one. We can stop a genocide. I think that that's something that Bill Clinton apologized for not doing with Rwanda and we centered a show around that.
Q: Are we going to see a new Jack Bauer in this two hour prequel and Season Seven?
KS: No, it's a Jack Bauer that you'll be very familiar with, but one of the great things I think about the show was that every season has always impacted how that character develops, and you're going to see a Jack Bauer that's carrying the weight of the last six seasons. What was most important was he was disillusioned with how he'd been manipulated to do things that he didn't like for himself, and that he was really leaving his world behind. From that sense, yeah he's a much freer person than certainly the end of Season Six.
Q: Twenty-four episodes a year is already a lot. With this on top of it, how do you stay awake and able to work?
KS: Before I started 24 I'd made a lot of films that I was very proud of that were seen by no one, maybe eight people. When I started doing 24, and I started doing shows that I was very excited about and a lot of people started seeing them, and people were generally excited about the show, that gave me a kind of excitement just to know that whatever you were going to do, people were going to see. If you did it really well, that it would be appreciated and consequently if you didn't do it well and there was mistakes, they would let you know that too. It gives you a kind of -- half of it is fear, half of it is adrenaline -- joy. It's a kind of energy that has really sustained all of us. When 24 is going well and you get a sense of the reaction that we have from an audience, there's no better juice in the world.
Q: Do you pay attention to criticism or just keep moving forward?
KS: Absolutely not, I'll carry that with me to my grave.
Q: So what's your response to critics of last season?
KS: I thought in all fairness, a lot of them were accurate. I disagreed with a few as well. I actually thought Season Six was one of our best seasons, but we did hit an issue that we've had in seasons before, but we really got it handed to us with Season Six. There's generally two kinds of major conflicts within the context of a season and transitioning from one conflict that ends and moving into the other has been the muddy area for us, and last year we struggled with it. This year, the thing that I think has really allowed us to kind of fight that, it'll be the first time we've actually been able to complete twenty-four episodes before one will air. I think that that has allowed us to really take our time to work those dangerous episodes, which are generally 13, 14, 15 and 16, because the first twelve and the last eight for us generally are really strong.
It's that transition area and we've had a lot of time to work on it. We all took that really personally, and I think [writer] Howard [Gordon] and I and Jon Kassar, we've talked about it, and we felt that some of them were very fair and legitimate. There was a lot of criticism about the White House and how that was handled, from a writing point and performance point, and we did find that that was not as fleshed out as we would have liked it, and that on some level, the CTU stuff, kind of went over the top in the kind of silly direction, that kind of undermined the intensity of the rest of the show. Those two things, specifically the ones that stood out for me during that four episode transition, we just started reaching for stuff that we thought might work and it wasn't really as well thought out as we would have liked.
Q: Of course your fans still remember Lost Boys and Stand By Me. When you look back on those films, what have you learned since then?
KS: Well, the lessons learned never stop. It's a really deep question. Stand By Me was the first film I got to do in the United States. I remember when I first went to go see that film I thought my career was over. Then the film became the success that it was, certainly at that time it was a part of American film history, and I realized the first thing was that I should probably not watch my work. The best thing for me to do was to just make it and the audience would be the judge. That has served me quite well. The journey from there to now, 24, has been an unbelievable experience for me. I think that acting is almost like working out. It's a physical exercise that one has to go through. The more that you train and the more you use whatever that instrument is -- it's your body, your brain, your voice, and all those thing combined. It's been an unbelievable tool for me to figure out things that work and don't. That was a huge learning tool.
Q: You thought Stand By Me would end your career? Have you ever been that wrong again?
KS: The one film that surprised me was Flatliners. I literally thought we were going to make the medical version of Paper Chase, and it was going to be done out of Harvard and it was going to be really serious. I had gotten the script in England and I just read it the way I read it, and Joel [Schumacher] and I talked on the phone. I thought it was going to be really serious, like Coma was really serious. It was in the real world.
The first scene I did was running to the gurney that we were doing the experiment on, and there was this huge grate and steam was coming up from it. It looked like an AC/DC show. It was the most unsanitary, ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. No medical student would ever perform any experiment over a subway grate. I don't care how cold it is in Chicago in December. Joel was going, "It's going to be alright," and I was like, "No, it's not." Then, the next scene, Kevin Bacon was climbing out a window, repelling down the side of a building. I was like, "This is bad! This isn't good at all!" The last straw was that I was running through the university and I was like, "What the f*ck?" There was a huge Statue of Liberty's head right there, and then across the way was this steel box with rubber gloves sticking out, and I had a breakdown. I was like, "I can't do this! You've got the wrong guy. I thought we were going to make Paper Chase!" [laughs]
I was 22, and Joel pulled me outside and said, "Kiefer, if you don't think that there isn't a night that I go to sleep where I know your future is in my hands, you're crazy. You're going to have to trust me." I was raised as an actor, from the beginning of my career until now, that you work for a director. You make that choice when you go in. You swing for that person until you come out the other end. So, I said, "Okay." I went and saw that movie, and it was the first time I realized there were people who were a lot smarter than me because I loved it. I was so taken aback because I was so ready to just bury my head in my hands, and I loved it. I thought it looked beautiful. He was right. He created this fantastical world that wasn't real, so you could accept all of these other things. I had a very similar experience with Alex Proyas on Dark City.
Q: Have you ever been right when you thought something would turn out badly, and it did?
KS: [laughs] Each one has its own telling points. There was one moment, and it was a first-time director. I won't name him because he was a nice enough guy. The camera operator and the cinematographer had gotten in an argument about crossing the line, which is camera technical terminology. When you're in a scene, there is a line that's created between you and the other person, and you can't cross and the camera can't cross, once you've established that line. Sometimes, given some movement, it can get complicated. So they were having this argument, and I looked off and in the corner was the director, sitting down, trying to figure it out. Then, he just went, "Oh, forget it," and threw up his arms. [laughs] So, at that moment, I knew I was in deep trouble.
Captured In Africa: The Paley Center For Media in Beverly Hills, CA is currently hosting an exhibition of photos taken during the 24: Redmeption African shoot. Curated by Entertainment Weekly deputy photo director Michael Kochman, the collection features works by 24 executive producer/director Jon Cassar, director of photography Rodney Charters, producer Michael Klick, unit photographer Kelsey McNeal, and star/executive producer Kiefer Sutherland. The exhibition can be viewed through January 11, 2009 in the Bell Family Gallery.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
jcjb:
Im excited to see it! I have waited through this long mess and think it will be as great as the 6 previous seasons. Great interview Fred!
jennylou:
I wish I had gotten into this show when it first started. Now I have so many other shows I watch I don't want to add another but I know this would be a great one to watch.