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omgbrainstorming · 6 years ago

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John Rogers’ Facebook Live

For those of you who didn’t know, this evening on the UPtv Facebook page, John Rogers (writer and producer of The Librarians and Leverage) did a Live and answered fans’ questions.

Here’s a recap of what happened (it’s a freaking poem, sorry!):

The comments in square brackets [like these] are my comments.

It started with some good old awkward silence (because few people were there and UPtv wanted for him to wait).

He said hi to everyone and marvelled at the fact that he had The Librarians fans watching him from all over the world (Please don’t ask me what time is it where I live). Someone had mistaken him for an actor and he thanked them, but said that they were mistaking him for someone way cooler than him.

In the meantime, he had a record on the wall behind him and someone asked him about it, he proudly took it in front of the camera to show that it was a 45 Bohemian Rapsody record (he’s a big Queen fan).

He reminded all of you lucky folks in the US that UPtv is not only showing all the episodes with new material every Wednesday, this weekend there will be a The Librarian marathon (the 3 movies plus the pilot and interviews with the cast), so don’t forget!

What was his fave moment from the show?

One of his fave was the videogame episode written for John Kim, the idea of the episode wasn’t new, but it was supposed to be a sort of redemption arc for Ezekiel. John Kim wasn’t a seasoned actor when he came from Australia to film the show and he really gave his best in this episode, thanks to - John Rogers added - the help of John Larroquette (Jenkins) and Rebecca Romijn (Eve Baird) who really helped him a lot.

He added that every single moment spent watching John Larroquette was a great moment [and can’t we Larroquetthishes understand], also watching Rebecca and Noah interact was really funny because Flynn had been really unlucky, romantically speaking, on the show and watching him being pulled out of his shell because of Eve, his equal, was a gift, especially when they figured out that Rebecca had a lot of comedian potential and they learned to tap into that. He liked working with Jonathan Frakes, and when Christian Kane finally got to fight in season 3 and 4 (they intentionally held him back). Overall too many great moments because it was a great cast.

Please talk about your experience as a writer and producer for The Librarians.

He wasn’t one of the original writers, he just hopped on the first and third movie of The Librarian because Flynn is a polymath and he (John Rogers) has a degree in phisics and could help with lots of science and cool knowledge stuff. After Leverage ended they managed to get the rights to make a tv show out of The Librarian, they had schedule problems because Noah was on Falling Skies, so they needed to make it quickly, they couldn’t replace him because he was a franchise character, so they came up with the idea of a team looking back at the first movie [when there’s that loooooooooong queue of people on the stairs that are trying to get the job like Flynn] and thought “Who are these people who had a shot of living this magical life?” and just one replacement Librarian would have been constantly compared to Flynn, while a team gave them the possibility to have the format change they were looking for. So then they sat down to think how Flynn would change and how these new characters would change. John Rogers thought about the fact that throughout the movies a big theme was loneliness, because this dream job made you isolated, and Noah was all for playing a Flynn who had been through a lot of action in those 10 years and was a different guy.

What was your inspiration for the episodes you wrote?

They put togethere a lot of ideas, mainly thinking “What is a great myth, urban legend, urban lore, etc.? And how do we twist it?” Because us, the fans, watch a lot of genre entertainment, so we were probably ahead of them in terms of knowing the subject. So they decided to start with “something like the 90s X-Files, something that the audience’s expecting, and twist it!”. He makes the example of the “witchcraft episode” [1x07 The Librarians and the Rule of Three, the one with Morgan Le Fay] “so in the 90s the kids.. it would’ve been a goth cult doing satanic practices, how do we twist it? Well, it turns out it’s actually the parents and it’s with good intentions. And also we brought in Morgan le Fay, fantastic character”. They sit down, think about the themes, do a lot of research, have fun with weird historical stuff and then twist it. Then he added that beside all of this, they listened to whatever John Larroquette would say/point out because “whatever John Larroquette says is super super interesting!” [Preach.]

How did you decide the villains of each season?

Since they didn’t know if they were going to be renewed (this for each season), they always tried to give us closure, they didn’t want to leave us hanging too much, they tried to make each season like a book with only one big villain. Since the first season was a reboot of the movies they used the original villain, The Serpent Brotherhood, to ease us in a new mythology. By the second season they were really fascinated with how books and narrative works, so Geoffrey Thorne came up with the idea of the fictionals. For season 3 and 4 they found an interesting historical path to follow and explore. So they actually decided first what they wanted to talk about in that season and then picked a villain that would fit.

Where does the story of What Lies Beneath the Stones come from?

[Can I say that this question is getting old?] Jacob Stone comes from a place where he’s uncomfortable with himself and that’s mostly because of the expectations that are put upon us by others, so they wanted to tell you where those expectations came from, in this case from his father. John Rogers was quick to assure us that Christian actually has a great relationship with his father, but they wanted to show what happens when you leave home, when you go out of a “redneck” situation like that.

If there could have been only one Librarian in the end, which of the LITs would you have chosen?

“Well that’s not fair!” He says that there’s a reason for which he wrote the season 1 finale like that, to show you what all of them would have been like as the ultimate Librarian, partially because they didn’t know if they were getting a season 2 (they filmed it all before airing) and he “has no desire to revisit that nightmare”, he likes to think that “Ezekiel is annoying the hell out of Stone” somewhere, somehow, still all happily together. [Is John Rogers a Jazekiel shipper? Yes, he is]

Had you been able to do a 5th season, what ideas would you have liked to explore?

He thinks that the show had a lot more seasons in it than what they actually got, and they were leaning toward the idea that you can’t keep a secret forever, they would have to go public, they would have to address the fact that magic is in the world and the world would find out and that would have been a whole new mess.

How did you come up with Galahad and the other immortals?

A lot of it was looking back at the movies, and once they established that Jenkins was immortal and Excalibur was there as a character, “a real character, he made us all cry when he died! I mean, probably my favourite thing in my entire career, is that I made a bunch of people cry when a sword died on tv!”, it made sense to look at the Knights of the Round Table for immortals (with the help of historians on staff, like Kate Rorick) and other immortals too are just “what are other cool myths and how do we integrate them with our story?”

Why otters?!

Always in the Morgan Le Fay episode, they were researching projects to put in the background and they stumbled upon the fact that otters are actually really dangerous, and “when you’re a bunch of writers locked in one room with each other for ten hours a day... you get a little sneaky, and so... deadly otters just became a recurring joke and we just never let it go!”

Which of the cast members could you see as a librarian, working the books and stuff?

Surprisingly for us, he says, Christian Kane, because he had a real interest in history, and he or Lindy Booth would have had a natural inclination towards it.

When did you decide Charlene and Judson were an item? I ask since in the movies it was never really hinted at.

Bob [Newhart, Judson] was retiring and Jane [Curtin, Charlene] was on a CBS show and they had just enough time to shoot that first episode of season 1 with them, so they had to tie them together to say goodbye at the same time. They first tied them together with her being his Guardian - there was actually a cool sword fight with Jane Curtin we never got to see because there wasn’t enough time - and when they brought her back they got to throw Jenkins in the mix (they liked their banter and decided to up their relationship) [dumbest decision ever], they created a backstory and properly said goodbye to her.

About the death of Excalibur,

on the first edit Dean put in the dog whines sound without warning him and when it played he told him it was too heartbreaking, take that out, but Dean loved it.

Did you keep anything from the set?

No, because they were still shooting when he left. Everyone wanted the Globe, but Dean kept it.

So who was Charlene married to prior to Judson?

Actually, it was after Judson. But he said “think of Higlander, once you realise Judson will never be able to settle down you think, well, maybe you should have a human relationship to have a real life”

What do you think was the secret sauce that made the show so special?

“Honestly, I think it was love”. And the fact that they could literally tap into any subject, and “they could all hit a joke!”, they [the cast] really liked each other, “Rebecca and Lindy were inseparable, everyone adopted John [Kim] as their little brother” so that showed on camera. On a business side nobody else was making a family show.

How did you keep pace with the episodes so that nothing would happen too quickly?

In the first season they were lucky to be able to write it all before filming it, so they had a solid background, and he says that it’s important, for the emotional growth of the characters, to see the episodes in the order they were intended to, not like they are on DVD, especially “Jake and Cassie are kinda screwed up if you watch them in the DVD order”. The first season is about how you build trust, welcome to the magical world and see them rise to the occasion. In the second season it was how do you change, you’ve been introduced to this world, how do you become a different person. He loves writing about characters who don’t have a choice but to change. The actors really helped (they came up with “Jacob’s dad, the fact that Cassandra had never really dated so she was not aware of her sexual orientation, John [Kim] wanted to talk about his family. So it was very much talkig to them, looking at the emotional story we wanted to tell over the season and then split it into ten and figure out how to pace that”

How much ad libbing space was the cast allowed?

A lot. He knew Christian very well, kinda knew Lindy, “Rebecca was fantastic, John Larroquette has... nine Emmy’s! John Larroquette won so many Emmy’s he had to ask them to stop giving them to him! So, yeah, you let him do what he wants”. John Kim is a natural talent and Noah knows Flynn inside out. So they all go through reharsal (when they ask “oh, can I change this, can I change that?” and you’re like “yeah, sure” unless it’s a piece of information that is needed for later) and then they ask the directors “can I try this? Can I try that?”, sometimes they just go for it and you keep rolling. In the time loop episode (Ezekiel’s videogame) Christian Kane had to say “Some thief!” a billion times in one day and he tried to make it funny and new every single time.

Did you prefer writing more mythical/historical based stories or more science fiction based stories?

Fifty fifty. The mythical stories were funny because they had to find the real story and then find the magic tweak, science fiction is easier because you have control and people assume that what you’re saying is real, it feels easier. He likes the fact that in the historical ones you think “oh wow! That’s really weird, then you Google it and go like, oh wow! That’s true!”, both cool and sometimes disturbing, he says, what more could you want?

Was it important for you to be working on a family friendly show?

Yes, very much so. Because there wasn’t much you could watch together with your kids back then. It was a beautiful challenge to make a show with deeply emotional stories and characters with real problems, real arcs, and do it in a family friendly setting. Raise subjects that were relevant, like in the Morgan Le Fay episode where a lot of the staff had kids in highschool and they talked about the fact that kids these days are under so much pressure, so much homework and still need to have lives! And they approached that through the metaphor of magic.

Which tv shows and movies inspired you as a writer?

Old action shows, con shows, Doctor Who, historical shows, The Rocket Files [?? sorry, I’m really not sure about the name, English is not my first language], Raiders of the Lost Ark, old pulps (they structured the episodes titles to be like old pulps). Probably more books. Alastor MaClaine [??], Isaac Asimov, Robert Howard.

If the show had continued, what other mythologies would you have drawn from for ideas?

Probably expand the Arthurian mythology, Asian mythology, Russian mythology, etc. He would have liked a more diverse casting with the new mythologies to make it even more inclusive as a show, because The Librarians are the Guardians of the world and you should have world cultures and world mythologies represented.

What were some of your favourite ideas put into the show?

Santa Claus. He thinks it came up because they knew they were going to be a winter show, so they had a Christmas episode, and he said “well, we can just do Santa Claus!” and then someone said “he’d be a friend of Jenkins because he’s immortal!” and then “but who do you get to play Santa Claus?!” and Bruce Campbell had just conveniently moved to Oregon. He was a delight, everyone loved him and he broke their hearts when later his schedule never allowed him to be back on the show. Jeff Thone’s fictionals as well, the vampire quest with Cassie and Jenkins and Clara Lago (Estrella) because of Cassie’s sexuality that was set out at the end of season 1 and had to roll out, basically they figured out who she had chemistry with, “Honestly, I was kinda going for her [Cassie] and Baird, but we never got there. Yeah, Noah kept coming back and he’s a charming bastard! Ops! I’m not supposed to swear, sorry” [John Rogers is a wild fanboy and I love him]. “Most of my favourite things were not mine”

About Nicole coming back:

They had to be careful, because it wasn’t something that could have happened in season 1, the story had to progress before her [you could have just... not brought her back? Just saying], the show needed to be able to stand alone and only then they could bring a character from the original movies back [yeah, but like, why Nicole?? Why not Emily? Better yet, why not Simone?? And don’t you dare tell me “Simone died” because guess what, Nicole was dead too.]

Which character was the most fun to write?

It’s a tie, but Lindy because he had fun with maths, all the calculations she does they (espacially he) did them, in the pilot when she’s in Stonehenge, John Rogers went there and had fun calculating the actual height of the sun in Germany at that particular time, and then Rebecca because she’s a gifted comedian ancd actor, like with the story that Eve tells Ezekiel in the time loop episode that was the anchor to that episode.

Who’s your fave director to work with?

They were all great, probably Mark Roskin and Jonathan Frakes.

About the pilot:

The pilot was a challenge because in the middle of it they found out they could not have Jane Curtin for the second half, so her part was rushed.

Did you ever have to deal with writers block trying to create such intricate arcs? How did you or would you deal with it?

There’s the writers’ room, so hopefully when you’re stuck, the others are not. That’s why it’s important to rely on your writers, because even if you don’t have a way to approach something, they will. There’s an old saying that goes “you don’t think your way out of a writing block, you write your way out of a thinking block”, if you are stuck you just start writing, even if it’s bad, till you hit one interesting line, one interesting moment and you hook on that and realise that that was what your brain was trying to get to.

It was action packed, but was it hard to keep it family friendly?

No, lots of them had kids so they knew the right tone. Action doesn’t mean brutal violence, the most challenging thing was how to do the emotional stories that are mature but still resonates with, like, 12yo.

Did you ever start working on an episode and find it wasn’t working? How did you change in the fly?

It happened only once to him. The physical sets weren’t lining up, they were trying to go for a dream sequence (later on they made something similar with the Wonderland episode), so they changed it with the “deal with the Devil in a small town with Baird’s old friend”.

Was there ever a storyline that you wanted to do and didn't get to do?

He would have liked to do something more with the “the Government has found out that magic is real”, especially because the idea of magic in the show is not “weeeeee, we can do magic now! Hardwork is what pays off and magic is a short cut and is dangerous”, Jenkins is saying it constantly, they wanted to blow up some myths “everyone loves talking about kings and queens, but everyone forget that that means you don’t have any rights, that’s why Jenkins had that speech at the end of episode 10″ [season 1, Loom of Fate]

Who was the best poker player?

Not John Kim because he has no poker face “I love the boy but you can see everything that he’s thinking crossing his face at all times”.

After the time line resetted in the last couple of episodes, do you think Jenkins still has his D&D games with Jeff?

As you may have noticed from episode 10, season 1, Baird points out that the thing she did with Santa that enables her to remember all the other timelines did not come from the Clippings Book, it came from Jenkins, so the assumption is that Jenkins can at least see other timelines and certainly as immortal he’s aware of them, he’s a different relationship with time, so even if during the timeline reset maybe Jeff doesn’t remember, he [John Rogers] likes to think that Jenkins found his way back to them, if that was something that he enjoyed doing (and John Rogers thinks he does), “but Jenkins definitely remembers all of the timelines, wheter he admits it or not”. [Like, be still my Casskins heart, he remembers, he remember Tea Time in the Annex, I’m cool, I’m calm. Fine. Someone call an ambulance]

Which character relationship was your favourite? Eg. Eve/Jenkins, Jake/Ezekiel etc.

He says that the question is which characters do you prefer to write, because that’s how they exist, with dialogue. He loved Eve/Jenkins because they were “the old guys”, they’ve been through a lot, a lot of pain, loss, so there was a lot of bonding ground in those scenes, and Cassandra and Jacob because they both didn’t have a chance to live their best life, “because Ezekiel is living his best life, it’s just a shallow one”, and then as Lindy and Rebecca became friends they just let them ride with it. And then Flynn/Everybody because when Flynn shows up they can torture him and have fun.

In the first episode there’s a conversation between Jenkins and Eve about Flynn’s mental state that i just LOVE. It made me fall in love with Jenkins.

That’s the idea of Jenkins, he’s been through A LOT, he’s known pain, has lost a lot and he’ll help you to help other people the way he couldn’t. [I’m crying, someone needs to hug Jenkins for like, a whole new season. I volunteer]

Did you have a favourite artefact?

They were trying to distance themselves from the movies by stopping the show from being all about artefacts. He can’t choose. But he really loved Frankenstein, loved that everyone forgets that in the book he’s actually really literate and wanted to bring him back to show his relationship with Ezekiel but the actor wasn’t available.

What are you up to currently?

After The Librarians and The Player on MBC he’s adapting the Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss for the tv.

Was the storybook episode easier or harder to write?

It was really easy once they figured out the archetypes, they wanted to subvert the tropes because they didn’t want Jacob as Prince Charming and they knew Ezekiel was Jack, so Cassandra being Prince Charming was a great clue of what would happen later on “and also, she nailed it! She was amazing, everyone was amazing”. It was very easy to write but very hard to produce.

I remember reading about an abandoned "Black Mask" idea. What was up with that?

They were thinking about doing a much more complicated time travel story (for season 1), where Eve, instead of being thrown into parallel dimensions, would be thrown back through time, and they’d later reveal that each time the “mysterious hero” that Jenkins was supposed to tell them about, appeared in time of need was actually one of the Librarians going back wearing the mask to save the day, and that Jenkins himself originally had that role.

In the episode with Dorian Grey, how difficult was it to turn the classic art story into the electronic version.

The idea came very easily, from selfies to narcissism, from that to Dorian, that’s done.

I loved your blog posts as we went through first season - thank you for that!

He said thank you.

What a great storyline that would be - the black mask - maybe if you get to do reunion movie!!?

He said that instead of looking back he’d like to move forward, what would it be like for them not to have to hide anymore.

I think the darkest episode was the Bender House, but it was really cool.

Perfect example of twisting classic stories.

Would Ezekiel have ever found aliens?

No, never! They find it too funny, in a world were everything is true, aliens are not.

Did you ever think about having a kind of "flashback" episode of Jenkins' Arthurian times? [This was mine]

[Ignoring the fact that he though I was Spanish just because I told him who played Estrella - I just Googled it, I’m weak] They did think about it, it was going to be in the season 2 finale, when Eve and Flynn go back in time, it was supposed to be a King Arthur episode, when they were to find out that Shakespeare was Merlin, find him and give him their statue so he would be the guardian of it, but then they thought it’d be cooler - and John [Larroquette] himself liked this better - if even he didn’t know what was going on and they could talk more about his longing and the loss for Flynn and Eve like everybody else, they didn’t want him to be like “let the LITs suffer thinking they’ve lost them while I know better”. [So either the episode didn’t make sense or like... Galahad was just hanging out with Merlin in the Elizabethan period?? So it wouldn’t have been “his Arthurians time”, just “hanging out with almost the only remaining buddy from Camelot”, still cool, but I meant like, middle ages]

Who came up with the Serpent Brotherhood?

It was the original writers.

He finished reminding averyone about the marathon, to tweet along because the actors will be active (he’ll personally bog John Kim so he’ll remember), he’ll be on the hashtag too. Thanked us fans and closed hoping for new The Librarians material.

Now I’m knackered, it’s stupid early in the morning here, I have yet to go to sleep, send help. (If you see any errors, please let me know!)

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