October 27, 2024 • 41 mins
The Millennium Group Sessions Redux returns with writer and producer Michael R. Perry!
Michael is known for his episodes The Mikado, Collateral, Omerta, Nostalgia and of course, ...Thirteen Years Later. We chat with him about the genesis of the episode, some behind the scenes stuff and much more.
Hosts - Troy L. Foreman
Special guest - Michael R. Perry
Follow us on Twitter - @tiwwamm
Website - www.thetimeisnowmm.com
Podcast Intro - Lance Henriksen
Michael is known for his episodes The Mikado, Collateral, Omerta, Nostalgia and of course, ...Thirteen Years Later. We chat with him about the genesis of the episode, some behind the scenes stuff and much more.
Hosts - Troy L. Foreman
Special guest - Michael R. Perry
Follow us on Twitter - @tiwwamm
Website - www.thetimeisnowmm.com
Podcast Intro - Lance Henriksen
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
After a decade, the time is now, the wave is
becoming title. Join us in the campaign for the return
of FBI criminal profiler Frank Black and Millennium. This is
the back to Frank Black Millennium Group Sessions. My friends,
(00:26):
this is who we are.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome back to the Millennium Group Sessions podcast. I know,
I know, it has been a while since we've done
an episode of the podcast, but we are back and
we hope that we're bringing you more new episodes here
in the near future. But for today's episode, it's a
special one. It's Halloween and we're going to be talking
about the Halloween episode thirteen years later. Now, when you
(00:56):
think of Halloween and Millennium, most of the time people
will talk about the Curse of Frank Black. But for me,
thirteen years Later as one of my favorite episodes of
the season and probably my favorite Halloween episode. So we
had the opportunity to sit down with the writer of
the episode, the Michael R. Perry, and talk about the episode,
the behind the scenes, and much much more. So thank
you for tuning in and enjoy the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
The following program was recorded on an earlier day for
presentation at this time.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, first of all, thank you so much for your time. Man.
I truly appreciate it. Sure happy to come on. So
first course, before we even talk about the episode, I
want to ask you, with the ending of season two
and that's final episode, did you think you guys were
actually going to come back for a third season.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
No, everybody in the office agreed, it's been nice working
with you. We'll have that final drink. Hope to see
you on another show. And I went and interviewed for
lots of other shows, like very interesting looking other shows,
and they said, well, we haven't heard that. In Leennium
is definitely canceled. I go, they killed some main characters
(02:04):
and a plague destroyed most of the Earth's population.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
That's the final episode.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It hasn't aired yet, but when that airs, you'll see
there's no way it's coming back.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
They'd be like, oh, yeah, so we really.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Want to have you on this show, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And then.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
They're like, no, it's been renewed for another season and
you're coming back. And I was happy to come back.
But like the first week, usually you come back on
a show around Memorial Day, like the week before Memorial Day,
and Chip is back and Ken is back and kan
air in her back, and we're like, what are we
(02:40):
going to do? Because you know, you just you have
to you have to be a little cold blooded in
this business because you'll be in the middle of a
great show and it gets canceled for reasons just having
to do with business and ratings and nothing to do
with your creative involvement and stuff. So you just have
to cut it off. Go and now I'm going to
move on to the next thing. And we had all
(03:01):
mentally and emotionally and creatively moved on to wherever we
were going to go next, and we're like, hey, here
we are back in.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I don't know if you know this.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It was all in a construction trailer. The writers' rooms
were kind of a big construction trailer on the lot,
and so we all came back in and were like,
here we are, and how do we dig out of this?
And that was the first That was the first order
of business. And then once we decided that, then we
(03:34):
just got back down to work. You know, we got
down to work and got down to writing our favorite show.
And you know, they had to notify all the actors
who were still alive, whose characters are still alive.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
You're coming back.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yes, we're still shooting in Vancouver, because at some point
right around then they had moved X Files back down
to here, right, and so the some of the Millennium
actors thought, oh, that's great, They're going to move Millennium
to LA And I don't think you can make it
in LA. I think that Vancouver was a supporting character.
They have like an amazing casting pool of kind of
(04:10):
young lost people who aren't you haven't seen him in
a million commercials and stuff, who bring that kind of
Millennium darkness to it, and the weather itself and the
kind of locations that you're just a little but you're.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Not at ease.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It doesn't look like the Brady Bunch on a sound stage.
It looks like reality. And so anyway, so we've just
notified everybody, Yes, Millennium is coming back, and now we're
going to start figuring it out. So the first episode,
I think that was largely up to Chip to explain
that it was a localized plague, et cetera, et cetera,
(04:49):
and then we could get back into the show.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's interesting because when we were talking to Chip and
I don't know if you knew this or not, but
he was telling us that. Years later, he ran into
like Jame Wall and they were talking and James basically said, hey,
we had outs in the in season two that would
have been able to help you guys, but no one
came to talk to us, and you would have had
an easy way to get into season three. Did you
know anything about that? No? No.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I spent a whole day with Glenn Morgan last summer
during the writer's strike. So the writer's strike wasn't always
picketing in front of studios.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
There was sometimes we would go.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
To Apple stores. There was a big Apple store downtown.
They just wanted us to hand out flyers to people
who were shopping for Max and stuff. And I go, hey, Glenn,
I haven't seen you in a long time, and we
caught up on everything, and it thirteen years later, never
came up. I don't even think those guys watched season three.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You know. I think you asked me, did you watch
season three? They'd be like, oh, yeah, Chip was up.
When we talked to Chipp, he was like he was
a little bummed. He's like, man, all I had to
do was maybe talk to those guys, And they said
they had little escape patches playing it throughout season two
that would have helped Lee than the season three. But
oh well, yeah that was I think.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
They also thought the season the show was over too.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Anyway, it's ever since then when I get on a
show and they go, we don't know how we're going
to dig out of this, I'm like, you can dig
your way out of any I go, we have a
room full of very creative people here, and if we
also have a tonight, go on, you know, have dinner,
see your family, go see a movie. We'll work on
it again tomorrow and we will find a way out
(06:32):
of it. Because and then I tell him this is
what happened at the end of season two of Millennium,
and we came back anyway, So it's.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Interesting when it comes to Chris Carter, can you talk
a little bit about how he helps his writers, you know,
also become producers and what is like working underneath him
as a right.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Oh my god, that was amazing. He just kind of
like says, you have to learn this. That's how you'll
be valuable to me and to the production and to yourself.
And you're going to produce your own episode. Basically so
when you write, first of all, you outline very rigorously.
You've probably heard about the boards with cards on one
(07:09):
card per scene, and Chris approves that pretty much. Once
that's approved, you know, you write it and there's usual
notes and stuff, but usually you're locked by the time
you have that card outline. So then you get the
script and then send it to Vancouver, and they had
an amazing production team up there, and then for the
last week or so, you would be up there and
(07:30):
you would go to the casting for the people who
are only going to be in that episode, and a
lot of times it would be like crazy cool roles.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And then you would go to.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
You look at the locations, and then you go on
the tech scout and the text scout. The tex scout
is where you go, Oh, Tom Wright is a genius man.
He's asking the weirdest, smallest, most detailed question while we're
standing in a parking lot that it's going to become
something else, going to become whatever thing we turn it into.
And it's midday and we're going to shoot there in
(08:04):
the middle of the night. And he doesn't only ask
questions or create problems. He sees opportunities, like we shot
in a real mental institution. For the pool murder scene
was a closed mental institution, and he thought of all
kinds of cool things to do with that at the
text scout because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
By the time this is not everybody.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
By the time he gets to the set, he's got
a shot list. It's usually drawn on.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The script that he's working with. I have a couple
of scripts of his that have over Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Oh amazing, So yeah you should. Yeah, those are those
are incredible artifacts of This is how you make a movie,
how you make a television episode if it's going to
be visually dynamic. A lot of TV shows are just
they talk in this room, then they talk in this room,
then they talk in this room, and it doesn't matter
how you cover it. But Tom's stuff is not.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Like that at all.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Every scene is its own little mini movie, and he
loves to start on a detail. He loves a split diopter.
Do you know what a split diopter is? So you're
gonna shoot a scene, we're gonna have in the foreground,
my face is going to be half of the screen,
and then in the background there's gonna be you and
you're gonna be diffusing a bomb or something. They both
(09:18):
need to be in focus, so you put this thing
on the front of the camera that lets both of
us be in focused by having different focal lengths for
each of us. And Hitchcock used it a lot, and
the silent directors use it a lot, and Tom used it.
You know, he liked using that kind of stuff. So
he had a very sophisticated sense of visuals and mes
(09:42):
on send and framing, and it was just great to
give a script to him because you knew that it
was going to uh, he was going to use all
of his powers to express it in a way they
would give a lot of dynamism to things. And so anyway,
so that's why everybody wanted He directed pretty much every
(10:02):
other episode.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yea. So so as far as the Halloween episode for
season three, was that something that you volunteered for it
was it pitch to you or did it come up
in a rotation that you got that that episode.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I think it came up in rotation. And originally they're like, hey,
you want to do the Halloween episode, And we didn't
always do a Halloween episode on you know, every show
like this, and then somebody decided it should be lighter
in spirit, more like screen two something like that, and
(10:37):
I was like, Okay, we're going to do this. We
have to go all the way. We can't like step
one toe in Millennium as people usually watch it, and
another toe in a kind of crazy satirical version. If
we're going to go insane, we're going to drive there
at high speed. You know, there's a there's a line
dividing a regular episode from an episode like this, and
we have to run screaming past it. And everybody was
(11:01):
on board with that. Yeah, we gotta go for that.
And it wasn't until there was already outlines and stuff
that Fox decided. There's a Fox executive someplace I don't
know who it is, who is a big kisstand. He said,
we're going to have Kiss night because I go, they're
an old band. They were an old band already and
they're an even older band now, and they go, no, no, no,
(11:23):
they're so great. We're gonna have kiss references in every
episode all night long, and it's going to culminate in
I don't know, some Kiss live concert or something that
they were going to broadcast, and I've protested.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I was like, I don't know, I can do.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
This, and out of the protesting of it. Out of
the protesting of it came, oh, we'll make the movie.
Within the movie, people kind of object to it, and
Frank Black will voice the objection to it. Yet I
was reading the Wikipedia page. I hope you can go
out there and add some of your own opinions, because
(11:58):
the ones on there are vicious. And The AV Club's
Emily VanDerWerff felt that the appearance of Kiss was contrived.
It's like, yeah, it was contrived. It's contrived, and they
talk about how contrived it is during the episode.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, actually it's an episode.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, It's like, yeah, it's like they're making a B movie.
Pretty much every incident in the B movie is kind
of contrived, and so it becomes a little bit meta
during that and anyway, other there's some other people, some
doctor who writer who gives it one out of five stars.
Those are the only two comments on the Wikipedia page
(12:37):
for thirteen years later. Nevertheless, Yeah, it was contrived, and
I think that we just had to commit to that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And it's framed. It's framed in.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
A way that this was a tale told by a
mad pan full of sound and fury and signifying nothing,
and you know, we completely committed to that principle and
ran with it. And I think it's a good episode.
I think I think it's a lot of fun. I
think that the kiss stuff kind of contributes to it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
You know, what did the idea? Where did the idea
come from for to have those guys actually act, especially
Jean and Paul.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I know that Gene and Paul already were pretty good actors,
but it was sort of like, if you have kiss
in the episode, why do you have.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Kissed in the episode? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And for people who like them, they're gonna get to
see one song, right, And if I'm going to watch
an episode of a show that I'm going to try
for the first time, I want to have a little
more than that. And it was the opportunity to see
them without their makeup, which you know, everybody knows them
as the sort of cartoon characters that that are on
(13:47):
the album cover. But it was just fun to like
write a little role for each of them to thread
through the whole thing. And I was very happy with that,
and I thought that I thought that that added up lot.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I think we've talked about it in the past, and
some people might not know this yet, but I guess
overall it was a pretty good experience of working with them,
but there were some issues with the other two bad
members not not having bigger parts than they were upset
about it because.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Two of the band members bought the rights to all
the Kiss trademarks at some point, and the other two
band members were then employees, you know, firing them at
will before officially like part of the you know kid
in aquity. Yeah, they were not Kiss equity players.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
They were just.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Higher lings and so they were always filling on the
short end of the stick. And I think Ace, I
just got a call from a crying assistant in Vancouver.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Ace won't come out of his trailer.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And this is when you learn to produce. And I
called Chris. I go, Ace won't come out of his trailer.
He goes, well, Michael, you're a smart guy. You'll figure
out how to make him come out.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Of his trailer. Well, o, spar Got, you'll figure it.
I yeah, And I love that. I love it.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
He's just like, you can solve this. This is the
this is the kind of problem that walks in the
door every single day when you're making television.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And anyway, I talked to him.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
For a while I heard his his issues, his issues
where the other actors got more lines, and I wrote
him more lines, and Tom understood that, and we understood,
if it's brilliant, we'll keep it. And it wasn't and
we didn't, so we kept a couple of the lines.
But he got to get his more lines and the
(15:33):
show went on because if he hadn't come out of
his trailer, we would have. You know, you can't recast
somebody once you committed film to them, right, And he
was king of the truck. I don't know, can you
get sued for a podcast? He was kind of drunk too,
and anyway, that's that's how he rolls. He's a rock star.
(15:54):
That's why you're a rock star because you can be
a little drunk and make demands and people usually give
in to you. And I in a certain gave in
to him in order to keep the show running.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
They are seeing some of the scenes of the band
performing were like fantastic in the episode, and Tom was
telling us that Kiss actually wanted to use some of
that footage to like cut a actual music video. Is
that true? It is true? And he said no.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Chris said no, They're like no, We've already done a
lot for Kiss. You know, they're in our show. If
people want to see, if they can come watch the show,
And that was the end of that. So Chris said no,
I think yeah all the way up. You know, Tom
doesn't just get to say no on that kind of thing. Yeah,
you know, it's Chris's show, And I think it was
(16:40):
a good choice. It would be a good choice to say,
we're not going to let this stuff go out of
context because it might look you wouldn't understand what was
going on unless you had the context for it. And
Tom said, I'll direct a music video if they hire me,
which they never did. I think they're sheeap skates and
they thought free music video, and who doesn't want something free?
(17:01):
And anyway, they didn't get it. They didn't get the
free thing.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Looking back when that episode all these years later, do
you is there anything you would have changed we're going
in the show as far as writing or the scene.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Absolutely, I would have changed one thing. We reveal at
the end that none of this happened, right, we absolutely
reveal none of this happened. We're just listening to an
insane man in a mental institution rambling on who thinks
he is Frank Black, but he is not Frank Black.
And we had an opportunity to kill main characters, a
(17:39):
revocable opportunity because you could you could have gone, like,
killed a main character, broke to commercial and come back
and you're like, I don't know where the show is
going now because at the end we find out now
it was all the ravings of a madman. And that's
that's one thing actually, I think Chip and Ken and
I talked.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
About after it air.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
We're like, we should have.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thought of that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
That would have been cool, but we didn't do that.
But other than that, it was part of the inspiration
for the Jeff you know, Jeff Yeger is married to
make Integer or what.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't know if they still are. They still are, Yeah,
they still are.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But he knew the character of Frank Black inside and out,
so that you know, he was very well able to
do the voice and to start.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Doing the Oh, he was hilarious. He was hilarious.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
But there was an inspiration for all of that that
came from that construction trailer. We had an office assistant
who was always getting into trouble, but we loved him
and he would become Frank Black for days at a time.
He would answer to the telephone millennium and like, when
(18:53):
we you have to put temp lines in sometimes when
you're editing, and it's usually just you know, hey, Troy,
can you come here and be the voice of yeah,
you know cop number two and you say it and
then later we go when we get cop number two
in Vancouver and he loops it, and he sometimes would
loop the Frank Black lines for the temp mix. But
(19:14):
she would be Frank Black for very long periods of time,
like all day long or all week long, and it
was just funny to go, Okay, this guy, he likes
the show. He's just become that thing. And what if
somebody became a thing? But it wasn't a gag, it
wasn't an act. What if somebody became Frank Black and
(19:35):
really believed it? And I didn't have to go into
great lengths to explain it because everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Knew the office assistant.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
They're like, oh, yeah, that's a great way to get
into this all.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So we did a podcast years ago. It was like
a Christmas special podcast. It was Lance, Megan and Brittany
and we were talking and near the end, I don't
know if I don't know if it's tr or not,
but Lance said that there was a time when Jeff
had put something behind his ear to make his ear
stick out.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
True play is that true? And Lance were like, you,
son of a bitch, you didn't have to do that. Yeah,
But Lance didn't like it until he just he turned around.
He was like, Okay, now that I know what we're doing.
I think he didn't know where to put his foot
down when he first heard what we were going to do.
He's like, we're not going to do a kiss thing
(20:27):
and a sort of silly movie pastiche murder mystery thing.
And then when he understood now this sort of taking
a break from the regular thing, he was all in.
Once he got there, he got he went all in
and that let everybody else, you know, play along too
and have a breather from admittedly dark episodes that we've had. Yeah, So, Hugh,
(20:53):
it was a physically demanding production.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
That's what That's what he said. It was like, Tom said,
it was like shooting an actual movie. That that episode.
He said, you got it, and I think you in
one of the one of the little things we have
on our website, you were like you couldn't believe that
Tom got all these shots.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
At It's amazing. It's just testament to how well organized
he is. And also the love that the crews had
for him. And you see that also on the tech scout.
You know, you go, we're gonna shoot in this mental institution.
He checks with everybody, goes to the electric guys. You know,
are you comfortable? Can you get your generators in here?
(21:29):
Do you feel okay doing this at night? What if
we have to have a fog machine? What if this,
you know, goes to sound. Hey, we're if we're near
an airport or whatever. Everybody knows they can tell their
problems to Tom and he will work.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
With them to solve them.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
And once in a while there's some some department can't
get their problem solved. So if you go, we we
just have to do this short scene in a kind
of noisy area, and I know you're a pro and
you'll do the best you can. And uh so they'll
always give him the benefit of the of the doubt
because he takes care of them. He takes really good care.
(22:02):
You know, a a movie.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Set is like.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Ten different dimensions that are happening at the same time.
Unaware of each other. So you're like, camera guys are
all thinking about one very complex problem, and your electric
guys are thinking about a different complex problem, and your
sound guys. And everybody's mission is critical to the whole
thing coming off, and you have to make sure that
(22:28):
everybody is able to do their thing. And Tom understood
all the crafts extremely well.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, one thing I just thought about. You know, you
guys over the years had issues with standards of practices.
Did you have any issues with them? Guys? Those guys
when it came to this episode or pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He dated through, Oh no, no, no, no, we had
They're like, you know, what are you doing? It's it's
pretty cory.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's got a lot of nudity in it. It's got
this like.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Violating all all the norm and we actually dedicated. We
actually say something like never believe anything you see on Halloween.
And the name is the Reverend, the name of the guy.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Who is the censor.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And so Ken knew him pretty well because Ken had
been an executive before he had begun working on our show.
And she was just saying like, did you tone down
all these things? Did you cut out all these things?
And and we said yeah, we did some of them,
but we also need you to work with us because
of the special nature of this episode. And he's like, okay,
(23:34):
I'm going to give you once, but you can't take
this to the bank. You cannot do this if it's
not a here another one of the guys says it
was a farrago. One of the one of the mean
critics said a farrago of in jokes. You can't do
(23:55):
it when it's not a farrago of in jokes. He
did not use the word for rago. That was some
doctor who writer. My light is getting really messed up here.
I'm gonna close the Curtaincy who that helps?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Can you see me? Or is this yeah? Yeah, I'm good, Okay,
we'll keep it. I wanted to know, like episodes like
thirteen years later, Curse of Frank Black, Midnight of the Center,
all these holiday episodes a millennium, they still resonate with fans,
like all these years later, Why do you think that
is character?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's because you know, you get into a show, the
plot is like new to you, and then once you
watch it the second time or the third time, you
know how it's going to resolve. You know who did
it so to speak, you know, in Millennium's case, why
they did it. You know what kind of crazy ideas
are going to be introduced. But you love the characters,
(24:47):
and so I think that the moments between him and
Claya are great in this episode. Yeah, they get a
lot of time together. They don't always get a lot
of personal time together. They just get exposition. Know what
time was the gunshot and she'll say it was a
four tiny five whatever. And in this one they got
to have a night of popcorn and watching movies together.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
That was a great scene. That's a great scene, that.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Scene, and they get to do crazy characters stuff together.
That is the glue that makes you love a show.
And everybody loves those characters. And I think the same
is true of Kate and Aaron's and all of those
sort of character based episodes age very well because you
get to go visit with the characters that you love.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
You mentioned Clay, and I meant to ask you this earlier,
which she said that the kiss episode was one of
her favorite season three and she wished they had got
to do more episodes or more stuff like that, cheek
stuff like that. Oh, that's very sweet. That's very sweet.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
She came to your movie screening right, yeah, and in
Burbank and as sweet as ever, as kind as ever,
and you know, we were so lucky to get her.
And like when she came in to meet all the
cast and crew, somebody made some crack about, well, you're
going to have to go to Canada, and she's like,
I'm Canadian. I think she was born in Canada, so
(26:10):
it was like she had no issue with that. But
she brought a lot to it because it was just
nice to have a younger feminine presence in the midst
of a very hard driving crime show. And she and
Lance had a kind of chemistry. They had a kind
of partner chemistry.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That was very, very sweet.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
We didn't get to explore it as much as they
did on X Files because they only did one year together, and.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Just because we.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Didn't really discover it except in episodes like this.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
When did you find out that the show was going
to be canceled, like for good in the third season? Oh,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
In the third season, they probably told us, probably told
us like March or eight April after February sweeps, But
they usually keep all their options open until the last minute.
A lot of times on TV series after three years
all the actors get a big raise, so.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
That might have weighed in.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
But I don't remember exactly when they said, now this
is not coming back.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But it was a.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Show called Millennium. It's a terrible bar trivia question. What
year was the show Millennium canceled? Nineteen ninety nine? Like, oh,
come on, let's just get the Y two K man,
Let's go to Y two K.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I'm curious to know for you personally, and I know
this may be putting on a spot a little bit,
but if you could think back to some of the
episodes throughout the entire series, or there are a couple
that stand out to you that you didn't write that
you're like, oh man, this is a great episode.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I'd have to revisit all of them. But I mean,
I loved the pilot. The pilot was so crazy, and
I'm like, I was working on a different show.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I was across.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I was in a different construction trailer across from Chris
Curteri's office, and oftentimes would be working nights and weekends
and stuff and saw that and then one night saw
him and I was like, I can't believe you got
that on the air. Congratulations. That's kind of an amazing,
amazing feat that you were able to create the show
(28:20):
and get it on the air, and a lot of
people use their clout to make it exactly the same show. Again,
you know, he could have made another X Files, the
Why Files, the Z Files, and he didn't. He had
this completely different thing that he wanted to do, And
so I've always loved that. And I like the Darren
Morgan episodes again for character reasons. You get into a
(28:41):
lot of frank black stuff, and that's why you love
watching the show. So the his episodes of X Files
are my favorites as well, so especially the one with
the UFOs and I can't remember the title of it,
(29:03):
but anyway, the one with all the UFOs in X Files,
yep was the Darren Morgan episode that I go, Okay,
you can really you can really go swing for the
fences in this kind of thing and get thoughtful ideas
in and be funny.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Oh and while I'm thinking about it, working with Mark
Snow and his incredible music, he did the rout the
series on his show. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That's always the best part of the whole show. Because
your work is done. We already wrote it, which was
its own, you know, very tough thing to do, got
it all approved and stuff, cast it, shot it, edited it.
All of those all those trips are very hard work.
You know, you got to put your shoulder into it.
You have a lot of people to please, You have
(29:51):
a lot of people sometimes to argue with and try
and persuade them that a different way is worth trying.
But then you go to Mark and it's just like
putting icing on the cake. And he's kind of a genius,
and he had awards all over is it was a
garage converted into a music studio. He had music awards
(30:11):
from every show he'd ever written, and he would try
out a cue and if you didn't like it, he
would come up with another cue almost immediately, and it
just elevated every single episode so much. And he did
great work on this episode. He did great work on Omerta. Yes,
(30:33):
he did really amazing music on America.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Oh yeah, Emerita is incredible.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, And it's sort of like you wonder you're trying
to convey emotion as a writer, and you're wondering did
it come across? And when Mark reacts and creates a
musical cue that captures what you were thinking of when
you were writing the very first part of the first outline.
You're like, Okay, I've done something, and he's really honored
(31:01):
it with incredible music.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
What some of the fans may not know a lot
of us do know, because we've spoken to you in
the past. With some new viewers or listeners may not know,
is the episode Dirty Snowball. Yeah. Talk a little bit
about Dirty Snowball. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
They they loved the character road Decker. Morgan and Wan
loved the character road Decker. And there was the suicide
cult that had happened it because they believed that a
comet had a UFO in its wake and was going
(31:37):
to come and take them to Heaven. They took a
bunch of a real life thing that happened at Heaven's Gate.
If I'm not going to skate, yeah, Heaven's Gate people.
They lived in a nice big house in his southern
Orange County or northern San Diego County. They put on
black Nikes, and I have a peer and Nike immediately
(32:01):
pulled those off.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
They put on Black Knight.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
He's took poison and died, and so that seemed like
a very millennial theme, and uh, Morgan and Juan liked
the idea, and Chris liked the idea of what if
Rodecker fell in love with somebody who was in that
as Frank is investigating the possibility of a suicide calls
(32:23):
and have a tragic romance intersect with a millennium investigation.
And I did the card cards iverybody loved it. I
did the outline, got improved all the way up from
you know, Morgan, I Wang and Chris and Ken and
everybody in the network, and I did a script. While
(32:44):
I was at script, Glenn and Jim decided to go
a different direction with the show. They wanted to do
the Owls Roosters thing, and not so much what season
one had been. Like season one, the episodes had an
overarching sense of doom about them, but no powerful through line,
and once we got into the Owl's roosters thing, everything
(33:07):
sort of had to service that only on season two.
Season three, we knows what happened in season three, but
in Glenn and Jim's season, that was what they were doing.
And so they got the script and they go, we
like the script, but we're not going.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
To do it.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Like nobody wants to hear that. And that was that
you just like I said about when you think your
show is canceled, you just sit down, cry a little bit,
and go look for another show. And when somebody doesn't
improve your script, So then I had to I sort
(33:43):
of told people this next script, I'm going to write
it so that if they don't make it, if I
show it to people to ask why the hell didn't
they make it? And that became the Mikado. I thought,
I'll just do like a bang.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Oh wow, really yeah, yeah, I didn't even know that. Oh,
I thought I got it.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I got to kind of save my job, you know,
So I'm gonna do a bang up on it. And
I kind of wanted to write it so that if
they go, this is the script that I got fired for,
people be like what And and Glenn and Jim loved it,
you know, so that was all in my head, the
notion that it had to be you know, this this
(34:20):
uh never, this relentless piece, and and they liked it,
and you know, Jim went with me to Vancouver to
produce it, and that was, you know, my first produced episode,
and that was during season two.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yep. And you showed me.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Around Vancouver and introduced me to the crew and stuff
like that, took me to the production meetings, the text scout,
all the usual stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
That's interesting because when a lot of fans talk about
their favorite episodes, the Micado always comes up, always comes up.
Interesting because it.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Was kind of after Dirty Snowball, which was a sort
of softer thing, even though it ends with a suicide
called Dying and Rodecker heartbroken and Frank Black wondering what
does it mean for the overall state of the world
that people would die because of what happened with a
comet flying over Earth. It never got made and so
(35:20):
then I was like, Okay, I'm going to do one
sort of more traditional season, one kind of thing that
would be in season and one.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Wow. And I guess one of my final questions for
you is, and this is a little bit kind of
a big question, but just looking back at your time
working on this show, what did you appreciate most about
working on that show or what were some of the
things you appreciated most about working on that show.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
The Vakecouver crew was amazing. I mean, I love Chip Johannison.
He's gonna hear this yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Every time I crossed paths with him.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I saw him during the strike last summer, and he
was filled with eccentric personal stories of stuff he had
done around the world and always is it's always doing
something interesting. And his wife is very nice, and his
daughter has turned out to be some kind of genius.
And so I loved working with Chip. I loved working
with Chris. You know, his his system of you have
(36:21):
to be a producer to be a useful writer to me,
or I don't really want you. I don't want people
to be just thrown out pages. I have too much
other stuff to do. And you know, having being thrown
in the deep end is I think the only way
to learn how to produce. And a big part of
why we went on strike last year is they were
doing that. No longer were they teaching beginning writers how
(36:45):
to produce on episodes. So we're now getting back to
that as a as an industry. But I loved I
always love casting too. You know, you're going to get
three different people to come in and read, and they
may all be vert. They could be brothers, but it
(37:05):
could be one's old, ones young, one's in an accent, right,
you know, and That's my favorite kind of casting is
when the three don't seem to have anything in common.
And we had a casting director who trusted the process
and we trusted her, and she would bring in the
thing as described in the pages, and then she going,
I'm bringing in a wild card. See what I think
(37:26):
of this, See what you think of this actor? No harm,
no foul. You don't like them, you don't like them,
but it's an idea for.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
How to do this.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And she she did an amazing casting on Omerica in particular,
you know, and thirteen years later was very very much
taking advantage of the wonderful casting opportunities in Vancouver. We
kind of got the cream of the crop in Vancouver
on that one.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
So that was fun. Something just hit me I was
talking when not you know, talking to people over the years,
they've always had their ideas of if there was a
fourth season they would have liked to see this. Clay
had had an idea, she said, parton Lance have talked
over the years about what they would have loved to
see for season four. Chris said he had a way,
he knew what he wanted to do with season four,
(38:12):
but of course he wouldn't tell me what it was.
Did you have any thoughts like if you guys had
come back over the have you thought about that over
the years, like, oh man, we wish we could have
taken the show this way, knowing how it ended in
season three.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
I'm almost certain that in the spring of nineteen ninety
nine we would have had writers' room discussions and we
would have taken everybody and gotten into, you know, some
depth as to here's what we want to do for
the next season. That the construction trailer people would have
(38:44):
shared with Chris, and Chris would have shared with the network,
And you know, it's the sort of standard thing when
you're in a show, particularly a show like this where
seasons have arcs and all three seasons.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Are so boldly different from you. Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
I think that we certainly would have had that, But
I think the ratings were going down like a slowly
deflating balloon. Yeah, and we were like number one hundred,
and I was looking at our ratings like five point.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Four million viewers.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
People would love you and send bouquets to your house
in twenty twenty four, but in nineteen ninety nine, that
was cancelation numbers.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, So anyway, it was.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
It was still it's the job, and we made some
good We made some good television.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
He made some outstanding television and finally, thank you. I
don't know if you can say anything or if you
want to talk about anything, but do you have any
product projects coming up that you can talk about.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Or I don't have any coming up that I can
talk about. I'm always working, you know. Always when there's downtime,
I'm working on something else, and a lot of times
it'll turn into like the Voices was a thing I
did during a downtime the Ryan Reynolds movie YEP and
the River. The River came about because I was on
(40:07):
the set of Paranormal Activity Part two and Orn and
I were just waiting.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
There's a lot of waiting.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
He had never really been on a movie that he
wasn't directing, and he's like, we should talk about doing
a TV show. I was like, yes, we should, And
so during all the waiting we were like trading ideas
and stuff. So it's similarly now I have a I'm
working on things, but I don't want to talk. I
don't like to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Oh you don't want to Jason, No, totally understand. Well, Michael,
it's been a pleasure speaking with you about thirteen years
later and just talking about Millennium and you know, you
know as well, you know that I love that show
and it's my number one, my favorite show of all time. Well,
thank you, Troy.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I love your enthusiasm for it. I love that you're
keeping it alive, and you always find interesting insights in
your film, in your pot casts and all the stuff
you're doing about it. You're finding very interesting insights.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And it's I always like to have one.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
If I have one good viewer, I'm happy, and I
think I have one brilliant viewer, and that would be you.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Wow. Well that's a compliment that yeah, yeah, yeah, And
there you have our episode with the incredible Michael R. Perry. Michael,
we really appreciate your time, Thank you for sitting down
the chat with us, and thank you to each and
every one of you who took the time to listen
to the interview. I hope you enjoyed it, and as
I said before, look forward to some more new episodes
(41:35):
in the very near future. Until then, see yeah,
After a decade, the time is now, the wave is
becoming title. Join us in the campaign for the return
of FBI criminal profiler Frank Black and Millennium. This is
the back to Frank Black Millennium Group Sessions. My friends,
(00:26):
this is who we are.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome back to the Millennium Group Sessions podcast. I know,
I know, it has been a while since we've done
an episode of the podcast, but we are back and
we hope that we're bringing you more new episodes here
in the near future. But for today's episode, it's a
special one. It's Halloween and we're going to be talking
about the Halloween episode thirteen years later. Now, when you
(00:56):
think of Halloween and Millennium, most of the time people
will talk about the Curse of Frank Black. But for me,
thirteen years Later as one of my favorite episodes of
the season and probably my favorite Halloween episode. So we
had the opportunity to sit down with the writer of
the episode, the Michael R. Perry, and talk about the episode,
the behind the scenes, and much much more. So thank
you for tuning in and enjoy the podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
The following program was recorded on an earlier day for
presentation at this time.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, first of all, thank you so much for your time. Man.
I truly appreciate it. Sure happy to come on. So
first course, before we even talk about the episode, I
want to ask you, with the ending of season two
and that's final episode, did you think you guys were
actually going to come back for a third season.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
No, everybody in the office agreed, it's been nice working
with you. We'll have that final drink. Hope to see
you on another show. And I went and interviewed for
lots of other shows, like very interesting looking other shows,
and they said, well, we haven't heard that. In Leennium
is definitely canceled. I go, they killed some main characters
(02:04):
and a plague destroyed most of the Earth's population.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
That's the final episode.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It hasn't aired yet, but when that airs, you'll see
there's no way it's coming back.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
They'd be like, oh, yeah, so we really.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Want to have you on this show, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And then.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
They're like, no, it's been renewed for another season and
you're coming back. And I was happy to come back.
But like the first week, usually you come back on
a show around Memorial Day, like the week before Memorial Day,
and Chip is back and Ken is back and kan
air in her back, and we're like, what are we
(02:40):
going to do? Because you know, you just you have
to you have to be a little cold blooded in
this business because you'll be in the middle of a
great show and it gets canceled for reasons just having
to do with business and ratings and nothing to do
with your creative involvement and stuff. So you just have
to cut it off. Go and now I'm going to
move on to the next thing. And we had all
(03:01):
mentally and emotionally and creatively moved on to wherever we
were going to go next, and we're like, hey, here
we are back in.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I don't know if you know this.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
It was all in a construction trailer. The writers' rooms
were kind of a big construction trailer on the lot,
and so we all came back in and were like,
here we are, and how do we dig out of this?
And that was the first That was the first order
of business. And then once we decided that, then we
(03:34):
just got back down to work. You know, we got
down to work and got down to writing our favorite show.
And you know, they had to notify all the actors
who were still alive, whose characters are still alive.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
You're coming back.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yes, we're still shooting in Vancouver, because at some point
right around then they had moved X Files back down
to here, right, and so the some of the Millennium
actors thought, oh, that's great, They're going to move Millennium
to LA And I don't think you can make it
in LA. I think that Vancouver was a supporting character.
They have like an amazing casting pool of kind of
(04:10):
young lost people who aren't you haven't seen him in
a million commercials and stuff, who bring that kind of
Millennium darkness to it, and the weather itself and the
kind of locations that you're just a little but you're.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Not at ease.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It doesn't look like the Brady Bunch on a sound stage.
It looks like reality. And so anyway, so we've just
notified everybody, Yes, Millennium is coming back, and now we're
going to start figuring it out. So the first episode,
I think that was largely up to Chip to explain
that it was a localized plague, et cetera, et cetera,
(04:49):
and then we could get back into the show.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It's interesting because when we were talking to Chip and
I don't know if you knew this or not, but
he was telling us that. Years later, he ran into
like Jame Wall and they were talking and James basically said, hey,
we had outs in the in season two that would
have been able to help you guys, but no one
came to talk to us, and you would have had
an easy way to get into season three. Did you
know anything about that? No? No.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I spent a whole day with Glenn Morgan last summer
during the writer's strike. So the writer's strike wasn't always
picketing in front of studios.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
There was sometimes we would go.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
To Apple stores. There was a big Apple store downtown.
They just wanted us to hand out flyers to people
who were shopping for Max and stuff. And I go, hey, Glenn,
I haven't seen you in a long time, and we
caught up on everything, and it thirteen years later, never
came up. I don't even think those guys watched season three.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You know. I think you asked me, did you watch
season three? They'd be like, oh, yeah, Chip was up.
When we talked to Chipp, he was like he was
a little bummed. He's like, man, all I had to
do was maybe talk to those guys, And they said
they had little escape patches playing it throughout season two
that would have helped Lee than the season three. But
oh well, yeah that was I think.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
They also thought the season the show was over too.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Anyway, it's ever since then when I get on a
show and they go, we don't know how we're going
to dig out of this, I'm like, you can dig
your way out of any I go, we have a
room full of very creative people here, and if we
also have a tonight, go on, you know, have dinner,
see your family, go see a movie. We'll work on
it again tomorrow and we will find a way out
(06:32):
of it. Because and then I tell him this is
what happened at the end of season two of Millennium,
and we came back anyway, So it's.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Interesting when it comes to Chris Carter, can you talk
a little bit about how he helps his writers, you know,
also become producers and what is like working underneath him
as a right.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Oh my god, that was amazing. He just kind of
like says, you have to learn this. That's how you'll
be valuable to me and to the production and to yourself.
And you're going to produce your own episode. Basically so
when you write, first of all, you outline very rigorously.
You've probably heard about the boards with cards on one
(07:09):
card per scene, and Chris approves that pretty much. Once
that's approved, you know, you write it and there's usual
notes and stuff, but usually you're locked by the time
you have that card outline. So then you get the
script and then send it to Vancouver, and they had
an amazing production team up there, and then for the
last week or so, you would be up there and
(07:30):
you would go to the casting for the people who
are only going to be in that episode, and a
lot of times it would be like crazy cool roles.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And then you would go to.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
You look at the locations, and then you go on
the tech scout and the text scout. The tex scout
is where you go, Oh, Tom Wright is a genius man.
He's asking the weirdest, smallest, most detailed question while we're
standing in a parking lot that it's going to become
something else, going to become whatever thing we turn it into.
And it's midday and we're going to shoot there in
(08:04):
the middle of the night. And he doesn't only ask
questions or create problems. He sees opportunities, like we shot
in a real mental institution. For the pool murder scene
was a closed mental institution, and he thought of all
kinds of cool things to do with that at the
text scout because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
By the time this is not everybody.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
By the time he gets to the set, he's got
a shot list. It's usually drawn on.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
The script that he's working with. I have a couple
of scripts of his that have over Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Oh amazing, So yeah you should. Yeah, those are those
are incredible artifacts of This is how you make a movie,
how you make a television episode if it's going to
be visually dynamic. A lot of TV shows are just
they talk in this room, then they talk in this room,
then they talk in this room, and it doesn't matter
how you cover it. But Tom's stuff is not.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Like that at all.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Every scene is its own little mini movie, and he
loves to start on a detail. He loves a split diopter.
Do you know what a split diopter is? So you're
gonna shoot a scene, we're gonna have in the foreground,
my face is going to be half of the screen,
and then in the background there's gonna be you and
you're gonna be diffusing a bomb or something. They both
(09:18):
need to be in focus, so you put this thing
on the front of the camera that lets both of
us be in focused by having different focal lengths for
each of us. And Hitchcock used it a lot, and
the silent directors use it a lot, and Tom used it.
You know, he liked using that kind of stuff. So
he had a very sophisticated sense of visuals and mes
(09:42):
on send and framing, and it was just great to
give a script to him because you knew that it
was going to uh, he was going to use all
of his powers to express it in a way they
would give a lot of dynamism to things. And so anyway,
so that's why everybody wanted He directed pretty much every
(10:02):
other episode.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yea. So so as far as the Halloween episode for
season three, was that something that you volunteered for it
was it pitch to you or did it come up
in a rotation that you got that that episode.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I think it came up in rotation. And originally they're like, hey,
you want to do the Halloween episode, And we didn't
always do a Halloween episode on you know, every show
like this, and then somebody decided it should be lighter
in spirit, more like screen two something like that, and
(10:37):
I was like, Okay, we're going to do this. We
have to go all the way. We can't like step
one toe in Millennium as people usually watch it, and
another toe in a kind of crazy satirical version. If
we're going to go insane, we're going to drive there
at high speed. You know, there's a there's a line
dividing a regular episode from an episode like this, and
we have to run screaming past it. And everybody was
(11:01):
on board with that. Yeah, we gotta go for that.
And it wasn't until there was already outlines and stuff
that Fox decided. There's a Fox executive someplace I don't
know who it is, who is a big kisstand. He said,
we're going to have Kiss night because I go, they're
an old band. They were an old band already and
they're an even older band now, and they go, no, no, no,
(11:23):
they're so great. We're gonna have kiss references in every
episode all night long, and it's going to culminate in
I don't know, some Kiss live concert or something that
they were going to broadcast, and I've protested.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I was like, I don't know, I can do.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
This, and out of the protesting of it. Out of
the protesting of it came, oh, we'll make the movie.
Within the movie, people kind of object to it, and
Frank Black will voice the objection to it. Yet I
was reading the Wikipedia page. I hope you can go
out there and add some of your own opinions, because
(11:58):
the ones on there are vicious. And The AV Club's
Emily VanDerWerff felt that the appearance of Kiss was contrived.
It's like, yeah, it was contrived. It's contrived, and they
talk about how contrived it is during the episode.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, actually it's an episode.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, It's like, yeah, it's like they're making a B movie.
Pretty much every incident in the B movie is kind
of contrived, and so it becomes a little bit meta
during that and anyway, other there's some other people, some
doctor who writer who gives it one out of five stars.
Those are the only two comments on the Wikipedia page
(12:37):
for thirteen years later. Nevertheless, Yeah, it was contrived, and
I think that we just had to commit to that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And it's framed. It's framed in.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
A way that this was a tale told by a
mad pan full of sound and fury and signifying nothing,
and you know, we completely committed to that principle and
ran with it. And I think it's a good episode.
I think I think it's a lot of fun. I
think that the kiss stuff kind of contributes to it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
You know, what did the idea? Where did the idea
come from for to have those guys actually act, especially
Jean and Paul.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I know that Gene and Paul already were pretty good actors,
but it was sort of like, if you have kiss
in the episode, why do you have.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Kissed in the episode? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And for people who like them, they're gonna get to
see one song, right, And if I'm going to watch
an episode of a show that I'm going to try
for the first time, I want to have a little
more than that. And it was the opportunity to see
them without their makeup, which you know, everybody knows them
as the sort of cartoon characters that that are on
(13:47):
the album cover. But it was just fun to like
write a little role for each of them to thread
through the whole thing. And I was very happy with that,
and I thought that I thought that that added up lot.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I think we've talked about it in the past, and
some people might not know this yet, but I guess
overall it was a pretty good experience of working with them,
but there were some issues with the other two bad
members not not having bigger parts than they were upset
about it because.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Two of the band members bought the rights to all
the Kiss trademarks at some point, and the other two
band members were then employees, you know, firing them at
will before officially like part of the you know kid
in aquity. Yeah, they were not Kiss equity players.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
They were just.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Higher lings and so they were always filling on the
short end of the stick. And I think Ace, I
just got a call from a crying assistant in Vancouver.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Ace won't come out of his trailer.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And this is when you learn to produce. And I
called Chris. I go, Ace won't come out of his trailer.
He goes, well, Michael, you're a smart guy. You'll figure
out how to make him come out.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Of his trailer. Well, o, spar Got, you'll figure it.
I yeah, And I love that. I love it.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
He's just like, you can solve this. This is the
this is the kind of problem that walks in the
door every single day when you're making television.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And anyway, I talked to him.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
For a while I heard his his issues, his issues
where the other actors got more lines, and I wrote
him more lines, and Tom understood that, and we understood,
if it's brilliant, we'll keep it. And it wasn't and
we didn't, so we kept a couple of the lines.
But he got to get his more lines and the
(15:33):
show went on because if he hadn't come out of
his trailer, we would have. You know, you can't recast
somebody once you committed film to them, right, And he
was king of the truck. I don't know, can you
get sued for a podcast? He was kind of drunk too,
and anyway, that's that's how he rolls. He's a rock star.
(15:54):
That's why you're a rock star because you can be
a little drunk and make demands and people usually give
in to you. And I in a certain gave in
to him in order to keep the show running.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
They are seeing some of the scenes of the band
performing were like fantastic in the episode, and Tom was
telling us that Kiss actually wanted to use some of
that footage to like cut a actual music video. Is
that true? It is true? And he said no.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Chris said no, They're like no, We've already done a
lot for Kiss. You know, they're in our show. If
people want to see, if they can come watch the show,
And that was the end of that. So Chris said no,
I think yeah all the way up. You know, Tom
doesn't just get to say no on that kind of thing. Yeah,
you know, it's Chris's show, And I think it was
(16:40):
a good choice. It would be a good choice to say,
we're not going to let this stuff go out of
context because it might look you wouldn't understand what was
going on unless you had the context for it. And
Tom said, I'll direct a music video if they hire me,
which they never did. I think they're sheeap skates and
they thought free music video, and who doesn't want something free?
(17:01):
And anyway, they didn't get it. They didn't get the
free thing.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Looking back when that episode all these years later, do
you is there anything you would have changed we're going
in the show as far as writing or the scene.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Absolutely, I would have changed one thing. We reveal at
the end that none of this happened, right, we absolutely
reveal none of this happened. We're just listening to an
insane man in a mental institution rambling on who thinks
he is Frank Black, but he is not Frank Black.
And we had an opportunity to kill main characters, a
(17:39):
revocable opportunity because you could you could have gone, like,
killed a main character, broke to commercial and come back
and you're like, I don't know where the show is
going now because at the end we find out now
it was all the ravings of a madman. And that's
that's one thing actually, I think Chip and Ken and
I talked.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
About after it air.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
We're like, we should have.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thought of that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
That would have been cool, but we didn't do that.
But other than that, it was part of the inspiration
for the Jeff you know, Jeff Yeger is married to
make Integer or what.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't know if they still are. They still are, Yeah,
they still are.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
But he knew the character of Frank Black inside and out,
so that you know, he was very well able to
do the voice and to start.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Doing the Oh, he was hilarious. He was hilarious.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
But there was an inspiration for all of that that
came from that construction trailer. We had an office assistant
who was always getting into trouble, but we loved him
and he would become Frank Black for days at a time.
He would answer to the telephone millennium and like, when
(18:53):
we you have to put temp lines in sometimes when
you're editing, and it's usually just you know, hey, Troy,
can you come here and be the voice of yeah,
you know cop number two and you say it and
then later we go when we get cop number two
in Vancouver and he loops it, and he sometimes would
loop the Frank Black lines for the temp mix. But
(19:14):
she would be Frank Black for very long periods of time,
like all day long or all week long, and it
was just funny to go, Okay, this guy, he likes
the show. He's just become that thing. And what if
somebody became a thing? But it wasn't a gag, it
wasn't an act. What if somebody became Frank Black and
(19:35):
really believed it? And I didn't have to go into
great lengths to explain it because everybody.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Knew the office assistant.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
They're like, oh, yeah, that's a great way to get
into this all.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So we did a podcast years ago. It was like
a Christmas special podcast. It was Lance, Megan and Brittany
and we were talking and near the end, I don't
know if I don't know if it's tr or not,
but Lance said that there was a time when Jeff
had put something behind his ear to make his ear
stick out.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
True play is that true? And Lance were like, you,
son of a bitch, you didn't have to do that. Yeah,
But Lance didn't like it until he just he turned around.
He was like, Okay, now that I know what we're doing.
I think he didn't know where to put his foot
down when he first heard what we were going to do.
He's like, we're not going to do a kiss thing
(20:27):
and a sort of silly movie pastiche murder mystery thing.
And then when he understood now this sort of taking
a break from the regular thing, he was all in.
Once he got there, he got he went all in
and that let everybody else, you know, play along too
and have a breather from admittedly dark episodes that we've had. Yeah, So, Hugh,
(20:53):
it was a physically demanding production.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
That's what That's what he said. It was like, Tom said,
it was like shooting an actual movie. That that episode.
He said, you got it, and I think you in
one of the one of the little things we have
on our website, you were like you couldn't believe that
Tom got all these shots.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
At It's amazing. It's just testament to how well organized
he is. And also the love that the crews had
for him. And you see that also on the tech scout.
You know, you go, we're gonna shoot in this mental institution.
He checks with everybody, goes to the electric guys. You know,
are you comfortable? Can you get your generators in here?
(21:29):
Do you feel okay doing this at night? What if
we have to have a fog machine? What if this,
you know, goes to sound. Hey, we're if we're near
an airport or whatever. Everybody knows they can tell their
problems to Tom and he will work.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
With them to solve them.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
And once in a while there's some some department can't
get their problem solved. So if you go, we we
just have to do this short scene in a kind
of noisy area, and I know you're a pro and
you'll do the best you can. And uh so they'll
always give him the benefit of the of the doubt
because he takes care of them. He takes really good care.
(22:02):
You know, a a movie.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Set is like.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Ten different dimensions that are happening at the same time.
Unaware of each other. So you're like, camera guys are
all thinking about one very complex problem, and your electric
guys are thinking about a different complex problem, and your
sound guys. And everybody's mission is critical to the whole
thing coming off, and you have to make sure that
(22:28):
everybody is able to do their thing. And Tom understood
all the crafts extremely well.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, one thing I just thought about. You know, you
guys over the years had issues with standards of practices.
Did you have any issues with them? Guys? Those guys
when it came to this episode or pretty cool?
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He dated through, Oh no, no, no, no, we had
They're like, you know, what are you doing? It's it's
pretty cory.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
It's got a lot of nudity in it. It's got
this like.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Violating all all the norm and we actually dedicated. We
actually say something like never believe anything you see on Halloween.
And the name is the Reverend, the name of the guy.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Who is the censor.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And so Ken knew him pretty well because Ken had
been an executive before he had begun working on our show.
And she was just saying like, did you tone down
all these things? Did you cut out all these things?
And and we said yeah, we did some of them,
but we also need you to work with us because
of the special nature of this episode. And he's like, okay,
(23:34):
I'm going to give you once, but you can't take
this to the bank. You cannot do this if it's
not a here another one of the guys says it
was a farrago. One of the one of the mean
critics said a farrago of in jokes. You can't do
(23:55):
it when it's not a farrago of in jokes. He
did not use the word for rago. That was some
doctor who writer. My light is getting really messed up here.
I'm gonna close the Curtaincy who that helps?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Can you see me? Or is this yeah? Yeah, I'm good, Okay,
we'll keep it. I wanted to know, like episodes like
thirteen years later, Curse of Frank Black, Midnight of the Center,
all these holiday episodes a millennium, they still resonate with fans,
like all these years later, Why do you think that
is character?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
It's because you know, you get into a show, the
plot is like new to you, and then once you
watch it the second time or the third time, you
know how it's going to resolve. You know who did
it so to speak, you know, in Millennium's case, why
they did it. You know what kind of crazy ideas
are going to be introduced. But you love the characters,
(24:47):
and so I think that the moments between him and
Claya are great in this episode. Yeah, they get a
lot of time together. They don't always get a lot
of personal time together. They just get exposition. Know what
time was the gunshot and she'll say it was a
four tiny five whatever. And in this one they got
to have a night of popcorn and watching movies together.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
That was a great scene. That's a great scene, that.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Scene, and they get to do crazy characters stuff together.
That is the glue that makes you love a show.
And everybody loves those characters. And I think the same
is true of Kate and Aaron's and all of those
sort of character based episodes age very well because you
get to go visit with the characters that you love.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
You mentioned Clay, and I meant to ask you this earlier,
which she said that the kiss episode was one of
her favorite season three and she wished they had got
to do more episodes or more stuff like that, cheek
stuff like that. Oh, that's very sweet. That's very sweet.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
She came to your movie screening right, yeah, and in
Burbank and as sweet as ever, as kind as ever,
and you know, we were so lucky to get her.
And like when she came in to meet all the
cast and crew, somebody made some crack about, well, you're
going to have to go to Canada, and she's like,
I'm Canadian. I think she was born in Canada, so
(26:10):
it was like she had no issue with that. But
she brought a lot to it because it was just
nice to have a younger feminine presence in the midst
of a very hard driving crime show. And she and
Lance had a kind of chemistry. They had a kind
of partner chemistry.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That was very, very sweet.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
We didn't get to explore it as much as they
did on X Files because they only did one year together, and.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Just because we.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Didn't really discover it except in episodes like this.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
When did you find out that the show was going
to be canceled, like for good in the third season? Oh,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
In the third season, they probably told us, probably told
us like March or eight April after February sweeps, But
they usually keep all their options open until the last minute.
A lot of times on TV series after three years
all the actors get a big raise, so.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
That might have weighed in.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
But I don't remember exactly when they said, now this
is not coming back.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But it was a.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Show called Millennium. It's a terrible bar trivia question. What
year was the show Millennium canceled? Nineteen ninety nine? Like, oh,
come on, let's just get the Y two K man,
Let's go to Y two K.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I'm curious to know for you personally, and I know
this may be putting on a spot a little bit,
but if you could think back to some of the
episodes throughout the entire series, or there are a couple
that stand out to you that you didn't write that
you're like, oh man, this is a great episode.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I'd have to revisit all of them. But I mean,
I loved the pilot. The pilot was so crazy, and
I'm like, I was working on a different show.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I was across.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
I was in a different construction trailer across from Chris
Curteri's office, and oftentimes would be working nights and weekends
and stuff and saw that and then one night saw
him and I was like, I can't believe you got
that on the air. Congratulations. That's kind of an amazing,
amazing feat that you were able to create the show
(28:20):
and get it on the air, and a lot of
people use their clout to make it exactly the same show. Again,
you know, he could have made another X Files, the
Why Files, the Z Files, and he didn't. He had
this completely different thing that he wanted to do, And
so I've always loved that. And I like the Darren
Morgan episodes again for character reasons. You get into a
(28:41):
lot of frank black stuff, and that's why you love
watching the show. So the his episodes of X Files
are my favorites as well, so especially the one with
the UFOs and I can't remember the title of it,
(29:03):
but anyway, the one with all the UFOs in X Files,
yep was the Darren Morgan episode that I go, Okay,
you can really you can really go swing for the
fences in this kind of thing and get thoughtful ideas
in and be funny.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Oh and while I'm thinking about it, working with Mark
Snow and his incredible music, he did the rout the
series on his show. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That's always the best part of the whole show. Because
your work is done. We already wrote it, which was
its own, you know, very tough thing to do, got
it all approved and stuff, cast it, shot it, edited it.
All of those all those trips are very hard work.
You know, you got to put your shoulder into it.
You have a lot of people to please, You have
(29:51):
a lot of people sometimes to argue with and try
and persuade them that a different way is worth trying.
But then you go to Mark and it's just like
putting icing on the cake. And he's kind of a genius,
and he had awards all over is it was a
garage converted into a music studio. He had music awards
(30:11):
from every show he'd ever written, and he would try
out a cue and if you didn't like it, he
would come up with another cue almost immediately, and it
just elevated every single episode so much. And he did
great work on this episode. He did great work on Omerta. Yes,
(30:33):
he did really amazing music on America.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Oh yeah, Emerita is incredible.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, And it's sort of like you wonder you're trying
to convey emotion as a writer, and you're wondering did
it come across? And when Mark reacts and creates a
musical cue that captures what you were thinking of when
you were writing the very first part of the first outline.
You're like, Okay, I've done something, and he's really honored
(31:01):
it with incredible music.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
What some of the fans may not know a lot
of us do know, because we've spoken to you in
the past. With some new viewers or listeners may not know,
is the episode Dirty Snowball. Yeah. Talk a little bit
about Dirty Snowball. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
They they loved the character road Decker. Morgan and Wan
loved the character road Decker. And there was the suicide
cult that had happened it because they believed that a
comet had a UFO in its wake and was going
(31:37):
to come and take them to Heaven. They took a
bunch of a real life thing that happened at Heaven's Gate.
If I'm not going to skate, yeah, Heaven's Gate people.
They lived in a nice big house in his southern
Orange County or northern San Diego County. They put on
black Nikes, and I have a peer and Nike immediately
(32:01):
pulled those off.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
They put on Black Knight.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
He's took poison and died, and so that seemed like
a very millennial theme, and uh, Morgan and Juan liked
the idea, and Chris liked the idea of what if
Rodecker fell in love with somebody who was in that
as Frank is investigating the possibility of a suicide calls
(32:23):
and have a tragic romance intersect with a millennium investigation.
And I did the card cards iverybody loved it. I
did the outline, got improved all the way up from
you know, Morgan, I Wang and Chris and Ken and
everybody in the network, and I did a script. While
(32:44):
I was at script, Glenn and Jim decided to go
a different direction with the show. They wanted to do
the Owls Roosters thing, and not so much what season
one had been. Like season one, the episodes had an
overarching sense of doom about them, but no powerful through line,
and once we got into the Owl's roosters thing, everything
(33:07):
sort of had to service that only on season two.
Season three, we knows what happened in season three, but
in Glenn and Jim's season, that was what they were doing.
And so they got the script and they go, we
like the script, but we're not going.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
To do it.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Like nobody wants to hear that. And that was that
you just like I said about when you think your
show is canceled, you just sit down, cry a little bit,
and go look for another show. And when somebody doesn't
improve your script, So then I had to I sort
(33:43):
of told people this next script, I'm going to write
it so that if they don't make it, if I
show it to people to ask why the hell didn't
they make it? And that became the Mikado. I thought,
I'll just do like a bang.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Oh wow, really yeah, yeah, I didn't even know that. Oh,
I thought I got it.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I got to kind of save my job, you know,
So I'm gonna do a bang up on it. And
I kind of wanted to write it so that if
they go, this is the script that I got fired for,
people be like what And and Glenn and Jim loved it,
you know, so that was all in my head, the
notion that it had to be you know, this this
(34:20):
uh never, this relentless piece, and and they liked it,
and you know, Jim went with me to Vancouver to
produce it, and that was, you know, my first produced episode,
and that was during season two.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yep. And you showed me.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Around Vancouver and introduced me to the crew and stuff
like that, took me to the production meetings, the text scout,
all the usual stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
That's interesting because when a lot of fans talk about
their favorite episodes, the Micado always comes up, always comes up.
Interesting because it.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Was kind of after Dirty Snowball, which was a sort
of softer thing, even though it ends with a suicide
called Dying and Rodecker heartbroken and Frank Black wondering what
does it mean for the overall state of the world
that people would die because of what happened with a
comet flying over Earth. It never got made and so
(35:20):
then I was like, Okay, I'm going to do one
sort of more traditional season, one kind of thing that
would be in season and one.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Wow. And I guess one of my final questions for
you is, and this is a little bit kind of
a big question, but just looking back at your time
working on this show, what did you appreciate most about
working on that show or what were some of the
things you appreciated most about working on that show.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
The Vakecouver crew was amazing. I mean, I love Chip Johannison.
He's gonna hear this yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Every time I crossed paths with him.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I saw him during the strike last summer, and he
was filled with eccentric personal stories of stuff he had
done around the world and always is it's always doing
something interesting. And his wife is very nice, and his
daughter has turned out to be some kind of genius.
And so I loved working with Chip. I loved working
with Chris. You know, his his system of you have
(36:21):
to be a producer to be a useful writer to me,
or I don't really want you. I don't want people
to be just thrown out pages. I have too much
other stuff to do. And you know, having being thrown
in the deep end is I think the only way
to learn how to produce. And a big part of
why we went on strike last year is they were
doing that. No longer were they teaching beginning writers how
(36:45):
to produce on episodes. So we're now getting back to
that as a as an industry. But I loved I
always love casting too. You know, you're going to get
three different people to come in and read, and they
may all be vert. They could be brothers, but it
(37:05):
could be one's old, ones young, one's in an accent, right,
you know, and That's my favorite kind of casting is
when the three don't seem to have anything in common.
And we had a casting director who trusted the process
and we trusted her, and she would bring in the
thing as described in the pages, and then she going,
I'm bringing in a wild card. See what I think
(37:26):
of this, See what you think of this actor? No harm,
no foul. You don't like them, you don't like them,
but it's an idea for.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
How to do this.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And she she did an amazing casting on Omerica in particular,
you know, and thirteen years later was very very much
taking advantage of the wonderful casting opportunities in Vancouver. We
kind of got the cream of the crop in Vancouver
on that one.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
So that was fun. Something just hit me I was
talking when not you know, talking to people over the years,
they've always had their ideas of if there was a
fourth season they would have liked to see this. Clay
had had an idea, she said, parton Lance have talked
over the years about what they would have loved to
see for season four. Chris said he had a way,
he knew what he wanted to do with season four,
(38:12):
but of course he wouldn't tell me what it was.
Did you have any thoughts like if you guys had
come back over the have you thought about that over
the years, like, oh man, we wish we could have
taken the show this way, knowing how it ended in
season three.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
I'm almost certain that in the spring of nineteen ninety
nine we would have had writers' room discussions and we
would have taken everybody and gotten into, you know, some
depth as to here's what we want to do for
the next season. That the construction trailer people would have
(38:44):
shared with Chris, and Chris would have shared with the network,
And you know, it's the sort of standard thing when
you're in a show, particularly a show like this where
seasons have arcs and all three seasons.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Are so boldly different from you. Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
I think that we certainly would have had that, But
I think the ratings were going down like a slowly
deflating balloon. Yeah, and we were like number one hundred,
and I was looking at our ratings like five point.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Four million viewers.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
People would love you and send bouquets to your house
in twenty twenty four, but in nineteen ninety nine, that
was cancelation numbers.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, So anyway, it was.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
It was still it's the job, and we made some
good We made some good television.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
He made some outstanding television and finally, thank you. I
don't know if you can say anything or if you
want to talk about anything, but do you have any
product projects coming up that you can talk about.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Or I don't have any coming up that I can
talk about. I'm always working, you know. Always when there's downtime,
I'm working on something else, and a lot of times
it'll turn into like the Voices was a thing I
did during a downtime the Ryan Reynolds movie YEP and
the River. The River came about because I was on
(40:07):
the set of Paranormal Activity Part two and Orn and
I were just waiting.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
There's a lot of waiting.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
He had never really been on a movie that he
wasn't directing, and he's like, we should talk about doing
a TV show. I was like, yes, we should, And
so during all the waiting we were like trading ideas
and stuff. So it's similarly now I have a I'm
working on things, but I don't want to talk. I
don't like to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Oh you don't want to Jason, No, totally understand. Well, Michael,
it's been a pleasure speaking with you about thirteen years
later and just talking about Millennium and you know, you
know as well, you know that I love that show
and it's my number one, my favorite show of all time. Well,
thank you, Troy.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I love your enthusiasm for it. I love that you're
keeping it alive, and you always find interesting insights in
your film, in your pot casts and all the stuff
you're doing about it. You're finding very interesting insights.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And it's I always like to have one.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
If I have one good viewer, I'm happy, and I
think I have one brilliant viewer, and that would be you.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Wow. Well that's a compliment that yeah, yeah, yeah, And
there you have our episode with the incredible Michael R. Perry. Michael,
we really appreciate your time, Thank you for sitting down
the chat with us, and thank you to each and
every one of you who took the time to listen
to the interview. I hope you enjoyed it, and as
I said before, look forward to some more new episodes
(41:35):
in the very near future. Until then, see yeah,
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