Book:
Improvising: My Life And Show Business, available on Amazon.
Author:
John Considine, television/film actor and writer. Check out his author facebook page and his fiction book entitled A War. And here is a written Q and A I did recently with him about his time on MacGyver.
Conversation:
Total run time: 1:02:17
0:01 - introduction
1:27 - early childhood
14:07 - acting career
25:39 - MacGyver
1:01:24 - epilogue
The embedded player works best in Google Chrome. You can also download the mp3 by clicking here, and the podcast is available in iTunes.
Great podcast. Considine was very insightful and humorous, and didn't have any stereotypical Hollywood affectations at all. Easy to see why he was so popular to work with.
ReplyDeleteHe's extremely lucky he got a second chance with the pitch session and I think typically if you're a writer who fails to connect to that degree in the first pitch meeting there's rarely a second. And I think it's just assumed by producers that any writer walking in has watched the series and has a good handle on the characters and the show's parameters. Pretty wild that after such a bad first impression that Considine went on to be one of Downing's favorite writers.
I really enjoyed "FX: The Series" and always thought it seemed very much in the vein of "MacGyver". There was some degree of state-of-the-art gadgetry involved but I was a little surprised that Considine was able to take on "MacGyver" but found "FX" so intimidating given the general storytelling similarities.
Great interview all around and hats off to Considine for being so open and accessible to the site.
Thanks for listening and glad you enjoyed. If you get a chance you should check out his book, I think you'd enjoy it.
DeleteI haven't seen FX before. I can sympathize with him in that I wouldn't be good at writing about overly technical gadgetry. At least MacGyver had the scientific adviser to help, though he said he didn't know about him until Good Knight MacGyver. In the book he mentions that in his wife thought of the idea in There But For The Grace where MacGyver staples the bad guy's jacket (with the guy in it) to the ground - that's a fun one.