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Do you have a sense of how the anticipation for this show will translate into its success?
Peter Berg: “I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience in the television business. I did a short-lived show called Wonderland, that I did with Brian also, which didn’t get quite the reviews that this show’s getting but it got very good reviews and it was about a darker subject, about mental illness. And that show was cancelled after two episodes. And so I remain cautiously pessimistic about the whole process. I hope our show finds an audience. I hope it’s a big hit. I’m proud of the show. Obviously television is a very complex and competitive environment right now so we’re going to just keep our fingers crossed.”
Brian Grazer: “Pete and I haven’t talked about it. I’m actually cautiously optimistic. I actually think that people - it may have a slow start but I really believe it’ll work. I actually in my heart actually believe that people will, viewers will get hooked. So I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Peter Berg: “I was kidding when I said cautiously pessimistic. I’m glad you said that though because I hate to admit that I am cautiously pessimistic about this show. I believe in the show. I think that these actors are extremely compelling and fun to watch and that’s more important than football is what will make this show work if it is to work. Because of how much I enjoy watching them, I feel cautiously optimistic.”
Will you look at the dark underbelly of Texas obsession like the original book and parts of the movie did?
Peter Berg: “I think what the book did was present a very fair and complex look at culture and racism was certainly an aspect of that presentation. It’s something we did a bit in the film. We weren’t able to get into it as much as Bissinger was able to get into it in the book. He never led with racism. In other words, it was never a book intended to be about the dark underbelly. It was intended to be a book that was a very fair and balanced look at sociology and that is definitely something we wanted to do in the show and one of the reason why we wanted to do the show is so we could do what we couldn’t do in the movie, which Bissinger couldn’t do in the book which is to explore these issues. Not just racism but family issues, competition, educational issues and we want to be able to present them in a very fair way. If that means at times there’s a darkness or negativity surrounding certain issues, we’re going to go at that.”
Is that an advantage of doing it as a TV series?
Peter Berg: “I think so. I think Brian and I both felt after the movie came out and in comparison to the book that there was a lot left on the table. We just weren’t able to - it’s hard in a film to make a left turn and service issues like academic grade manipulation for example, which was a big aspect of the book and some people wanted to put in the film. It’s a very complicated issue. We couldn’t do it in the movie but we can take two or three episodes and really explore it in a television environment.”
How are you balancing directing films with working on the show?
Peter Berg: “It’s been going really well. We’ve got really talented people when the show started and it all comes from a guy named Jason Katims who’s kind of put the writers together and put together a really good staff of writers. And that makes it much easier for people like Brian and myself to do other things and come in. And something I’ve learned from Brian is sometimes it’s good to have perspective and be able to not be so close and to be able to come in and look at things on a really large macro level and offer advice and suggestions that perhaps if you were so deep into it you wouldn’t see. That works well if you’ve got foot soldiers and people who are out there really doing the work and we’re lucky to have that.”
