LOS ANGELES -- FILIPINO-AMERICAN Dean Devlin, who produced such hits as ?Independence Day,? ?Godzilla,? the Oscar-nominated ?The Patriot? and ?Stargate,? is lending his Midas touch to another medium: television.
?Leverage,? the series starring Timothy Hutton whose first season episode marked Dean?s directorial debut, has been picked up for a second season by Turner Network Television (TNT), one of the top-rated cable networks in the US.
Dean?s mother, Pilar Seurat, was an actress who appeared mostly in American TV shows in the ?60s and early ?70s. A native of the Philippines, Pilar, whose real name was Rita Hernandez, passed away in 2001.
Dean told me recently via e-mail: ?Of course, my surviving Filipino relatives here in the States are very close to me. Unfortunately, I haven?t been able to go back to the islands for over 10 years. I?m hoping I can go back there soon and catch up with my many family members in the Philippines.?
Old-fashioned
Dean?s Electric Entertainment, a film, TV and new media production company which he founded in 2001, produces ?Leverage,? a series he described as being ?like an old-fashioned caper movie.? The show, which premiered last December, has generated solid ratings. Dean started Electric Entertainment after he and Roland Emmerich ended their business and creative partnership that led to several blockbusters.
In his review of Dean?s latest creative venture, The Hollywood Reporter?s Barry Garron wrote, ?TNT?s ?Leverage? manufactures fun viewing with its marriage of cutting-edge special effects to an attractive cast full of larger-than-life personalities ?. The action is swift, the patter is clever, the casting is smart and the special effects are nimble, all of which add up to a flashy hour of fun.?
Timothy, who is the youngest ever to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Robert Redford?s 1981 Oscar and Golden Globe Best Picture, ?Ordinary People,? plays Nate Ford, a modern-day Robin Hood whose team of high-tech thieves, hackers and grifters (Gina Bellman, Beth Riesgraf, Christian Kane and Aldis Hodge) seeks revenge against unscrupulous powerful and wealthy folks.
In our recent Four Seasons Hotel interview with Timothy about the series, of course we seized the ?FC? (short for the term that we coined, Filipino connection) and asked the actor about Dean as a debuting director. He said, ?Dean is great to work with. He has produced several amazing movies. This is his first television series and the first time he directed something. He directed the pilot and several of the first season shows. He?s a fantastic director and a great producer. I?m very fortunate to be in good hands with someone like him because not only is he very good creatively and on the producing side but he?s also the studio. He?s financing it along with TNT. There is no other studio.?
Asked how he landed the role, Timothy answered, ?I got a call from someone saying, ?There?s this script. Do you want to take a look at it?? I read the script. We talked about it and then I got on the phone with Dean. He spoke to me at great length about the part. It was a great character and something I thought would be interesting to pursue.?
Afterward, Dean told us, also via e-mail, why he chose Timothy: ?When we were first putting the cast together, the executives at TNT asked me, ?Who do you see in the lead role?? I answered that I was looking for a ?Tim Hutton type.? They said, ?Why don?t you simply ask Tim if he?d be interested?? I couldn?t imagine the good fortune of getting an Academy Award winning actor to star in our show, but as luck would have it, Tim loved the script and decided to join our crazy caravan. His depth as an actor has brought great weight and pathos to our show, but the biggest surprise for all of us was how adept Tim is at comedy.?
Of the various disguises that Timothy resorts to in the series? weekly stories of scheming, the 46-year-old director-producer said: ?We?ve been able to create some great and fun characters for Tim to play in the cons and it has brought an entirely new dimension to the show.?
Dean explained what made him decide to make his directorial debut with ?Leverage.? ?I?ve always been interested in a very specific balance between drama and comedy, and smart and fun,? declared Dean, who was shooting Super-8mm movies as a kid and won a student film award when he was 13 years old. ?John Rogers and Chris Downey?s script for the pilot hit this balance perfectly and got me very excited about the project. I just knew this was the project I had always been waiting for, so when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at the chance.?
Most rewarding
?Working on ?Leverage,? especially the directing part, has been truly the most rewarding experience of my career,? volunteered Dean, who was born in New York but raised in LA. ?The scripts are fantastic and the cast is superb. It?s been an amazing creative adventure.?
He revealed his plans for the series? second season: ?Currently, I?m planning on directing four episodes in the second season, including the season opener and the two-part season finale. The second season finds us with a new city as home base and brand-new challenges for keeping this team of loaners together.?
With his father Don also in show business (he produced ?The Witches of Eastwick?), Dean, who is married to actress Lisa Brenner, grew up in movie sets. Both his parents dabbled in acting so the bug caught Dean, too, at one point. He appeared in TV shows and movies in the ?80s. Don Devlin, who separated from Pilar in 1963, died in 2000. Pilar remarried in 1970 to Don Cerveris.
We asked Dean if there?s a story he is itching to bring to the big screen that will mark his feature film directorial debut. ?There?s a project called ?Ghosting? that I?m hoping to direct before the end of the year,? he revealed. The project is a supernatural thriller. ?We?re in the process of raising the money now. If all goes as planned, we?d have cameras rolling some time in November.?
E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, ?The Nepales Report,? on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.
