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[07/24/09 - 01:04 AM]
Live at the San Diego Comic-Con: "Psych"
By Brian Ford Sullivan (TFC)

Please note: As a courtesy, please do not reproduce these comments to newsgroups, forums or other online places. Links only please.


Highlights from the "Psych" press room:

Corbin Bernsen on the relationship between Shawn and Henry: "The relationship is bounded in this: I have a certain way in doing things, I wanted my son to be like me and he has ended up doing exactly what I do which is solving crimes, but doing it his own way... I think Henry's got to loosen up, Henry's got to recognize - I'm dealing with my own kids, I've got a 20-year-old son - and you go, alright, you don't want to do it my way, as long as you get to the end of the game and you're responsible and you have values and all those things, I'm learning we all have our different path."

Corbin Bernsen on whether he'll direct an episode of the show: "No, I mean I direct. I just finished a movie called 'Rust,' I've directed four little films I do in the off-season. I write during the season and I direct in the off-season. You know, yeah it would be fun but it's, I kind of have a weird thing about TV and directing TV and certainly a show you're on. I'm not dying to do it... I don't know where the win is. I mean, what if your show sucks?"

James Roday on his directing aspirations: "Truthfully it's something that I was always interested in doing, I just didn't think the opportunities would fall into my lap the way that they have thanks to our super generous and wonderful show creator and producers. It's basically, you know, the warmest, safest environment to sort of perfect your technique and flex new muscles and I feel like with each one I'm getting more confidence. And what can you say, to work on a show where you get to write and direct episodes is a gift."

Dule Hill on his directing aspirations: "I always tell the crew if you see me directing, start looking for a new job."

Dule Hill on his character's romantic prospects: "I think we're having something this year, I think something will come up this season. Hopefully we'll see."

James Roday on the pineapple: "I have to say we went almost a whole season without any cool ways to hide the pineapple, it was just sitting out on people's desks. We got a little lazy with it but we sort of did some recon in the off-season and you should be duly impressed with some of the hiding places this season. We put a little more thought and care into it."

James Roday on creating Shawn as an actor: "My approach is just this guy's constantly flying by the seat of his pants. He's an improviser by nature. [My] influences were basically, you know, Chevy Chase's Fletch and Val Kimer [in] 'Weird Science.' Those are sort of the guys I felt like encompassed that the best. So I put them in a blender, along with a fairly high dose of my own face and brain and landed on it."

Steve Franks on balancing the amount of silliness: "That's the hardest thing. The silliness is our car and the wheels [are] out of alignment. And it's always trying to pull us so we're always trying to [pull it back]. What fuels us is the silliness but we realize at the end of the day that if we're a detective show and we're having a case, if you're 30 minutes into the show and you're like - 'What's this case about?' - you're probably going to lose interest. So it's walking a tight rope. And we've really wrote ourselves into a corner because we have so many things we have to do humor-wise: we have to get these guys in a really fun argument, we have to tie it to something that happened to them as a kid in the past, we have to sort of relate it to what's going on with the characters. And it's a character piece: we're not about, it's not 'CSI' where every minute they're at a new location and they're questioning and it turned out to be the third person they questioned."

Steve Franks on the show's odd cases: "I drive our network insane because I'm so adamant that our show be unique... we did an episode where a sea lion died, where they go to a funeral for a sea lion and surmise it was murder... For me it's like that's what we have to do and it's twice as hard as, we could just do 'okay, a debutante gets shot' or whatever... I turn on 'CSI' and it's like 'when a toddler is found dead,' I'm like, oh my God! How are you sitting down going, 'That's great! I can't wait to see how they catch the guy!"

Chris Henze on amping up the drama: "When you give [James and Dule] drama, they really excel as well. For us, to see them and know them as well as we do now and know what they can do - it's fun to say let's do a serious episode. James, whenever James writes and directs an episode it usually is sort of some very genre [type thing] because he's such a huge horror fan, genre fan... Steve always wants to go towards the adventurous, fun, exciting, really funny place. And we have some other writers, Andy [Berman] and whatnot, who aren't afraid of slightly darker places, but then have moments of really great, funny stuff. So we feel like we love mixing it up because you never know what you're going to get."

Steve Franks on what's ahead: "Rachael Leigh Cook is back for a handful of episodes this year. We talk about her in the episodes she's not in. It's hard because on our budget we can only get so many guest stars, so to bring in an actor it's sort of like, 'Oh my God, let's talk about her in this one and then she's here in the next one!' So we have to get usefulness out of [them]."

Steve Franks on "The Mentalist": "For me it's like, am I upset about it? Listen: when you go to the cereal aisle in the grocery store and you see Fruit Loops. If you look down on the bottom, there's something that looks just like Fruit Loops and it's in a different bag and it's called Fruity Loopos."

Timothy Omundson on the Lassiter/Juliet relationship: "For as much as Lassiter would ever open up to any another human being, yes they actually have great respect for each other. Their relationship has really sort of leveled out where they're on sort of the same level. It's not so much mentor and trainee [anymore]."

Maggie Lawson on the differences between working with James the actor and James the director: "James is such an artist anyway that as far as a difference, you kind of expect, you know James is coming prepared, you know James has a vision start to finish for what he's directing, what scene he's doing. And he's very open as an actor to changes and improvising, and he's like that in directing as well where he loves new ideas and he also really knows what he wants which I think is one of the most important things as a director. He knows what the episode needs to be and he knows how to get that."





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· PSYCH (USA)
· SAN DIEGO COMIC CON (TFC)





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