Interviewing Eric Kripke about "Revolution" at Comic Con 2012

Eric Kripke at Media Roundtable (cr. C.A. Taylor)

(This interview was supposed to be published on Suite101.com but they are undergoing a re-launch and I feel that it isn't fair to anyone to keep the article/interview under wraps any longer.  So I'm going to publish it here and then transfer it later if I can to Suite101.com. This way the work doesn't just languish on the computer unread and unloved.)

“What would happen if you did something as easy as just flip the lights out?” Eric Kripke asked when he was describing his newly created show for NBC, Revolution, which premiered on September 17, 2012. At the time, he was in the press room at San Diego Comic Con 2012 last July. “I think that’s just something everyone can really relate to, because everyone knows the frustration of being in a 5 minute blackout or their computer freezes up and if that happens forever, ah, what that could mean.”



Eric Kripke signs autographs
(cr. Trae Patton/NBC with
permission)
 

 That’s a very antiseptic way of describing a scenario where planes fall out of the sky and crash because the sudden and permanent wink out of electricity causes their computers to shut down. But as Kripke said, he didn’t want to make a show about death. “I wanted to make a show about life. And, make this a world people would want to live in.”

He explained that they researched what a complete blackout of electricity on the planet would actually mean, looking at Congressional reports and government think tanks as part of their information gathering. “It turns out we’re glamorizing it. If it would actually happen, it’s so much hairier than what we’re even predicting—that took my breath away. The other interesting factoid, the reason behind the blackout is not a solar flare, ah, not a magnetic storm, but scientists say we’re entering into an intense level of solar activity over the next 10-12 years and there is, get this, a 10% chance of this happening!”
 

Thus, Kripke’s interesting what if – the first scene of the pilot where all the lights and computers blink into darkness to strand cars on the road and to nose-dive a plane into a fiery crash – has a basis in reality. “Yeah, think about that, 10% chance of something firing, frying the grid that badly,” Kripke said. “In so many ways we want to be the anti-apocalyptic show and because it’s about hope and it’s about rebirth… I mean, there’s a very specific reason I set it 15 years later. Because I don’t want it to be about death and destruction. I want it to be about heroes and sort of restoring the land.”
 

Revolution cast and creator
(cr. Trae Patton/NBC
with permission)

Indeed, it is the story of young Charlie Matheson (Tracy Spiridakos) who seeks out her estranged uncle Miles (Billy Burke) to help her rescue her brother Danny (Graham Rogers) after her father, Ben Matheson (Tim Guinee) was killed in an attempt to capture him and force him to reveal what he knew about the blackout which took out every bit of technology the modern world had. For, like in any vacuum of chaos, a militia arises with a leader (David Lyons as Monroe) who, as the once friend of Miles, overheard Ben tell him something.

Tim Guinee & Anna Lise Philips
(cr. Bob Mahoney/NBC with
permission)
 

And as with any epic quest, along the way, our heroes will try to defeat the militia, re-establish the United States as a country, and solve the mystery of what happened, or as Kripke described it, “just a really rollicking, emotional, character-based saga.”

The Epic Nature of the Journey

What gives the show legs and makes it great, Kripke said, is that “different characters are at cross-purposes in terms of their motivations. Charlie wants to get her brother back. They want to turn the power back on, which is very complicated and difficult. More and more of these resistance groups start rising up against the militia. So it’s great because there’s a lot of different storylines we can play that are all very visceral.  Not any one of them is complicated or confusing. It’s just about freedom, family and restoring society.”

In fact, he sees it as a Joseph Campbell epic quest type of story, like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or even Wizard of Oz and The Odyssey.

Dealing with the Mystery

Billy Burke as Miles
(Bob Mahoney/NBC with
permission)

But what about the blackout itself? “We have flashbacks in very episode which are these amazing kind of… I call them epi-shots of adrenaline, because it’s harrowing,” Kripke said. “Because there wouldn’t be food and water and society would fall—they’re predicting within 5 days….” Because he didn’t want to make a series like The Road, he set it 15 years later so he “could put the purge in the backstory of the show. A lot of things are worse, a lot of things are better.” The purge “could influence your characters rather than having to live with it minute by minute because that’s – look, it’s exciting, but the purge is not destination television. It’s a pretty depressing thing. So, for me, it’s a show that’s supposed to be fun and have a lot of light and adventure to it.”

He also promised not to keep people hanging on the constant mystery. “I’m not a huge fan of the endless mystery,” he said. “I like to ask a bunch of questions and then answer them and have those answers expand and lead to bigger questions…. There’s gonna be a solid narrative drive through the first season where you’re gonna feel like we’re moving the football forward…. We’re not gonna be coy or really hold off on things. We’re gonna move forward. We have the answers.”

JD Pardo as Nate & Billy Burke as Miles
(cr. Bob Mahoney/NBC with permission)

Kripke promised that they were going to give those answers, but as with any real drama the answers keep making the problem worse and worse. “I think what makes especially genre shows—you look at a show like Lost, for instance, which is the gold standard of a show like this— and those are character dramas, those are about the people. People think the island is interesting, but you watch Lost for those people. And that’s what I’m really focusing on here. This is a show about these characters and who they are and what we surprisingly reveal about them and just about this family trying to reunite. For me, that’s just as important as turning the power back on.”

Another Multiple Year Plan?

Considering that with Supernatural, Kripke had a five-year plan, it was logical to ask him how far out he had mapped the storylines of Revolution. “I’m a very anal individual,” he admitted, “so I like to know answers and I like to have a plan…. At this very early stage of the game, I have a rough shape of 3-4 years with the ability to go beyond that. I certainly know what the first season is going to be. What’s great about this show is that it’s a whole world. And even though the first season takes place in this country called the Monroe Republic, that’s not to say it’s the only country in North America. There are whole other places to go and whole other horizons to explore. My last show, I was kind of infamous for having a 5 year plan, which was all well and good till we got to season 6. I really learned from that mistake. And I’m not gonna make that mistake again, if, knock on wood, we go that far… Five year plans have their fallibility.”

Tracy Spiridakos as Charley
(cr. Bob Mahoney/NBC with permission)

And the most important question of the day for me was whether the amazing writer/director Bob Singer would be involved in this project with him, like he was on Supernatural? “As much as I would love to have him, he’s busy with Supernatural.

He’s staying on—full executive producer—Supernatural. The minute I can get him, he’ll be directing episodes for Revolution. Ah, no, full time on Supernatural.”

 

Check out Revolution on NBC on Mondays at 10 pm ET/PT.