It’s time for another conference call. This time it was for another new NBC drama called The Black Donnellys. That’s the show that takes over the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip timeslot of Monday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT. On this call, press from around the world got a chance to interview the Academy Award winners, and creators/executive producers of the show, Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco.
The Black Donnellys is about an Irish family living in New York in a crime-ridden neighborhood. The Donnelly family includes four brothers who are very close and protective of one another. Filmed in New York City, this gritty and hard-hitting drama is loosely based on the background of Bobby Moresco, one of the series’ executive producer-creators. The other executive producer/creator, who also directed The Black Donnellys pilot, is Canada’s own Paul Haggis. Moresco and Haggis are the Academy Award winning co-writers of Crash.
Paul Haggis (Executive Producer/Writer/Director) –
On March 5, 2006, Haggis became the first person in the history of the
Academy Awards to write two back-to-back Best Picture Winners, for Crash and the previous year’s winner, Million Dollar Baby. Before that Haggis created a variety of shows for television; his favorite being the critically acclaimed CBS series EZ Street. Although the series was short-lived, it still routinely turns up on critics’ Top Ten lists. The New York Times recently named it one of the most influential TV series of all time, saying “without EZ Streets, there would be no Sopranos.”
Bobby Moresco (Executive Producer/Writer/Director) –
Besides his work on Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and the TV show EZ Street, he also had a hand in Heat. Born in New York City in 1951 and raised in the Hell’s Kitchen district of Manhattan, Moresco began studying acting with the widely respected Wynn Handman and Peggy Fuery, founders of The American Place Theatre and Loft Theatre, respectively. Around that time, Moresco opened The Actor’s Gym in New York and moved the company to Los Angeles in 1978. Over the years, Moresco has written, produced and/or directed over 35 theatrical productions. In 1998, he co-created and executive produced the critically acclaimed series Falcone, based on the movie Donnie Brasco which was nominated for two Emmy Awards.
Here are the highlights of what was said in this conference call for The Black Donnellys with Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco…
Having won an Academy Award, was there any reservation about going back to television where you guys started? Paul Haggis: We figured we would never win another one, so we thought we should get back to what we did best and it’s going good so far. Bobby Moresco: If ever we were going to go back to TV, it would have been for this show. PH: Yeah, it was something that Bobby and I really loved and something we wrote in 1996, and when we had the opportunity to do it we both jumped on it. BM: Exactly, we never thought twice.
Bobby, a lot of times you described having grown up in the “Hell’s Kitchen” area of New York City, and I wonder if you would just elaborate on that a little bit. Was your childhood a lot like the Donnellys? BM: Well, first of all, I want to make it clear that this is not a biography. This started out with Haggis and I sharing stories, when we were doing EZ Street, about growing up in “Hell’s Kitchen”. We created a fictional world, which should be made clear too. But having said that I was one of those guys who was out in the streets. I had five brothers growing up. I spent a lot of my life trying to understand how people that you love and respect and honor can do monstrous things and become monsters, but then be the people that you thought you loved, and that’s a strange dichotomy to try to get hold of. You know, we were totally involved in the Irish world. My dad was a Longshoreman, my mom’s family was in construction, and all those people that you guys read about were friends and family back then. Together with Paul, I thought we found a great fictional world and fictional setting and a lot of fictional characters that are based in real life.
You said before that you started writing the show in 1996, that’s when EZ Street was airing. Was this something that was pitched for CBS at the time? PH: Yeah, this was a follow-up to EZ Street, and it was something that we were going to do then, but then EZ Street got cancelled so that wouldn’t have been the right time. After that, it was something we tried to do it with CBS over the years, but it just wasn’t a fit for them, so we sort of gave up trying about five years ago.
Have you learned anything now from the failure of EZ Street? PH: I don’t think we learned a damn thing. You know, at the time, we were told, “Don’t you guys get it? No one wants to see a continuing story over 24 episodes”…and now, people say, “Don’t you get it? The only thing people want is that this is for 24 episodes.” So we didn’t learn a damn thing, we just did the show exactly as we would have done it then.
Can you talk about the differences in doing a TV show as opposed to a movie? BM: It’s a huge mistake to think that you should approach the writing for television differently than for a movie. You approach everything the same amount of craft, the same amount of intensity, and the same amount of need for character and plot and story. Form may change a bit, but if anything else changes it’s a big mistake.”
Is it possible that the narrator, Joey “Ice Cream”, could be leading us in the complete opposite direction, since he’s such a bullshit artist? PH: It’s more than possible. I mean that’s what we want you to think. Why are we believing a liar like this? It’s fascinating because it’s something we want to explore and that’s something you do explore a lot in movies and television shows. BM: Emotionally, we’re dealing with something truthful in both character and the story. PH: And that’s what we want to do exactly. We want to sometimes tell a deeper truth than what was the factual truth for the moment whether Joey “Ice Cream” was there or not. He seems to know what’s going on, but what are his motivations? I mean, that’s something we certainly explore as we go along.
Americans may not know this, but in Canada there was a real family called the Donnellys and the real Black Donnellys were some of the most gruesome members in Canadian history. Why did you decide on that title for the show? PH: I mean, there was an emotional truth that we wanted to use. When I told Bobby the story of The Black Donnellys, we thought that was intriguing. There are many themes. You usually want to choose a title that is not literal, but this one is. The original title of this was actually “The Truth According to Joey Ice-Cream”, but Kevin thought that was just a tad esoteric. So we thought “What else? What is it that we have, it’s called the The Donnellys,” and we’d always thought of this and we’d played with themes that came out of that massacre. And as a result we then came up with “The Black Donnellys”. We thought that sounded great. But there was something about the level of intolerance in that community and the fact that the bad folks were easily pointed to and they said they were the bad people and we were the good people, and then the good people then massacre the bad people. This speaks to what we’re doing here because we’re trying to empathize with murderers, drug dealers in this. As you will see, this is definitely a tragedy that we’re telling. From the first frame, you can tell that this is not going to end well for anybody, but how will it turn out?
This is very action-packed show. How many of the fights are going to be booze induced? And do the brothers have a drink of choice? PH: Well, how many brothers are booze induced? Well, Bobby – I guess, all of them? No, that’s not the case. I mean, tempers flare constantly on this show, the brothers are always fighting with themselves or others. Do they have a drink of choice, Bobby? BM: No, I don’t think they do, and I don’t think we can point to any. But Paul is absolutely right. Sometimes booze is involved, sometimes booze isn’t involved.
It seems that you showed a hybrid of your experiences growing up in New York set in a modern backdrop of New York. Which generation are you aiming for, are you aiming for the good old generation or the newer generation in terms of your audience? BM: That’s a good question. Haggis and I took a lot of the experiences in characters that I knew growing up and then turned them more inside out, and threw them into the mix to create a fictional world of characters in the story. PH: And for that reason, we decided to create a fictional neighborhood, and you’ll see that we have elements of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, and made it all look like one neighborhood. That seems very similar to what we did with EZ Street in which we took portions in Detroit and Chicago and L.A., and made a city that you couldn’t recognize. BM: As for time period, you shouldn’t quite be sure when it takes place. You just know it’s contemporary, but we want it to feel universal and timeless as well.
Can you talk a little bit about switching gears and stories from week to week, and how you’re able to do that as a writer? PH: I think we just look for great stories, you know, great dilemmas. I mean we tried to put our characters into situations where we wouldn’t want to be in and then help them make choices that we wouldn’t ever want to make, and that’s what we always try to do.
why is it that you think that the public is so drawn to this gang-based story or mobster-type story? What is the common denominator there? PH: Oh, I don’t know. I mean we’re drawn to a lot of stories and this is one is more about the journey that these boys face and less about the crime involved. We like the idea of doing a “coming of age” story within this sort of this world where crime is the easiest way to make a living. And that’s what appealed to us. Bobby, is there anything with you? BM: Yeah. You know, I think that’s absolutely correct. I think it’s a mistake to think that somebody wants to write a mobster story. What you write about is people you care about in emotional situations.
Is it great to have this group of young actors, in which you can take them so many other places because of their age and the freshness of them? BM: Oh, yeah, I think that’s the most fun out of all it. Am I wrong, Paul? PH: I hate them. They make me feel old and fat… BM: Exactly. PH: …and bald. BM: Exactly. PH: It really is a lot of fun because they’re just willing to trust and the actors will just jump in and do anything we’re asking to do and try. That’s what you want as the director, as the producer, as the writer, these people to just say, “Okay, let’s just try that.” They’re very brave.
How important is it for you to counterpoint the youthful stars with the more experienced supporting actors? BM: Oh, I don’t even think you think about that. You create a character that serves the story and then you go from there. I don’t think we ever thought from the moment we saw these guys in the audition process that weren’t going to depend on them. I mean, if the younger guys need “help” in some way, then the older guys are terrific. PH: I knew it would be almost impossible to find these group of kids, who were appealing, good actors, and who looked like they were from this neighborhood. So I went away to Italy and I let Bobby do it. He and Alexa Fogel and Mark Harris and Jeff King all sat down and tried to cast this thing. And they emailed me choices, and then I looked at auditions over the internet. It was great. In the end and very quickly, we found one actor for each role who was just perfect, and we presented that one actor for each role to the network, and they said “yeah” and that was it. That’s the same thing we were looking for in the adults. There are usually two choices. There are many good actors but there’s always one actor who came in and just embodied that role and whether that one had a lot of experience or whether they were fresh and unknown, we just said, “That’s the person.” BM: Yeah, absolutely. And to go along with that, Paul and I, we’re really lucky enough and fortunate enough to have Kevin in the studio really supporting all the choices we’ve made creatively. PH: Yeah, he was fabulous.
This could easily be an R-Rated film as opposed to a TV series. What were some of the challenges in adapting it for a network television where shows like Brotherhood and The Wire and The Sopranos can really go for it on HBO? PH: You know, I haven’t seen the Brotherhood, but The Wire is a magnificent show, it’s a great show, it’s one of my favorite shows on television. It is obviously always a challenge with the language, but that was basically it. And we weren’t even challenged that much for it, Bobby? BM: I don’t think so either, and there’s the case to be made that it helped. When you write a good poem, if you’re writing a sonnet, you have to stick to the form. You know, if you’re writing a Haiku, you have to stick to the form. It serves you to be more creative there. Being constricted to form can be very helpful at times. PH: It’s obviously always a challenge with the language, but that was basically it. We got to tell all the emotional truth. I was worried about that, I got to tell you. I never thought that we would be introducing this on network television. But they really gave us a lot of freedom, and we tried to be responsible with that.
For years, we really never heard so much about Irish thugs or mobsters. It was mainly Italian-Americans. But now we have Brotherhood and characters in The Departed. Why do you think there’s this interest now? PH: I don’t think it’s an interest. I don’t know. We wrote this back in 1996. It was like last year with the Oscars, when people were asking us why is it that all these films have social significance this year? It’s impossible to tell because all those projects, we created three, four, five years ago.
Bobby, you talked earlier about growing up in this type of environment. What was the next step when you really decided to become a writer? What lead you in that direction as you were growing up? BM: Well, there were two things. The first was, you know, when I grew on Tenth Avenue and 53rd Street, we were right in the middle, three blocks to the east with Broadway, two blocks from the West of the Docks. My father was a Longshoreman, everybody worked in construction. Everybody is getting involved crime or they were cops. So it was real. You could either become good, you can be involved in crime, become a cop, work in the docks or walk east to Broadway. I liked that way. I started taking some acting classes when I was 17. That changed my life, and just totally changed my entire outlook on everything and I had to reinvent it somehow and try to understand it.
– The Black Donnellys airs on NBC on Monday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT. – The Black Donnellys airs on the Global network in Canada on Monday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
