It happens tonight, October 19, at 9:30 on CBS.

Photo: Robert Voets//CBS
©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: SF Universe

Now that we’ve all seen the Leverage episode, can you talk more about the incident you referred to on your blog?

Wil Wheaton: Yes, sure. We were shooting a bunch of footage for the security cams where you see Chaos outside. There’s that scene where you see Chaos standing outside Sophie’s apartment building, getting ready to take those flowers in, and we were shooting it in an actual apartment building, on a real street, with people walking around and somehow this woman got past our PAs. She was going into the building and she walked right up to me and wanted to see these flowers and who were they for, and could she smell them, and you know where did they come from, and I thought, well let’s see, if this was really happening, this guy would stand here and he would be charming and he would engage her and talk with her, and answer her questions and then just send her on her way to be as unremarkable and unmemorable as possible. So that’s what I did and played that out with her, and then she left and I looked around and went right into the building behind her.

Acting on a television show, you have to do the same beats over and over again and you kind of establish a rhythm and then stay with it so that you can get through and finish the day. It’s very rare that you get an opportunity to have something completely unexpected happen and just play with it and incorporate it as part of the reality of the show. Back in the old days, if we were filming on film, they would have cut the cameras immediately because it’s just too expensive to keep the film rolling. But we’re shooting on a Red camera, so that wasn’t even an issue at all. And it was a really fun, really memorable moment. In a filming experience that was just wall-to-wall awesome, that was one of the things that is really going to stay with me for a very long time.

These past few TV seasons, we’ve been seen a growing number of hero geeks from Hardison on Leverage, Chuck on Chuck, Rodney McKay on Stargate Atlantis — even Sam and Dean Winchester rely on their computer research skills to help save the day. Seems like it’s a great time to be a geek!

Wil Wheaton: One of my first columns at Suicide Girls was called “Have the Geek Inherited the Earth?” I examined that because I remember growing up and feeling like I was the only kid on my block and in my school that was into Star Trek and there were a few kids that were into Dungeons and Dragons but we were at a parochial school so it was something you had to really kind of keep on the down low as they say. I didn’t know anybody else that played the Ghostbusters soundtrack and recreated the entire movie from memory like I did, playing all the different characters and stuff. I was really a geek.

I remember I had one of those, here’s how computers work, pop-up books that I bought at a bookstore. I carried the thing with me everywhere I went and pretended that it was a laptop before laptops existed and I’d go to restaurants with my mom and she’d be like, ‘what are you doing?’ I’d be like, ’stop mom, I’m talking to Norad,’ because I had just seen War Games. And back then I felt like I was the only one and I endured the tormenting that we all endure in school, and felt like I was alone. If you fast forward to the last few years, because of the ubiquity of Internet culture and the ability for us to find other people who are like us, it doesn’t feel as lonely and it doesn’t feel as hopeless is it did in the 70s and early 80s.

ON CONVENTIONS AND SCI FI SEEPING INTO MASS CULTURE

You know, one of the reasons I love going to science fiction conventions and comic conventions is because I can find other people who are just like me and we are in an environment where not only is it OK to dress up in a costume, but you want to impress people with how hard you worked to put the thing together, and that’s awesome. That sort of thing didn’t really exist before. So I think it’s probably a little bit easier now, especially if you’re a kid growing up today and you watch Robot Chicken and then you find out that Seth Green who makes it loves the same things you do, it kind of takes the edge off a little bit. And I think that that does sort of like mitigate a little bit what the whole geek experience was like.

I think that with the advent of personal computers and the success of like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Batman reboots and things like that the giant conglomerates in the studios are realizing that there’s more of us than they thought and we’re now a viable market. So I guess it’s a very long way of saying that it’s probably a little bit easier now than it was you know when I was growing up, but I bet you if you were to find some of the kids who are teased today, and some of the kids who are still in school who are trying to get people together to watch Dr. Who, they would probably tell you that it sucks and that it’s hard, because I think that’s just kind of . .  the fires that forge geekdom are stoked by the cool kids, and I think that’s going to be like that forever. And I guess I just hope that it’s getting easier for people now than it was for me when I was a kid.

AND THE GEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

I remember when I started blogging in 2000 and all the traditional media, whatever you want to call it, were all sort of sneering at us like how dare you try to come and play on our baseball field. Your gloves are ugly and you’re fat and stink like manure and we were like, uh you know we’re doing the same thing it’s just in a different medium, but you enjoy that giant wooly mammoth, keeping standing in that tar pit, we’re going to be over here and I just think it’s great that we, who started this whole blogging thing, that we’ve carved out our own little section of the world and I’m so excited to be part of this.

You can keep up with Wil through his Twitter and his blog. Both are always worth the time spent reading them.

Leverage photos courtesy of TNT

Post from: SF Universe

CHAOS THEORY

In Leverage, you play a computer hacker called Chaos, this seems like the perfect role for you.

Wil Wheaton: I love my computer. I love the Internet. I would consider myself an early adopter of a lot of the Internet technologies that a lot of people take for granted these days. I was heavily involved in bulletin board culture before the Internet existed. I’ve been a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Free Software Foundation and I’m a vocal advocate for network neutrality and you know users rights and I’m one of the loud voices in the Anti-DRM movement. I absolutely love technology and, and it’s still a very, very big part of my life.

[However,] the extent of my illicit hacking activity probably starts and ends with the Activision video game Hacker on my old Macintosh in like 1984 or 1985. I was never a contributor but I read Frak religiously in the late 80s and right until the early 90s and it was not an especially long distance that I had to cover to get from myself to becoming Chaos. But I’ve never really engaged in anything that would, that would bring you down on the wrong side of the law.

On Leverage, we’ve seen Hardison do some pretty amazing things with just a computer and a wireless connection. How realistic is that?

Wil Wheaton: The technical aspects of Leverage, whether it’s the computer controlled mechanisms or it’s the slight of hand and pick pocketing or the standard grifting, is all backed up by a team of real life experts that really know that stuff inside and out because they’ve actually done it. You know Kevin Mitnick was on the set when we were doing a lot of our hacking stuff and I was like, wow, that’s like pretending to be a hockey player in front of Wayne Gretzky. I better make sure that I have all of my beats down, you know? But these guys, they’re not very different from the computer enthusiasts that I’ve known throughout my life. If you spend any time online and you are part of that, this culture that we’re part of, of course you know a guy like Hardison. He may not be turning on and off motion sensors remotely and moving the funds from a number of bank accounts around, but he is certainly sitting there quoting the crap out of obscure sci-fi movies and then being like physically wounded when nobody gets it.

How do Chaos’ skills compare to those of Hardison?

Wil Wheaton: Well, if you ask Chaos he would tell you that Hardison dreams of one day being half as competent and skilled and accomplished as he is. If you asked Hardison he would tell you that he thinks it’s just adorable that Chaos holds this opinion of himself and that’s part of what makes their relationship so much fun to create. It was really important to me when I was putting this character together and Aldis and I were rehearsing our scenes, that the audience get the sense that these guys are both at the absolute top of their game. And there’s a ton of really funny Fark-style trash talking that he and I engaged in that we just improvised that didn’t make it into the final cut of the show but I really hope finds its way to a DVD or something like that, because it’s all really, really silly stuff.

If you could be any character on the Leverage crew, who would you be?

Wil Wheaton: In real life, I’d like to be a guy like Eliot because he’s unstoppable. I’ve been a skinny nerd my whole life and I would love to finally be the guy that nobody can push around. As an actor, I would love to play a character like Nate Ford because he is so complex and so layered and so haunted and you know there are not a lot of actors who could do what Tim Hutton does with that character.

THE WRITER WITHIN

In addition to acting, you’re also an author.

Wil Wheaton: Yes I just recently published a book called Sunken Treasure that is a collection, of all the different things that I’ve done and it’s the first time that I published a book on demand online. I wanted to see if it was possible to do that and have it be financially viable and it’s been a runaway success that has totally exceeded what I thought it could ever possibly do. It’s been really fun to see that happen.

I have a couple of books coming out in the next very, very, very near future. One book is a collection of episode recaps and behind the scenes memories. It’s a humor book about my time on Star Trek The Next Generation that actually started out when I was a blogger for TV Squad. And that’s called Memories of the Future and that should be out really soon. And then I am putting together a short collection of short fiction that I’ve written.

Fiction is a new venture for you, isn’t it?

Wil Wheaton: I have wanted to write and release fiction for a really long time, but I’ve had to struggle overcoming the voices of self-doubt and uncertainty, taking the plunge out of the narrative nonfiction world where I feel very comfortable and I’ve found some measure of success. I’m sure that a lot of you who are writers know what I’m talking about where there’s that fear that like you know you’re going to be Carrie at the prom and they’re all going to laugh at you. So I am hoping that when this little collection of short fiction is published in the near future it doesn’t end with me covered in pig’s blood burning down a high school gym.

Have you ever considered writing for television?

Wil Wheaton: You know not really. I don’t know if that’s really right for me. I have spent a lot of time with TV writers and they have a stamina and a skill level that is just intimidating and blows me away. I don’t know if that’s something that I would be successful at if I tried to do it. And since I kind of don’t want to mess up a good thing, do you know what I mean? It’s just like, I feel like I’m playing the longest, tallest game of Jenga ever and every time I manage to stack a new block on top of the tower and it doesn’t fall down I’m like, oh thank God. You know so I don’t want to risk bumping the table.

Come back tomorrow when Wil talks about life as a geek, his love of scifi conventions and about a strange incident that happened while shooting Leverage.

Wil’s episode of Leverage, “The Two Live Crew Job” airs tonight at 9:00 on TNT.

Photos: TNT

Post from: SF Universe

When Stewie can’t get his questions answered at at Star Trek: TNG reunion con, he takes matters into his own hands. Like any smart toddler, he builds a transporter and beams the entire cast into his bedroom for his own one-on-one Q&A.

It happens tonight on the Family Guy episode “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven.”

Executive Producer David Goodman sat down with reporters this week to talk the episode and how it came about.

Let’s start with the why:

Goodman: Actually, you could ask last week why did we do a Back to the Future reference when the movie is 30 years old. I think we’re fans, especially Seth and I are huge fans of Star Trek and we realize that although there had been plenty of episodic television that brought back the cast of the original series, there, in fact, had not been, in fact, I wrote one of them for Futurama, “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” where we reunited the original cast.

But Seth and I realized that nobody had really reunited the Next Generation cast and many of them had already appeared on our show. Next Generation was a hugely popular show in its day, I think they got 10 million or 12 million a week, I think we only get like 8 million, so it was a popular show. We make references to—we’re not necessarily going to reference the most current, although we do that. Our stock and trade is our own memories of shows we watched when we were younger.

How hard was it, gathering the cast together to do this episode?

Goodman: They were wonderful. Many of them had already done the show. I think we had, Patrick Stewart is in the family in a way, he does a recurring role on American Dad, and he’s been on Family Guy more than one once. We had Marina Sirtis, and Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn had already done the show. And the rest, Denise Cosby and Gates McFadden and Wil Wheaton were very game. They were fans of the show. Wil, when he came and did his voice, stayed for hours talking to the artists. It was not hard at all and they couldn’t have been nicer or more game to spoof themselves and have fun with this episode. We had a great time working with them. They were terrific.

Are there any “in” jokes, strictly for the fans?

Goodman: Well, there is a Tasha Yar joke in the episode. It’s pretty obvious from the minute she opens her mouth. And Denise was very game about it and anybody who is familiar with the series will get it right away. Anybody who’s not, it just plays as a joke on its own. And then for me, in fact, the scene that I’m in, it was the second scene that my character is in, I am pontificating about a piece of Star Trek, I’m having an argument with another Star Trek fan about a piece of what they call Star Trek cannon. And the argument is actually a real argument that Star Trek fans have, so I was very pleased with that.

Any concerns about mocking a show with such a devoted following?

Goodman: I think it’s easy to mock things that take themselves too seriously. I think again, Star Trek, it’s both wonderful and pompous at the same time. I really am a die-hard Trekkie, but there are moments in Star Trek where it takes itself very seriously.  And in fact, any kind of science fiction show where you have somebody in makeup playing an alien, that’s going to be easy to make fun of, even if it’s done perfectly.

Watch Family Guy tonight, March 29 at 9:00 on Fox with guest voices include Patrick Stewart, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton, Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes.
©2009 FOX BROADCASTING. CR: FOX

Post from: SF Universe

Lending their voices and likenesses will be Patrick Stewart, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton, Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes. Now that’s what I call a reunion.

Watch for the episode March 29 at 9:00 on FOX.

Photo: FOX

Post from: SF Universe

“Paradise” — Agent Hotchner (Thomas Gibson, left) speaks with a motel manager (guest star Wil Wheaton, right) about a series of staged car accidents that may hide the other crimes of a serial killer, on CRIMINAL MINDS, Wednesday, October 22 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS. ©2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: SF Universe

“Paradise” — Wil Wheaton (Stand By Me, Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest stars on the CBS series CRIMINAL MINDS, on the CBS Television Network. (Sorry, but I couldn’t find the date for this.)

Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS. ©2008

Post from: SF Universe

The episode will also be a reunion between Lloyd and his former Taxi co-star Judd Hirsch who plays Don and Charlie’s father in the series.  Look for it to air on November 23.

Take a look at the pics.

Larry Fleinhart (Peter MacNicol), Ross Moore (guest star, three-time Emmy Award winner, Christopher Lloyd, “Taxi,” “Back To The Future”) and Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch)

Wil Wheaton (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) guest stars as Miles Sklar

Photos: Cliff Lipson/CBS

Post from: SF Universe