Newsday
The Arizona Republic
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/
When Jeffrey Donovan first auditioned for the role of Michael Westen, a new TV spy, he didn't go for the intense, Kiefer-Sutherland-on-"24" sort of thing. Donovan's take was more laid-back. Sarcastic. Been there, done that.In an instant, "Burn Notice" creator Matt Nix knew he'd found his star.
The last thing Nix wanted was for his hero to be, well ... "spy-ish." He envisioned something un-"Alias," a non-"24."
"Those shows (depict) a very dramatic world," Nix says. "People run around saying" - he adopts a deep, basso acting voice - "'You don't understand! We're up against the hugest organization in the world, and we're all going to die unless we do this thing in the next 42 minutes!' "
Back to regular Matt: "On Burn Notice,' we kinda go in the opposite direction."
Like in the pilot, when Michael is stuck between two thugs in the back of a Mercedes. "You know, Mercedes makes an SUV now," he says. "Big backseat ... surprisingly affordable, too."
Michael Westen is no James Bond. He's Stephen Colbert armed with sunglasses, a hot babe sidekick and perhaps some combustible homemade thermite powder, outwitting villains with levity as well as pyrotechnics.
The series, which debuted on the USA Network last summer, was a hit. And Thursday, after nearly a year, "Burn Notice" returns for a second season (at 10 p.m. EDT), as quirky and clever as ever.
The premise remains the same. Michael, a former agent, is stuck in his hometown of Miami, broke and blacklisted. (In spyspeak, a "burn notice" is like a pink slip, but worse.) He's desperate to figure out who "burned" him and why, but he also needs to pay the rent. So he dabbles in crime-solving, helping folks in need using Special Ops training and assistance from Sam (Bruce Campbell), a semiretired colleague, and Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), a sultry, ruthless IRA operative - and Michael's ex-girlfriend.
Each episode is like "Spying for Dummies," with Michael explaining how to tail a suspect, use a flash grenade, escape from a house when all exits are blocked. (Bust out the air-conditioning unit, where the wall is weakest and when nobody's watching.) Nix prides himself on getting the details right, and even has a private intelligence operative on staff.
When Donovan was first cast, he read up on spies and intelligence. "I don't remember the (book) titles," Donovan notes. "Or made me forget - by some brainwashing message embedded in the text," he jokes. "They all spoke about the same thing. How boring and long the waiting is between actual missions. Kind of like sitting on a movie set."
The show revels in that kind of reality. Michael's world is shaken, not sugarcoated.
Take Madeline, his manipulative, chain-smoking mother (played by "Cagney & Lacey" vet Sharon Gless). "It's a little weird to have a spy show with a mom on it," Nix admits. "But this is a show where all the hard things are easy and the easy things are hard."
Thug in the doorway? No problem. But a nagging mom? That 007 never had it so tough.
And then there's the ex.
"I love how outspoken and unrestrained Fiona is," Anwar says of her character. One minute she's pushing Michael to rig a bigger bomb - the next, to face his issues. He knows her well enough not to judge her by her slinky attire.
"We were shooting a couple weeks ago, and I had a micro mini on," Anwar says. "One of the writers said, Do you know you're gonna be loading and firing a shotgun? (Maybe) you should be wearing jeans.' And I was like, It's Fi.' He nodded and wandered off."
Hey, the show tweaks convention, but there's still got to be a sexy gal with a gun. Plus the requisite chases, the cool clothes, the muscle car (a 70s Dodge Charger).
In truth, "Burn" is a spy series moonlighting as a private-eye show - part "Rockford Files," part "MacGyver." The MacGyver act doesn't come naturally, Donovan admits. "I usually pick a project at home, research it on the Internet, tackle the job myself, screw it up, then call in an expert at twice the original cost to fix it."
But Donovan's flair for accents has encouraged the writers to create more scenes where Michael goes undercover. Over the hiatus, the actor boned up on dialects - and jujitsu, for good measure. (He already knows aikido and has a black belt in karate.)
"Michael runs around with a gun and there are explosions on the show," Nix says, "but the reason he defeats the bad guys always has to do with how smart he is."
It's the power of the brain over the bullet.
If that doesn't work, Fiona can always whip out a missile launcher from under her skirt. Now there's an ex a spy can count on.
Q&A: 'BURN'S' JEFFREY DONOVAN
by Rick Bentley - Jul. 7, 2008 12:00 AM
McClatchy Newspapers
Sharon Gless, Bruce Campbell, Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar
Jeffrey Donovan's character of Michael Weston on the USA Network series "Burn Notice" has the cool of James Bond and the handyman skills of MacGyver. Those attributes come in handy as Weston tries to find out why he was given a "burn notice," a term for when a spy has been blacklisted.
He's stuck in Miami without money or resources. His only help comes from an ex-spy (Bruce Campbell) and a gun-crazy ex-girlfriend (Gabrielle Anwar).
The second season of "Burn Notice" begins at 10 p.m. EDT Thursday. Donovan agreed to a debriefing about the new season in a telephone interview in late June. Here's what he had to say:
Q: You will film this new season during the rainy, hot summer in Florida. Was that because of the writers strike?
D: "The strike just delayed us a couple of months. It's difficult. We try to roll with it. If we're going to have this beautiful backstop then we got to just roll with the storm punches. And doing action in the humidity is a little tough. But I just try to stay in shape, eat a lot of yogurt and try not to hurt myself."
Q: This series could have been filmed in Los Angeles and the weather would not be as big a problem. Is it important this show shoots in Florida?
D: "I think that not only is it important for the show, it's important for Miami. We are the only show since Miami Vice' (1980s) to have a second season and that's a big deal for the economy down here, especially in this depressed real estate market. So the backdrop is important with the humidity and the heat, and the beach and the sun. I think it's really important for Miami itself."
Q: This character has been called the James Bond of America. Do you channel Bond or any other spy while playing this role?D: "Well I don't have the body and good looks of the James Bonds and, though I am a big fan of the Bourne Identity,' I don't have Matt Damon's chops and probably his intellect.
"So I don't think I'll ever be confused with anybody like really good. And as long as I kind of keep my rogue-ish slant on this role, I don't think it can be like anybody else."
Q: How will your relationship with Fiona (Anwar) change this season?
D: "Put in parentheses he chuckles loudly.' That's a crazy relationship that's going to have its ups and downs. And it's going to go left, right and all around, and it'll be exciting. Some of the episodes I actually don't read until I get on the day just so I can see what crazy thing she's going to do to me that day."
Q: You attracted a big enough audience to get a second season. Any pressure to make sure there is a third?
D: "The ratings are not up to me. They're up to the general public and if they go up and down, we're still going to do the same thing we did last year which was make the show we would want to watch. And that's what we're doing this year again. If people follow, great. If they don't, well we're going to still be proud of what we did."
BRUCE CAMPBELL TURNS UP THE HEAT
by Luaine Lee - Jun. 30, 2008 12:00 AM
McClatchy
It's a little difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys on USA's "Burn Notice," and that's one of the things that make the character-driven thriller unique.When star Jeffrey Donovan was cast as the spy who is driven in from the cold, he knew a lot about Bruce Campbell, who was to play his unkempt cohort, Sam.
"I knew of Bruce," says Donovan. "I actually had heard about him through a friend of mine who knew him. So I knew just of him, but that's not to say that I wasn't a fan of his because I don't actually know many actors - because I don't go to the movies and I don't watch television. But now that I've gotten to know him, I couldn't ask for a better costar. And I'm sure actors say that all the time, but they're lying. I know all of them. They're lying. And this is the truth. You can't ask for a better actor coming from his huge career, to come and grace us on this show has been just a blessing for us."
But Campbell, the veteran actor from shows like "The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr." and "Jack of All Trades," says he knew "jack diddley" about Donovan. In the case of "Burn Notice," which returns to USA with new episodes on July 10, it was a case of choosing the right man for the right job.
"The role was offered and I just did some research of who was involved and what their deal was because in television you're kind of trapped in an airless box, working very closely together with these people. And if the dynamics aren't right it can be a very trying situation," says Campbell.
"And so I just did enough research, to find out a little bit about this Donovan guy. My research, I think was successful in that it led me to the right direction and the right decision because I chose this show because of its unique nature. And what I also like about it, there's a retro feel to this show. There's a weird classic' feel to it. It's a little bit iconic. I like this show. I'm a fan of this show because I like the nature of it. It's not bitter. It's not jaded."
Campbell should know. He's been around the block more times than a school bus from as far back as his days with director-pal Sam Raimi and the "Evil Dead" movies. Campbell directed many episodes of "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys" in which he played the role of a villain, a character he repeated in "Xena: Warrior Princess.
He thinks episodic television hasn't changed much since his "Briscoe County" days 15 years ago.
"They usually pick seven or eight days that you get to make your movie. You either get a support crew to shoot stunts and carnage and mayhem, or you don't. Generally speaking, you're shooting between six and nine pages a day, which is really fast, really aggressive. And so those aspects really haven't changed. Somebody came across these genius amounts of days to make a TV show and everyone has stuck with that," he says.
"And so the actual process of shooting episodic has not changed that much aside from a second camera. I've noticed that pretty much two cameras are now standard whereas episodic I did years ago wasn't always as much as two cameras. But, you know, mechanically it's similar."
Campbell has become a cult favorite among fans and filmmakers alike. A known scene-stealer, his proclivity for snatching the limelight doesn't rattle Donovan. "Let me set the record straight," says Donovan. "You WANT Bruce Campbell stealing scenes on your show. I mean, you want that ... I'm the straight man, and you need someone like Bruce Campbell because he never does it so far that it detracts from the show or the scene, or the characters.
"It's a blessing that Bruce has stolen scenes in the past because it lends him an ability to come in here and do the same thing here. You know, it's awesome."
It was two other big TV stars who gave Donovan advice early in his career that helped form the pattern he followed from appearances on a soap to "Touching Evil" and now "Burn Notice."
Alison Janney ("Juno," "West Wing") and Anthony LaPaglia ("Without a Trace") costarred with Donovan in "View from the Bridge" in New York. "I knew they'd gone in and out of movies," says Donovan. "And I turned to them one day and said, Is there any difference?' They said, No. Truth, that's all it is.' (After that) it wasn't that hard for me to figure out how to do TV and film."
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