PALEY CENTER FOR MEDIA, THE: PALEYFEST 2015: HOMELAND {LONG VERSION}
Summary
One in a series of evenings and special screenings presented as part of The Paley Center for Media's 32nd William S. Paley Television Festival in Los Angeles. Held this year at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, the festival celebrates the excellence and diversity of American television and is dedicated to television's creative community. This PALEYFEST 2015 opening night seminar honors "Homeland," the dramatic action series about troubled government agent Carrie Matheson and her fight against terrorism, inspired by the Israeli series "Prisoner of War." Host Maureen Reidy (president and CEO, The Paley Center for Media) offers opening remarks and brings moderator Julie Chen (moderator, "The Talk" and host, "Big Brother") to the stage. Chen introduces a series of clips from the show's recently-concluded fourth season.
Chen moderates the following panelists: executive producers/writers Meredith Stiehm, Alexander Cary and Chip Johannessen; executive producer/director Lesli Linka Glatter; executive producer/showrunner Alex Gansa; co-executive producer/writer Patrick Harbinson; composer Sean Callery; and cast members Maury Sterling (Max) and Claire Danes (Carrie Mathison).
The panelists touch on such topics as: Johannessen and Cary's departure from the show after season four; their trips between seasons to Washington D.C. to research the most up-to-date political topics; the decision to set season four in Islamabad and eventually stage an attack at the American embassy; Carrie's "authentic response to grief" in the wake of the death of Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis); Danes' interest in portraying Carrie as a sympathetic character while also exploring "the taboo of an unloving mother"; Stiehm's evolving opinions on the sexual relationship between Carrie and the teenage asset Aayan Ibrahim (Suraj Sharma); the memorable scene in the seventh episode in which a drugged Carrie has a vision of Brody, and the "closure" provided by his surprise return; how Callery scored the "funhouse ride" scene through Carrie's point of view and then removed the music for Brody's reappearance; praise for assistant editor Sarah Reeves' sound design on the same episode; the harrowing tarmac scene involving the prisoner-exchange of Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) in the ninth episode; the "exciting challenge" of visually transforming their shooting location of Capetown, South Africa into Pakistan; the writers' sense that killing off Fara Sherazi (Nazanin Boniadi) would be more emotionally powerful than killing Max; the show's many character deaths, including the much-delayed demise of Brody in the season three finale; the surprising reaction of real-life government officials to the death of CIA deputy station chief John Redmond (Michael O'Keefe); the complicated camera tricks used in the disturbing scene in which Carrie considers drowning her infant daughter in the bathtub; the death of actor James Rebhorn, who played Carrie's father Frank, and the decision to keep the character "alive" off-screen until the season finale; Danes' opinions on the romantic connection between Carrie and Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend); the "tremendous amount of debate" about the couple amongst the writers and repeated postponement of their first kiss; the writers' desire to humanize season four's villain, Taliban leader Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar), particularly through his intense conversations with Saul; suggestions about the meaning of the finale's climactic scene involving Saul and the "super-smart," possibly-traitorous Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham); and hints about the upcoming fifth season, which will be set in Europe two and a half years in the future and in which Carrie will no longer be an intelligence officer.
Questions from the audience and from Twitter and the PaleyFest app then lead to a discussion of the following topics, among others: the positive and negative effects of Carrie's mental health on her abilities as an officer; comparisons to Danes' character of gentle, tragic Beth March in "Little Women" (1994); their challenging eight- or nine-day shooting schedules; hints from real-life Washington officials about the current relevance of events in Syria and Iraq; Quinn's "epiphany" about his emotional state and need to leave the agency, and his attempts to bring Carrie along with him for less-than-magnanimous reasons; the apparent gender divide in reactions to the Carrie/Quinn romance, with women supporting it and men disliking it; the infamous "Carrie cry-face," dating back to Danes' role on "My So-Called Life"; Gansa's views of the degree of luck involved in any show's success; and tentative plans for the fifth season's premiere to air on the last Sunday in September.
Details
- NETWORK: N/A
- DATE: November 30, 1999 7:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:19:57
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 121868
- GENRE: Seminars
- SUBJECT HEADING: Asian American Pacific Islanders Collection
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Maureen Reidy … Host
- Julie Chen … Moderator
- Patrick Harbinson … Panelist
- Maury Sterling … Panelist
- Sean Callery … Panelist
- Meredith Stiehm … Panelist
- Alexander Cary … Panelist
- Chip Johannessen … Panelist
- Lesli Linka Glatter … Panelist
- Claire Danes … Panelist
- Alex Gansa … Panelist
- F. Murray Abraham
- Numan Acar
- Nazanin Boniadi
- Rupert Friend
- Damian Lewis
- Michael O'Keefe
- Mandy Patinkin
- James Rebhorn
- Sarah Reeves
- Suraj Sharma