Most probably knowBryan Cranstonas one of the great TV & film actors – Walter White, Hal Wilkerson, Dalton Trumbo… Yet Cranston has also begun to build up his resume as a producer, forming the production company Moon Shot Entertainment. These past two years the company has released an eclectic slate of TV shows – the comic-noirSneaky Pete, the Phillip K. Dick dystopian anthologyElectric Sheep, and now the family dramedyThe Dangerous Book for Boys. For Cranston: this is exactly the point – to avoid any easy labeling or pigeonholing, much as he has as an actor.
The Dangerous Book for Boysspins the award winning non-fiction book into a narrative series focusing on the misadventures of prepubescent Wyatt McKenna (Gabriel Bateman) in the aftermath of his father’s passing. The show mixes reality –the economic and emotional strain of loosing a father– with the whimsical interludes of Wyatt’s own imagination, where his father (Chris Diamantopoulos) still lives and doles out sage advice. It makes for an intriguing combo of melancholy & comedy, the rare ‘children’s show’ to explicitly deal with real-world issues.
In the following interview with co-creator Bryan Cranston, he discusses developingThe Dangerous Book For Boys, balancing the various tones, and how the series changed when NBC dropped out & Amazon picked it up. For the full interview, read on below.
Collider: I don’t think you could have three more different shows thanThe Dangerous Book for Boys,Electric DreamsandSneaky Pete…
Bryan Cranston: That’s how you do it. It’s just different parts of my personality. I don’t always want to be on the vanguard of crafting new dystopian worlds, but I do like that so it’s there. Then there’s also the part of me that goes, ‘No - I like simplicity and sweetness.’ That’s whereTheDangerous Book for Boyslives. Everything I do I want people to go, ‘How can we peg Moon Shot Entertainment?’ And you go, ‘you may’t.’
When did you first become familiar withThe Dangerous Book for Boys?
Cranston: Anna Gunn gave me the book.
Why did she give you that book?
Cranston: She said, “The book reminds me of you.” So I read it all the way through and just thought it was amazing. But there’s no story there so you may’t make a show out of it. Then when Sony said they have the rights to that book, I went, ‘I know that book.’ They said, ‘Yeah, Our drama department has the rights to it. Can you come up with a story idea?’ I thought about a bunch of different scenarios but nothing was really working. So after three or four weeks of trying to think of different ways to get it, I said - ‘I don’t think so. It’s not for us. Maybe someone else can think of a way to crack that story.’
So I completely forgot about it. Just dropped it out of my consciousness, but it was still in my subconscious. I went running along the Charles River in Boston one day and then a lightning bolt, BOOM, I literally stopped and figured [the show] out. I realized it’s not a drama, it’s a family adventure. It’s fun. It’s heartfelt. It’s emotional. It’s honest. It’s the life of this family. You’re going to have to invest in these characters and root for them. Then we thought of a hook that every episode has a familiar family problem and all the fantasies offer a possible solution.
How did you settle on that hook?
Cranston: Once I cracked the general setup, I started talking with my partner James Degus about it. We started adding more and more to it. I knew we needed someone else to come in and be a partner, so I contacted Greg Mottola - a dad himself – and pitched him the idea. He gravitated towards it and then the three of us started drawing it out, creating the structure and the hook. Then we got Michael Glouberman, who I knew fromMalcolm in the Middleas a strong comedy writer, and got him on board. So the four of us started working, and pitching and debating…
What is the balance between comedy and drama on the show? Is it comedy first, drama second or vice versa?
Cranston: All we need to focus on is telling the story as honestly as possible – so some episodes might be more comedy than drama and then the next episode might be a little bit more drama than comedy. Amazon has given us permission to let it be whatever it’s supposed to be.
When you’re breaking each episode, are you starting with a particular lesson or set piece you want tie in?
Sometimes we have an image of a great fantasy sequence. Then we think how could we reverse engineer it to find a legitimate story to get to that. Or sometimes a writer will come in and say this happened and we’ll go, ‘Let’s use that experience.’ So then it becomes what fantasy can support that and have a connectivity to an every day problem?
I know you were developing the show originally for NBC. What does that do – when it changes to Amazon?
Cranston: I suppose if we had gotten further with NBC, we would have found out how much tolerance they had for certain aspects of it. We got an inkling that they were a little nervous about the dad being dead. They asked if that was necessary and we told them it was. We don’t call this a comedy. It’s more of a family adventure show. It’s often very emotional and fun and relatable. We got to a certain point and NBC decided it might not be right for them, so they let it go. And Amazon was there to pick it up and told us, ‘Do what you want. We don’t want to change anything. Go make the show you want to make.’
Do you prefer developing for the streaming services? Because I know onSneaky Petethat was also developed for network before switching to Amazon…
Cranston: It started on CBS.
Yeah – that seems to be the pattern.
Cranston: When I’m on stage, I rely on the audience to tell me what the play is about. I communicate with them and they communicate back to me. It’s an ebb and flow relationship. I think it’s the same with creating a show and pitching it to networks. The networks will tell you if they’re right for it, if they’re getting the show. Are we always going to agree on every aspect of the creative process? Absolutely not. You’re a fool if you expect to agree on everything. But that’s not the point. The point isn’t to agree on everything. The point is to find consensus. Fight for the things you really need and acquiesce on the things you don’t. HadSneaky Petestayed at CBS, I still think it would have been a great show – just a little different. Had NBC keptTheDangerous Book for Boys, it would have been a little different but definitely still strong. I’d like to do a broadcast show… but I don’t know if my sensibilities are in line with what broadcast is. I say that but the sensibilities are constantly changing. They’re never in concrete. It’s malleable.
