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View Full Version : How Frank Darabont wanted to open Season 2 of The Walking dead.



paranoid101
07-Jan-2012, 07:05 PM
All taken from aint it cool news here - http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52526


Dear Eric,

Sure, I’ll confirm that storyline. Why not? Big caveat here though:

CraveOnline is much mistaken in saying this was for a “web series.” This was never meant as a web gimmick, this was intended for use in the actual TV series. I wanted to kick off the 2nd season with the flashback episode Sam describes, which would have followed a squad of Army Rangers getting trapped in the city and trying to survive as Atlanta falls. 



The idea was to do this with a very focused “you are there” documentary feel. Not going all shaky-cam, but still making it a bit rawer and grainier than the rest of the show. We’d start with a squad of maybe seven or eight soldiers being dropped into the city by chopper. They have map coordinates they need to get to; they’ve been told to report to a certain place to provide reinforcement. It’s not a special mission, it’s basically a housekeeping measure putting more boots on the ground to reinforce key intersections and installations throughout the city. And we follow this group from the moment the copter sets them down. All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from “the city is being secured” to “holy shit, we’ve lost control, the world is ending.” Our squad gets blocked at every turn and are soon just trying to survive. I wanted to do a really tense, character-driven ensemble story as communications break down, supply lines are lost, escape routes are cut off, morale falls apart, leadership unravels, mutinies heat up, etc. (Yes, this approach owes a spiritual debt to a number of great films, including Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort.)

Along the way, I thought we could briefly dovetail this story with a few established characters from the show. Not to overdo that, mind you, because it could get silly and too coincidental if you load too much into that idea. But I thought it would be great to veer off on a quick narrative detour that brushes our soldiers briefly up against some people we know. Picture our squad arriving at a manned barricade where some civilians are being held back from leaving the city on shoot-to-kill orders to stop the spread of contagion, it’s a panicked high-intensity scene, and in this crowd of desperate people we find Andrea and Amy. The barricade gunners panic, the civilians start to get mowed down by machine gun fire, and in this melee the girls get pulled to safety by some old guy they don’t even know. It’s Dale. He’s nobody to them, just some guy who saw the opportunity to do the right thing and reacted in the moment. This would have been perhaps a minute or two of the episode, just a cool detour like the various outposts the soldiers encounter in Saving Private Ryan, but we would have witnessed the moment that Dale meets Andrea and Amy, seen where that relationship began. I also felt it would be a great way to get Emma Bell back into the series for a moment, because she was so wonderful and we were all so sorry that her character died and she had to leave the show. (Of course if this “brush with established characters” idea didn’t work in the script stage, I’d have tossed it out. You try a lot of ideas like that as you go, see how they play. But I thought this one stood a pretty good chance of being engineered to work well.) 



So the story follows these soldiers through hell as the city falls apart and the squad implodes, with Sam’s soldier being the main character and the moral center of the group. He becomes the last survivor of the squad, and he finally gets to the map coordinates they’ve been trying to get to from the start: it’s the barricade at the Atlanta courthouse intersection from the pilot where Rick later finds the tank. The soldier is still alive when he gets there, but he’s been bitten. He’s accomplished his “simple” mission, but he’s gone through seven kinds of hell to do it (including being forced to frag his squad leader), and now he’s dying. And he crawls off into the tank just to get off the street and under cover. As his fever builds and the poor guy starts to hallucinate, he pulls his last grenade and considers ending his life. He sets the grenade down on that shelf for a moment to reflect on all the shit and misery that brought him to this sad end-point of his life, and to dredge up the courage to pull the pin...but before he can act, the fever burns him out and he dies. 



The kicker comes in the last moments of this episode:



After the soldier dies this squalid, lonely death...and after a quiet lapse of time...we do a shot-for-shot reprise from the first episode of the first season: Rick comes scrambling into the tank to escape the horde...blows that zombie soldier’s brains out...now Rick’s trapped...fade out...the end.



The notion was to take the “throwaway” tank zombie Rick encountered in the pilot, and tell that soldier’s story. Make him the star of his own movie, follow his journey, but don’t reveal who he is until the end. The idea being that every zombie has a story, every undead extra was once a human being with a life of his/her own...was, in a sense, the star of his own life’s movie. And we’ve followed this one particular guy and seen how his life ended; we witness his struggles, see his good intentions and his failures, and we experience his godawful death in this tank. That’s why I cast Sam as that tank zombie in the first place instead of just casting some extra. I had this story in mind while filming the pilot, and I knew I’d need a superb actor to play that soldier when the time came.



And then starting with Episode 202, we’d be back with Rick’s group and back in step with the flow of the established story from last season.

I always had in mind to throw in a “wild-card” episode every season, maybe as a season opener or closer. Just a separate story more in the feel of an anthology series, one that appears completely off the track of the regular series but actually does wind up tying in somehow by the fade-out. They did that sort of thing on LOST on occasion, and I really respected it. It always seemed like a bold choice that trusted the audience and rewarded their loyalty with a totally unexpected surprise episode every so often.

That’s it from me. I hope things are well on your end.

Best,

Frank


Wow I would have payed good money to see that, sounds fantastic, maybe just maybe they could do it as a Web episode, but not holding my breath due to the money costs.

childofgilead
07-Jan-2012, 07:31 PM
This is why he was the heart of the show. Not crazy about the premise exactly, but just willing to show other stories and to give the show a wider scale and feel.

AcesandEights
07-Jan-2012, 08:11 PM
Sounds so cool!

I just wonder if it's the truth, kind of smells like sour grapes.

kidgloves
07-Jan-2012, 08:22 PM
I don't doubt thats what Frank wanted to do for one second. He is a HUGE loss to the series. HUGE.
Maybe someone will swallow their pride and reach further into their pockets and bring the guy back. Im not holding my breath though.
This is after all a business that uses an art form to make money. Especially television.

bassman
08-Jan-2012, 12:02 AM
I'm surprised to see Darabont finally speak out a bit. As kid mentions, he was a HUGE loss for this series. It's like kicking the only pilot out of the cockpit and hoping the plane doesn't crash. Here's hoping season three isn't a plane crash....

Thorn
10-Jan-2012, 04:05 PM
Glad we heard from him, and I can not say enough how much I would have loved this approach to this seasons start.

childofgilead
11-Jan-2012, 01:53 AM
Yeah..I watched this season's later episodes just out of habit honestly..I could care less where things go from here, I think he was the only thing keeping the show in a path..now that he's gone, I can't see the show achieving the quality of the first episode.

krisvds
11-Jan-2012, 04:59 AM
Hmmmm. It is sad to see a guy so passionate forced to leave his pet project. He was a perhaps a bit too ambitious I suppose.
Still not entirely sold on the 'wildcard' episodes though. The biggest strength of TWD is its character driven nature and I wonder if the viewer would be as emotionally invested in a character like the Tank guy than in any of the main cast by now? Especially in the 60 minute 'pilot' format?
The biggest problems the series face to me is
a) a lack of pace.
b) uneven writing. some characters are all over the place, most are very flat. The writing could be a whole lot better.
Still enjoying it though. I seriously hope the second part of this season does bring the fireworks and I don't mean zombie action alone.

Thorn
11-Jan-2012, 12:58 PM
The issue to me with any tv series is find in a writing team that is consistent, if you do not have a "main writer" and driving creative force that sits in on these writing meetings, and script treatment sessions you are going to see the up and down and inconsistent character portrayal, pacing, and direction as various writers all pull in different directions along their own path and according to their own vision.

Frank was a strong and respected force in the industry that commanded the respect of his peers.

I think the show will be fine without him, I do I just think it might take some time to recover from his absence. I am not one who is as frustrated with some at the shows pace, in fact I find I enjoy it most of the time. That said I do understand the concerns... what we want to avoid here is it becoming the A Team with predictable zombie encounters thrown in for gratuitous action wit ha lack of character development. I do not need 10 zombie kills and episode, I do need character development.

Somewhere there is a happy medium, and there is a way to take a season and put in peaks and valleys it does not need non stop action but must avoid stagnation.

krisvds
15-Jan-2012, 04:02 PM
More on the subject at IGN:
http://tv.ign.com/articles/121/1216568p1.html

a different take on the matter by Mazzara:
"Frank himself moved off of that storyline and said, 'Okay. That makes sense. Let's put it on the wish list.' The story was never outlined. It was never written as far as I know. It was never budgeted."

Neil
15-Jan-2012, 04:49 PM
The idea being that every zombie has a story, every undead extra was once a human being with a life of his/her own...
^ This! Absolutely this!

-- -------- Post added at 05:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------


I do not need 10 zombie kills and episode, I do need character development.

Somewhere there is a happy medium, and there is a way to take a season and put in peaks and valleys it does not need non stop action but must avoid stagnation.

Agreed! I'd also like to see more flash backs to the stories around the time of the outbreak and collapse! There's some good stories lurking in there, and it seems a shame to waste that opportunity!

Thorn
15-Jan-2012, 11:41 PM
^ This! Absolutely this!

-- -------- Post added at 05:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------



Agreed! I'd also like to see more flash backs to the stories around the time of the outbreak and collapse! There's some good stories lurking in there, and it seems a shame to waste that opportunity!

Totally, I was salivating at the flashbacks to Atlanta from Lori and Shane's view stuck where they were with a group of strangers on the road and how things were starting to unfold even then... would kill for more of that!

kidgloves
16-Jan-2012, 06:53 PM
Maybe an X files movie tie in deal?
That would be off the charts