FROM THE TCAs: HAWAII FIVE-0 panel w/Alex O’Loughlin & Scott Caan

Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan field questions from reporters earlier today.

The Hawaii Five-0 panel was held earlier today at the Beverly Hilton hotel as part of the CBS TCA summer press tour. The following is the transcript (provided by CBS) of today’s panel featuring stars Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan and Executive Producers Alex Kurtzman and Peter Lenkov.

QUESTION:  Alex and Scott, when you’re taking roles that are this iconic, where do you guys start? Because obviously this is a major reboot of the characters’ histories, for a beginning.  Do you go back and look at the old show?  Do you just start from the script you’re given and just take it from square one?

SCOTT CAAN:  I purposely didn’t go back and look at too much of the old show.  I wanted to start fresh, and I didn’t want to have any old ideas.  I just kind of wanted to start fresh.  So no, I didn’t do any of that.  I think Alex did a little bit more of that. He’ll tell you about it.

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  Well, I remember the old show from when I was a kid.  I mean, if you can remember, the old show was taken off TV 40 years ago.  You know, it started over 50 years ago, and there’s been a lot of changes in television and in the way we act stylistically and with technology and with what we can do with the money that we have with special effects and stunts and all the rest of it.  So it’s not a remake.  We’re not kind of picking up where they left off.  It’s a reboot, and the characters are very different.  My character, Steve McGarrett, is — inthe old show, you didn’t know much about the character that Jack Lord played, whereas in the pilot on our new show, you learn a lot about my Steve McGarrett.  And I didn’t look to that — I didn’t look to that for — to make decisions.  I just did my character work based on the script that these guys wrote.

Kurtzman, O'Loughlin, Caan and Lenkov discuss HAWAII FIVE-0

QUESTION:  Alex, you’ve been through a couple rounds with CBS now.  Would it be fair to say you feel more confident this time around?

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  Yeah, I do.  I — I don’t want to take anything away from the other shows I’ve done. I’ve worked with some incredible people and some wonderful showrunners and some — well, “Moonlight,” I don’t know if I ever met the showrunners.  There were about 17 of them.  But the other shows were great in their own ways.  But the thing is there’s a reason things either work or don’t work in television.  And I don’t know what the answer is.  I just sort of keep blundering along to the next thing and hoping.  But this has — the team behind this, I mean, the two men here who are at the helm of this show, Peter and Alex, and the writing staff that we have, it just feels – everyone feels so capable.  There’s also something – I don’t know.  Like I saw the pilot.  I read the pilot, I did the pilot, and I saw what they did with it.  And there’s something special about it.  So I mean, if this one doesn’t go, I’m completely bewildered.  I have no idea how television works at all.

Scott Caan, Daniel Dae Kim, Alex O'Loughlin and Grace Park in Hawaii Five-0's pilot

QUESTION:  For Scott.  Scott, maybe it was just me, but it seemed to me that, more than any other time I’ve seen you, this role reminded me of something your dad might have done.  Were you conscious that this might be more reflective of some of his work in the past?  Were you conscious of that?

SCOTT CAAN:  I don’t think so.  I mean, I think originally when they talked to me about doing this show, I didn’t know if I particularly wanted to get involved in doing TV.  And I read it, and immediately it was like, “Yes, this is something I want to do.” And I think that I was able to do better work on this than I had done in the last ten years in movies.  And I think it’s just — you’re getting to see a little more of my personality, and a little more of what I can bring.  And I guess that’s going to come from, you know, someone I come from.  So I guess it’s just a coincidence.

QUESTION:  In the original show, Danno, very much the sidekick, sort of off to the side.  McGarrett gets to do everything.  Here it seems like more of a buddy piece.  Was that by design?  Was that just you seeing what Scott was doing in the pilot?  Can you talk a little bit about that?

Having the show set in sunny and warm Hawaii should keep shirts off once in a while, right?

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  Who’s the question directed to?  I’m sorry?

QUESTION:  The producers.

ALEX KURTZMAN:  Go ahead.

PETER LENKOV:  Well, I think, for me — when I sort of like dove into this thing and talking to Alex about what made the original show so good and so memorable was the cases week to week.  I think what we wanted to do was really go into these characters, but we felt that — we felt we needed McGarrett to play off somebody.  And I think when we started to think about the Danno character, the Danno character really felt like it would be a good foil in some ways, a good – you get some good drama out of the relationship if you have someone who is a fish out of water.  So really by design originally, it was that these two guys would be front and center in the show, McGarrett clearly leading the unit and Danno being his right-hand man, but really being an equal in terms of his experience and what he brings to the table.  So really, yes, by design it was built that way.

QUESTION:  For the showrunners, production question. You have some really beautiful, beautiful footage of Hawaii and people surfing, kayaking, and so forth.  Do you have a dedicated second-unit crew that is just out there shooting all sorts of stuff all the time, or do you buy other existing footage?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  That is all original footage.  Hawaii is the fifth character on the show.  Hawaii is the fifth Beatle.  And we knew that in order to make that personality come across, it wasn’t about finding stock footage from something else that existed, which I think would have certainly been the cheaper choice. It was about raising — keeping the quality level the same and making sure that we found moments that would be very specific to the identity of Hawaii.  And what it really meant was going around and just carrying around a camera and finding little honest moments and waiting for them.  So we did have a very dedicated second unit on the pilot that was just looking for those kinds of things.

PETER LENKOV:  And still for the series, we actually have a dedicated camera man that’s going around with a Canon 5D that’s shooting second unit as we’re shooting the first unit.  So we’re building a library of stock footage as we sort of shoot this show week to week.

QUESTION:  To follow on that, in the original ‘Iolani Palace actually was production headquarters for it. It’s a place that’s a national treasure, and I can’t imagine that you’d be having camera crews and equipment traipsing on through there.  Are you using that just as a nod to the original?

PETER LENKOV:  Yes, actually, we are.  We’re shooting at another government building across the street. ’Iolani Palace now is — it’s actually — it’s closed to any shooting.  They don’t — they haven’t shot there, I think, since the original “Five-0.”  But we’re allowed to shoot outside the gates, and we’re going to use another exterior, which is directly across the street in front of the King Kamehameha statue.

QUESTION:  Because McGarrett’s office was in the palace.

PETER LENKOV:  Yes.  It was right down the hall from the governor’s office, actually.

QUESTION:  And “Lost” did a lot for Hawaii.  People went there.  The original “Hawaii Five-0″ also brought a lot of tourism there.  The cooperation that you’re getting from, be it, the Hawaii tourism or the film office, is that all dedicated to bring bodies to Hawaii?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  I think that Hawaii has been wildly receptive to bringing the show back.  I think that the original series is a real point of pride for them. It’s a badge of honor.  And I think that was something that we felt we had to respect and we had to — we had to make sure that the legacy endured in the right way. You know, I’m sure they’re happy that it will bring tourism — more tourism to Hawaii, but the nice thing about it is that I think people want to go to Hawaii on vacation anyway.  So it’s interesting to me; like, we were cutting the show, and one of the editors said, ”God, just” — she got this look on her face, and I said, “What?”  And she said, “I just feel like I’m on vacation when I watch this show.”  And I thought, ”That’s great.”  That’s exactly what you want, because hopefully at the end of a long day, you’ll come home and you’ll want to watch “Hawaii Five-0″ just to escape.

QUESTION:  We’ve seen in recent years the rise of this type of television that we call blue-sky television, in cable especially with “Burn Notice” in Miami.  And you talked a little bit about wanting people to feel like they’re on vacation when they watch this show, but the actual storylines and action seem pretty gritty and pretty intense.  So are we going to see more of that lighthearted stuff come out in the show, or are you just hoping that the locale is going to communicate that?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  A hundred percent yes, absolutely. The show is very lighthearted.  A lot of it has to do with the banter between Danno and McGarrett.  But the key for us is that the foundation had to be real.  One of the first questions, I think, people ask is, “Why do this show now?”  And the answer to that for us was that Peter walked in the door and said, “This is a show that is meaningful for me because it’s really about my relationship with my dad.  My dad and I used to sit down” –By the way, I’m telling your story, if that’s okay.

PETER LENKOV:  Sure.

ALEX KURTZMAN:  But, you know, he said, “This is about my relationship with my father.  We used to sit down every week, and we would watch this show.  And it became sort of how we bonded.”  And I think that in hearing the story, what struck us about it was that the spirit of “Five-0″ is about a family.  And for Peter to come in with a take that was so much about family felt like, “Okay, that’s a very good, honest, emotional reason to come into the show.”  And it ended up, I think, leading to the storylines that we came up with for the pilot: a guy who had sort of been running away from his family for a long time, coming back home, and then having to rediscover that.  And it felt like — you could make that about “Five-0,” or could you make it about something else.  But that was a good story.  That was just a good story.  It certainly was a story that I would be engaged by.  So the fact that we could put it in the context of “Five-0″ was even better.  And then it became about paying tribute to everything that the original “Five-0″ was really about.

QUESTION:  As a quick follow-up, Hawaii is also known for its ethnic diversity, but the panel isn’t particularly diverse.  So are we going to see the actors of color who have been cast have prominent roles on the show?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  Well, Chin and Kono certainly are and — absolute- — the answer is a hundred percent yes, we have -

PETER LENKOV:  We’re actually probably casting half of, week to week, our guest stars out of Hawaii.  It’s important to us for us to be real.  It’s important for us to feel authentic.  And right from the beginning, we — when we started shooting the first episode, we started going on weekends to these workshops, acting workshops, and making sure that we invest back into the community and get actors trained so we could utilize their talent and make it feel real.  Our big thing is really for this show to feel like you’re really in Hawaii week to week, and that means casting locally.

QUESTION:  You guys — I notice the word “reboot” being bandied about quite a bit, and Alex O’Loughlin mentioned it.  Nina mentioned it.  Why are you guys avoiding the word “remake”?  I mean, remakes often don’t pick up from where the last one left off. They’re usually rethought and re- — is there something about the image of the show you want people not to have in their mind when they go to view this version?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  I think, for me, the word “remake” suggests that we’re doing exactly the same thing, just doing it again.  And I think in our experience in ”Star Trek,” we felt like you have to find the spirit of what that original franchise was about, and you have to really be true to it, and then you have to expand on it and bring it into the modern time with whatever rules will govern it.  And I think what we felt like we really had to do was make sure that we were staying true to the spirit of the show, but bringing something new to the table that a modern audience would recognize.  And for us, that’s why the word “reboot,” I think, just feels more appropriate.

QUESTION:  Hi, I’ve got two questions.  This sounds like — this may sound obsessively nitpicky, but because the theme song — it seems to be so big with you guys, even, just, you know, judging by what you showed us, it actually seems like in the pilot the theme song is faintly technoey and not exactly — it doesn’t have the umph of what’s going on here.  I know this is the extended version or whatever.  But could you address that important issue?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  Yes.

QUESTION:  And what’s Hawaii like now?  Could you set a picture of, like, the population and the crime scene and the crime industries, that kind of thing.

ALEX KURTZMAN:  I’ll take the first part, Peter.  You want to take the second part? So, you know, when you look at something new, you say, okay, I have to play with it.  I have to figure out how to — what am I going to keep and what am I going to reinvent.  And it had been suggested at one point that we get a really popular rock star to come in and redo the theme with an electric guitar.  And we thought, okay, let’s explore it.  Let’s see how that goes.  And before we hired that person, we sort of did a run, just a run with Brian Tyler, and it was absolutely a temp.  Pilot season is a crush of time. We ended up having to hand things in, and then the theme ended up getting out in that version.  Well, what it underscored for us, especially in kind of looking at it, was that you cannot change the original theme.  There are few themes that are as good as the ”Five-0″ theme.  I mean, it is the greatest theme. And what that really led us back to was this is one of those things that we have to be utterly respectful to the point that we found the original musicians who did the first, the original theme, and brought them back in to re-record it.  And I think that at the end of the day, why mess with something that’s perfect?

PETER LENKOV:  I think, also the version you may have seen — we had a temp.  We had a temp track in there for the opening credits.  And I think we — as we showed you today, we sort of re-recorded the theme. What we had in there really was just temp until we had the time to actually get an orchestra together and redo the theme song.  So what you saw today or what you heard today is actually going to be in the pilot when it airs September 20th.

QUESTION:  Alex, playing McGarrett, the old McGarrett was stoic unbending.  It was either black or white, right or wrong.  There are more colors in your — more gray areas.  Tell me how you came up with that, or do you admire the stoic nature of the original McGarrett?

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  I love Jack Lord’s McGarrett.  I love Jack Lord’s hair.  I love Jack Lord’s version.  I think he started blue steel, the look that he does. (Laughter.) He’s awesome.  None of which I can get away with today in 2010 on television. Look, Steve McGarrett, my Steve McGarrett is — our Steve McGarrett is a little different.  Yeah, he’s stoic in a lot of ways, though.  I mean, he’s a military guy.  There are a lot of areas where he’s black and white, where he’s very clear.  And, I mean, the differences between Danny and Steve are so apparent in every episode, and, you know, Steve goes in one direction and Danny freaks out and he’s like, “How can you possibly think that it’s okay to go in that direction?”  And Steve is kind of bemused constantly by Danny’s reactions to this.  But as far as the character, I don’t know.  I mean, it’s my job to — my job is character.  That’s the only thing that I have any kind of control over.  It’s the only thing I have any input into, really, I mean, at the end of the day. And so — and that’s what I’ve been trained in and that’s what I really enjoy doing.  So I guess I came to this and did the character work that I always do. And I found a lot of layers to this guy.  And the other difference, like I mentioned before, is that you learn a lot about our Steve McGarrett in the new ”Hawaii Five-0″ in the very beginning, and so I had a lot to work with — stuff about his father, about his family, about his estrangement from them, about his military background, about the level of training that he’s done.  I mean, it takes a lot of dedication and a very big decision to — and a lot of perseverance to get — not only get to something like the Navy Seals, but to actually get through and to be in the field with a team like that.  So this guy, he’s a really interesting case study for me as an actor and as a sort of researcher of human movement.  But in answer to your question, the only reason I can continue bringing colors and levels to this guy is because of the writing that’s delivered to me on a week-to-week basis and that’s –

QUESTION:  Well, briefly, is it a reflection of our times that nowadays we can accept a leading character who is not absolutely good or absolutely bad, that you can show a flawed human being?

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  I think so.  That’s always been — I refuse to show you anything else.  And in some of the other work I’ve done, the other bits get cut out and they will show you one version of the performance that I’ve done, but I never deliver a performance on the day that is just one thing, because it’s inaccurate to all of us.  None of us are just purely benevolent or malevolent.  I mean, it’s not possible in human nature, unless you’re Ghandi or — and I’m sure he has –

PETER LENKOV:  I think, also, what makes Steve McGarrett and I think what makes Danny Williams so interesting is that they are a little gray, and I think there is some flaws in that, in them.  And I think that’s what makes them so watchable.  They make mistakes and they’re human, and I think that — them being real comes across and I think that’s why you gravitate to these guys and I think that’s why it really clicked and it worked for us.  And I think we’re fans of flawed heros.  I think when you see somebody week to week just, you know, is always a winner and always gets his man, sometimes it gets a little boring.  You sort of want to see something that feels very real and very true, and we strive for that and we strive for these characters to just really bring out the best in each other but really feel real to an audience that’s watching them.

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  And that’s the other thing, if I might just elaborate on what you’re saying, Peter, is that the more flaw you bring to a character or the more balance you give your character with flaw, the closer that character moves towards everyman, you know.  And if that character is an everyman, then we can all sit back and relate to them like we can’t relate to a superhero.

Question: Has Daniel Kim been any sort of a resource having spent most of the last few years there?

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  He has for me.  He showed me where all the good sushi was.

QUESTION:  Good restaurants, bars.

PETER LENKOV:  He’s sort of the unofficial mayor of Waikiki.

ALEX O’LOUGHLIN:  That’s true.  His poster’s in every shaved ice shop.

PETER LENKOV:  He’s been an amazing resource for us and opened a lot of doors for us shootingwise.  And he really does know everybody, literally everybody. There’s 800,000 — I think it’s under a million, about 860,000 people in Honolulu, and I think he knows literally every one. But how has it changed?  You know, in terms of its strategic importance, it’s really the first border in the United States on that side of the world.  And I think that’s — still exists.  And there’s threats now.  We obviously know all the threats that are coming from North Korea and Asia.  And I think that that’s — that’s actually helping our storytelling. We don’t want to — really, we’re a story that’s set in Hawaii, but there’s such global stakes to that region that we want to take advantage of in our storytelling.

QUESTION:  But specifically, internal, like crime and is it similar to other American cities, or are there unique situations there?

PETER LENKOV:  There are unique situations.  I mean, they have a very big meth problem, very big ice problem.  That’s probably their number-one drug problem.  They have crimes there.  They’re like any other big city, any other growing metropolis.  They have literally — which you’ll see in the pilot. Human smuggling — that’s a big industry for crime syndicates.  But for the most part, it’s big crimes and, I think, international stakes because of its geographic location.

QUESTION:  Question for the producers.  I think — I can’t recall in the last few years.  We’ve seen so many new crime shows coming out, whether it’s this or in a courtroom.  Any particular — do you guys have any theories why the networks have a particular appetite for that genre right now?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  I think the audience likes mysteries. They like puzzles.  They like unraveling.  They like following your heroes as they’re unraveling these mysteries.  You know, crime and solving crimes — I just think it’s timeless in terms of its appeal.  I don’t know.  I mean, I’ve worked on a lot of crime procedural dramas, and they’ve always had huge audiences.  And I think what I hear from people all the time is they love the mystery.  They love solving a crime and solving it as they’re watching it with their leads.

QUESTION:  For the producers, what from the original show were you most eager or excited about getting rid of?

PETER LENKOV:  Getting rid of?

QUESTION:  Yes.

PETER LENKOV:  Interesting.  I don’t think we were trying to get rid of anything.  I think what was appealing to us about this show was that we were fans of the original show.  We liked the original show, and we didn’t want to throw things out that worked.  And I think the reason why some remakes or some reimaginings or some reboots — I know that there’s a lot of different terms.  But why they work and why they don’t work is if you understand and you’re passionate about the source material, they work.  So for us, there was a lot that worked and there was a lot in the pilot, when you see the pilot, that you’ll see this little tributes to the original show.  There’s McGarrett’s – the car that Jack Lord drove — that’s sitting in a garage that our Steve McGarrett is going to be working on and getting rebuilt.  It was an important car for his father.  There’s a lot of stuff that, really, we felt like we wanted to mine and give back something to the people that actually watched the original show. For a new viewer, they may just gloss over it and may not recognize it.  But for somebody who’s seen that original show, they’ll see that we really took great care and respect for the original material.

QUESTION:  One more theme song question.  You know, in today’s TV, you’re lucky to get a couple of guitar riffs and a horn blast and then straight into the show.  They don’t want to lose the viewer.  Are they going to make any concessions for the “Hawaii Five-0″ theme song?  Will you be able to get maybe 15 seconds’ worth in, or are you debating how much you want to give them the theme song before risking losing the viewer, I guess, is what the networks think could happen if you play too much of it?

PETER LENKOV:  I think it’s such an amazing theme song and they — CBS has been so supportive with us, with regard to having an opening title sequence.  I don’t think we’re afraid to lose the audience.  I think it’s so dynamic.  I mean, that’s one of the key selling points of this show is that theme song.  And people want to hear it, and they’re going to look forward to hearing it week to week.

ALEX KURTZMAN:  I miss theme songs, I gotta say, and I miss them just as a viewer.  I feel like I definitely understand the idea of jumping right into story.  But I also feel like a great theme song is a lost art, and that was definitely why we felt like we really had to put this back up there, because, as I said, I think this is one of the best ever and to not have it would feel like it would be a huge disservice to the identity of “Five-0.”

QUESTION:  So are you going to be able to do, say, like, a full minute, which will be almost unheard of on broadcast TV, or how much time are you going to get?

ALEX KURTZMAN:  We’re still cutting the sequence now, so I think it’s a matter of — you know, it’s got to feel organic, and it’s got to feel right, but we’re certainly aiming toward somewhere between 30 seconds to a minute, whatever feels right.

PETER LENKOV:  Yeah.  Right now, it’s 30 seconds that’s in the pilot, and it seems to feel — feel right.  The original was a lot longer.  But I think for us we felt that what we have right now tells a story.

BETH HAIKEN:  Thank you very much.  Just to explain, everybody, Grace and Daniel are in Hawaii, shooting so that’s why they couldn’t be with us today.  And Alex Kurtzman and Peter Lenkov will be at the party

tonight.  Thank you.

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Tagged as: Alex Kurtzman, Alex O'Loughlin, CBS, Daniel Dae Kim, Grace Park, Hawaii Five 0, Jim Halterman, McGarrett, Peter Lenkov, Scott Caan