We're going to spare you all of the nerdy Arrested Development quotes we've been word-vomiting since learning Netflix would be presenting a panel for their brand new season of the show at TCA tour in Los Angeles. What we are proud to present you, though, is a live-blog of that Q&A session so you can nerd out with us if you're so inclined. No, we didn't wear cut-offs (but we thought about it!), but hopefully our professionalism and restraint will be rewarded with a frozen banana. Or a tub of diamond cream...
- Netflix slate clip package shows first look at Arrested Development with Gob (Will Arnett) performing on stage on a cross, Jesus style, as well as George Michael (Michael Cera) saying "You stole my girlfriend!", Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) with a short bob haircut, and more.
- Not the music we wanted, but we'll take it. Arrested Development walks out to the show's theme.
- Mitch Hurwitz says he was "superstitious about 2012, if that's what you're asking. But now I feel like a fool," when reporter asks if they expected to be back. But seriously, it didn't feel impossible to him until he got into it: "I think I always just held out hope that this would work out. It was a very naive hope. We shouldn't be here."
- "There were a couple of times when I started working out the stories...we were originally working on a movie, and there were a few fan fiction things that would scoop us, and I would think 'Oh, we can't do that.' One of the things was always to try to surprise [the audience], and that was easy to do when no one was watching," Hurwitz says.
- "David Cross and Tony Hale are no longer on the show," Jason Bateman jokes. They're not on the panel today.
- "We just went free-form, kind of jazz riffs. I would say it's a very different form that really emerged organically," Hurwitz says of new episodes. "The family grew apart, and everybody else got onto new shows and had contracts and whatever, and the only way we could get them all together was to kind of "dedicate" [episodes]." Evolution of storytelling was necessary for production and exclusive to the new Netflix format. Basically, a moment in Cera's episode, for example, might be revisited in another character's episode to see their POV.
- Hurwitz wanted to try to do a jumping from story-to-story, kind of Choose Your Own Adventure style, but he doesn't know if the technology is available yet.
- Bateman says this season, these episodes, set up a potential movie later. This is act one, and a movie would be act seasons two and three. He doesn't want to call this season four. "There is certainly a satisfying conclusion to these episodes if the movie unfortunately does not happen, but they are meant to work within each other as sort of a hybrid of Arrested Development stuff," he says.
- "I could vomit right this moment," Hurwitz on nerves that if this doesn't work, it could tarnish Arrested Development's legacy.
- "You cannot and should not compare these episodes to the series, where you had 22 minutes, and you had every character in every episode," says Bateman. "It's its own thing," adds Will Arnett.
- "We very early on made a decision that we were going to try to give the fans, the people who were loyal to us, something that they felt was special. We started gearing our content towards what makes us laugh...We had to determine early on not to be precious about it," Hurwitz says. "We did?" Portia de Rossi quips.
- Hurwitz says in season two of the series, the writers were up in arms about a 'body gas' joke, and that made him want to do it.
- "The spirit of this is to surprise the fans with something they didn't see coming," Hurwitz says.
- "We always knew there were going to be fourteen [episodes] but we said 'Let's say there's ten but the fans will be so happy when there's even more'!" Hurwitz says.
- Lilyhammer put all of their episodes out at once because it was meant to be "like an album," and that's what Arrested Development is doing, as well. There is a recommended order of viewing, as well. If you watch in order, things will make sense in episode four that were seeded from the start.
- Cera joined the writers' room, which he considered a "really fun invitation from Mitch." They had been already working for awhile, but ironically his first day, they were working on George Michael stuff. "Really, I just stuck around," he says. "If memory serves, you got something in, "Hurwitz adds, saying Cera is a brilliant guy and writer. "I really did bring him in because he's such an open guy, and he wants to learn this other craft or whatever you call what TV writers do. Suddenly we were very dependent on Michael Cera['s pitches]. Wow, this is like his first language."
- Hurwitz says Jeffrey Tambor pushed for Netflix: "Jeffrey is an artist, and he takes risks."
- de Rossi says what makes this different from episodic television "action happens simultaneously for characters throughout the entire fourteen episodes. She points to a scene in which she interprets her mother's tone as sarcastic when she was actually going for something very different. "When you watch my episode, you'll think 'Wow, that's quite something'-- 'Well, they won't think that now," Hurwitz adds, calling out her spoiler.
- "I have finally gotten to play Joan Crawford with laughs!" Jessica Walter says.
- "We got very locked in on the story. It was incredibly, incredibly complicated. We still owe some pickups because we're in second position to most of these actors...We're telling a complicated story that jumps around in time and has all of these intersections, and we're telling them way out of order," Hurwitz says of complicated production process.
- Hurwitz notes they're just starting post-production right now, so there are some elements that are still in flux, story-wise. They're trying to make each installment under a half-hour, the cable TV model.
- Walter says she had hoped this would really happen. She has never worked with such great writers and spent time visiting in the writers' room (but not working with them like Cera), too. Arnett asks her to name one writer. "Richard!" she retorts.
- Arnett says he and Hurwitz would talk about Arrested Development's movie even when they were working together on Sit Down Shut Up. Remember the last line of the finale when Ron Howard says "Maybe a movie?" It was always the intention from Hurwitz to keep Arrested Development going in that way.
- Bateman feels the show is much better suited where you can go into a dark room and loose yourself in the show, rather than get interrupted by commercials. "It all made sense that it came out this way."
- Tambor says they shot in the desert for a bit in Arrested Development. Second week, it was all nine actors in a living room scene, first time they had seen each other in a long time: "I wouldn't say we're a sentimental group, but it was pretty [amazing]." Hurwitz adds that it was always rare that everybody would be in a scene together, and keeping consistency, there is mingling in and out.
- "We had one trailer. We had the Star trailer," Tambor says. Since each episode was focused on one cast members, they would share the trailer. The person who's episode it was that week would get it that week. Creative? "The truth is, we couldn't afford to do the show with what these people are worth now...So it was this crazy idea that there would be one king every week," Hurwitz jokes.
- Hurwitz didn't want to give us a new clip for fear of spoilers, so we're seeing a scene that got cut from the show instead. It deals with yet another "too close" Lucille and Buster moment. Hurwitz jokes that if we laugh, maybe he'll put the scene back into the show.
- And sadly, no frozen bananas. But that's okay because fourteen new installments is a much better gift.
Arrested Development premieres on Netflix in May 2013 with all fourteen episodes streaming at the same time.
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