Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1126636
46 DGA QUARTERLY EGOS NEED NOT APPLY N E O F T H E T H I N G S that's really spe- cial about Homeland is that I can speak to having done four different episodes in three different continents and in four different cities," says director Seith Mann, back for his fifth episode this year. "And consistently, they manage to put together crews that don't have any assholes, and that's super rare." The "no-asshole policy," as Glatter puts it, is a pre- requisite that's stated upfront. Wendy Bledsoe, a 2nd AD who joined the Homeland ranks in Season 3, says while that might sound curt, "They really work hard to be a team of people who are really good at what they do but we also want to be with for 16 hours a day." It's also why the show has a habit of returning to the same core group of directors who are known to be without pretense. With an average of nine of their 11-day shoots per episode on location, Glatter says she needs to hire people who "support each other." "I could count on maybe one hand the times we've ever had any kind of disagreement [because] if we're together, we're asking the same questions," says Alex Graves of working with Glatter. Their relationship stems from when he hired her to work on NBC's The West Wing. Patience also plays an important role, says director/UPM Michael Klick. He says going into new countries each year means "we meet a new po- litical situation [and] we meet new challenges" in regards to working relationships and how different countries see Americans. This is important this season, Glatter says, be- cause "on the set, there are like 10 different languag- es being spoken," and "it has been a bit like being in the kid's game of telephone, where you ask for a trash can, and through five translations, and seven different people, you're handed a banana. But with like a big smile." For Klick, who speaks only English, working in Morocco has been a learning experience. He also emphasizes another reason Homeland is different from most productions that film overseas. "We're working in an area that has had a lot of production, but it has been just two weeks at a time, or it's companies that come in and bring most everyone with them," he says. Whereas "We're here in an environment where we're bringing 110 days of photography. We're [also] raising some stages. And most people in Morocco have no experience with shooting on stages because most people who come to Morocco don't shoot inside. They shoot in the desert or at the ocean." ONGOING INVESTIGATION H E G R E AT T H I N G A B O U T Homeland is that it feels so current," says director Daniel Attias, who has been involved with the show since the first season—in- cluding recreating a Benghazi-like attack in the Sea- son 4 episode "13 Hours in Islamabad," which was akin to an hour-long war movie. Attias says it's one of the most complicated television episodes he's ever directed, and credits Klick and production designer John Kretschmer for helping him pull it off. "You hit the ground running on Homeland be- cause there has been a lot of advance consideration of all the technical challenges," Attias says, adding that "each season has to escalate beyond the previ- ous one with the stakes continuing to be compelling and critical, but seen in a new light." The devil is in the details. One of Graves' favorite takeaways came during his research for Season 7 when he says he learned that only unopened bottled water is served during meetings between U.S. and Russian officials because the "trust is so low between the Americans and the Russians when they meet that there's no entertainment or presentation" and there's a fear of being drugged and blackmailed. Plus, he says "the interpreters have to sit in a box [and not at the table] so that no one can see their lips move" and accuse them of false translation. THE HOMELAND WAY L AT T E R S AY S S H E L OV E S that Graves can take an episode with a lot of action, like the Season 6 episode "Casus Belli" that had a surprise shoot-out, and make it "character-based and not just about the pyrotech- nics." She calls him "a walking encyclopedia of film history, and every shot he's seen, and somehow all packed into his brain." She also points to someone like Keith Gordon, who directed a deeply emotional exchange between Danes' Carrie and the fellow agent whose life she saved, Rupert Friend's Peter Quinn, for Season 6's "The Man in the Basement." A former actor in his own right, Gordon "can communicate beautifully with actors to get the best, most subtle, layer of per- formance," says Glatter. These are gifts she thinks Attias and Graves also possess. By this point in the series, the crew is so in forma- tion that 2nd AD Bledsoe and 1st AD and producer Sunday Stevens have each person's style memo- rized. Stevens says Glatter comes from a choreogra- phy background and "she needs to see everything … like a stage piece from top to bottom." And Bledsoe "SOMETIMES I FIND THE SHOW TO BE A LITTLE AHEAD OF THE CURVE OF MY DIGESTION OF THE NEWS." —Director Seith Mann O T G