Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1126636
DGA QUARTERLY 47 PHOTOS: SHOWTIME says she's seen director Dan Minahan spin gold out of a truncated shooting schedule and a late script to turn Season 3's penultimate episode, "Big Man in Tehran," into a memorable one full of twists where the audience is left wondering if, when and how the compromised Brody's luck will run out. A s f o r s o m e o n e l i ke S e i t h M a n n ? B l e d s o e says,"He's like a jazz player; he likes to riff; he likes to make it up in the moment if he can." For his part, Mann says he appreciates that the script doesn't usually put "super-detailed camera instructions, which allows him to find his own interpretation, and that Stevens, in particular, seems less driven by schedules and more supportive of getting things right. "A lot of times, for the visiting directors, we'll help them through the smaller hurdles," says Stevens, such as explaining where a character is at a certain point in the season, or what an office setup would look like. Bledsoe says there is also a Homeland way to doing things that she has to maintain. This in- cludes the Glatter-mandated rule of rescouting loca- tions the day before filming starts to ensure nothing has changed, even if it means going on a weekend— because you can never be too sure. LASTING EFFECTS combination of education and co- inciding real-life circumstances has made Homeland one of TV's most pre- scient shows. While it may serve as a time capsule for this era, it also has left an impact on the people who make it. "I start from a place of paranoia," says Mann. "Sometimes I find the show to be a little ahead of the curve of my digestion of the news. And that sort of paranoia that exists in some of the storylines and whatever I unconsciously bring to it certainly inform [my directing]." Graves reminds us that Homeland has been talking about Russians and hackings since its fifth season, which aired in 2015. "Homeland brings you up to speed, maybe a step ahead of what's in the papers," he says. It has also given its makers ways to fill holes in their skill set, like a chance to collaborate with crews from all over the world, or gain more experi- ence working straight through the day thanks to the French hours system that Mann says he now prefers. (Glatter extends this educational component to as- piring women and minority directors, whom she encourages to shadow episodes during production.) "One of the great, fun perks of this job, as far as I'm concerned, [is] you get to go into a new part of the world and have that world open up to you," Attias says. "You are not just a guest in the country, you are also someone who people within the country recog- nize will be involved in portraying them to the rest of the world. So they want to, in most instances, put their best foot forward, show you as much as they can of who they really are so they can be accurately portrayed … I feel like I get a real window into some- thing true that I might not get to see if I were simply a tourist." Glatter, too, cannot deny the power that this traveling road show has given her to take a world's view of American politics that's both fictionalized and real. "I go to the gym [in a] T-shirt that says 'sorry for our president' in 15 languages, including sign lan- guage, and literally, I get people cheering," Glatter says. "America has not been seen like this, interna- tionally, for a very long time." Yet, Glatter and the rest of the Homeland crew have found a way to show it all on screen. ® A Lesli Linka Glatter, above center, is flanked by scenes from Homeland featuring Claire Danes.