Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/994862
44 DGA QUARTERLY and John Carcieri) is an urban Rip Van Winkle tale of Tray (Tracy Morgan), a low-level Brooklyn drug dealer re- turning to the 'hood after a two-de- cade prison stint, only to find the place unrecognizably transformed and gen- trified. "We're used to seeing Tracy's broader comedy," says Nassor, "but he and Jordan wanted to create a character who's living through a trauma, trying to go straight but fending off temptations." Many of these characters have lived or are currently living a life of crime, a situation that would have been rejected by TV execu- tives in the era of '60s and '70s sleuths, before antihero series like The Sopranos. Now, as Spiro notes, "You can play with a comedy actor like Bob Odenkirk, and go on a tightrope with him as he plays this incredibly complicated character Jimmy. In my episode (from the third season, titled 'Fall'), Jimmy ruthlessly manipulates Mrs. Landry into agreeing to a group settlement that will give Jimmy a big payday, and how he does it reveals to us a big piece in the puzzle of how Jimmy turns into Saul the conniving lawyer in Breaking Bad. It's sort of the ultimate character study—you love Jimmy, you hate him, you don't know where to sit with him." A key part of figuring out the right tone is helping actors find their way into the genre's typically contradictory and quirky characters. Mickle notes that Corbin Bernsen came in as a guest star for Hap and Leonard's third season playing Cantuck, the police chief of racist- drenched Grovetown, Texas, a hard-bitten type who suffers from an enlarged testicle—the kind of detail that defines Lansdale's fiction. PHOTO: MICHELE K. SHORT/AMC/SONY PICTURES TELEVISION inspired by the book rather than a deliberately faithful adaptation. "If you start with an Elmore Leonard story," he says, "you have a higher chance of succeeding, but I think we may have risked disap- pointing his big legion of die-hard fans since we weren't going to do a straight adaptation." The new version, created by Davey Holmes, tracks mob "cleaner" Miles Daly (Chris O'Dowd) from Nevada to Los Angeles, where he begins to learn the ins and outs of the mov- iemaking business. Character Building The key to Leonard, and to crime comedy, in Arkin's view, is a "focus on character. Elmore wanted to hear the characters talk, that would tell him where to go with his story, and that's exactly what we started with. The essence of this genre is character. If you don't have distinc- tive characters with voices of their own, you're lost in this form." This sentiment is echoed by a range of directors, among them Ami Canaan Mann (Sneaky Pete), Chioke Nassor (The Last O.G.), Sarah Pia Anderson (Good Girls, Sneaky Pete), Jim Mickle (director and co- creator of Hap and Leonard, based on Joe R. Lansdale's quirky East Texas novels), Mikkel Nørgaard (Good Behavior) and Minkie Spiro (Better Call Saul). Anderson taps into a key reason why crime comedy—which would appear on the surface to value plot most of all—is fundamentally character-driven: "This is material that sits on the cusp of comedy and drama, and it's so attractive to me as a director because this is where most humans live." The starting point of The Last O.G. (co-created by Jordan Peele Minkie Spiro, directing Better Call Saul, says she "sees the world in a very cinematic way," and is "very involved with the camera department."