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DGA QUARTERLY 45 approach to the characters, guidelines helping them with the tricky business of juggling comedy and crime. For her ambitious first sea- son finale episode of Good Girls, Anderson says, of a crucial mo- ment when the forlorn husband character Dean (Matthew Lillard) crashes his car, that "it was really a steal from the Coen brothers, making the viewer feel the moment alongside the character." The Coens' Effect is also felt in Hap and Leonard, Mickle ob- serves, with the critical contribution of Ellen Chenoweth, the brothers' longtime casting director: "She brought to us several won- derful character actors, like Irma P. Hall and John McConnell, who seem to be born for this style." Mickle came to Hap and Leonard by way of directing his previous feature, Cold in July, based on a pre- Hap novel by Lansdale, "so it gave me a way of carrying over the mix of hijinks and high tension that I did in the movie into the series. But the thing that really inspired me for this was watching a huge number of Korean crime movies when I was in Korea. They drop in crazy twists and turns, dark stories with broad humor. I'm thinking of Bong Joon-ho for example, stuff that we haven't quite been able to do in the U.S." That doesn't mean that a bunch of directors aren't try- ing, and many would say they're doing a terrific job right now. So how to pull off the twists, those high-wire mo- ments that define crime comedy? Beyond the script it- self, it starts with the actors—Nørgaard, the Danish-born maker of the hilarious Klown TV series and feature films that transformed Scandinavian comedy from situation- based to character-based, insists on carving out precious time on the episodic shoot of Good Behavior for inten- sive actor rehearsals without the camera. "You do this," he says, "and it's amazing how much time you save in the long run, since you eliminate any confusion about character behavior, motivation and the rest of PHOTOS: (TOP) FRED NORRIS/TURNER ENTERTAINMENT NETWORKS; (BOTTOM) AMAZON STUDIOS "Corbin and I talked about the fun of working with that strange character trait," says Mickle. "There's always a challenge to be an actor who jumps into a show that has seasons under its belt. You need to give actors their space to find their way, and with Corbin, he'll do different takes during rehearsal and will sometimes im- provise, all of which I encourage because I know that we'll find the best parts of the performance in the edit. Then, when an actor like Corbin says something funny, you need to get the reaction shots. In the first cut of a scene where Hap and Leonard meet Cantuck in episode two, Corbin's performance wasn't landing. But when we in- serted Hap's and Leonard's responses, it turned into the right kind of comic scene where our two guys are trying to figure out if this police chief is putting them on or not." Comedy of the Absurd These directors will readily point to key inspirations for their "THE ESSENCE OF THIS GENRE IS CHARACTER. IF YOU DON'T HAVE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS WITH VOICES OF THEIR OWN, YOU'RE LOST IN THIS FORM." —ADAM ARKIN Director on Get Shorty Director Mikkel Nørgaard (Good Behavior), top left, insists on intensive character rehearsals without the camera; below, Amy Mann works with Giovanni Ribisi on Sneaky Pete.