A “pilot” is the first episode of a newly developed TV series. It’s a “proof of concept” that helps a network gauge whether the premise has any marketable potential. As a rule, most TV programs never get past the first episode.
An actor’s reaction to getting cast in a pilot changes over the course of their career. When an actor is young and eager, they react with: “Hooray, I booked a pilot! This could lead to years of steady, well-paid employment!” When an actor is old, bitter and jaded, they tend to react with: “Oh, dear God, not another pilot! This will never go anywhere!”
An actor has to grow a thick skin, keeping pilots at arm’s length. It’s best not to get too close to something that might get killed off. I had been burned by pilots before, so it was only fitting that this new project was called Burn Notice.
“Fine,” I agreed. “You’re right. It’s only a pilot. It’ll never get picked up anyway…”
AMERICA’S PENIS
Southern, Central and Northern Florida are like three different states – or even worlds – and it would take decades before I understood that.
My first real experience in Northern Florida came when I was scouting locations for Evil Dead II in 1986. Florida was a potential location for us because it was number three in film and TV production and they had a capable film commission established.
I had never before considered Florida to be a “redneck state,” but some of my most disturbing brushes with racism happened when I was scouting the rural areas of Northern Florida.
As an example, passing a gas station one day, George, our location guide, gestured out the window to an African-American man pumping gas. “You see that fellow there? He’s a good one.”
It took me a moment to understand what George was insinuating, because I had never heard anyone – even in lily-white suburban Detroit where I was raised – say anything like that before about a person of color.
In the end, for a myriad of reasons, we didn’t film there.
Thank God.
Central Florida was all about tourists, franchises and retirees. Orlando is one of the most franchise-infiltrated cities I’ve ever seen – not a mom-and-pop operation in sight. Orlando was all about things that were familiar, safe and fun. Theme parks on parade. It was like a midwestern town dropped into the middle of a swamp. I nicknamed it Borelando.
Miami wasn’t even remotely close to a Midwest sensibility. It’s one of the most culturally and racially diverse places I’ve ever been. The Latin culture had taken hold long ago and locals were very comfortable and proud of their heritage – whether it was Colombian, Cuban or Venezuelan. On any given day, you would encounter far more people speaking Spanish than English.
On more than one occasion, while struggling to communicate with someone who spoke no English, I was asked: “Why you no speak Spanish?” The explanation that five miles outside the city of Miami nobody speaks a word of Spanish would not compute.
After seven years there, on and off, my refrain became: “I love Miami because it’s so close to the U.S.”
CLIMATE CONTROL
I was born in Michigan and spent the first twenty-plus years of my life there. Maybe my body was hardwired for colder climates. Regardless, Miami was on the opposite corner of the nation from where I had chosen to live. Each year, for seven seasons, I had to transform from a pasty, rain-soaked Pacific Northwesterner into a tanned, semi-tropical beach bum.
When you exit the plane in Miami, you are immediately blasted with a fireball of humidity, a smothering heat that I had never experienced before – like a jungle outpost. Then I remembered I was only an hour’s drive from the Everglades (1.5 million acres of tropical wetlands).
Miami was a jungle outpost.
At that level of mugginess and rainfall, the tropics were constantly decaying yet trying to reclaim civilization at the same time. Lush vines were steadily strangling everything, while foliage mocked landscapers as they vainly tried to keep everything tight and trim.
Shedding a few layers in-between takes in order to beat the heat.
Avocados and bananas didn’t stand a chance in Miami. Eat them immediately, or you were looking at a blackened mess forty-eight hours later. Not even a sealed freezer could stave off a moldy death.
The rapid decomposition was so impressive that Ida and I had to change how we ate. We couldn’t assume that groceries bought on Sunday would be anything other than ooze by Thursday. Stockpiling wasn’t an option, so we shopped like Europeans, only buying what we would actually eat within the next couple days.
Our bicycles were also under attack – from corrosion. Being so close to the ocean, the air itself was 30 percent salt. Taking your bike in to the shop to get “de-corroded” was just routine maintenance.
After a few years, I became an old pro at living in the Magic City and an expert in harnessing the power of the sun. When I first arrived in Miami, I was still just another ignorant tourist. The character Sam Axe needed to be a tan man, the result of years of being a relaxed, poolside lounger. How do you get tan quickly? A tanning salon, of course!
The first time I went, the attendant knew nothing about the science of tanning or the mechanics of the beds. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so willing to allow some babbling, orange-colored dipshit bombard me with ultraviolet radiation. But my naiveté didn’t stop there. After being barbecued for way too long, at way too high of a setting, I casually headed out to the beach to catch some more rays.
It didn’t take a dermatologist to help me understand why I couldn’t sleep that night. Never again. Eventually, I would learn that fifteen minutes of sunbathing per side was all I needed to maintain a tan but not destroy my skin.
My costar, Gabrielle Anwar, absolutely loved the Miami climate. She was five-three and weighed only seven pounds, so she was immune to overheating. The Southern Florida climate was paradise to her. I think I only saw her sweat three times – and it’s possible that the sweat was added by the makeup department. Conversely, Gabrielle couldn’t tolerate air-conditioning. If a gust of cold, recycled air got too close, she’d start shivering, grab her set chair and drag it into the balmiest, sun-blasted spot she could find.
Gabrielle basking in the infernal Miami climate.
Adaptation is critical to survival. I needed to use every resource available to acclimate to the Sunshine State if I had any chance of making it through an entire season of shooting.
Over the course of the first couple seasons, we had to devise a wardrobe system that would allow me to stay as comfortable as possible or at least hide how uncomfortable I was. This was a challenge because Sam Axe was a covert operative, an infiltrator and impersonator. Sam couldn’t wear short-sleeve floral shirts in every scene – he needed to be able to wear black, three-piece suits and look cool (both meanings apply) doing it.
When filming, I went through a lot of shirts. I’d sweat through a shirt after a few takes, so we’d swap it out for a fresh one. Over time, I researched lightweight undergarment fabric that whisked sweat away to another dimension, thereby giving my shirts “another take or two.” Wool socks, counter-intuitively, kept my feel comfy and dry. SmartWool, the opposite of your father’s “dumb, scratchy wool,” was my new best friend. Try it sometime. Cotton is the Jose Cuervo of fabrics – we’ve been sold a shabby bill of goods for decades. Cotton, in sock form, lights a fire in your shoe through incessant friction. Wool, for whatever reason, came to my rescue and it’s all I wear on my feet now, hot or cold.
Clothing control was only part of what I needed to endure the blazing climate. I had to lose some weight. My gut had expanded in the decade of living in rural Oregon. Playing Sam Axe was great because he didn’t have to be fit and agile like the character Michael Westen – he was defined by his penchant for lounging around with a beer in hand. A gut was practically obligatory. Fat, however, is insulation intended to keep a warm-blooded body warm when it’s cold. Gabrielle was comfortable on location because she had less fat than a rice cake and Jeffrey Donovan w
as a lean son of a gun as well. In seven seasons, I never saw him sweat.
I soon discovered how necessary a pool was to preserving my core temperature and my sanity. For the first season, I didn’t have access to a swimming pool – only a small speck of rooftop upon which I could get my fifteen minutes per side of sunbathing. I’d end up drenched in sweat as I waddled through the house to the shower. After the first season, I refused to live in Miami without a pool.
It was possible to chart the change of seasons by the temperature fluctuations in the pool. When I arrived at the beginning of a new season in March, water in the pool would be pretty much completely cold. A month later, the top inch of water would be warm, so I’d swim back and forth to swirl it all around. By early summer, the pool would be fifty-fifty cold and hot. Near the end of filming a season, by early fall, the pool would morph into a low-grade Jacuzzi and recused itself from providing relief – not a cool spot to be felt.
The house Ida and I rented was the same way. Everything was fine in March, but five months later the heat would become inexorably trapped in its bowels. I decided to adopt an admittedly strange ritual of “bleeding” the water pipes. Convinced that superheated water was trapped in the pipes because of sub-par wall insulation, I’d run the cold water until it actually got “cold” again.
The production schedule for Burn Notice had us shooting during the “low” tourist season which, ironically, was summer in Miami. Summer is usually associated with sun, fun and vacations, but the peak of Miami’s tourism and tolerability was during the winter. Much like we did when we were kids, people head south for the winter. December, January and February are the perfect months to be in Miami. September and October are the perilous hurricane months and anything in between took place at its own peril.
Shooting is always easier when it’s not crowded. Productions have a better chance of filming at popular restaurants, landmarks or recreation areas and you don’t have as many gawkers coagulating around you.
Whenever I worked in New Zealand, the weather was flip-flopped because I’d cross the equator into the Southern Hemisphere. If I went down in June, the beginning of my summer, the New Zealand winter was just coming on full force. I would return home to fall weather, realizing that an entire season had passed me by. Some years, depending on when I went and how long I stayed, experiencing back-to-back summers or winters was not unusual – just completely discombobulating.
Spending my summer and fall in Miami meant that I only had about one good month of weather in Florida before the inferno began. By the time I got back to Oregon, I’d only have a few weeks until the weather turned into stereotypical Pacific Northwest – cold and wet.
For seven years, it seemed like I was never anywhere at the right time.
ON NOTICE
My role in Burn Notice was that of Sam Axe, a “former” Navy SEAL (I was informed to never use the term “ex” when referring to military service). After serving honorably, Sam was now devoted to a life of women, suds and sun. However, fate would deal him a different card when friend and spy Michael Westen gets “burned” by a mysterious organization and shows up in Miami with nothing.
“You know spies … bunch of bitchy little girls.”
Created by boyish, whip-smart Matt Nix, Burn Notice raced from pilot to production and became a seven-season hit for the USA Network, arguably influencing the network template for new shows over the next few years. It’s also inarguably one of the most successful, challenging and rewarding projects I’ve ever been a part of.
I didn’t know Jeffrey Donovan before Burn Notice. He was almost exactly ten years younger than me but had fifteen years of experience under his belt in theater, movies and on television. Jeffrey and I bonded over the fact that I had been in his shoes before, starring in two previous TV shows or, as we would joke, “being number one on the call sheet.”
Jeffrey was a very accomplished, dynamic actor and the show was a perfect vehicle for his unique gifts. Eventually, he became like a younger brother to me and our relationship remained strong throughout.
Gabrielle Anwar was an old pro by the time Burn Notice rolled around. Having acted since childhood, she was confident in her abilities and was wonderfully frank and direct on set in her dealings with directors and producers. I enjoyed her toughness and general fearlessness. Gabrielle had just finished a stint on The Tudors, a decidedly highbrow affair, and Burn Notice couldn’t have been a bigger departure. She loved calling it a “silly boys’ show” and seemed genuinely baffled by what made the show so popular.
Sharon Gless was a TV icon, having achieved deserved accolades on her groundbreaking show, Cagney & Lacey. I’m continually amused by actors who are, in reality, the opposite of the characters they portray. In the show, Madeline Westen (my character called her Maddy) was a life-hardened battle-axe with strong opinions. In real life, Sharon was a pussycat. I would even call her shy and slightly demure. Granted, she could laugh like a longshoreman and had a wonderful, bawdy sense of humor, but I was always dumb founded how a multiple-Emmy winner could still be so questioning of her own abilities.
Celebrating a coveted TV milestone: 100 episodes.
Coby Bell, my personal salvation in Miami, rolled in for season four and beyond as the character Jesse. Coby, although twenty years my junior, had done six seasons of Third Watch and a slew of other television. He was unfazed, or so it seemed, by coming into the show, late in the party, to take some heat off the rest of us.
Coby is a mensch. A father of four young children, he would dutifully fly back to Los Angeles every weekend without fail. I’ll always be impressed by that. As a younger actor I never had that dedication and it damaged my first marriage. Coby and I became fast friends. I think the writers sensed this, because Sam and Jesse were often paired together in scenes apart from Michael or Fiona.
Aside from the regulars, we got terrific support seasonally from Seth Peterson as Michael’s tormented brother, Stephen Martines as Fiona’s ill-fated lover and the unsung work of journeyman actors Marc Macaulay and Brandon Morris, who played a couple of by-the-book FBI guys.
One of the great things about a hit TV show is that it attracts high-quality guest stars. Usually, actors will flock to a TV show for one of two reasons – either they’re fans or it’s popular. As seven seasons rolled out, Burn Notice benefited from both criteria and over five hundred actors passed through Miami.
Because this was an international spy show, this varied group of thespians fell into some of the obvious categories. For starters, you need an endless string of bad guys to defeat. Playing a “bad guy” appeals to many actors, mostly because they don’t have to be “likable” and they can ham it up.
John Mahoney, who played the cryptic Management guy, was a fan of the show. Jay Karnes and Todd Stashwick were both good at being smooth bad guys. Jere Burns specialized in creepy. A handful of Brisco alumni even snuck in to play baddies – M. C. Gainey, Andrew Divoff and John Pyper-Ferguson. Tricia Helfer, an early “badd-ess,” was both beautiful and dangerous.
Certainly the “Most Colorful Bad Guy” award would have to go to Tim Matheson for his portrayal of Larry, the rogue operative. Tim was an old pro who had been in the business forever and I respected him a lot – hell, he did the voice for Jonny Quest, my favorite cartoon as a kid. Tim also returned in the director’s chair to lead us through a number of our most epic season-ending episodes.
Aside from the “overtly bad,” spy shows also need a layer of “not good, not bad” characters. We had plenty of very questionable CIA types who excelled at doublespeak. Richard Schiff, Alex Carter and the formidable John C. McGinley were all standouts. My favorite of the CIA jerks, though, were two numbskulls played by Brandon O’Malley and John Ales. These characters were imported from the Sam Axe TV movie and as actors we loved shouting at each other. Often, after the camera would cut, we’d all burst out laughing.
Eventually, you work your way into the “mostly good” guys. Barry the Money Launderer, a recurring char
acter, was wonderfully played by Paul Tei. I always looked forward to scenes with him. Paul had a great sense of humor and the two of us came as close to ad-libbing as there was on the show, which wasn’t a whole lot. Jack Coleman, Grant Show and Lauren Stamile capably headed up the more “serious” accomplices.
There was also quite an array of “maybe good, maybe bad” leading ladies for Jeffrey to play opposite, such as Moon Bloodgood, Dina Meyer and Alona Tal. I managed to spend screen time with Kristanna Loken in a couple episodes and I didn’t complain one little bit.
If you stay on the air long enough, plenty of “random” casting will happen, too, where you get people who were perfectly fine for the role but who already had impressive careers of their own, like Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless, singer Gavin Rossdale, football great Michael Irvin, comedy freak Patton Oswalt, WWE legend Big Show and rapper Method Man.
Of all the guest stars on Burn Notice, the most awe-inspiring was the Bandit himself, Mr. Burt Reynolds. A lot of our Florida-based production team had worked with Burt on various movies and TV shows and they talked him into appearing in an episode.
Writing about a guy like Burt Reynolds, where do you even begin? Not only was he a fellow Michigander, but in addition Burt’s acting career – well past the half-century mark now – encompassed the end of the studio system, early television and the Hollywood blockbuster.
Burt was the number-one box office star for five years running, which is unparalleled. At his peak, he declined the roles of James Bond and Han Solo.
His contributions to cinema and television really are iconic. In my profession, we would be lucky to have one Deliverance or The Longest Yard on our résumé. My contemporaries on the small screen would be thrilled to be associated with just one classic like Gunsmoke or Evening Shade.
The man’s accomplishments are various and impressive. He founded a theater, posed naked in Cosmopolitan magazine and had a hit single called “Let’s Do Something Cheap and Superficial.” He’s got an Emmy, some Golden Globes and a sack full of People’s Choice Awards. From spaghetti Westerns to Boogie Nights, what hasn’t this man done?
Hail to the Chin Page 14