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Comic-Con '07: Pimping Daisies By Tim Surette - TV.com July 28, 2007 at 11:04:00 AM | more stories by this author
Producer Bryan Fuller and the cast of Pushing Daisies delights an early-morning crowd.
At 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, I was not in dreamland kicking the covers off my bed with my feet as I should be. No siree. Instead, I found myself sitting in a ballroom with about 500 other people waiting for a panel to start.
But no ordinary panel could get me out of bed at that hour...no, this one is a dandy. Warner Bros. hosted an early screening for ABC's Pushing Daisies, a new whimsical comedy-hyphen-drama from Bryan Fuller (Heroes, Dead Like Me).
Fuller has become a cult hero among some television devotees for his dark sense of humor and ability to create fantasy in real-world situations. He created the Showtime series Dead Like Me, about a group of people recruited to become grim reapers. He also thought up Wonderfalls, the tragically short-lived show about a Niagara Falls gift shop worker who begins hearing the dolls in the store talking to her.
The producer also happens to be co-executive producer on Heroes and a main writer for Star Trek: Voyager. However, Daisies marks his return to the comically macabre. The main character Ned, played by Lee Pace (a Wonderfalls vet), discovers at an early age that he has the power to bring the dead back to life. Being a Fuller production, it isn't all that simple though.
Ned giveth and he taketh. One touch brings the dead back to life, but only for a minute. And if he touches them again, they die--for good. But it isn't even that simple. If a revived person stays alive for more than a minute, someone else in proximity dies.
Pace's character is eventually recruited by a private investigator (Chi McBride) to help solve murders and grab the reward money. When one of Ned's adventures leads him to reviving his childhood crush Chuck (played by the vivacious Anna Friel), things go a little nuts. He keeps her alive with dreams of one day being able to form some sort of relationship with her...but then there's that whole thing about not being able to touch her. And you thought you had problems.
With a setting ripped out of a Tim Burton movie, storybook-like narration, and a colorful palette that jumps off the screen, Daisies is the best early pilot of the new season.
Much of the crowd seemed to think so too. At a convention full of superheroes, spaceships, and wizards, Daisies is a complete surprise. It's a touching (almost too touching) tale that really catches people off guard, as evidenced by the many fans' testaments in the question-and-answer session that immediately followed the screening.
Fuller promised the room that the mood of the pilot would carry over into the season. "[There is] a lot more fun to be had [on the show], and we have a fantastic writing staff and a lot of great stories to tell."
The idea for the show came to Fuller when he was working on Dead Like Me. Ned's powers were originally planned for a character on the show in a story arc on a season that never happened. After Dead Like Me was shelved, the idea sat in the back of Fuller's mind for a few years while he worked on other projects.
Director and producer Barry Sonnenfeld says the look of the pilot--which is highlighted by bright colors and digital effects--wil remain consistent. Sonnenfeld is scheduled to direct three of the first 13 episodes, and the same crew that worked on the pilot is on board for the first season.
Much of the plot of the story revolves around the fact that Pace and Friel can't touch, so the moderator asked the two actors if they method act on set by keeping their distance from each other. Before Pace could say a word, Friel answered the question by planting a big fat kiss on Pace, much to the delight of the crowd that had just "oooh"ed and "awww"ed over their troubled on-screen romance.
Each episode of the show will have a self-contained "case of the week," which will stand as a metaphor for the relationship between Chuck and Ned. For example, in one episode, the plot involves a jailed convict's long-distance relationship with a "woman who lives in a windmill"--Fuller says that like it's no big deal, and admits "it's that kind of show." The long-distance relationship is symbolism for the fact that while Chuck and Ned may be in the same room, they seem so far apart.
The rest of the question-and-answer session was a Kristen Chenowith (who plays Ned's neighbor and employee at his Pie shop) love-fest. The Broadway-star-turned-television-actress didn't mind, bantering with the crowd and even gave the room a peek at her Tony-Award-winning cleavage.
Yeah, it was that kind of panel.
Source: TV.com
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