CSI Gary Dourdain Interview

11-05-2007 09:09

Do you ever think you’re supporting the crime rather than it being about the actors?

That’s what you call formula tv. When we first started, we needed to show more of the characters and now we’re going, “I need a day off. D’you think this could be about the crime, cos there’s too much character stuff goin on there. I’d just love a week off. This season has actually been really good. When we got back from summer break, we were actually really surprised; the scripts were much better, there were stronger storylines and it’s good to go to work, I feel like I’m doing something. You come home from work and you feel like you’ve put something…How did you come to CSI? I was doing theatre in New York, small parts in big films and big parts in small films. Couple of TV shows, couple of sitcoms and a couple of crime shows. Sweet Justice in New York was a crime show that we did for Nick Wharf (check) New York Undercover and Law and Order. I did a pilot with Mark, which was supposed to be a show, basically the precursor to this happening but was eight years before, and a guy named John ** wrote and directed it.

Have you heard of China Beach>?

He was one of the writers on China Beach. Some actors, they are just professional pilot actors, they turn up and obviously know they won’t get picked up. I don’t know if it’s a tax right of the production company to do shit pilots… None of us were expecting this, certainly not this much success. It’s still going. We’re still kind of like – it’s ridiculous. Critics hate us. (laughter) They keep on talking shows up to knock us off but they don’t I understand why either. They ask us, we don’t understand either, there’s no (forming?) to that. Hopefully not no. There’s a lot of shitty ones it’s true. When we came up with the concept I think, there was always certain dilutions that have to take place because of TV and if you try to dilute the diluted already you just end up coming up with (…) We’re on network TV so we have to compete with HBO and Showtime and those (…) just making TV bigger and better with more curse words and bigger sex scenes and we have to compete with that. It’s hard to. It’s why they won all the awards and get all the accolades but you know, making a show that’s like that - there’s 22 of us now just in the States and across the world. (??!!) Look at some of the HBO shows like The Sopranos. The Italians don’t like The Sopranos!Effect on judicial system:
Speaking to the law enforcement who couldn’t catch a guy at first because he wore booties during the murder. He wore booties? Before he killed somebody, it was that premeditated. So definitely there’s some good and bad to it I suppose. That’s what we get from law enforcement all the time, criminals watch our shows, this is what to see what not to do!Kids science:
That’s the most positive CSi effect, I do have lots of kids come up to be and going “what job is it? I want to be a forensic scientist.” “Are you sure kid? It’s carving off the top of heads and shit. It’s nasty shit!” It’s rought, these guys who’ve been in law enforcement 27 years, I don’t’ know how they do it, they see a lot of hard stuff. I did other shows before, a movie and a cop show in New York, I’ve seen my fair share of dead bodies and I’ve been to my fair share of coroner’s autopsy visitations. They just stick in your mind forever about what you’ve done to the human body, figure out what happened to it. I said ‘ass’ the other day and someone quickly went (whispers) “I don’t think we can say ass!” We can’t say ass? But you can show somebody getting a knife in them! (Heaviest Porsche???) and shit, but you can’t say ass! And you can’t breasts. And you can’t show an ass. It doesn’t make sense at all.I didn’t think I would. I got there late. (laughs) I was like this was going to suck but it was a lot of fun. When we did Alien Resurrection, we weren’t able to do it with the whole cast because everyone was in different cities by the time they decided we’d do one for AR, like 10 years after we’d done it. But it was fun to do because you don’t watch the shows – you put them away after you see it, you do something else, you’re making another show, it happens. This show’s a season I haven’t even seen yet because I’ve been shooting at the same time with Aaron so I was able to go back and really see stuff that I hadn’t seen before, really pick it apart.

Did you have favourite shows that bonded?

In the beginning it was The Mod Squad and Mission: Impossible, those were my favourite shows. I was really young when it (MI) was out. And then of course there was Barney and Starsky and Hutch. The cool cop shows. Barney was a funny, cool cop show.