Writers' blog - Episode 10/11
Episodes 10 & 11 (by David
Brechin-Smith)
In the world of TV, making a drama series for an 8.30pm timeslot
brings with it certain constraints and "rules". These limitations
are often based on censorship guidelines.
There are words and situations and events that are deemed
unacceptable to the general viewing audience at that time of the
day. For example, in an 8.30pm show, you can't have characters
saying "f**k" or "c**t". I've deliberately asterisked those words
because I'm not sure if you can say them on the TVNZ website either
(you can't really - Ed). However, after 9.30pm, you can swear
till profanities are coming out your arse.
Just look at Outrageous Fortune. On that show they actually have
someone who works with the script editor called the F*ck
Supervisor. It's this person's job to make sure there are at least
six hundred and twenty-nine instances per episode of characters
saying "f**k". If the script fails to reach this quota, it has to
be rewritten to include more "*ucks". And that can take time.
Carefully placed profanity is a skill. Those fu*ks aren't
random.
What's funny to me is that when we read "f**k" or "c**t", or hear
them bleeped out on TV or in a film, we're saying or hearing those
words in our heads anyway. It's a point famously made by American
comedian, Lenny Bruce, who, in the 1960s, was arrested for
obscenity after using the word "cocksucker" - sorry, I mean "
c*cks*cker" - during a routine. He later performed the same
routine, only this time he said "bleep" instead of "coc*s*cker".
This time they couldn't arrest him because "bleep" isn't an
obscenity. But you can bet that everyone in the audience, and the
cops, were thinking "*ock*ucker" every time Lenny said
"bleep".
So, what's this got to do with The Cu*t?
Well, first, the dialogue in the show is "clean". None of the
characters ever say "fu*k". Imagine that. A New Zealand drama
without one single "f*ck". Groundbreaking. There might be a couple
of "sh*ts", but I even doubt that. The worst we get language-wise
is "crap", and the odd "Jesus" or "Christ". While we're on the
subject of blasphemy, I heard Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner
interviewed recently and he said that, on that show, they're
allowed to say "Jesus" and "Christ" but not "Jesus Christ".
Second, The Cult has no burning babies. We had one, but it turned
out to be one of those events that crossed the line of good taste
and appropriateness for an 8.30pm show. So it was decided that the
burning baby had to go. At the time, we (the writers) fought the
decision, giving solid story and character reasons to keep the
burning baby, but in the end, we lost.
I'm glad we lost. I'm glad we got rid of the burning baby. Why? Let
me explain:
Episode 10 is Sophie's episode and part of her story is about how,
in the recent past, she lost her daughter. Up until this episode,
we know virtually nothing about who Sophie is, or what she's up to,
or why she's doing what she's doing. I think it's one of the
strengths of The Cult that we introduce characters, such as Sophie,
and keep them shrouded in mystery for a few episodes. This helps to
make them compelling characters. We watch them because we're
waiting to be told more about them, waiting to discover what makes
them tick. In episode 10, we learn what makes Sophie tick.
In her back-story, we see that she's a de-programmer, helping
families try and get their loved ones out of cults. The man she's
trying to de-program is Liam, a Momentum member, who's been living
in a compound led by a man called Ron Poleski. Sophie knows that
some of the doctrine Liam spouts at her isn't in the Momentum
literature, which alerts her to the fact that Poleski is most
likely a maverick within Momentum (much like Edward North
is).
For example, when Liam learns that Sophie has a five-year-old
daughter, Emily, he warns Sophie that Emily's "mind and body and
soul are being compromised" by the corrupt forces of the world.
This is Poleski's doctrine, not Momentum's.
Anyway, later, Liam attacks Sophie, escapes in Sophie's car and
kidnaps Emily. The police find Sophie's car by a coastal cliff-top
and it's assumed, after a man's body and items of Emily's clothing
are found washed up, that Liam and Emily have drowned. But,
crucially, Emily's body is never found.
Now, in a previous script, Emily wasn't five. She was a baby. And
Liam didn't kidnap her. He locked himself and Emily in the toilet
of Sophie's house. The toilet floor was drenched in petrol. When
Sophie gets home, frantic, to check that Emily is safe, Liam drops
a lit match on the toilet floor and the place goes up in flames
(he's doused other parts of the house as well). We didn't actually
see any burning bodies, but it was made clear that Liam and baby
Emily burned to death.
The reason we had such an extreme event was to create a clear
understanding of why Sophie, in the present day, is cold and
calculating and willing to use innocent people as pawns in her own
deadly game (the true nature of which is slowly unfolding in these
later episodes). We needed to understand her deep desire to take
revenge against Momentum.
But, as I've said, we weren't allowed a burning baby. It was too
much. But removing the burning baby was, ultimately, a great thing.
The reason is because in the earlier version it was clear that
Emily (and Liam) had definitely died. However, in the final
version, it's not clear that Emily is dead. Her body is never
found. Which means Sophie can't get any real closure around her
daughter's death. Which further complicates her as a character - in
a good way.
Sophie assumes, based on the police's evidence, that her daughter
is dead and that Liam/Momentum is to blame, which motivates her
actions against Two Gardens. But because Emily's body was never
recovered, Sophie always has an amount of hope, however small, that
her daughter could still be alive. The possibility that Emily is
still alive also gives us something to play with story-wise when we
continue Sophie's arc. I'm not saying that Sophie will later learn
that Emily is still alive, just that it can be useful to have stuff
like this up your sleeve.
If we were allowed to keep the burning baby (which may have been
the case if it was a 9.30pm show) then we wouldn't have had this
potential story material. In this case, censorship forced us to
come up with an alternative scenario that was actually much
better.
Nothing to do with that, we've had a question on the show's blog
from andrew54, a fan in the States who's been watching the show
on-line - nice one andrew45! Tell your friends!
The question relates to the fact that, generally, the Liberators
wear dark-coloured clothes and the cult members wear light-coloured
clothes. Andrew54 asks if this is important or simply a tweaking of
the "white hat - black hat" concept from Westerns. The answer is
that it was done to help create a feeling confusion in the
audience. Who is good? Who is bad? Who is right? Who is
wrong?
We didn't want to create a situation in which it was clear that the
cult was "evil" and that the Liberators were "good" and "heroic".
We didn't want it to be that obvious. We wanted to create
"blurring". We wanted people to question what the Liberators are
doing: are they doing the right thing or are they being selfish and
intolerant? We didn't want to portray Two Gardens as a dark,
dangerous, destructive cult led by a corrupt, perverse leader. That
would have been a cliché.
In other words, we wanted to defy expectations. I think the use of
dark for the Liberators and light for the cult members is a simple
visual representation of this idea.
The character who best embodies this idea of "blurring" is of
course Edward, who's the focus of ep11. One thing we wanted to do -
and I think we've achieved this - was to make Edward North unlike
almost every cult leader we've known. He's not after money or sex
or even power. He wants something much more important than those
superficial things.
We wanted to create a cult leader who genuinely believes that he
can make the world a better place. As he explains in his
back-story, how much better would the world be if we got rid of
greed, anger, jealousy? All the negative human traits and emotions
that can lead to murder and war. I mean, he's got a good point,
right? Without all that stuff I think the world would be a better
place.
However, when we learn how Edward plans to achieve this, we begin
to understand that, while he's a good man, he's also seriously
deranged. Watch next week's finale to find out just how far Edward
will go to try and make the world a better place for us all. And
how some of the Liberators, particularly Michael, are crucial to
his plans.
One last thing. In last night's episode, wasn't Edward's near death
experience cool? And did you spot who was there with him? It's a
big clue as to why Michael and some of the other Liberators have
been "lured" to Two
Gardens.
