JOHN: “Hi, I’m John Colm, lead writer for the hit series ‘Erased.’”
ELLIOT: “I’m Elliot Lewis, the other lead writer.” *laughs*
CHRISTINE: “And I’m Christine Han, from storyboarding.”
JOHN: “First off, thanks for buying the first season of ‘Erased’ on DVD. Actually, didn’t we change the name to ‘Paper Jam?’”
ELLIOT: “’Erased’ was the codename, and the name of the pilot. The series is ‘Paper Jam.’”
JOHN: “The muppets came up with both names.”
CHRISTINE: “Next, let’s tell the viewers a little about how we got started here.”
ELLIOT: “I started working with Gyrobo in the 90s. We wrote some scenes in ‘Titanic’. Of course, we lost the rights to them when Gyrobo refused to work with Leonardo DiCaprio. He originally wanted to cast Chris Farley as Jack Dawson. This came literally right after Gyrobo was thrown out of Icon for trying to cast Phil Hartman as the lead in ‘Braveheart.’”
CHRISTINE: “Wasn’t that when he started that doomsday cult?”
ELLIOT: “No. That was after Farley and Hartman died, because those were literally the only two actors he was interested in casting. But that’s how we met. He surprised me last year when I was working on ‘Atlantis’, said he was onto a new project.”
CHRISTINE: “Similar story here, we worked on ‘Clumps: The Musical’ in 2002. It was a rebuttal to ‘Hair.’”
JOHN: “He stuffed me in a burlap sack until the crying stopped.”
CHRISTINE: “I got a phone call from him last week, ‘Chrissy! Pack up the kiddos and speedos! We’re goin’ fer the BIG TIME!’”
JOHN: “…but it didn’t…”
CHRISTINE: “We went to Europe to visit paper mills and Egyptian papyrus museums. He said we needed a feel of the history of paper.”
ELLIOT: “We spent literally days sketching paper.”
JOHN: “I asked him, ‘why paper?’ He told me he’d been conducting an experiment with clocks, hanging them over his sink, when he slipped and hit his head. And that’s when he had a vision. He saw an image—”
CHRISTINE: “Futuristic paper, written on with digital ink.”
JOHN: “…it’s liquid paper. That was his thing. That was the show. But we couldn’t sell it on that alone.”
ELLIOT: “We spent… God, at least four months working with branding consultants, trying to get a message. Remember Tintar…?” *others nod in agreement*
JOHN: “Lou Tintarello. He actually approached us. Wasted weeks trying to convince us to use our ‘digital pulpit’ to push his message of ‘heavenly dumpster-diving,’ or whatever it was.”
ELLIOT: “’Tell the people that their path to God lies in their own droppings.’ ‘The spiritual awareness of a people derives from their material discardation.’ He was crazy.”
CHRISTINE: “Gyrobo believed in him.”
ELLIOT: “Gyrobo believes it’s not possible to photograph the dark side of the moon because ‘satellites don’t work that way.’ If we could’ve kept paying his outrageous consulting fees, the show would be 43 minutes of pure garbage.”
JOHN: “He tried to cast Sarah Palin.”
CHRISTINE: “Gyrobo or Tintarello…?”
JOHN: “Gyrobo was intent on proving Alaska was part of the continental United States. He wanted her to tell people it was. That was his agenda.”
ELLIOT: “We ended up making Alaska a big part of the show. That’s where Doctor Nunn worked, at Maverick University.”
JOHN: “It’s a real place. We got permission to shoot there, but we had to bring in a ton of extras. The male-female ratio there is even worse than the rest of Alaska.”
ELLIOT: “Is your chair sticking?”
CHRISTINE: “My chair is fine.”
JOHN: “So after Tintarello left I told Gyrobo, ‘if you want a message you need conflict.’ He said, ‘why not have his boss trying to kill him like they do that there?’ He slurred his words, too.”
ELLIOT: “Does anybody want to change chairs?”
JOHN: “So we decided to have his boss try to kill him, which was perfect, because we’d already decided that his boss had stolen the liquid paper formula from Dr. Nunn before having her ‘erased.’ Hey, I just got that! ‘Erased.’”
CHRISTINE: “That’s why we called the pilot ‘Erased.’”
ELLIOT: “My chair is the Leaning Tower of Pisa here.”
JOHN: “The series starts with Nathan Carter, a manager at a paper mill in the future — LPI, Liquid Paper Incorporated — overseeing the output of millions of sheets of liquid paper each day. He stumbles onto an old newspaper from one of LPI’s biggest clients during an audit before LPI merges with Google.”
CHRISTINE: “Keep in mind, this is while Google faces an antitrust lawsuit. LPI can’t afford any improprieties.”
JOHN: “The paper talks about LPI founder Devlin Dingus, but says that an enigmatic Dr. Nunn was the one who invented the technology behind liquid paper. Nathan checks the paper against the ‘official’ records, and can’t find the article or any mention of Dr. Nunn.”
ELLIOT: “It was my idea to have a newspaper as THE central plot device. A bridge between the past and not-too-distant future.”
JOHN: “This contradicts everything Nathan knows about liquid paper, that it was created by Dingus in his mom’s basement. His bosses suddenly take notice and tell him to drop it. But he’s too headstrong, and decides to keep pressing. He finds himself fired and under fire from hired guns… ”
CHRISTINE: “The only way he can protect his family and expose Dingus is to find Dr. Nunn and shatter the conspiracy. Every episode has him using a clue from the previous episode to reach a new location. Along the way he encounters recurring assassins, people with secrets of their own to protect, and his biggest foe, liquid paper itself — each sheet of which is actively scanning for his face and ready to transmit his whereabouts to LPI.”
*** BEGIN SPOILER ALERT! ***
ELLIOT: “As the series progresses, we learn that Nunn’s wild experimentation with liquid paper produced an amazing new variant codenamed ”Papyrus“. What it does is anyone’s guess — once Nathan learns of its existence it at the end of season one, it becomes the focus of season two.”
*** END SPOILER ALERT! ***
CHRISTINE: “And Nathan can only keep his family safe by leaving them. That was the message I think we latched onto: protecting your family.”
ELLIOT: “His daughter doesn’t seen to think so.” *laughs*
JOHN: “That was Koma’s idea.”
CHRISTINE: “Koma?”
JOHN: “You didn’t work with him, you were in storyboarding. He was one of the investors. Came by every day, at first with donuts. We liked him, but then the donuts stopped and he started bringing those pit-bulls.”
ELLIOT: “His idea was that Nathan’s daughter Jessika would be approached by Dingus, who would lie and convince her that her father was the real criminal. She would turn against him without him knowing, setting up that cliffhanger.”
CHRISTINE: “My kids loved that cliffhanger.”
ELLIOT: “Your kids loved that episode of ‘SpongeBob’ where he ingested toxic paint.”
CHRISTINE: “That show’s gone downhill…”
ELLIOT: “Speaking of downhill, find out how that cliffhanger ends when the new season of ‘Paper Jam’ starts.”
JOHN: “Season 2 premiers on SyFy on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 10 PM eastern.”
ELLIOT: “Thanks for watching. And remember…”
ALL: “Let’s Jam!”
ELLIOT: “I’m standing up now.”
©2010 SyFy. No rights reserved.
ELLIOT: “I’m Elliot Lewis, the other lead writer.” *laughs*
CHRISTINE: “And I’m Christine Han, from storyboarding.”
JOHN: “First off, thanks for buying the first season of ‘Erased’ on DVD. Actually, didn’t we change the name to ‘Paper Jam?’”
ELLIOT: “’Erased’ was the codename, and the name of the pilot. The series is ‘Paper Jam.’”
JOHN: “The muppets came up with both names.”
CHRISTINE: “Next, let’s tell the viewers a little about how we got started here.”
ELLIOT: “I started working with Gyrobo in the 90s. We wrote some scenes in ‘Titanic’. Of course, we lost the rights to them when Gyrobo refused to work with Leonardo DiCaprio. He originally wanted to cast Chris Farley as Jack Dawson. This came literally right after Gyrobo was thrown out of Icon for trying to cast Phil Hartman as the lead in ‘Braveheart.’”
CHRISTINE: “Wasn’t that when he started that doomsday cult?”
ELLIOT: “No. That was after Farley and Hartman died, because those were literally the only two actors he was interested in casting. But that’s how we met. He surprised me last year when I was working on ‘Atlantis’, said he was onto a new project.”
CHRISTINE: “Similar story here, we worked on ‘Clumps: The Musical’ in 2002. It was a rebuttal to ‘Hair.’”
JOHN: “He stuffed me in a burlap sack until the crying stopped.”
CHRISTINE: “I got a phone call from him last week, ‘Chrissy! Pack up the kiddos and speedos! We’re goin’ fer the BIG TIME!’”
JOHN: “…but it didn’t…”
CHRISTINE: “We went to Europe to visit paper mills and Egyptian papyrus museums. He said we needed a feel of the history of paper.”
ELLIOT: “We spent literally days sketching paper.”
JOHN: “I asked him, ‘why paper?’ He told me he’d been conducting an experiment with clocks, hanging them over his sink, when he slipped and hit his head. And that’s when he had a vision. He saw an image—”
CHRISTINE: “Futuristic paper, written on with digital ink.”
JOHN: “…it’s liquid paper. That was his thing. That was the show. But we couldn’t sell it on that alone.”
ELLIOT: “We spent… God, at least four months working with branding consultants, trying to get a message. Remember Tintar…?” *others nod in agreement*
JOHN: “Lou Tintarello. He actually approached us. Wasted weeks trying to convince us to use our ‘digital pulpit’ to push his message of ‘heavenly dumpster-diving,’ or whatever it was.”
ELLIOT: “’Tell the people that their path to God lies in their own droppings.’ ‘The spiritual awareness of a people derives from their material discardation.’ He was crazy.”
CHRISTINE: “Gyrobo believed in him.”
ELLIOT: “Gyrobo believes it’s not possible to photograph the dark side of the moon because ‘satellites don’t work that way.’ If we could’ve kept paying his outrageous consulting fees, the show would be 43 minutes of pure garbage.”
JOHN: “He tried to cast Sarah Palin.”
CHRISTINE: “Gyrobo or Tintarello…?”
JOHN: “Gyrobo was intent on proving Alaska was part of the continental United States. He wanted her to tell people it was. That was his agenda.”
ELLIOT: “We ended up making Alaska a big part of the show. That’s where Doctor Nunn worked, at Maverick University.”
JOHN: “It’s a real place. We got permission to shoot there, but we had to bring in a ton of extras. The male-female ratio there is even worse than the rest of Alaska.”
ELLIOT: “Is your chair sticking?”
CHRISTINE: “My chair is fine.”
JOHN: “So after Tintarello left I told Gyrobo, ‘if you want a message you need conflict.’ He said, ‘why not have his boss trying to kill him like they do that there?’ He slurred his words, too.”
ELLIOT: “Does anybody want to change chairs?”
JOHN: “So we decided to have his boss try to kill him, which was perfect, because we’d already decided that his boss had stolen the liquid paper formula from Dr. Nunn before having her ‘erased.’ Hey, I just got that! ‘Erased.’”
CHRISTINE: “That’s why we called the pilot ‘Erased.’”
ELLIOT: “My chair is the Leaning Tower of Pisa here.”
JOHN: “The series starts with Nathan Carter, a manager at a paper mill in the future — LPI, Liquid Paper Incorporated — overseeing the output of millions of sheets of liquid paper each day. He stumbles onto an old newspaper from one of LPI’s biggest clients during an audit before LPI merges with Google.”
CHRISTINE: “Keep in mind, this is while Google faces an antitrust lawsuit. LPI can’t afford any improprieties.”
JOHN: “The paper talks about LPI founder Devlin Dingus, but says that an enigmatic Dr. Nunn was the one who invented the technology behind liquid paper. Nathan checks the paper against the ‘official’ records, and can’t find the article or any mention of Dr. Nunn.”
ELLIOT: “It was my idea to have a newspaper as THE central plot device. A bridge between the past and not-too-distant future.”
JOHN: “This contradicts everything Nathan knows about liquid paper, that it was created by Dingus in his mom’s basement. His bosses suddenly take notice and tell him to drop it. But he’s too headstrong, and decides to keep pressing. He finds himself fired and under fire from hired guns… ”
CHRISTINE: “The only way he can protect his family and expose Dingus is to find Dr. Nunn and shatter the conspiracy. Every episode has him using a clue from the previous episode to reach a new location. Along the way he encounters recurring assassins, people with secrets of their own to protect, and his biggest foe, liquid paper itself — each sheet of which is actively scanning for his face and ready to transmit his whereabouts to LPI.”
*** BEGIN SPOILER ALERT! ***
ELLIOT: “As the series progresses, we learn that Nunn’s wild experimentation with liquid paper produced an amazing new variant codenamed ”Papyrus“. What it does is anyone’s guess — once Nathan learns of its existence it at the end of season one, it becomes the focus of season two.”
*** END SPOILER ALERT! ***
CHRISTINE: “And Nathan can only keep his family safe by leaving them. That was the message I think we latched onto: protecting your family.”
ELLIOT: “His daughter doesn’t seen to think so.” *laughs*
JOHN: “That was Koma’s idea.”
CHRISTINE: “Koma?”
JOHN: “You didn’t work with him, you were in storyboarding. He was one of the investors. Came by every day, at first with donuts. We liked him, but then the donuts stopped and he started bringing those pit-bulls.”
ELLIOT: “His idea was that Nathan’s daughter Jessika would be approached by Dingus, who would lie and convince her that her father was the real criminal. She would turn against him without him knowing, setting up that cliffhanger.”
CHRISTINE: “My kids loved that cliffhanger.”
ELLIOT: “Your kids loved that episode of ‘SpongeBob’ where he ingested toxic paint.”
CHRISTINE: “That show’s gone downhill…”
ELLIOT: “Speaking of downhill, find out how that cliffhanger ends when the new season of ‘Paper Jam’ starts.”
JOHN: “Season 2 premiers on SyFy on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 10 PM eastern.”
ELLIOT: “Thanks for watching. And remember…”
ALL: “Let’s Jam!”
ELLIOT: “I’m standing up now.”
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