A little article about Hart Hanson - creator of Bones from a Canadian Newspaper. I love the show but I'm still pissed at Hart so he'd better deliver this season!
Rattle their Bones: Actors’ chemistry behind show’s rising success.
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | 12:50 pm
Canwest News Service
LOS ANGELES – Hart Hanson is the hidden face of Bones.
And if the hidden face of Bones is looking pretty self-satisfied these days, it’s with good reason. The Mississauga, Ont.-raised creator, executive producer and head writer of Bones is riding herd over what is suddenly one of prime time television’s fastest-growing dramas.
On this sultry August afternoon on the 20th Century Fox lot where Bones is filmed, Hanson is busy trading witticisms, barbs and high-fives with stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz following the day’s shoot.
Bones is about to break ground on its fifth season – the season premiere airs Sept. 16 on Global TV, and the following night, Sept. 17, on the Fox network – and the darkly comic procedural about seemingly mismatched forensic examiners with a growing attraction for each other is coming off its highest- rated season yet.
As Hanson originally conceived it, Bones was (very) loosely based on the life of forensic anthropologist and crime novelist Kathy Reichs. Bones ranked a middling 60th in the U.S. Nielsen ratings when it debuted in 2005, with a shade under nine million viewers.
The following year, it rose to 50th, and the year after that, 47th. Last season, Bones edged close to 10 million viewers, good enough to land it in 33rd place. After four seasons, Bones is now within a hair of being a Top 30 show.
Bones is defying the TV trend that says indifferent debuts almost invariably result in diminishing returns.
And while Hanson, a career writer – with Canadian series Traders, Neon Rider, The Odyssey, Road To Avonlea and Ready or Not to his name – says a TV show’s success rides on its writing, the real reason Bones has suddenly clicked is because of its actors Boreanaz and Deschanel are not cookie-cutter Hollywood models. They have a genuine rapport off-screen: They like each other. Chemistry is one thing you can’t fake, Hanson says.
As if to prove his point on this late summer afternoon, Deschanel begins poking fun at Boreanaz’s pronunciation of the name Byrd – a recurring actor in that day’s scenes – “B-errr-d, Burr-red, Byrr-red,” she says, slurring her words – and Boreanaz takes it in kind.
“They tease each other all the time,” Hanson explained. “And that proves this thing we do, this thing we have, works. Taken out of context, teasing can be hurtful. We’ve learned to trust each other, implicitly.”
Boreanaz, who won the role because, as Hanson famously noted at the time, he didn’t fit the Hollywood mould of “pretty boy waifs,” says mutual respect is about being there for the other person.
“If I’m having a bad day or she’s having a bad day, we can talk about it and get through it and use it in our work,” Boreanaz explained. “It works for us. It motivates the scene and pushes the scene along, and it also helps us find out something new about each other.”
Hanson is deep into this season’s arc of episodes – Seeley Booth (Boreanaz) and Temperance Brennan’s (Deschanel) on-again/off-again relationship will become more clear in the season opener, he teases – but he’s not about to divulge details.
Asked if there will be more “It was all a dream – maybe” moments during the coming season, for example, Hanson scoffed and replied: “Do you honestly think I am going to answer that question after what I went through last season?”
The May season finale – in which Booth and Brennan were revealed in bed together, but only in a dream – divided longtime Bones fans along no-they- didn’t/yes-they-did lines.
“You want people to react to your show,” Hanson said. “This sounds awful but it’s true: When the audience fights amongst itself, I feel we’ve done something right. If everybody loved everything all the time, they would be bored inside one season.”
Something has changed, though, between Booth and Brennan in the new season, Hanson admitted. Exactly what, he wouldn’t say.
Neither would Boreanaz.
“I’m just trying to get my memory back,” Boreanaz said, with a playful wince.
Deschanel says that one of the things that appeals to her about Brennan’s character is her innocence.
“She has no idea who Britney Spears is, or anything pop-culture related at all. Which I love. It’s as though she filled her brain with entirely useful information that she uses in her day-to-day life, so why would she fill it with anything frivolous like Britney Spears? But I also love the fact that she has contradictions. Brennan did know, for example, who Stewie was from Family Guy. We all have people in our lives who surprise us, and I think that’s what makes it so human. That’s what I love about Hart and Stephen’s (Nathan) writing: The characters have this base, but then contradict the base, because that’s what people do. You see from time to time that Brennan does know certain things – like, for example, that she’s a fan of John Wayne. She watched him when she was growing up.”
“Do you want to do your impression of John Wayne, since it was never in the show?” Hanson teased.
“No,” Deschanel said, startled. “I don’t remember how to do it.”
Deschanel remembered her recent experience at Comic-Con, though.
“We felt like rock stars backstage, with the 4,500 people who showed up out in front,” she said, laughing.
“I didn’t like it at all,” Hanson said. “To step out on that stage with the actors – oh, God.”
“David did an impression of Hart that was amazing,” Deschanel said.
“It turned me inside out,” Hanson said, “because there were 4,000 people out there, and 1,000 of them HATE me.”
He paused.
“And 3,000 are very nice.”
“Did you poll everyone afterwards to get those numbers?” Deschanel asked.
“I’m guessing by the boos,” Hanson replied.
“Rough estimate, then,” Deschanel said.
“It’s interesting, though,” Hanson said. “If I could just divorce myself from the agony of facing 4,200 of our fans, it was incredible to hear them cheer and react to every little thing. When Emily walked out, the noise in the room was just incredible. And then afterward, we had to be surrounded by security. There were these 15 huge guys who were taking us out to sign stuff, and I thought, `This is ridiculous.’… It was a shocking experience that I could forego.”
Hanson turned to his writing partner, Bones co-executive producer Stephen Nathan.
“You can go next year, Stephen,” he said.
There will be a next year, too. Bones has already been renewed for a seventh season.
