In Part 2 of our posts from my set visit to Pittsburgh for the filming of the Spike action/drama series The Kill Point premiering July 22, I talked to cowriter and co-producer Todd Harthan (at left in the photo) about the series’ origin, why it ended up taking place in Pittsburgh and more about his plans for world domination.
How did you come up with the series?
Todd Harthan: [Co-writer James] DeMonaco and I, two of our favorite movies are Dog Day Afternoon and Heat, so we were big fans of bank robbery shows. The problem is there are a bunch of bank robbery movies, a bunch of bank robbery shows. We wanted to do a bank robbery show, but we were just trying to figure out a way to turn it on its head a little bit. So given that there’s this ongoing, seemingly never-ending war going on, we thought, “Is there a way to blend the two worlds?” It was the idea of having a bank robbery show, and then [DeMonaco] woke up one day and it was actually his idea to make them soldiers and that’s really what the network responded to. … Now that we had [Spike’s] interest, the next step was sitting in a room with DeMonaco for a couple of weeks and coming up with what the eight hours would be. A hostage situation over eight hours of television is a little tricky, coming up with enough things to do to stretch it over that period of time. So there’s a twist, there’s a reveal at the end of Episode 1, in the pilot, that sort of is the thing that really solidifies the show. It’s an element that I don’t think we’ve seen in a bank robbery show before. [whispers] But it’s very secret.
Is there a political message here?
TH: It’s twofold. We’re trying to play both sides. Outside the bank, our main SWAT commander is an ex soldier who has come back from the war and turned her training into a career, and she’s become a SWAT commander and leads a seemingly normal life. The other side of that is the people that come back from the war that don’t necessarily blend back into society, can’t really figure out how to manage their lives after they’ve fought. We’re trying to balance it out so the people that watch the show, they don’t think, “Oh, these guys are anti-war. These guys are anti-government.” It’s not that at all. It’s a little bit of both. Hopefully it will spark conversation instead of arguments. Hopefully it will make people think.
Why Pittsburgh?
TH: We went to every other city, and they all said no, and the last choice was Pittsburgh. [laughs] It was supposed to be New York, it was supposed to be midtown Manhattan. Manhattan’s incredibly expensive to shoot in, so we knew right away that we weren’t going to be able to shoot in New York. So we thought maybe we’d go to Jersey, Connecticut … it was like this endless search for a city. But Lionsgate had just done something here [in Pittsburgh]. And I guess that planted the seed for Lionsgate to at least research Pittsburgh. And then we researched it, and it looked like all these different things were going to go in our favor if we came here. The city was going to help us with locations, the mayor was going to help us with the police department, and all these things started to open up. So we came here to scout it, and it just worked. Downtown was great. There were places like this where we could build our sets that weren’t very expensive. There were all kinds of housing options for people who were going to be traveling in. So it just sort of fit. But making it Pittsburgh for Pittsburgh — because originally we were going to cover it up and make it look like New York if we could — which, in hindsight, would’ve been an absolute killer for us, because some of our best shots so far are of all the bridges and the water and the skyline, all that stuff which we’re able to open up because it’s Pittsburgh for Pittsburgh. But it was a little bit of a journey to get it to Pittsburgh, because we were pushing it away at first because we didn’t know anything about it. I’d never been here. DeMonaco had never been here. Steve Shill our director had never been here. So we were all just like, “Well … we guess.” I just pictured it as a really dull, working, gray steel town. And then we were walking around downtown and were like, “Jeez, this is actually pretty cool.” I mean, the square where we’re shooting the exterior of the bank is fantastic. You can’t re-create that. In L.A. they have all these backlots with New York streets and Boston streets, you have all these built-up mock cities. But when you look at Market Square, it’s priceless. When we’re shooting Market Square, it’s unbelievable. You can’t build that stuff. So that’s the longwinded version of why Pittsburgh.
Are you closing up the story in eight episodes?
TH: We’re closing up the bank robbery end of it. The cop version of it, the Pittsburgh Police Department version of it is the seed that we carry on. It’s like [24‘s] Jack Bauer, it’s like CTU. The Pittsburgh Police Department and the SWAT team and Donnie Wahlberg’s character is like the CTU for our show. We’ll take them and we’ll go onto a different hostage situation that’s not in the bank. It could be something’s happening out in the river involving one of the big barges, or someone’s taking over one of the bridges, convention center, baseball park. We’re exploring all of these other setpiece options.
So there’s more Kill Point in the works?
TH: Season 2 would be 13 episodes, so the trick with Season 2 is it’s going to be really hard to have one hostage situation over 13 episodes. But the key is that we may have them do one hostage situation that takes you up to the midpoint of the show and it ends, and it goes on to a second one through the second half. Or we may do it in fours. We may have four little hostage situations. We’re in talks with that right now.
Why was cable and particularly Spike the perfect home for this series?
TH: The big advantage to doing it on cable is, well, two things: It’s nice to have a little more freedom with language. And two: the action sequences and the blood and guts and all that stuff that we show (I say guts but we don’t really show guts). What we show, we can push the envelope a little bit more with everything. It’s across the board: with content, with political themes, the action sequences, all that stuff is an advantage to cable. But the big advantage to cable and Spike is that we are sort of hoping this is the equivalent to what The Shield was to FX. [Spike] doesn’t have a lot of scripted series, they had Blade last year which isn’t on the air any more, but they mostly have UFC and Pros Vs. Joes and stuff like that. This is hopefully a high quality scripted series. They went and got arguably one of the best directors in TV, Steve Shill. They went and got John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg and Frank Grillo who was on Prison Break and all these guys, Leo Fitzpatrick who was on The Wire. We have a lot of actors from The Wire on this show. So what we’re hoping we have the opportunity to put Spike on the map as far as scripted series goes, to be the first one that really makes them pop like The Shield did for FX. So that’s exciting. It’s not just another show on another network that does a bunch of shows every year. This is the first one to hopefully help them explode. And then I become their Golden Boy! It’s all in my master plan to take over the world! Get a key to the city in Pittsburgh. I want my own bridge. I’m working on that.