Wade Williams Talks About the Strike, Answers Questions

Wade Williams updated his blog and talked about the strike and answered some fan questions.

Quick Recap:

• Prison Break production has shut down and most of the cast has moved back to Los Angeles.

• 5 Episodes are filmed and ready…
• Wade thinks Prison Break: Cherry Hill is a good idea!
• Wentworth’s tattoo is like an industrial strength fake tattoo.

The Blog Post:

We just finished shooting the last script written before the writers strike began. Now we are on vacation/hold/hiatus/looking for a gig while the writers and producers hopefully bang out a deal sooner rather than later. My instinct is that this strike could go on for a while — the stakes are high and the players are dug in. I’m just gonna save my dough and hopefully get a gig in the mean time. We’ll see what the future brings. It’s not time to worry yet.

The production is completely shut down here. Most of the cast in PB have given up their apartments here in Dallas and moved back to L.A. The over- 200 member crew of Prison Break is out of work, as well. Nice timing for the holidays huh? It’s hard for everyone. We all want to continue working on PB but we can’t just wait around hoping for the strike to end and turn down other work. I think everybody is in “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” mode, taking work if it comes our way and saving the greenbacks. Since our daughter is in school here, we’re gonna stay put in Dallas until we resume production again.

But don’t despair. There are still 5 new episodes of PB to air this season. In the USA they will begin airing the new episodes on January 14, 2008, and continue them into February. I’m not sure what the foreign airdates will be. There’s some classic PB yet to come so hold onto your hats. I think this has been my favorite season so far — despite my wardrobe and the brutal prison Sona — with all the new complicated characters, the unimaginable deaths. I think it’s been Prison Break at it’s ruthless best.

As I promised I’m gonna answer some questions you asked in your comments:

Bijoux asks: “Have you been hearing anything about the spin off on the set or is this breaking news to you? Any thoughts?

Well actually we have been hearing rumors about a spin off called Prison Break: Cherry Hill about a women’s prison. The Rumors going as far as whispering that they were looking for the lead female actor for the show! I don’t know how true any of them are, but it sounds like a cool idea to me. What do you think?

ZZZ99 asks: “Why can’t they make fake tattoos (like the ones for kids that you just press on) for Michael’s tattoo. It would only take about 10 minutes versus hours! It just makes no sense to me that somebody couldn’t come up with something like that in TV land! So much easier.”

They do make fake tattoo; in fact that’s what they use on Wentworth: industrial strength wet-and-lift tattoos a lot like the ones little kids love. These are made with better inks and are alcohol based so you apply them using alcohol and then lift them off. They use separate tattoo pieces for his arms, chest and back. After they are applied, a make up artist uses alcohol soluble make up to tweak the tattoo art. The whole process to apply then paint and tweak Went’s tats takes 4 hours…so if he has to be ready to work at 7 am that means he’s in the make up chair at 3 am to begin getting his tattoos applied. He’s been a good sport every time…thank goodness for him the tattoos haven’t been used much recently.

The SonaExpress asks: “Do you see shows such as Prison Break as evidence that the gap between feature film and television is narrowing? We as viewers are getting shows that are increasingly more serialized with high production values and great acting, since tv is no longer a matter of having to tune in at a particular time or have to worry about missing episodes.

Thanks! I think you’re right; the gap between TV and film is narrowing. It used to be that TV and Film were two different animals. In the past, the visual language of television and film, as well as the acting, directing, writing, and editing styles were very different. More and more film actors, writers and directors are doing TV shows now. Many feature film directors are becoming executive producers on TV shows, take Brett Ratner for instance. Stylistically, shows like Prison Break have film like forms in the serial nature of the story line and in the way the camera is used to tell the story…its not just a bunch of talking heads like a lot of TV…although PB is edited into close ups often.

The DVR/computer has changed the way people can watch television…we can watch what we want when we want and fast forward through the commercials. I think the present/future holds downloadable TV where we will be able to program our TV/computer to download whatever TV show or movie we want to watch onto our hard drive whenever we want…that’s already the case here in the US. That’s what the writers strike is all about…revenues from digital media. Soon for a fee, all TV and Film will be available in best quality digital form for immediate download…itunes is just the beginning…writers, actors, directors…we don’t receive a penny for any of that.

S1mulat10n0ne asks: “Is it really you writing this blog, or do you have someone doing this for
you?

Yep, its me that writes it! I enjoy doing it, thanks for reading.