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‘Poker Face' director, executive producer Adam Arkin on channeling ‘Heat' and the technique he ‘had never done before'
During the first season of Poker Face, prodigious director Adam Arkin marveled at the 'joyous invention of the show," which compelled him to jump at the opportunity to join the second season as executive producer and director. He says series mastermind Rian Johnson and star Natasha Lyonne "created an environment that was very intoxicating to watch and one that was alluring" for him to immerse himself. It doesn't hurt that the Peacock murder mystery series attracts 'a caliber of actors you don't often see doing a guest shot on a single episode of television,' and Arkin credits that willingness to 'the variety and the chance to try something new and be cast against type.' Arkin sat down with Gold Derby to discuss the two Season 2 episodes he directed, 'Sloppy Joseph' and 'One Last Case.'
Poker Face challenges each one of its directors because they have to 'create an entirely new world with every episode,' which Arkin describes as 'a daunting task not for the faint of heart, because it really requires a level of effort of almost doing a pilot every two weeks.' The director credits the cinematographers Christine Ng, Jaron Presant, and Tari Segal for maintaining the visual consistency of the show, despite the 'conscious desire to change things up subtly based on the influences' and settings of each installment. Ng and Presant, who worked on both the first and second seasons, created the 'hallmarks' of the visual style of the comedic mystery, including 'a brightness, a willingness to do things visually surprising, unconventional camera moves, the use of zoom that somewhat harken back to the '70s and '80s and classic films of those eras, and a love of cinema.'
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Arkin has a stellar CV as director, working behind the camera of Emmy-winning television series such as Succession, Fargo, Nurse Jackie, and The Americans. Even so, Poker Face afforded him the chance to flex new muscles behind the camera. 'There was a visual target baked into 'Sloppy Joseph' that I had never done before,' says Arkin, citing the 'creation of the two worlds: the adult and the child world.' In the episode, an overachieving elementary school student named Stephanie (Eva Jade Halford), in a fit of jealousy, sabotages the magic trick of her classmate Elijah (Callum Vinson). For the scenes centered on the children, Arkin kept the screen 'virtually free of an adult presence, at least beyond seeing a body wipe or a hand or an arm' to remain 'in and on the level of the children.' When the director 'raised the eye line' to deal with Lyonne's Charlie, he then made sure the adult world felt 'washed out' and 'a little more drab' in comparison.
SEE 'No lies detected': Critics praise 'Poker Face' Season 2 as 'fresh, funny,' and driven by the 'magnetic' Natasha Lyonne
'Sloppy Joseph' centers on the showdown between Charlie and Stephanie, as the protagonist tries to unravel how and why Elijah's magic trick went so awry as to kill the classroom gerbil. Arkin had to navigate a tricky character dynamic, because even though Stephanie is so young, she had to be a worthy opponent to human lie detector Charlie. The director calls their scenes 'a huge amount of fun' and 'not as much heavy lifting as one might imagine.' He praises Halford, especially in the scene in which Charlie interrogates Stephanie on the playground, and Stephanie answers Charlie's questions while spinning on a carousel. 'It would have been a complicated scene for a child actor to do just for the emotional content, but we had the added element of a continuity issue around where she was in that carousel. She just had this remarkable ability to know her timing … she just instinctually knew to hold until she was in the place that matched,' explains the director. He also notes that Lyonne 'recognized really quickly that she had a true scene partner in Eva.'
Arkin also directed the subsequent episode, 'One Last Job,' in which big-box store employee Kendall (Sam Richardson), who dreams of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter, gets embroiled in a plot to rob the store of its Black Friday cash. Kendall's love of cinema and heist moves stems from his passion for the 1995 Michael Mann film Heat, which the episode mirrors. Asked if he feels similarly passionately about any one movie, Arkin admits, 'I can't boil it down to a small handful. There are probably a few dozen films that just live in my psyche as reference points, if not literal inspiration for my own desire to be a storyteller and filmmaker, then just the way they impacted me emotionally.' He cites a few standout pictures, including the iconic The Godfather, which he describes as 'an amazing accomplishment' and 'state of the art in so many ways,' the 1966 John Frankenheimer film 'Seconds' starring Rock Hudson, which he confesses 'almost put me in the hospital, it was so disturbing but brilliantly made,' and Howard Hawks' screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. 'They've all created a stew of inspiration, I hope,' reflects the director.
'One Last Job' balances its robbery plot inspired by classic heist films with romantic comedy, as Charlie falls in love with store manager Bill (Corey Hawkins), who ends up the victim of Kendall's theft gone sideways. Arkin credits writer Taofik Kolade for striking the perfect balance of the two polar opposite film genres. As director, he 'found the best way to achieve the result was just by fully committing to whichever genre we were operating in on a given day,' and the mashup was aided by 'post-production in terms of the pacing.'
WATCH our video interview with Tony Tost, 'Poker Face' showrunner
Both episodes have big tentpole sequences that Arkin had to time and execute meticulously. In 'Sloppy Joseph,' it is the talent show scenes in which Stephanie tampers with Elijah's magic trick and he kills the gerbil in front of the entire school. The sequence was tricky because the director 'had really limited hours because we were working with all those kids,' and he therefore had to ensure the team was 'covering things inventively, prodigiously, for the editorial options, but also efficiently.' In 'One Last Job,' the hardest sequence to shoot was the return of Kendall's accomplice, Juice (James Ransone), who shoots up the big box store looking for the stolen loot while Charlie tries to thwart him. The director wanted a 'hall of mirrors' sequence with Juice featuring the various television screens in the store. 'One of the major ideas I had in the middle of it was that it would be cool to have Charlie herself appear on some of those screens because of the in-house store cameras that are set up inevitably in those departments,' shares the director, adding, 'A lot of that work was done in post-production.'
In addition to directing, Arkin is a prolific actor, with three Emmy nominations for Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope, and Frasier. Asked if he would love to move in front of the camera in a future episode of Poker Face, he says, 'I would jump at that in a heartbeat if the offer was ever extended.' He muses, 'In general, I love the fact that I've been getting to direct as much as I have, but one of the byproducts of it is I'm not acting virtually at all these days, and I really miss it. I don't feel like I'm ready to close the books on that, so I'm looking for the opportunity.'
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