The mastermind behind shows like Firefly, Angel, the 9-1-1 universe, and many more sat down with Gonzalez for one of his rarer in-depth interviews. Gonzalez is a fan of the show 9-1-1, which was recently renewed for its 10th season, and previously reached out to Minear on his FB profile. During one of their conversations in October, Gonzalez suggested an interview, and Minear agreed. But, busy with filming season 9, it got postponed for some time. Now that the season is finally in the can, Tim kept his promise and sat down for this exclusive interview with Celeb Scoop Hub, which not only gives an inside look into Minear’s creative process but also offers, sometimes very personal, stories about his life and how these influenced the plots that unfold on the screen.
For Celeb Scoop Hub’s first celebrity interview, I sat down with Tim Minear about his approach to storytelling. We touched on how he got started, how he blends the real with the dramatized, and more. Read below to see what he has to say.
CSH: You used to film Super 8 films as a kid. Are there parts of that process that still show up now when you’re running a set or breaking down a story?
TM: I think so. I mean, I think it’s all kind of a continuation in a way. You’re getting together with friends, and you’re making movies. In fact, the guy I grew up with, Jonathan Lawrence, he has now directed two episodes of the show. That’s definitely like just being a kid again. Cause, literally, we were doing it together from the time we were about 9 or 10. He directed episode 13 this year, “Mother’s Boy,” and that was special.
CSH: That’s awesome! Is there a Super 8 film that feels like a proto-episode of something that you did later?
TM: In a weird way, yes, because when we were kids in the ’70s and ’80s, when we’d go out and make our Super 8 films, we’d make Star Trek and the 6 Million Dollar Man. We were actually making episodes of the TV shows that we watched. So in a way, yeah, I guess I was actually making TV even back then if you think about it.
CSH: That’s pretty cool. It’s kind of like it translates over to when you were working on Firefly and stuff like that.
TM: Oh, definitely. No question about it.
CSH: That’s so cool. If you could tap Platoon-era Tim on the shoulder and show him all the things you’ve done, what do you think would surprise him most about where you’ve ended up?
TM: Oh! He’d be like, well, why aren’t you directing feature films? What’s this TV nonsense? Cause that never occurred to me as a kid. I always thought that I’d make movies and I didn’t even consider television. But it turns out television is obviously what I’ve been doing for decades now, and television obviously gets made. Movies often don’t. I don’t know how many hours of produced content I’ve actually been behind, but it’s a lot.
CSH: Was there a moment where it stopped feeling random, and you just went, “Oh this is what I do now?”
TM: No. I think I was always pretty confident that this was what I would do. I remember my agent telling me back after my first job at a network show, which was Lois and Clark, “You know you gotta start saving that because a TV writer only has a limited life span,” and I just was like, “What? No. If I wanna work, I’ll work.” And it’s never been the case. I have the longest-running overall production deal at 20th Century Fox. The longest.
CSH: Wow, that’s awesome! You’ve joked a lot in the past about your shows being canceled, and you had your Twitter account poking fun at it. How do you actually process finding out a show’s been canceled and find the energy to build the next thing?
TM: I just go on to the next thing. It’s always just kind of rolled off my back. I mean, most things get canceled. Although that hasn’t been my experience in the last more than a decade obviously. Cause we’re coming in on season 10 of 9-1-1 and American Horror Story is still going. But back then, when the shows would get canceled, I just saw it as an opportunity to do something new. I was just grateful that I got to do the thing that I got to do. You know, it’s funny, if I hadn’t been canceled back then, there are a lot of things I wouldn’t have ended up doing. Like if one thing had stuck, I wouldn’t have done Wonderfalls or The Inside or Terriers. And all of those things, I’m really happy that I did, so in a way, my thundering failure was good for me.
Read the full interview on celebscoophub.com
