Two Brothers, Batman, and Person of Interest

 
 


This happy looking guy is Jonathan Nolan.















He happens to be the guy who wrote the short story that the movie Memento was based on.

Coincidentally, he is also the younger brother of Christopher Nolan, the guy who directed Memento.
















As an incredibly talented brother team, Christopher and Jonathan have co-written: The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and the Dark Knight Rises.

Recently, Jonathan wrote a pilot for a television show:  Person of Interest.







Person of Interest stars Jim Caviezel, best known for his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ . . .

(A role which, as Mel Gibson warned the devoutly Catholic Caviezel at the time, would wreck his career in Hollywood.  Proving mostly accurate, Caviezel struggled to make his mark until Person of Interest, which premiered as the highest rated pilot in 15 years and averages 10 million viewers per week)

. . . and Michael Emerson, best known for his role as Ben Linus from the show Lost.

















Lost was created, in part, by J.J. Abrams, who also serves as an executive producer on Person of Interest.  Lost, a story of a group of survivors of a plane crash, dealt with many strange phenomena, including time travel and other such fringe science.

J.J. Abrams, among his many other projects, also wrote the screenplay for Forever Young, a 1992 movie starring Mel Gibson.  In Forever Young, Gibson plays a test pilot in 1939 who undergoes a cryogenic experiment and wakes up in 1992.  This was an early example of Abrams fascination with time travel and fringe science.












More recently and keeping in tune with his scifi fascinations, Abrams has served (simultaneously as his work on Person of Interest) as the executive producer of the show Fringe.  Fringe, starring Anna Torv and Pacey (Joshua Jackson),  focuses on an FBI unit that investigates cases involving, as the title suggests, fringe science phenomena.











Peter Weller guest starred in season 2, episode 18 of Fringe, titled "White Tulip."  In the episode, Weller plays Alistair Peck, a scientist obsessed with time travel who is slowly turning himself into a cyborg.













Ironically, this is not Weller's first go at playing a cyborg, as he played Officer Alex J. Murphy in Robocop.

Recently, Weller did the voice acting for Bruce Wayne / Batman in the animated adaptation of the classic Frank Miller comic "The Dark Knight Returns."

In the animated adaptation, the voice of Joker is performed by Michael Emerson.

The Strange Television Journey of Olivia Wilde

The Black Donnellys was a show about four Irish-American brothers involved with organized crime in Hell's Kitchen.

Created by Paul Haggis, outspoken critic of Scientology and winner of multiple Academy Awards for his work on Million Dollar Baby and Crash, the show debuted on NBC in February of 2007.

Unfortunately, it could not attract a significant viewership and it was canceled officially in May of 2007.

One of the main characters on the show, Jenny Rilley, was played by actress Olivia Wilde.












Prior to this role, she had a memorable appearance as bisexual club manager Alex Kelly in Season Two of  The O.C. (2004-2005).  In the span of one season, Wilde made out with both Adam Brody and Mischa Barton.













After the cancellation of The Black Donnellys, Wilde was offered and accepted the role of Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley on the show House.  Her character was on this show also happens to be bisexual, to the delight of imaginations everywhere.

She joined the cast in September of 2007, less than five months after the cancellation of The Black Donnellys.

Had The Black Donnellys been renewed for a second season, she may never have been on House, where she remained a (mostly) regular cast member for a total of eighty-one episodes from 2007 until 2012.

The X-Files Episode that Led to Bryan Cranston Playing Walter White in Breaking Bad

This guy is Vince Gilligan, the current creator/writer/director/producer of Breaking Bad.  Before Breaking Bad, though, he was a producer on the X-Files.










In X-Files Season 6, Episode 2 "Drive," which aired in November of 1998, Gilligan wrote a story about a desperate man inflicted with a terminal disease.  

This man, coincidentally, was played by Bryan Cranston.

Gilligan later explained that when he was casting the role of Walter White in Breaking Bad, which premiered ten years later in 2008, he knew he needed to pick Bryan Cranston after having seen his work on the X-Files episode:

“We had this villain, and we needed the audience to feel bad for him when he died,” Gilligan said. “Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it.”

And that is how an X-Files cameo a decade ago led to Bryan Cranston playing Walter White on Breaking Bad.