WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Bedside manner is overrated. Despite a tactless, cantankerous demeanor, Gregory House has been a welcome TV guest since 2004.
After eight seasons, Hugh Laurie hangs up his cane as brilliant diagnostician Gregory House.
House has enjoyed a healthy eight-season run that included audiences of 20 million and more at its peak, four Emmy nominations for best drama and six for star Hugh Laurie.
Tonight, Fox wraps up Dr. House's tale with a two-hour goodbye (8 ET/PT) divided between a retrospective and the final episode.
Laurie, who created one of the more captivating characters of recent times, shares his viewers' sentiment: "I like him."
But why like a guy whose behavior can be downright antisocial, whether he's dealing with patients with mysterious, bizarre (though often surprisingly curable) symptoms, or colleagues on the elite diagnostic team he heads at Princeton Plainsboro Hospital?
"First of all, he's funny. That's an important ingredient to the way his mind works, professionally as well as emotionally. He's also entertaining, which explains why the character Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) tolerated him for so long," says Laurie, enjoying a breezy afternoon on a balcony terrace at the Chateau Marmont hotel.
"And there's something defiant about House. He just wouldn't bend to conventional demands of good manners or authority. He also wouldn't bend to fear of death or loneliness," Laurie says. "For all his morbid self-destructiveness, I tend to think there is something full of life about House."
The unsentimental House has been a totally different kind of TV doctor, nothing like the avuncular Marcus Welby, the heroic Doug Ross of ER or the earnest young surgeons of Grey's Anatomy. You wouldn't see any of them start to strangle a patient with his own medication line, as House did in last week's episode.
But patients will put up with a lot when a doctor has House's success rate. In a recent episode, a hospital pathologist demanded to be treated by House, based on his track record.
House's weaknesses, including an addiction to Vicodin and chronic leg pain that causes him to limp, helped humanize him, says Englishman Laurie, who perfected the limp and an American accent for the role. "Sympathetic instincts are aroused when you see people who are in pain. You want to heal them or protect them in some way."
From a different angle, series creator David Shore says, "He's a 15-year-old boy. He just does what he wants to do, which is a very attractive thing. We worked very hard to make it smart and funny, and Hugh is unbelievable in that role. I can give all the credit in the world to Hugh — and I am."
House in a predicament
One of those immature stunts — clogging the hospital's toilets with paper, causing damage to an MRI machine — puts House in a predicament in the finale, as his parole for an earlier act of destruction is revoked and he is ordered back to jail. He is supposed to serve six months, one more than the life expectancy of best friend James Wilson, an oncologist who has cancer.
"House is faced with a very difficult situation with Wilson, and he assesses what his future should or will be. How does he deal with that?" Shore says. House has "always been a good friend. I like the fact that we're ending the series focusing on the House-Wilson relationship."
Strong characters such as Wilson and Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) make House a better character, he says. "He's only as good as the people who battle him. … Any time somebody went toe-to-toe with House and won, and Lisa did that as often as anybody, it was great."
Over the years, House dueled with other able colleagues, including Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer), Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley (Olivia Wilde) and Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson). They put up with a lot of grief, some humorous, some less so, to bask in his genius. (Morrison and Wilde will appear in the finale, as will Amber Tamblyn, who played med student Martha Masters, and Kal Penn, whose character, Lawrence Kutner, killed himself.)
"They thought he was brilliant, and they were just sponges soaking it up," Epps says. "Certain people and departments are above and beyond the rest in their field. House was that guy. The core of House represented the truth. He was always trying to get to the truth of the matter. That's one of the reasons people responded to the character."
Foreman, who became the hospital's dean of medicine during the run of the show, "tried to keep him within the boundaries of reality," Epps says. "House has a childlike quality, in that he's forever curious, and I think Foreman echoed the audience in the sense of: 'Hey, you can't do this in the real world.' "
If House the character has demanded more from an audience than the typical TV hero, so has House the series. "It was about something. It tackled ethics and morals and existential questions of religion, sex, love and marriage. It took on a great many things," Laurie says.
"It aspired to take on big ethical questions: Is it worth using bad means to achieve a good end? What are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve a desired outcome? How much are you prepared to pay in psychic and moral terms to achieve good results?" he says. "House is a character and an idea that tried to test those limits."
Going out his own way
House premiered Nov. 16, 2004, to modest ratings, starting well short of hit status. "I just wanted a large enough audience so I could keep telling my stories," Shore says.
He got far more. Fox backed House in its early struggles, eventually giving it the prime slot after TV's most-watched show, American Idol. House's audience boomed, and it became one of TV's top hits. In its peak season, 2006-07, the show averaged 19.3 million viewers. The numbers have slipped in recent years, and the show is averaging 8.6 million viewers this season.
Shore, with Laurie and executive producer Katie Jacobs, decided to end the show this season because of uncertainties about the future in such matters as budgets and casting.
"My worry was, if it's not going to get resolved in time, and it was looking like it wasn't going to get resolved in time, we're going to wind up not being able to end the series the way we want," Shore says. "If we can't do it the way we want to do it, let's go out while we're still feeling good about it."
The time feels right to Laurie, too. "You cannot have a character on the ledge threatening to jump forever, because at some point the crowd gathered below is going to start to drift away. The guy's got to jump or climb back into the building."
Will viewers see that in the finale? "You probably will. House reaches a point at which he physically and emotionally confronts the question of to be or not to be. Well, I suppose I shouldn't tell you which way he goes," Laurie says, pausing. "You can probably guess."
'House' series finale: Cast, creator explain why it's time for the end -- EXCLUSIVE
After eight dark and twisted seasons of House, Fox’s beloved medical drama hangs up its cane tonight with an hour-long retrospective and series finale (8-10 p.m. ET) entitled “Everybody Dies” — a tweak to one of Dr. House’s famous lines, “Everybody lies.”
Creator David Shore and the cast have kept quiet on exactly what will happen in the finale. We know Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Thirteen (Olivia Wilde), Kutner (Kal Penn), and Amber (Anne Dudek) will return, as will Chase (Jesse Spencer), who left Princeton-Plainsboro May 7. As we learned by the end of last week’s penultimate episode, House is heading back to prison for six months after violating parole, and his best/only friend Wilson — having refused further cancer treatment — has five months to live.
“It’s a different kind of episode, but at its core I think it’s still a House episode,” Shore told EW of the series finale. “It’s still about a character looking to figure things out. We still have a medical case, but beyond that — that’s what they all are. The medical case allows us to explore the nature of the characters. It’s an ending.”
So why is the series ending now? Back when the show was looking successful in season 3, the showrunners predicted it would go eight years, “and that just seemed to be the number,” Shore said. “I still believe we’re doing interesting stories, but I really wanted to make sure that we’re doing that at the end and we’re still happy. As Hugh [Laurie] says, Dr. House is the guy who leaves the party before people want him to.”
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Omar Epps, who plays Dr. Foreman (now the Dean of Medicine, having replaced Lisa Edelstein’s Dr. Cuddy), agreed that it’s the right time for House to call it quits. “It’s like Jordan hitting the last shot on Byron Russell — you want to go out at a time when the show is still effective, people are still watching it, the stories are still fresh,” the former Love and Basketball star said. After eight seasons, it’s hard to keep an audience at the edge of its seat. “I think we’ve run our course,” said Epps. “It’s the right time.”
Speaking of Cuddy, Lisa Edelstein is one of the few former stars not slated to return for tonight’s finale — a point of outcry among some fans who want complete closure on the Gregory House Experience. Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. Wilson) encouraged fans to just trust the writers on this one. “If fans feel something’s missing because Cuddy’s not here, well, screw them,” he said (clearly having been prompted about the subject too many times that day). “When did storytelling become interactive? It’s annoying. I don’t think it’s right.”
Hugh Laurie reluctantly agreed while chortling that his costar had just popped off. “That did change at some point,” he commented. “Fans own it more than the people who make the show.”
House has always been a series steeped in cynicism and darkness thanks to its caustic title character — but as longtime viewers know, it’s not that simple. The dual nature of Dr. House — with that good side peeking out just often enough to keep us intrigued — is a big part of what drives the show. After all, House spent last week’s episode trying to convince Wilson to fight for his life. The House-Wilson scenes in the past few episodes have been some of the most stunning of the series and have revealed more of House’s heart than ever before.
“I love House,” Laurie said of his character. “If you don’t, there’s no way in. If you play a judgement of the character, that’s incredibly tedious to watch, except in the sort of broadest, satirical way. I’ve loved him right from the start. He’s immensely funny, imaginative — and some bad things too. Basically he’s on the side of the angels without necessarily being an angel.”
“[House] is very much a hopeful character,” said Shore, who knew Laurie was the right actor the moment he read for the part. “He’s seeking truth and happiness. He doesn’t necessarily succeed, but who truly does? He’s trying to do the right thing — not the right thing society’s telling him to do. That’s what’s truly heroic about him. He has a very deep moral compass, to his own detriment.”
Odette Annable, who plays Dr. Adams (new this season) summed it up: “There’s just so much truth in this show and raw honesty you can take from it,” she said. “House can be vulgar — ‘everybody lies’ — but goddamnit, it’s kind of true.”
Watch below as Leonard and Laurie comment on the Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson nature of the House/Wilson friendship. (This was shot a month and a half before the finale — and well before Wilson got cancer — so the fact that I suggested that the finale be called “Everybody Dies” is just a crazy coincidence.)
'House's' nurse speaks: Bobbin Bergstrom on her role on and off camera By Rick Porter May 21, 2012 3:17 PM ET
Bobbin Bergstrom has appeared on more episodes of "House" than all but five of the show's original cast members. Yet her character doesn't even have a name.
Throughout the series' eight-year run, which ends Monday (May 21), Bergstrom has been known just as "Nurse" in the credits. She is, in fact, a registered nurse, and in addition to her on-camera role she's also "House's" medical technical adviser. Her behind-the-scenes role in making sure the show's medical scenes are up to snuff and her on-camera work go hand in hand, she says.
"It works out better for the company and for me to actually be in scenes," Bergstrom tells Zap2it. "I've always been on camera -- it's something I saw as part of my package, that I can add credibility by being in it as well as doing all the consulting. ... I had worked with the producers before on another show ['Gideon's Crossing,' in the 2000-01 season], so they knew it was something I offered. It was an added bonus for them, and Hugh [Laurie] was really happy when he didn't have to worry about a background person or someone he didn't know working next to him and making it more difficult for him to concentrate on his lines."
A typical day for Bergstrom on the "House" set might include some on-camera work as well as a meeting to go over scripts and make sure the medicine in them is sound -- which involves more than just making sure the characters are doing the right procedure in the right way. Timing is also a factor.
"There might be 10 things to do in a procedure to make it accurate in the time frame that we're trying to make it work in the scene, but there's no way the actor can possibly do all 10 things," she says. "So I'm the one who will decide what gets eliminated to preserve the most accurate pieces so we still remain credible and it still remains dramatically interesting."
Early in the show's run, if you saw a close-up shot of hands performing surgery on "House," they were likely Bergstrom's. As the show progressed, though, she says "all the actors got very well-versed and very talented at learning how to do the medical procedures skillfully and still hiding the pieces of Hollywood that make it work."
Bergstrom says she went to nursing school with the intent of working as a medical adviser for movies and TV series, and she's amassed credits ranging from the movies "Volcano" (her first film) and "Desperate Measures" to shows like "Six Feet Under" and "NYPD Blue." Until a few years ago, she also worked as an ER nurse in her time away from sets so she could stay on top of current practices in hospitals.
She says that she's also shared stories with "House's" writers that occasionally end up on screen. One of her favorite on-camera moments, she says, came from discussing a patient who died early one morning before his family arrived at the hospital. Going against protocol, she shaved the man's face and made sure he looked at peace "so when [the family] came in they would look at him as if he was sleeping."
The end of the Season 3 episode "Informed Consent" (pictured at the top of the post) plays out much the same way: After a renowned researcher played by Joel Grey dies, Bergstrom closes his eyes and relaxes his hands before covering him with a sheet. "I'm doing a very intimate washing of his face, caring for him after he's dead in a very human way," she says. "That's what many people tell me is one of their favorite things they've seen me do."
Bergstrom will be part of Monday's series finale, and although she hasn't seen the final cut, she thinks you'll be able to watch her in action in a scene near the end of the episode. She's unwilling to say more than that, though: "Let's just say when you watch it, you'll say, 'This is why she couldn't tell me.'" http://blog.zap2it.com/fromins....ra.html
Robert Sean Leonard - he's a man I would put my life in his hands, and almost have on occasion (с) H. Laurie
'House' Cast, Crew on the Last Day of Shooting, Show's Final Image and What They'll Miss Most
David Shore, Hugh Laurie, Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard and others reminisce to THR about their time on the Fox medical drama.
After eight seasons and more than 175 episodes, Fox's House will diagnose its final patient before saying goodbye for good.
'House' Star Hugh Laurie and Creator David Shore on Its 8-Season Run: 'Feel Sorry For the “It’s done. I can’t believe it’s been eight years, and I mean that in all the possible senses I can imagine of that," series creator David Shore told The Hollywood Reporter at the House series wrap party in downtown L.A. "It feels like it’s only been a couple. I feel like I’ve been living with this my whole life, and I can’t believe it’s eight years -- most fundamentally in the sense that how the hell did it last eight years?”
Shore, executive producer Russel Friend and stars Hugh Laurie, Omar Epps and Robert Sean Leonard were among those who took time out to reflect on the medical drama's long run, highlighting what they'll miss most and giving a glimpse into what the final image of the finale -- titled "Everybody Dies" and including some familiar faces -- might be.
The Final Day
Shore: “It was bittersweet. I kept going around, ‘Oh my god, it’s my last time here'. That room won’t exist in a few hours. They’re knocking stuff down right, left and center. There’s not a lot of sentimentality in this town. They need those stages.”
Laurie: “Right from the first day, you know it’s inevitable. It’s going to come at some point. On the first day, we thought it would come on the seventh day because shows don’t last this long. They’re not supposed to. We feel, I think -- if I had to describe for everybody -- it’s a feeling of sorrow that it’s over but also immense pride that we’ve done what we’ve done and these are shows we can look back on or have to look back on. Maybe we’ll be sitting in a hotel room in Iowa 10 years from now, and we’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that.’ I hope we will continue to feel proud of it. I wouldn’t swap it for anything."
Friend: “We were [on set]. All of us came down for set. It was very emotional. It was really weird. We always clap out when there’s a guest star’s last day of the episode. Obviously we’ve never done that for Hugh, and this was Hugh’s last day. We had to clap out Hugh Laurie, and it was very strange.”
Epps: "My final day was emotional for some people, but it was great for me. I feel thankful to have been present through this whole journey. I was present in that moment; all good things come to end, so it was going to happen."
Laurie: "I hope [the final image] will be satisfying. I believe it is a very wonderful twist to the story. Of course, I don't know if we've done it right or whether we've executed it right. I hope we have. I'm still slightly reeling from it. I believe that people will be satisfied by it. It's not going to be one of those things that's just a sudden poof, it's gone. This is more ambitious than that."
Shore: “The writers sat down months ago when it was starting to look like – even before [it was] defined – we were getting to the point where we as a writing group had to figure out how it was going to end or we were going to be screwed if it was going to end. We sat down and bandied around a bunch of ideas and a bunch of thoughts and came with one that we liked and felt true to the series and true to the character.” Epps: "The last image that you see of Forman, that people will see, I feel really good about it. I can't give it away." Friend: "I think [the final image of the show] will be very satisfying, yeah. I can't say [what it is]; it's a big secret. I was really pleased with what David [Shore] came up with for the ending."
What They'll Miss Most
Laurie: "I suspect it will hit at the strangest times. I’ll be driving and suddenly I’m hit by it: 'I’m never going to do that again, I’m never going to see that place, see that person again.' This is the cycle of life." Epps: "The banter between Forman and House. They had their own little chemistry, and Hugh and I had a blast at living that chemistry between those two characters." Leonard: "There have been a lot of great people that I enjoyed seeing every morning. I like the crew, I like Hugh. It's been a very lucky job for me, and I'll miss it. It's always fun to play scenes with Hugh Laurie, and I hope one day we play them as different characters than these. That was one of the great pluses."
Favorite Episodes
Friend: "We did this one episode where Hugh has to crawl under a collapsed building and cut off a woman’s leg to save her life. It was an incredible moment character-wise. It was late, and the whole thing felt so real. When we crawled back out, because we had built this tiny set, there were crew members with tears in their eyes."
The Series' Evolution
Shore: “We kept doing what we wanted to do. We didn’t go, ‘OK, we have to try new things.' We tried new things because we wanted to try new things. We told all the stories we wanted to tell and hopefully found an audience. And if we didn’t find an audience, I would have been fine too. It wouldn’t have been as good, but it would’ve been fine.” Epps: "I feel fulfilled. It was a great journey for the character [Eric Forman], from where he started to where he ended up. It was a full life, if you will."
'House' series finale: Boss David Shore on how 'natural' ending came to be, the cameo that didn't happen, and those Easter Eggs by Sandra Gonzalez
Dr. Gregory House checked out of Princeton-Plainsboro last night for the very last time after an hour that explored the man fans have come to know over eight seasons.
But letting the good doctor ride into the sunset with Wilson without talking to executive producer and creator David Shore wouldn’t seem right. So EW hopped on the phone with the House boss to break down all the twists last night and chat about how it came to be. [Spoilers ahead, obviously.] And if you missed the finale, catch up with our recap and Ken Tucker’s review.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So, true to form, the finale had me guessing to the very end. Tell me how you decided to end the series where you did, with House and Wilson riding into the sunset.
DAVID SHORE: There was a lot of discussion. The writers sat down and bandied around a bunch of ideas, and the more I thought about this idea, the more it seemed right. Ultimately, it’s House making a sacrifice — and yet not making a sacrifice. It’s House being with the person he should be with, in some ways. It’s not too sweet because it’s Wilson dying and House screwing everything up — and yet it’s Wilson and House riding into the sunset. And it’s House accessing his whole life for 40 minutes before that, which also allowed us to bring back guest cast. It just felt like the right tone and the right story.
How did you break that final story? I think one of the lines people are favoring today is that the final puzzle we solved with Dr. House was Dr. House. Yeah, that seems right, doesn’t it? His life and what he should be doing, and assessing all the types of choices and the way he’s made choices. Isn’t that what a final episode should be.
I certainly think so, which is why I thought he was going to die. Was there ever a point where you thought you might kill House? Everything was on the table and that seemed like a natural [choice] in some ways — that is an ending. And this [episode] is a nice ending for the series, but it’s not en ending to House, and that’s part of it. House as a human being — a fictional human being but still a human being — won’t be over until he dies. So there was some talk about that, but this felt better for many reasons.
Did you mean for it to be ambiguous in any way? I watched it, felt at peace with what I saw, and then our commenters took my peace away with their crazy-but-plausible theories. Did you purposely leave room for that discussion and theories that House did die? Yes, it did occur to me people might see that. And I welcome multiple interpretations. Well, I don’t welcome multiple interpretations usually. I get that, and I find it interesting. But I want people to feel differently about things, but I don’t want people to disagree about what the show is and what the story is. I was aware of that and I was okay with that.
So, was it meant to be taken at face value? Yeah. It was.
Well, now I feel better. Yes, it was meant to be taken at face value. House is riding off into the sunset.
Let’s talk returns. How hard or easy was it to get everyone on board? It was easy in the sense that I called the people you saw in [the episode], gave them a description — barely that — and they all jumped at the opportunity. That was really gratifying. Scheduling was a bit of a nightmare because they all have busy careers, and so I would have loved to shoot that stuff in order and that wasn’t possible. There were some scenes that were shot where part of one scene was shot one day and the other part of the scene was shot another day. So my hat goes off to the AD (assistant directors) department and the production department generally for wrangling everybody. But in terms of people coming back, it was great.
Why was it important to you to bring everyone back? It was a natural thing to do in the finale, which isn’t enough of a reason for me. What I liked was that the story we were telling lent itself to doing that, and doing it in a different way. And it was nice for me on a human level to see those people again. Mostly it made sense for the story – he’s had different people in his life who have touched him and affected him in different ways. They are a part of who he is, so we were portraying that in a literal way. We had those four characters come back, but in terms of the four people who came back, they weren’t there. They were part of his subconscious. So, literally portraying them as being part of him, I liked that.
That’s especially sweet in terms of Kutner, because he left so suddenly. It was nice closure, I think. It was a whole notion that he lives on, in a way, through the people he’s touched. Unfortunately, he doesn’t literally live on — that would have been nicer for him. But for his legacy, it exists.
I have to ask about Lisa Edelstein. Did you approach her about a return? I wanted her to come back, but we weren’t able to make that happen.
One of my favorite parts of the finale were the song choices at the end. That was all Hugh Laurie. It was completely Hugh. He came to me one day while we were shooting the finale and it seemed right. Again, it was that tone – opposite of what you expect and yet it worked.
Now, if I may get a little nerdy. Foreman, he knew at the end that House had done something, right? Yeah, that was intended to be a clue that House left for Foreman to tell him, ‘Don’t worry.’
Let’s talk about the codas with everyone, and why you chose those places — Taub with his children and Chase with his own team. The codas were meant to be, ‘Life goes on.’ House has touched their lives, House is gone from their lives now, but House will always be part of their lives. It was just seeing a little glimpse of them thinking about that and appreciating it. It went along with the song that was playing at that point. “Keep me in your heart for a while.” Both of those songs were our message to our audience – keep us in your heart for a while and enjoy yourself.
Was there anything in the finale that was left on the cutting room floor that you wish you could have included? There was a little more. We had Martha Masters (Amber Tamblyn) make an appearance at one point, and Olivia. But other than that, there was some stuff that we made slightly clearer. But what always happens to me is that you think you have this nice, tight script and then you go into editing, start chopping, and you’re a few minutes long. Usually it works better shorter and tighter.
Did you ever want that first hour to be for the story and not a retrospective? Originally we talked about doing a two-hour. That didn’t last very long. Once I had this story idea pretty firmed up, I didn’t believe I could sit through House assessing his life for two hours – as an audience member. [Laughs] At one point, I wanted, instead of 60 minutes, 65 minutes or 66 minutes. But it’s another episode, it should be the same as the other episodes. I shouldn’t be making indulgences.
What was the hardest scene? It was a tricky one for logistical reasons. The burning building was huge. Shooting that explosion was fantastic. After he falls through the floor, we actually had Hugh, Sela [Ward], and Jennifer [Morrison] in a room with a lot of fire in it. It wasn’t dangerous; we were very safe. But usually when you shoot a take, you can reset and do it again. But this time, every three minutes of filming, we would have to get everyone out of the room and let it cool off for 10 minutes. So logistically that was a challenge. In terms of performances, it was great. These are actors who have dealt with the show for years and years. Every one of them was fantastic.
As a writer? It was a challenging story to tell. We knew we wanted to start with House in a burning building, tell how he got here and where he goes from here. That was our set up, and the challenge becomes how do we make those flashbacks interesting, knowing he ends up in a burning building and nothings going to go right for him.
In your head, what happened after five months. That’s something I’m happy to leave to the rest of the world. The story ended where the story ended. I’m happy to let people fill that in for themselves. That’s actually one of the attractive things, to me, about this story. I liked the idea. Normally, I like to tell the story specifically and draw people along. This is the emotion you’re going to feel now. This is the emotion you’re going to feel NOW. But I liked the idea of leaving the audience with an ending they can fill in themselves. But five months from now? That’s less interesting to me than what House and Wilson are doing on the road.
Maybe talking about Dead Poets Society. Loved the Easter Egg, by the way. Which was your favorite or one you were especially pleased with? That was a good one. We were tempted at one point to do a whole bunch more. We were tempted to do homages or tiny reference to other series finales out there, like have someone get hit by a golf ball or a Korean woman with a chicken to reference M*A*S*H, but we thought that might be too distracting. But I loved the Dead Poets Society and “Nobody cares about the medicine.” Actually, that might have been my favorite.
And “Cancer is boring.” “Cancer is boring”! I love that that’s the last line of the series.
Lastly, what can you say about the run you’ve had and finishing up the story? It’s been very satisfying. I’ve got many specific complaints and no general complains. It’s been quite literally beyond my wildest dreams. If someone had guaranteed me that I would get three years on the air and enough of an audience to stay on the air, I would have been thrilled with that. It never occurred to me that it would have this sort of following and this sort of excitement. It’s been amazing. I’m not very eloquent about this because I can’t still wrap my head around this whole thing. It’s been amazing. http://insidetv.ew.com/2012....terview
Robert Sean Leonard - he's a man I would put my life in his hands, and almost have on occasion (с) H. Laurie
Сообщение отредактировал Ginger82 - Среда, 23.05.2012, 05:50
Catching Up With House Creator David Shore By Adam Vitcavage
After eight years of popping Vicodin and solving medical mysteries, House went off the air with one last dramatic episode. The finale in the ground-breaking medical drama found Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) faking his death and riding off into the sunset with his cancer-stricken best friend Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard).
We chatted with creator David Shore about what the past eight years has been like and all of the decisions that led to this final hour of his show.
Paste: Congratulations on wrapping up the series; it’s been an amazing eight years. David Shore: Thank you very much.
Paste: It first came out when I was in high school and I sort of grew up with the series. It’s really the only medical drama I’ve watched consistently. Shore: Wow, wow, wow. My kids have grown up with it a little bit as well.
Paste: It’s been a crazy eight years for sure. I mean, looking back did you ever think a show about a drug-addicted doctor would be on for almost a decade? Shore: No. No. I mean, I say that without reservation. It’s weird because you go on the air, you’re on American TV and you might be around. Why not? I just thought other people had things like this. I was there creating a show and I was one of the people doing this, but this sort of success never occurred to me. Huge success would have been that we had good enough ratings to stay on the air. That would have thrilled me. And by stay on the air I mean three or four years.
Paste: Was there ever a thought that you thought the series would end around that time? Did you ever think about wrapping up the series around that time? Shore: No, no. By the third year in I was fairly confident that it was going to go on for a few more years. Once we started following Idol towards the end of season one and then the ratings started going up through season two and I believe through season three, I knew we were going to hang around for a while. And I was happy, too. It was a character that I liked working with and writing stories for.
Paste: That was around the time when the original team left and I’ve always been curious about what the series would have been like if that core cast stayed on. Shore: I don’t know if it would have made that much of a difference. It’s tough to say. We made thousands decisions every week, really, and we certainly made many, many decisions throughout the show. It’s impossible to know. It all worked out and each one of them you could debate whether it would have worked out better or worse. I think obviously on the whole it worked out well. I think that’s a decisions that is indicative of something we did well which is we weren’t just reactive. We didn’t wait for people to tell us we should do something.
That felt like the natural story to tell. We’re not clamoring in any way to get rid of any one. People were happy with that team and I was happy with that team, but it felt like the right thing to do and the right story to do. They were on a three year fellowship; they’re working for a curmudgeon and who’s going to put up with that forever? So I think that is one of the things we did right: being driven by the stories.
Paste: So you’ve always been on the ball with making decisions, but was there ever one where you definitely wish went the other way? Shore: Many. But I’m not going to tell you them. (laughs)
Paste: Of course! Have to keep them secrets, right? Shore: There are many people who think many things we did we did wrong. I don’t want to tell those people I agree with them.
Paste: Of course not. And shifting to last night’s finale: it looks like it’s gone over well with fans. Have you been keeping up with the response? Shore: A little bit. Not that much. I’ve done it more in the last twelve hours than I ever have done during the show. Still not that much. I’ve read just enough to know that it looks like enough people are happy with the way things ended. The problem with looking at that is even though if people are really happy about it, there are plenty of people who are unhappy about it. It’s always been that way and it’s just the way it is. It’s never fun to go online to find someone calling you an idiot.
Paste: Was this always how you imagined House ending? Shore: No, no. The way I imagined it ending was a Fox executive giving me a call telling me the show is over and I could go home. In the first few years it never that I’d be able to dictate how it would end; I just thought it would happen. Obviously in the last year or so when we’ve gotten closer to what seemed like it was going to be the ending we decided we should do it on our terms and how we wanted to do it.
It was probably six months ago that we really started wrapping our head around it.
Paste: Did you ever thing about killing House (Hugh Laurie) off? Shore: Yeah, we thought about that. We thought about a lot of things, but we weren’t really happy about any of them. All of the endings didn’t seem quite right and not quite good enough. Then this idea came up and the more I thought about this idea the more it seemed like a great idea.
Paste: Obviously House and Wilson’s (Robert Sean Leonard) relationship played a vital role in the series right up to the very end. What were Laurie and Leonard like working together? Shore: They were fantastic working together. The two of them have a really nice rapport as actors and as people. They actually didn’t act together that much in this final episode. Just the scene in the cafeteria which the two of them were great in. Whenever it comes to the House/Wilson scenes I sort of just go, “Look, these guys are going to be great.”
Paste: And how was it directing the final show? Especially the final scene? Shore: I was up in a helicopter when we wrapped the final scene, and I was nauseous.
Paste: At least you got a good view of the last moments of your creation, but if there was one more season, what would it have been like? Shore: I don’t know. If there had been one more season, this season wouldn’t have ended this way. What will happen after this season for the characters? That’s one of the things I find satisfying about the ending. Planting the seed in the audience’s mind of House and Wilson on the road together and the fans can do what they want with this seed.
Paste: If you could sum up the entire House experience in five words, what would they be? Shore: I can’t. (laughs) I mean, I’ll tell you a little story. At the beginning of the show in interviews I was constantly asked to describe this character. I would find myself trying to be brief and failing. I would just start rambling. I was beating myself up because I was just rambling and not giving any good answers. Then I realized the reason I couldn’t do it was because it couldn’t be done. When I reach a point when I can describe a character in one paragraph then the character is no longer interesting.
The character is complicated. The character is a real person in my mind. Well actually that’s a stupid statement because by definition a character is not a real person, but I treat him as if he were a real person. I can’t describe myself in one paragraph and I can’t describe House in one paragraph. And I can’t describe the show in five words.
Paste: It was a long shot. Can you tell me what’s next for you? Shore: Nothing yet, but I will develop something else. I look forward to it, but this has been the experience of a lifetime.
The show I start in a week is about a women's prison. I wonder what I'll be an "expert" in THEN. Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened ;)
HOUSE med-tech Bobbin Bergstrom tells how the show did her wrong Special
Mindy By Mindy Peterman May 26, 2012 - 8 hours ago in Entertainment Comments
+ After eight years of devoting herself to House, Bergstrom reveals her hurt and disappointment at not being given her due. Whether you were a fan of the show House or simply a casual viewer, you've seen Bobbin Bergstrom's influence on the medical drama. From the beginning of the show's run in 2004, through to this month’s finale, she was the on set’s med-tech adviser, a job that entailed overseeing the medical integrity of the action for each episode. Whether it was adjusting symptoms of the Patient of the Week to fit an illness or instructing the actors how to perform in the operating room, Bergstrom was an essential part of House's success. The days are long on a hit television show. 12 to 14 hours make up the normal workday and Bergstrom worked those hours as well as doing research during her hiatus months in order to keep up with medical advances. Now after eight years and the end of the series, Bergstrom reveals she feels slighted, that although she found her work fulfilling, she never received the credit she was due. That hurt hit her hard when the House retrospective Swan Song aired on May 21 as the lead-in to the show's finale. “I was blatantly excluded by my House family [on that retrospective],” she told me in a long revelatory email. “ I saw every one of my friends speak and smile and that made me so happy for them. [I was] just confused by the seemingly deliberate exclusion.” She went on to say that this treatment was nothing new and that it had grown worse through the years. “My issue is that the company did do a generous thing by giving me a role as a nurse (she was credited as “Nurse” at the end of each episode, regardless if she appeared on screen or not). I'm very grateful because that qualifies me for insurance and retirement. However, my position truly was that of medical technical adviser.” She never received that recognition officially. “A credit as technical adviser was more important to my resume than that of “Nurse” but they couldn't do that because of SAG rules. I asked for a second credit as the medical technical adviser so that the industry people would know that I was responsible for that portion of the show [but that credit never appeared onscreen].” “We had three doctors who were actually story assistants to the writers but they'd been given credit on the show as medical technical advisers. They were never on the set. They didn’t touch or talk to the actors. They didn’t plan or work with any of the departments or prepare for an episode. Around Thanksgiving, on Fox's Twitter, I noticed an interview with John Sotos, one of these three consultants. He led [the readers] to believe that he was there directing the actors, doing my job. He referred to me by saying, ‘There's some nurse (no name) who sits on the set in case they have a question about pronunciation.’ Lisa Sanders, one of the other consultants, was featured on Martha Stewart’s show and presented herself as if she did what I did. “In the beginning [House’s creator and Executive Producer] David Shore was very salty with me when I would question the medicine in the first draft of the scripts. He would say, “Our doctors have reviewed this.” And I would say, 'With all due respect, it's not correct or if perhaps I don't know something they know and I would love to receive the research they used to legitimize this diagnosis.' Nine times out of ten they would change the story to fit the corrections I stated. I'm quite sure that that is what helped legitimize the show in the eyes of the medical community. “The retrospective would've been an opportunity for them to make sure that everybody knew I did my part so I didn't feel like I didn't get credit from the producers and writers. In addition to the personal insults and pain, this absolutely [will] cost me future work because the amount of people who want medical advisers for their shows in the industry is small. On the Internet Movie Database, I do come up as one of the most frequent actors on House and miscellaneous crew. [Only] sometimes does it say I'm a technical adviser. I guess I should revise that somehow.” LIKE THIS ARTICLE7
Добавлено (04.06.2012, 03:22) --------------------------------------------- Vince Duque, HOUSE's First AD, discusses the show's final days
By Mindy Peterman Jun 3, 2012
For its cast and crew, the end of the long-running medical drama was a time of of hard work and emotional ups and downs. First AD Vince Duque was an essential part of it all. Vince Duque, worked as first assistant director for the TV series House since 2009 and considered it a distinct honor to be a part of the groundbreaking show and its final days. In our recent phone interview he discussed the challenges and the joys of bringing the popular series to its emotional yet uplifting end.
Filming the finale must have been quite an ordeal. How did you recover from it?
It was a very interesting recovery because there was the actual process of shooting the episode and then the cathartic sense of going on vacation and kind of getting away from it. There wasn’t really a process of coping with leaving the show while we were doing it. For example all throughout the episode [I would have to announce something like], “Okay, that’s a series wrap on Omar Epps.” And that’s pretty significant. There would be scenes like that every day and I couldn’t get caught up in it because I had to keep everyone focused on shooting the episode.
How emotional must that have been for everybody involved?
We didn’t have a sort of bereavement seminar. There was such weird energy. We were shooting the episode and people had left the show to do other shows so we weren’t necessarily at 100 percent. The crew that we had for the final episode wasn’t necessarily the crew we had in the middle of the year or beginning of the year. There were a lot of new people doing an episode that was in itself incredibly difficult, more difficult than I think we’ve been used to in the last year or year and a half.
I was really impressed and surprised by how the series ended. Usually viewers have some idea of how a series finalé will go but not this time. How did you manage to keep the details of this episode under wraps?
I’d have to give credit to the writing staff, the assistants and the production office. I would also love to give credit to Geoffrey Colo and Alex Solether, the guys in our publicity department who had to fend off the media. There was very limited distribution [of the script]. Only a few people got Act 6, which was the ending. Even throughout the episode only certain people could have all six acts, which made shooting even more difficult because critical crew members like the set costumers needed to know what was going on on set for continuity. For example, the funeral. They didn’t know there was a funeral. They couldn’t necessarily prepare so costume designer, Cathy Crandall, had to find a way to organize information and disseminate critical logistical information to her department in a way they weren’t used to. Combine that with the fact that we had new crew members in different departments, especially in key positions learning the show, which was already a very complicated show to do.
Just thinking about it probably exhausts you.
It was a lot. I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished. We really came together and I’m very impressed and honored to be a part of a group of people who really hunkered down and pulled it together. Because, really, so many forces were at work trying to pull this apart. I don’t mean maliciously, but it was a difficult episode on so many levels. We were talking about how we were dealing with things like ‘this is the last scene in the outer office!’ We had to think about that and how everybody else was coping. It was just very strange but we somehow kept it together. I can’t even believe it.
Let’s go back a little and talk about when you found out the show was ending. How did things change for your and your crew when you were given the news the show would not be going on to season nine?
Yeah, it was a combination of a few things, one of them being certain key people leaving for other shows. It was soon after that we heard that our show was going down. It was the beginning of the end. How were people coping through the last four episodes? People were dealing with this in their own different ways. Their attention was dividing [between] the anxiety of leaving and trying to get another job and then grasping the notion that the show was going to be over. Yet that didn’t really manifest itself until the end when we were shooting the final episode and then even more so when we had the wrap party. I can’t articulate properly how it manifested itself but it was very acutely on the surface and yet...beneath the surface. I had made these shirts for the crew that said “Keep Calm and Carry On”, a take on an old World War II propaganda slogan. I loved that saying and used the House logo on it instead of the Queen’s crown. When I had worn that shirt in the past, Hugh made comments on it. He really loved it. So I bought those shirts for everybody and it was really great to see people wearing them. In a subconscious way it reminded everyone that everything was going to work out and we have to focus.
How was it working so closely with series creator David Shore for the final episode?
I’m honored to have worked with him directly like that [and] I give David Shore a lot of credit for [sticking to his guns]. After over eight years of being at the helm, he was really calm and collected and had a specific vision of how he wanted to do the episode. To his credit, he took me, Director of Photography, Gale Tattersall and our Executive Producer Andrew Bernstein, and really created this nucleus of a team to get us through the episode. It was a free flow exchange of ideas and communication with all of us. Another person I have to give credit to is Jeremy Cassells, the production designer. Without him we would have been [clueless] as to what this building was going to look like and how it was going to work. We had to build this thing in two weeks. Comparatively, for [the episode] “Help Me”, when we built that gigantic building collapse, we had at least a month or so to build that. We had to do this in two weeks. So between Jeremy and Steve Howard, who was the Construction Coordinator, we had his construction guys working around the clock to get this building made and fireproofed. You saw in the episode that we lit the set on fire.
It wasn’t CGI?
There was definitely some augmentation but we had an exterior location in downtown Los Angeles and the special effects team (who really did a great job on this episode) rigged this building so fire was coming out of it. Then it exploded. We also built a replica interior set that they ignited on fire. We pulled it off. It’s miraculous, a testament to how smart and how clever and how professional our crew really is.
What was your last day on the set like?
The last scene that I did was inside the building (a smaller crew had gone to shoot the motorcycle drive away five days later). But the last thing we were shooting was House realizing he can make a change. It was 11PM and we were going to do champagne. We had done the majority of the shooting already so everybody had this feeling of release. Yet we had a big day still. I remember the last scene I had with Hugh. I put my hand out, shook his hand and said, “Sir it’s been an honor to work with you these three years.” I remember before we cut, after his last shot, on my last day, we winked at each other before we went out to the ‘circus’, where everybody was waiting for him to say goodbye. This moment between the two of us said, “We did it. We got through the episode.” I won’t forget it. It was a great moment. There are a few very important people Duque wanted to be sure to mention since they were “so, so critical to the success of the episode”. Besides the aforementioned Production Designer Jeremy Cassells, Construction Coordinator Steve Howard, and Executive Producer Andrew Bernstein, Duque wanted to mention his AD team Diane Calhoun, Gary Cotti, Christine Danahy, Allison Rushton, Sam Luu, and PAs Derek Oishi, Matt McKinnon, and Letia Cloutson, Producer Marcy Kaplan and the production office team. Keep calm and carry on.
Хелп, испаноговорящие други! Небольшой фрагмент из интервью с режиссером Кампанеллой, где он рассказывает о съемках "Хауса"
Если я правильно поняла, то речь там идет о: When Campanella directed the ep One Day One Room, he suggested to use the table football that was on set only as a decoration. They had never used it before. As the ep. had a lot of dialogue and was not as dynamic as other House eps, making House and Wilson play with the table football would be a nice funny touch. He says that Hugh loved the idea. - в "Один день - одна комната" он предложил использовать настольный футбол, который раньше был просто декорацией, чтобы придать этой сценой живости "разговорному" эпизоду и что Хью понравилась эта идея. Уж это точно - оживили
Robert Sean Leonard - he's a man I would put my life in his hands, and almost have on occasion (с) H. Laurie
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