Harper's Island: Episode 12 and 13

by Karim Zreik July 13, 2009 10:13 AM
Harper's Island: Episode 12 and 13

It's hard to believe that the story of our beloved 13 episode Harper's Island is complete. To all of you who watched, supported, and shared your enthusiasm for the show with us... THANK YOU. Huge thanks. It means a lot. We've been pitching, developing, prepping, casting, shooting, editing, fixing, promoting, etc for over a year, and to hear so many of you express your gratitude has been fulfilling. Since this is my final blog, I decided to randomly list some thoughts and answer some of the viewer questions, not only from the final two episodes, but also from the whole season. I hope this helps. And again, THANK YOU for watching....

-- We told Chris Gorham he was our killer during the filming of Episode 8. He loved it, but he had tons of questions. We holed up in my hotel room for three hours and I tried my best to piece everything together for him. Our conversation was followed by two more hours on the phone with Exec. Producers Jeff Bell & Dan Shotz.

-- Every acting student should study Chris Gorham's performance in Ep. 13. Brilliant. His turn from Henry Dunn the groom to Henry Dunn the killer was awesome. You actually feel sorry for him as he's dying. So good. Watch it again... closely.

-- I have never seen a more focused actress than Katie Cassidy preparing and shooting her death scene. It was freezing outside, all she had on was a wedding dress, running barefoot, getting stabbed, and she shed genuine tears during every take, over four hours worth of tears. Amazing actress.

-- Danny's death scene required a big fight with Wakefield, followed by a needle in the eye. Callum (Wakefield) suffered a huge gash on his nose during the filming of the fight scene. The gash was so big that he had to be taken to the hospital, but not before giving us another hour of his time to complete the scene. Are you kidding me? A dedicated pro. Most of what you see in that fight scene was Brandon (Danny) and Callum. We used little of the stuntmen.

-- I thought Booth's death scene was the most emotional, until Mat Barr (Sully) gave the performance of a lifetime. Watching the scene unfold, moments before Sully's demise, Matt delivered fear, panic, sorrow, sadness, and love... in just a few short seconds. Trust me. That's hard to do.

-- Elaine Cassidy was cast as Abby Mills off a self-made videotape, and it proved to be one of the best casting decisions of our careers. You're never going to meet a more generous, sweeter human being than Elaine Cassidy. And to think, she did all of that running, screaming, jumping, and crying while pregnant, is unbelievable. Which explains the Honey's Donuts.

-- I wish CJ (Jimmy) would play every scene without his shirt on. I think our ratings would have been through the roof. I never had the chance to perform my assassin duties on CJ, but if I did, I imagine he would of high fived me, thanked me for the opportunity of being on the show, and bought me a nice steak dinner. He's a class act.

-- From the day we started developing this story, our killer has always been Henry Dunn. We shot the pilot presentation with Henry as our killer. We never swayed. His character offered our writing staff the best motive to bring everyone together and slowly kill off... one by one.

-- A lot of folks have been asking about the red ink in Kelly's eyes. It's twofold. The killer wanted the audience to believe that the red ink would link everything to Shane, the tattoo artist who has access to red ink. Also, the red ink was supposed to draw the Sheriff's attention to the red-eyed bear in Kelly's apartment, which led to the newspaper article with the words "Liar" written on it.

-- I'd like to take this time to thank anyone and everyone involved with HARPER'S GLOBE. You guys blew our minds and went above and beyond anything we would of ever imagined possible for this website. You also provided the fans of both HG & HI a forum to discuss topics, issues, and frustrations. Thanks to Miles & Greg from Eqal, Matt Siegel, the lovely Melanie (Robin), and our talented writer, Jennifer Yale. Awesome job.

-- Harper's Island DVD will be released September 8.

-- The secret about Mr. Wellington and his second wife, Katherine, was going to be that Mr. Wellington was broke. He was in financial ruin, and it's actually Katherine who has all the money and was paying for this extravagant destination wedding. We never had time to play it all out in the story.

-- A little shout out to the Twitter fans who followed me, Chris Gorham, Ali, Brandon, Ben, CJ, Bobby Sizemore, Gina, Sandy Bookstaver, etc. Your enthusiasm for the show was the reason I joined, AND to answer all your very elaborate questions, AND to find Dean Chekvala a girlfriend. In that order. "You're awesome" doesn't even come close to describing how I feel about you guys.

-- We started this journey of Harper's Island over a year ago. All the meetings, script notes, casting sessions, rehearsals, hiring of production crew, editing, post production work, confidentiality agreements... we knew we'd never be able to keep Spoilers from leaking out. To make matters worst, we delivered these episodes to CBS in March, knowing that the finale would air in early July. Of course spoilers would be leaked. Nothing we could do about it. The fact that there are people out there claiming WE leaked the finale is NUTS. For those who kept our secret and didn't share spoilers... thank you. For those who decided to leak information and ruin the experience for some... you suck.

-- Harper's Island was always meant to be a 13 episode storyline. If given a season 2, we were working on another story, with new characters, new location, and new killer. Some of the ideas floating around were: Harper's Safari, Harper's Semester At Sea, and my favorite, Harper's Sorority Row. It would have been fun to cast.

-- The cast had no idea who the killer was until the script for episode 13 was released. Chris Gorham had to live with the secret for three months. He was miserable.

-- Karena (psychic), Julia (organist), and Doc Campbell all survived.

-- The wedding video that appears at the end of Ep. 13 was shot during the filming of Episode 1, back in August, 2008.

-- Finally, to the greatest cast & crew ever assembled, THANK YOU for making this experience fun and memorable. Thank you for the tireless work. Thank you for making us feel welcome in Vancouver. Thank you for everything. Hopefully, our path will cross again. I hope it does...

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