There had to be easier things to adapt for television than The Dangerous Book For Boys, a utilitarian guide that works to pull kids away from the comfort of their screens with missions that promise adventure, fun, and a few scrapes. And yet, for years, producers took their swings and failed to find the kind narrative hook that would allow the book to translate to either the big or small screen.
When Bryan Cranston’s production company, Moon Shot, took on the project in 2014, they didn’t have a fully fleshed out concept in mind. That idea — specifically, using the book as a connection between three sons and their recently deceased father (and with one of the sons and his own imagination) while the family navigated mounting emotional and financial hardships — came in time, hitting Cranston while jogging along the Charles River in Boston one day.
“Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait. It’s not a drama. It’s comedy,” Cranston told Uproxx when we met him and members of the cast and crew at Silver Cup Studios in Queens, New York while they worked on the show (which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime).
Cranston (who serves as co-creator, executive producer, and who co-wrote the first two episodes of the show) says that he had to let it go in order for the idea to come to him. But he never let go of the passion that he had for the project. That’s what sustained him and his partners — director/producer Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) and agent James Degus — at Moon Shot when the show fell through at NBC in 2015 after the network asked that they consider scrapping the dead father angle. It’s what allowed them to stay with it until Amazon came calling with an order in May of 2017.
That passion was still evident during our brief visit with Cranston and others, as was a sense of excitement for what this team had finally been able to create on their own terms.
“The script is so inventive and adventurous. It was very real,” says actress Erinn Hayes, who plays Beth, the newly widowed mom of sons Wyatt (Gabriel Bateman), Dash (Drew Powell), and Liam (Kyan Zielinski).
Watching the series months after speaking with the cast and crew, it’s clear that Beth’s conflict with her husband’s freshly re-emerged identical twin brother (played by Chris Diamantopoulos, who also plays the family’s deceased patriarch, Patrick, in fantasy scenes) and his mother (Swoosie Kurtz) stands out and centers this often fantastical and sometimes rowdy show. It’s not a performance filled with broad and emotive grieving. For the most part, Beth keeps a stiff upper lip, venting frustration at times while trying to be all things to all people. It’s not the kind of nuance you’d expect in a family comedy, but Cranston told us that he wanted the show to work “on different levels” when we spoke during production, pointing to Malcolm In The Middle (where he co-starred and worked with Dangerous Book For Boys showrunner Michael Glouberman) as an example. “Parents would laugh. The kids would laugh. […] It’s got to be that good. It’s got to be that level.”
The look of the show’s ample fantasy scenes — in which Wyatt’s imagination takes him into outer space, the old west, and, most poignantly, a deserted island — also defies TV norms, with Mottola telling us that the production embraced its non-Game Of Thrones sized budget when it came to creating these big, splashy moments.
“I really pushed that we don’t do mediocre CG,” Mottola said as we sat in a makeshift interview area behind the bustling set. “There was a world in which you shoot a lot of green screen and you do the best you can. You do what you can for the amount of money. And I really pushed to make it theatrical and to go in a more Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson, La La Land direction to build sets and not hide the fact that it’s artificial and that it’s a stage.”
The reliance on practical effects, as opposed to an abundance of green screen aided effects (though, there are some), surprised Hayes.
“I had thought going into it that there was gonna be a lot of green screen and then walked onto this set that blew my mind,” she said. “When they create the sets and they’re not using green screen they’ve done such a beautiful job; because they give you a sense that you’re in, say, the Old West. But there is a real fantasy dream quality to it.”
Mottola says that his attitude is, “let’s do it with wood and nails and paint and light as much as we can.”
Daydream fantasies of the Old West or ancient Rome don’t come to mind when you think of the source material, but the common thread that runs through both the book and this series is the ability to prompt kids to explore, be it the world around them or the one that exists within themselves. In brief conversations with the three child actors who play Wyatt, Dash, and Liam (Gabriel Bateman, Drew Powell, and Kyan Zielinski), they revealed that working on Dangerous Book For Boys and becoming familiar with the book had inspired them to put down their devices; something that came more naturally to some than others.
Cranston isn’t averse to technology. During our interview, he praised it as a tool and an amazing source of information. He’s making a streaming TV show (multiple ones, including Sneaky Pete), so of course, he doesn’t want people to throw their phones, tablets, laptops, and smart TVs into the sea. He just seems like he’s worried about unstoked imaginations and unexplored creativity.
“My generation, your generation, we had that freedom to be able to jump on a bike and go,” he says. “We didn’t have the devices, we didn’t have these simulated experiences.”
Cranston likes how The Dangerous Book For Boys pushes kids to have “real experiences.”
“Go out and make mistakes,” he says. “Take some risks, have an adventure, [and] get lost so that you can figure out how to get home. Things of that nature, so that you start working on problem-solving. Start opening up your mind and your eyes.”
Cranston recognizes the way that we all use technology — as a crutch and a time killer — but posits that boredom isn’t so bad. “It forced all of us, in the back of that station wagon, to use our imagination, to look at things and to start conjuring and creating stories in our minds. But if you’re constantly on something that’s telling you a story and not providing a platform for you to be actively involved, there’s a problem there.”
Despite that strong opinion, Cranston doesn’t want Dangerous Book For Boys to come off as preachy, sensing how ineffective a tactic that might be.
“All I want to do is to entertain those kids,” he says before expressing a want for young viewers to see the fun that these characters are having and think about building a tree house or going on a hike. That is, after all, the power of storytelling, but it has to be done right.
Cranston clearly loves the challenge of creating something that moves people. He counts hollow and boring efforts as failures and a dereliction of a storyteller’s duties and says that writing (which he had done on a few occasions prior to Dangerous Book For Boys) is something that he wants to keep pursuing through Moon Shot (while still acting, though he never considered putting himself in this). But he’s dedicated to only taking on projects that stir something in him. “I don’t have to have a job. I don’t want a job,” he says when talking about that prerequisite for his emotional and creative investment.
“I love storytelling,” Cranston says with a kind of awe as we near the end of our conversation. “This is the [most] joyous thing about human beings. I mean this earnestly, it’s a non-cynical point of view that we have always wanted to be told stories, and whether you’re two or 102, that never changes. We are willing to pay good money to be told a story, even when we know what we’re seeing on screen… these are actors playing these roles. Doesn’t matter. Tell me a story. Take me away with this fantasy, sci-fi, horror, it doesn’t matter. Tell me a story. Scare me, make me laugh, make me think, make me angry even. Anything.”
It’s no wonder that Cranston hopes to inspire others to look into their imagination and also “take some risks, have an adventure, [and] get lost.” Look at how inspired he is by embracing those same pursuits as a storyteller.
The Dangerous Book For Boys is available to stream now on Amazon Prime.
