Justified showrunner Graham Yost did a Reddit AMA today. As anyone who reads his weekly Postmortems at EW can attest, he is refreshingly straightforward and candid when he answers questions about the show, and he seems to have a really great sense of humor about himself and the industry. Ergo, this was a really fun AMA. He touched on everything from his work as a writer pre-Justified (most notably Speed and Hey Dude, which is an awesome pairing for any resume), to places the show has been and is going, to a Dewey Crowe spinoff proposed by Dewey Crowe himself. Also, at one point, he gave one of the better AMA answers I’ve ever seen. But we’ll get to that. Hope you’re sitting down, ladies.
First, the highlights, starting with that Hey Dude thing I mentioned in the headline:
How much fun was it writing for Hey Dude?
Hey Dude was writers boot camp. I wrote, I think, 15 episodes of the 65 we did (Lisa Melamed probably wrote 10). It was a blast. We wrote fast, shot fast, and just had to keep going. No time to wait for the muse, just get it down and figure out how to do it while doing it.
There’s going to be a Hey Dude reunion at the Austin TV fest this June. Not sure who exactly will be there, but I plan to be.
A quick shoutout to Joss Whedon:
How much of what you wrote for Speed made it to the screen considering Joss Whedon claims he wrote most of the dialogue for the film?
Joss says he wrote most of the dialogue for Speed? Jesus. He wrote ALL the dialogue for Speed (I think I have one line left in there; another writer maybe a couple).
A solid counterpoint:
Hi, Mr. Yost. I’m a diehard Justified fan. Love Raylan and all the rest. But…don’t love this season. The humor is gone, and the violence is at an all time high. It’s like the sly humor and slick dialogue both died with Leonard Elmore. Sorry! Please tell me next year will be better! Thanks!
Next year will be better.
But hold on — not funny? Dewey Freaking Crowe praying to Jesus to let him kill this man and then he’ll do whatever he says? Man, I just don’t understand you…
A second solid counterpoint:
Hey Graham, what’s your very best life advice?
Always try to maintain a sense of humor.
Except when it comes to that guy who didn’t like this season, didn’t think it was funny. C’mon, man — Dewey Crowe playing naked Marco Polo!
Would watch:
Is there any chance for a spin off of Justified? Maybe the Crowders and Crowes? LOL
Damon (who plays Dewey) pitched “Dewey Crowe, Fugitive PI.” But no plans as of yet.
#TeamTimAndRachel:
Will we see more of Tim and Rachel in the final season of Justified? What’s in store for them?
Yes. We plan on seeing a lot more of them. You’ll see them more in the episode tonight and in the season finale. Our plan is to use them a lot next year. Erica and Jacob have been very patient this year, but we always knew we wanted to bring a lot more story to them in the final season.
About all those actors from Deadwood:
I like to imagine that in the Justified production office, there is a list of all of the actors from Band of Brothers and Deadwood, and every once in a while you guys just call them when you need a new guest star. Is my dream a reality?
We don’t have a list, but our casting director/producer Cami Patton and I worked together on Band, Boomtown and The Pacific, so, yeah, we always go back to that well. And then Tim will say, “What about this guy I worked with on Deadwood…”
GTS > GTL:
Love the show. In an interview Elmore Leonard said he had friends to ask things like “how would you break into a Corvette”…things like that. How do you guys do research so everything in the show comes off so authentic?
We call friends in Harlan, and we have a great technical advisor on the show, Charlie Almanza, who was Chief Deputy in the Marshals’ LA office. Frankly, we also just generally GTS (Google That Sh*t).
Elmore had a brilliant researcher, Gregg Sutter, who dig his digging for him (probably broke into cars for all I know).
ZOMBIE QUARLES:
Is Quarles dead? If he isn’t, is it possible that we will see him again or can we put that small hope/rumor to rest?
Unless you see a coroner pronounce someone dead, they haven’t died on Justified.
(He just lost an arm and, to my mind, didn’t bleed out.)
This sums up Boyd pretty well:
In S01E01, Raylan reacts pretty incredulously to the notion of Boyd truly believing all of the white power stuff that he was preaching at the time. I have always seen Boyd’s reaction to Raylan’s suspicions as sort of a tip of the hat that he knew what he was preaching was bullshit and was actually just working an angle to get paid and blow shit up. Was Raylan right about Boyd’s true motivations or was Boyd really a true believer of white supremacy?
Good question. We think Boyd believes whatever it is he believes at that particular time. Elmore said about Boyd that he didn’t believe a word he said, but loved to hear him say it.
I still choose to believe her name is Raylene:
Also, do we find out the baby’s name in the season finale? (I read somewhere that Winona’s in it)
Winona’s in the season finale. Probably in the final season. The baby’s name is Willa. See, I get stuck on a consonant and that’s it. Why all the Crowders (except for Johnny) start with a B, and most of the Crowes a D. What I lack in imagination I make up for in consistency.
Ladies…
So Boyd and Raylan have teamed up to deal with a common enemy once before. And if you’re worried that fans would complain if it happened again, that would be like someone not having sex with Scarlett Johannson for a second time while yawning and saying “Been there, done that”. Just saying.
If we could get Scarlett on the show I would have Raylan and Boyd have sex.
Get on it, Justified fan-fictioners.
