By Kenn Gold

Les McClain, Matt Keeslar, and Javier Grillo-Marxuach at the ABC Family Booth at Comic Con 2008.

Creator, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and star Matt Keeslar of ABC Family’s The Middleman appeared at Comic Con 2008 to a packed room of the show’s fans.  After the panel session they signed autographs, along with comic illustrator, Les McClain who drew The Middleman comic series.  Both Javi and Matt took a few minutes out of their hectic schedules at the booth to talk about where the show is going, and how they come up with all those pop culture references.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach (EP, creator, writer)

MediaBlvd> What’s it like being here at Comic Con after your show is a reality?

Javier> I’ve waited about ten years.  I’ve been here at Comic Con with Lost, and Medium, and The Middleman comic book, but I’ve been coming here ten years and I’ve been waiting all that time to come here with a show that I created.  So this for me is like Mecca, Oz and the Vatican and everything put together into one.  It’s just the best thing ever to be here with my own show based on a comic book that I wrote and Les McClain illustrated, so it’s been a long time coming for me, and it’s been really great to be able to do this, finally.

MediaBlvd> So how are the ratings?

Javier> How do you do a shrug on an audio podcast?  Sadly we’re a small show, and the ratings have not necessarily been stellar.  But the network has a great deal of faith in the show, that’s why they are publicizing the show.  That’s why we’re here.  We’re trying to get people to come in and watch the show.  We have 12 episodes in our first season and we’ve aired six.  So we have some traction, and it’s probably the best reviewed show ABC Family has ever had.  So it’s really now just about the audience finding us on Mondays at 10.

MediaBlvd> Has the time change hurt the show, do you know?

Javier> No, actually our ratings have kind of been going up incrementally.  Basically if you look at where the ratings are, at 10PM is when they get their CW and Fox audience.  So it’s really the network trying to get members of the audience who are coming off of those networks that don’t go till 11 to come to ABC family.  That’s the rationale behind the gambit, and we’ve been slowly building our audience.  What we’re trying to do now is take it to the next level.

MediaBlvd> I have a question from Shaun who does the TV Talk radio show.  Are you going to be able to work Jericho in like you said you might?

Javier> You know, every episode is chock full of pop culture references.  Tell you what, Jericho is the big comeback story, if we get a second season I promise you we will work Jericho into it.

MediaBlvd> What can we send into ABC Family like we did with the nuts to CBS for Jericho?

Javier> Haydars, Zippo lighters are kind of expensive.  I don’t know; whatever you want to send as long as you send it.  That’s the important thing, to let ABC Family know that you love the show if you do.  First of all, it means the world to us, the support of the fan base.  And if we can get the network to see just how many people are out there sampling the show, that would be a great thing.

MediaBlvd> Do you have any regrets about how you ended vol. 3, or the final comic?

Javier> As far as anything to do with The Middleman, absolutely no regrets.  I love the TV show, and if this is all we do, these 12 episodes, I’ll be completely fulfilled.  With the comic book, Les and I will probably come back to it and do more.  The comic book is a different continuity though.  With the comic, I generally felt that since we were doing it for four years, we really needed to take it to a different place.  So the character in the TV show is almost a different character from the book.  So if we go to the book, we’ll probably solve a lot of those stories in a much different way than we did on TV.

MediaBlvd> Back to the references for a second, on the TV show, how do you guys find them?

Javier> Our own geeky pasts!  No, I encourage the writers to pick something you like and reference it.  The trout zombie show had a lot of references to the band The Zombies, because Andy Rieser, who wrote that episode wanted to do a zombie show.  So he used names from songs and band members of The Zombies.  So it’s really about the individual writer and what they did. 

MediaBlvd> Do you have to clear using some of the things that you do?

Matt Keeslar (The Middleman)

MediaBlvd> How’s your experience been at Comic Con so far?

Matt> It’s been terrific, I’m very happy that we got a full room of people who are fans of the show.  That makes me very excited.

MediaBlvd> How do you memorize the dialogue for this show, it’s so complex?

Matt> Yeah, this has been one of the most challenging shows dialogue wise that I’ve ever done.  We have to learn a lot of dialogue in a very short amount of time, so I’m constantly breaking the dialogue down into sections.  Sometimes I put it on cue cards.  I go over it while I’m on the elliptical machine at the gym, or I listen to it on my iPod when I’m jogging. I’m constantly thinking of the dialogue that we are going to be doing for the next day or the next week.  And then as soon as it’s done, I wipe it out of memory because I know that I’ve got more to learn for the next week. But it’s the part that attracted me to doing The Middleman in the first place, is the amazing dialogue and the great writing.  That’s what made me want to do the show.  So it’s more than a pleasure to be able to learn this dialogue from week to week.

MediaBlvd> So are any of those phrases working their way into your daily conversations?

Matt> HAWKS OF THE LUFTWAFFE!  No, sometimes my mind just completely blanks.  I was trying to think of things to write for autographs.  But I could only think of a half dozen things because my vocabulary is too full now.  Like I can’t get anything out, it’s crammed in there!  But you can’t help but go home at the end of the day and be a little bit entrenched in the character, because it’s such an extreme character and we spend fourteen to fifteen hours a day doing it.  So I feel like it’s still something that I carry around with me.  Then again, it’s not that far from who I am.  I’m a bit anal and I can be a little goody-two-shoes my self. 

MediaBlvd> Where are you guys in filming?

Matt> We’re just starting the finale, episode 12.  It’s going to be a mirror universe episode where Wendy gets sucked into a quantum singularity and comes out on the other side and becomes a part of a world that’s like a very dark mirror image of The Middleman.

MediaBlvd> So it’s sort of a Star Trek  Mirror, Mirror episode?

Matt> Exactly, and all of the people in the mirror universe have goatees.

MediaBlvd> How many of the references do you get?  Do you actually recognize the things that they are alluding to?

Matt> I have no idea.  I try to know every single reference that I talk about.  But then there are others that other people make that I have no idea what they are talking about.  It’s a constant game of looking up on Google.  Thank God, I have an internet connection on set, because I’m constantly either looking up definitions of words or finding references.  Like one of the addresses was a 1939 Nepal Drive or something like that.  That happens to be when Indiana Jones goes into Nepal and the arc gets blown up.  These are all things that Javi thinks of and that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of, but I’m a rank amateur when it comes to that.

MediaBlvd> Is this show as much fun to do as it looks like it is on the screen?

Matt> It’s a blast.  We have an amazing cast and we really lucked out with a great crew.  Everybody gets the show.  It’s really due to our casting directors, they are really amazing and have put together an amazing cast.  Natalie, Mary Pat, and I have a really great relationship.  Then of course, Brit, Jake and all the others in recurring roles like Brendan and Drew, have all been such unique characters.  Each actors brought their own thing to it so it’s been a really great experience in that.

MediaBlvd> So what’s up next for you after filming wraps?

Matt> I’m taking a little vacation then back to auditioning and being a working actor.