Submitted by Unknown on 2002-08-15
Minear Discusses Simkins Departure

Source: Zap2It

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Writer/producer Tim Minear is having a busy day.

"Just like every day," he says.

That's no surprise since, in partnership with Joss Whedon, he's holding the reins on The WB's "Angel" and FOX's "Firefly."....

Read on for the full article



Whedon co-created "Angel," a spin-off of his "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," with David Greenwalt, who recently left the show (he still consults) to be executive producer on the ABC midseason drama "Miracles." As Whedon needed Greenwalt's second-in-command, Minear, to help him launch his new creation, "Firefly," outside producer David Simkins ("FreakyLinks") was brought in to run "Angel."

Just last week, Simkins departed "Angel" over reported "creative differences," leaving the tag team of Whedon and Minear to oversee both shows.

"It was an incredibly difficult situation to walk into," says Minear, speaking from the "Firefly" sets on the 20th Century Fox studio lot. "We weren't expecting to fill that position. Just a few months before that, I wasn't expecting to leave, and if David Greenwalt had left under any normal circumstances, I would have been there to shoulder it completely."

"Then the 'Firefly' thing happened, so everything changed. We didn't have a wicked lot of time to get to know new people, either before we selected David [Simkins] or after he was on board. He was thrown into the deep end of the pool without any lifeguards, and so, because we didn't have the time to really get in there and break him in, just everybody decided that it wasn't going to work."

Whedon and Minear have turned to "Angel" writer/producer Jeffrey Bell to pick up some of the slack. "Jeff Bell is there," Minear says, "admiraling the day-to-day concerns, but Joss and I are basically running it with everybody. We also have Kelly Manners, who's our on-set producer, who's there for the nuts-and-bolts stuff as well."

"It's a machine that's running and in place, but at the end of the day, the season arcs and the stories are going to have to be broken by Joss and me and the staff, just like they have been since the beginning of the year, so it's not all that different, in that sense."

"But I didn't envy David Simkins being put into the middle of that situation, because it's difficult."
Back to Home