Interview conducted by and © Edward Gross
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: When I think of the premise for NO ORDINARY FAMILY, the first thing that pops into my head is THE INCREDIBLES.
MARC GUGGENHEIM: Everyone thinks that, and I think that one episode will cure anyone of that belief. With THE INCREDIBLES, it’s a family of superheroes and they’re all wearing costumes and they’re all fighting crime together. That’s not what this show is. First of all, there are no costumes and the only person really fighting crime is the father, Jim Powell, played by Michael Chiklis.
SCIFI MEDIZA ZONE: So for the rest of them it’s about getting used to the powers in their life.
MARC GUGGENHEIM: Exactly. The way we think of it is that it’s a character show; it’s a family drama with this added element of their superpowers and how their superpowers make their problems, for lack of a better term, super. Combined with that you have the Jim Powell character, who’s fighting crime but in a very different way than The Incredibles do. He’s not a traditional superhero wearing a costume, mask or tights. One of the fun things about the show is that because it’s a TV show and not a movie, we have 22 hours in the first season alone to tell the story of these people getting used to their powers. Unlike a movie where they’ve got to figure it out really fast so you can get to the action, part of the fun of the show is watching them making mistakes with their powers, and watching the smallest thing being magnified when you are super human. Part of the fun of the show is seeing the missteps and comedy out of the fact that Jim can jump 50 feet, but doesn’t know how to land. As the posters for the show say, it doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: How would you describe the overall thrust of the show?
MARC GUGGENHEIM: The overall thrust is this family. These four people, they all love each other, but there are teenagers, it’s a 16-year-old marriage and they’ve got all of the problems that the rest of us have. In many ways the powers are just a metaphor for the various problems that they have in their lives. And whatever problems they have with their powers is a reflection of the problems in their lives. The thing I like to say is that it’s no different from BROTHERS AND SISTERS in terms of a family drama except that the family is a little smaller and we’re telling stories through these powers, but the powers operate as an allegory in many respects.
It’s been a long time since there was a show that the whole family could watch, and I think this is that. There’s the superhero aspect for the boys, the action stuff for the guys, the emotional stuff for the women. There’s a little something for everybody, it’s on at 8:00. It used to be that families would watch television together, but programming has become very niched. This show could fill a void.
QUESTION: Now what can you tell me about the NO ORDINARY FAMILY that’s up at Splastik.com and, of course, Comic Book Movie?
MARC GUGGENHEIM: What’s cool about it is the fact they actually shot new material for the motion comic with Michael Chiklis. Motion comics live in this interesting hybrid of an animated film and a comic. In this case, they’ve done this computer rotoscoping where they’re animating existing footage from the pilot and new footage that was shot for the motion comic, and it’s really kind of cool. One of the assistants in the NO ORDINARY FAMILY office, Sarah Fahey, wrote the story. The point is that it’s done by people directly involved with the show, so the mythology and the continuity and everything in the comic is related specifically to the show.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: What’s the storyline for the motion comic?
MARC GUGGENHEIM: There’s a mysterious character introduced at the end of the pilot that looms very large in the series. In the pilot he meets with a woman whose superpower is to predict the future and she sort of lays out a series of teasers of what’s going to happen with our characters in the series. What’s cool about it is that it’s more than just a brain dump of, “Here’s stuff that’s happening.” It takes place within the context of this serious character so that you really feel like you’re getting a little glimpse not just into the pilot, but into what’s going to happen in the series. Hey, it’s free, so why not check it out?
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: Are there going to be a lot of people with superpowers on the show?
MARC GUGGENHEIM: The motion comic sort of spoils a twist in the pilot, which is that the Powells are not the only people who have superpowers. Is there going to be a supervillain of the week? No. I think one of the fun aspects of the show is that you’ll tune in never knowing whether or not you’ll be encountering a super powered character. What it reminds me of is the early days of THE X-FILES, before it got so regimented on which episodes would be mythology and which ones weren’t: you’ll tune in and you’re not necessarily going to know if someone is a super powered character, if someone’s a villain, if it relates to the mythology of the show, but obviously one of the mysteries that’s set up in the pilot is how do these people get their super powers? That’s a fun little mystery running through the series. You can’t have a show with a genre element without some form of a mythology; I feel that’s just something the base wants.