Jason had been begging me to watch The CW/DC shows since they began.
And then he said, They introduced Flash.
And I said, I sawThe Flashin the 90s on TV, Im good.
Credit: Katie Yu/The CW
And Mewes never calls my house.
And hes like, No, King Shark is onFlash.
And hes like, Whos she?
Katie Yu/The CW
I said, Listen dude, Im not going to watch this.
And he goes, Youve got to see King Shark though.
Hes holding him by the neck, King Sharks picking up Flash by the neck.
Hes like, Oh, its over.
Hes just like a shark with pants that walks on land.
And I watched it and I thought the episode was incredibly well done.
1, King Shark looked amazing.
I mean, if youre going to do King Shark, holy crap he looked fantastic.
2, I just liked the structure of it, man.
They had gotten the tone down to a science.
If they dont have that, they dont make the episode.
You know they shoot it on a regular basis, so its doable spectacle.
I fell in love with the show and started talking to everyone about it.
Wed go back and forth sometimes like, I dont understand what theyre talking about in this point here.
And Jasons like, Ah thats from that one thing that happened over onArrowin Starling City.
And my wife would mock us mercifully like, Look at you two old ladies and your stories man.
What are Nikki and Victor up to this week?
I was like, F you, this isThe Flash, this is serious.
I fell in love with it big time.
I put it up on my YouTube channel and my mom called me.
And I was like, Which one?
And she was like, You were watchingThe Flashand the boys mom died.
And I said, Oh, its an insanely well done show.
And my mom was like, God, I hope you cry that hard when I die one day.
I said, I will, dont worry about it.
At that point, I was kind of confirmed as a hardcoreFlashfan.
I started talking about it a lot on the podcast.
We had Andrew Kreisberg onFatman on Batman, the podcast that I do.
Girl Jordan runs our company; boy Jordan [Cerf] is my TV agent.
And I was like, Why the f would you do that man?
I dont need no handouts.
I said, Were busy, were doing sh.
I dont need to be asking CW for a job.
She goes, Calm down, they said yeah.
I was like, Good job, that a girl.
Way to think outside the box.
Holy sh, really?
Then suddenly I was inFlashworld it was that simple.
And theyre like, Yeah,Dogma.
And he said, He loves the show, would you ever let him direct an episode?
And they said, Sure.
And thats how it happened.
It was that fing simple, it was crazy.
Thats weird, like I cant go in and start making demands and sh.
And he said, I dont care, I dont need to be in it.
I just want to go up there and see it happen and stuff.
I said, How?
And he goes, Ill be your assistant.
And I said, You kind of are my assistant in real life.
He came up with me toThe Flashand when we got there thats when I first got the episode.
They got him writing a script, this episode Runaway Dinosaur its called.
You dont see the script until you get up there.
They write right up until the last minute.
Then boom I saw the script and it was amazing.
Its perfect; its right up my alley.
A lot of character stuff, a lot of emotional scenes, big time emotional scenes.
They are kind of side-by-side episodes.
That was my watermark that I was hitting for.
Luckily Zack wrote a script that allowed us to do that.
It was like doing an episode in heaven.
Nobody calls it that in the show, but were in the afterlife.
For some reason that is just so up my alley, particularly the emotional stuff.
Because this episode is like a three-hanky episode.
I dont know what I can say in EW these days.
You will c your shorts is what Im saying, thats how fing strong the episode is.
1, Barry should say csucker a lot more.
No, obviously not.
If I want to do my stuff, I can do that in my stuff all the time.
That was my aim.
I didnt want to do something where people go, Kevin Smith directed that episode.
Really, I just went up as a total fan and my job became one of opinion and suggestion.
I was like, Let me lean on the cats that are here.
Kim Miles is our DP, crushed it with this episode.
If you ask any critic, they will tell you Im a bad director.
Directing has never been my first language.
Im a writer, first and foremost, who happened to wind up directing his own scripts.
On this, I couldnt write it because Zack already wrote it and crushed it.
I couldnt edit it because we had Felicia [Mignon].
Forced to solely direct and focus concentration on that, I actually became stronger, man.
Kim Miles was a big part of that.
Anytime I was like, Hey man, so how about we move over here?
We take the shot, we start the shot, we roll over here and we pick this up.
He was never like, Thats idiotic.
Hed be like, Thats good.
He was definitely dialed up to 11 as they say.
Shes in the God spot.
Continuity, thats the job she does, with script supervision you oversee that completely.
She was an incredible asset to have in terms of me wanting to get it asFlashas possible.
I wanted everybody to be like, Yeah man, this is a strongFlash.
This fits in, its not going to stick out like a sore thumb.
But these people are such wonderful artisans, you could do it without a director.
My take onFlashas director, I offered a lot of opinion and suggestion.
That was just to get us going.
He knows how to be Barry, man.
Particularly with this really touchy, feely stuff.
Lot of emotional stuff, lot of him getting glassy-eyed on the verge of crying and then breaking down.
So certainly Im not going to teach the guy how to cry.
But he doesnt need that because this dude does this on a regular basis.
Grants process was amazing.
The dudes true grit, hes an amazing actor.
When we got toMallrats, suddenly youve got a crew of 70-100 people.
I hate directing in front of people, because its an embarrassing job.
Really its just being paid to make pretend for a living as a grown up.
No, just tell everybody.
Best way to do that is to give everyone as much information as possible.
I became like more of a host on the movies.
The performances were amazing, all the good is yours, only the bad is mine.
We will never be in this exact situation again, so lets enjoy this.
Weve got the greatest job in the world.
And it got even better because were doingThe Flash, so lets do it.
You bring that level of enthusiasm to every shot, it bleeds in.
I like this, but you make me like it even more.
Thats why I end up getting pretty good casts.
My job as director comes down to opinion, suggestion, and cheerleading.
Sometimes you forget, Oh my god, whats better than this?
You know whats worse than this?
We dont even need to fund it out of our own pockets.
Its not a waste of time because this is how we spend our time.
All the Barry mom stuff is not only cannon, but its the heart of the show.
I was delighted when I cracked open that script and I saw Barrys mom.
I literally lost my breath, gasped when I saw the act end break and he goes, Mom.
And I was like, Oh sh,I got this son.
Theres spectacle in the show, dont get me wrong.
Theres the required spectacle, as per every episode, but it is so deep on emotion.
Every episode has heart, humor, and spectacle.
Theres so much heart in this episode, its crazy nuts.
The Flashairs Tuesdays at 8 p.m.
ET on The CW.
