A Killer Autumn Night with Showtime's Dexter
By Libby Slate • BACK TO PHOTO GALLERY
The slogan for Dexter is: "The serial killer you'll root for."
Apparently so. The series about a sociopath taught to channel his killer instincts into harming only people who deserve it made more than thirty media “Top Ten” television lists last year, and is Showtime’s top-rated series as well.
Its cast and creative team gathered to discuss the show at the Television Academy’s panel, “An Evening with … Dexter,” November 7 at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre.
On hand before a packed house of appreciative fans were Dexter Morgan himself, Michael C. Hall; cast mates Jennifer Carpenter, Keith Carradine, Erik King, C.S. Lee and James Remar; executive producers Sara Colleton, John Goldwyn, Daniel Cerone and Clyde Phillips; director of photography Romeo Tirone and composer Daniel Licht. US Weekly television critic John Griffiths moderated.
The series is based on the Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, which Colleton and Goldwyn found and optioned.
“Dexter belongs to the pantheon of one of the great anti-heroes in literature,” Colleton noted. And why does the television character have such appeal? “Each of us has a darker self,” said Phillips, who is co-show runner with Cerone.
“We don’t act out on it.” But even though Dexter does, Phillips said, he also “has a great sense of humor, a sense of compassion, a burgeoning sense of emotion and a love of children.”
Dexter is “remarkably capable in a lot of ways,” said Hall of his character, who works as a blood spatter specialist for the Miami PD. “But what really blows my mind about him is his capacity for stress management.” The comment drew the loudest laugh of the evening.
The Lindsay book was the first in a series, but the Dexter producers are not basing subsequent seasons on subsequent books. With the first book giving them the show template, the challenge of the second year, Cerone said, is “How do you top that?"
"We decided to come up with as many honest obstacles as problems as we could," Cerone continued, "In-laws, the uncovering of his kills, an alternative love interest – and spinning that organically into the story.”
To tell that story in musical terms, each character has his or her own theme. And, said Licht, “In general, the music comes out of Dexter himself, out of the cadences of his speaking in his voiceovers. He’s the audience of his own life," the composer explained. "If he’s concerned, the music’s concerned.”
The music is always a bit at counterpoint to the action, Colleton mentioned; a tense scene, Licht agreed, “would have a little touch of whimsy to it.”
As for the look of the story, “This show is more cinematic,” Tirone said. “I always say it’s a graphic novel with a Scorsese-Kronenberg-Kubrick influence!”
Will Dexter’s misdeeds ever be discovered? Said Carpenter, whose character Debra, Dexter’s foster sister, lost her real brother to Dexter in the first season, “When I watch the episodes, I think, ‘She knows.’ I don’t mean to play it that way.”
And, said King, who plays Dexter’s suspicious Miami PD nemesis Sgt. Doakes, “I don’t think you should quite count Doakes out yet.”
Whatever happens, “Dexter can never become, ultimately, a nice guy,” Cerone maintained. “There is a soul scratching in there, but he’s a character of great conflict. If he becomes a nice guy, that would be the end of the show.”
The panel discussion, which was preceded by a screening of an upcoming episode, was highlighted by an advance of a different sort: the impromptu announcement from Showtime Entertainment Networks president Robert Greenblatt, seated in the audience, that the series would return for a third season.
Barbara Wellner is activities committee chair. Robert O’Donnell is director of activities for the Academy.
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