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The End of OZ
By Greg
Archer
Satellite DIRECT magazine
It’s
official—OZ, HBO’s critically acclaimed prison drama, is not up for
parole. And the decision has OZ-ies ready to riot.
Who gave TV’s most provocative outing the death penalty? The man who
created it.
“With these final eight episodes of OZ, I’ll finish telling the
story I originally set out to tell,” says Tom Fontana, the show’s
creator and executive producer, whose vision was to end the drama
after its sixth season. “I want the series to go out at what I hope
will be its top form.”
Fontana doesn’t have to worry about that. Ever since OZ burst onto
the scene in 1997, it’s been quite the jaw-dropper and will be
remembered as one of the most groundbreaking series to ever hit the
airwaves. Brooding men behind bars, prison power struggles, white
supremacy, religious wars, full frontal male nudity, homosexuality,
murderous and grizzly bloodbaths—life in the experimental unit of
“Emerald City” at Oswald State Correctional Facility is anything but
tepid.
And those story arcs: the Beecher-Keller love saga; the twisted
karma of Miguel Alvarez, a former Latin gang leader-turned-post-
suicidal murderous-escapee; the woes of a warden hoping to find out
who raped his daughter; the Muslim author who was all for
non-violence and abstinence, but whose incarceration somehow led to
the burning of a short-tempered Mafia inmate. Even the show’s
venerable narrator, the wheelchair-bound Augustus Hill (Harold
Perrineau), has kept us enthralled.
The bottom line: viewers became “prisoners” of OZ, both captivated
by its pulsating plots and in awe of how its characters cope with
“jail time” and life within the confines of their own emotional
prisons. OZ also boasts one of the largest casts on television—Rita
Moreno as the challenged-yet-patient Sister Peter Marie stands
out—and a slew of celebrity directors including Matt Dillon. Still,
with all its critical acclaim, it has yet to be nominated for a
single award.
“It was the first cable series to head into the land that TV has
avoided and movies shied away from, “ says Terry Kinney, who plays
beleaguered “Em City” administrator Tim McManus. “The fact that we
had all of the growing pains and little of the praise was always
strange to me. Certainly, the award shows avoided us. Was it our
quality of work? No. So what was it?”
Guts. Before OZ, no other show dared to feature such gritty,
realistic plots—the graphic violence alone created the biggest buzz.
But without OZ fertilizing the TV soil, how could there have been
Queer As Folk, Six Feet Under or The Sopranos?
“It’s easy to dismiss OZ as ‘that prison rape show,’” says Dean
Winters (OZ’s Ryan O’Reily), who plays an imprisoned sibling
alongside his real-life brother, Scott. “But people who ‘get it’
understand that the writing is pristine and truthful.We’re not
selling beer and chips, so we can show the truth.”
For Lee Tergesen, whose character, Tobias Beecher, went from devoted
father to conflicted inmate sentenced to 15 years on a vehicular
manslaughter charge, OZ covered a lot of territory and mesmerized
with its “big ideas about what people are to each other, and what we
as human beings do—because we think we have to—in order to survive.”
While Fontana’s pen mastered every one of OZ’s storylines —and all
those envelope-pushing moments—he hit a new plateau in television by
scripting the love relationship between Tergesen’s Beecher and
convicted murderer/fellow inmate Chris Keller, played by Chris
Meloni (Law and Order: SVU). For the first time on television, an
hour-long drama featured every nuance of a love affair between two
men.
“In Episode six [of the second season], we had the first scene where
we had to tell each other that we loved each other and kiss,”
Tergesen recalls. “A lot of things on the show, at that point, were
bold, [but] I trusted Tom’s writing.”
Still, Tergesen and Meloni met before their scenes were shot and
discussed their onscreen relationship. “One actor told me, ‘never
kiss a man on screen’—you do have those considerations,” Tergesen
notes. “Chris and I decided not to shy away from it—to go toward it.
And that’s one of the things people sensed when they watched. They
got very involved in that relationship. We were invested in it and
we weren’t trying to skirt it. Sometimes you see people acting and
they stay separate from what they’re doing because they want you to
make sure that this isn’t them.”
How does it all play out in the end? Although cast and crew have
zipped lips, Kinney offers this tidbit: there’s “even more conflict
than in the previous season, if that’s even possible.
“There’s more Shakespearean plots,” he adds. “It’s a very, very sad
and very entertaining bloodbath. It’s the logical conclusion for a
show that has more intensity than any show I can remember being
involved with. It’s moved up another notch.”
The final season of OZ premieres Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO (ch.
501)
The Merry Old Land of OZ
• OZ Executive Producer Tom Fontana treats every member of his
ensemble cast with the same amount of fairness and promotes a “check
your ego” policy at the door.
• Most of the show was filmed on an elaborate soundstage in Bayonne,
NJ.
• During those oh-so-brutal prison riots, OZ guards used batons to
beat unruly prisoners. In reality, the batons were made of rubber.
Sometimes, when they escaped an actor’s grip, they fell to floor and
bounced back like a rubber ball. It left the cast in stitches.
• The OZ body count: So far, 56 inmates have left “Emerald City” in
body bags.
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