WIRX “Decoding Carnivale” call-in with Clancy Brown • 03-21-05

This is the transcript from Clancy’s radio call-in segment on Southwest Michigan’s WIRX/Rock 107.1, with Shelley Morgan.

SHELLEY: It’s a little after 4 o’clock. That means I’ve got Clancy Brown on the phone! It’s time to “Decode Carnivale”! Good show last night!

CLANCY: Not a lot of new information last night, though…

Shelley: We don’t need a lot of new information!

Clancy: Yeah, you’re right. We really don’t. We just sorta need some…

Shelley: Some things to happen!

Clancy: We need some logic strings tied up, ya know? We need this person… needs to know that, and that person needs to know this. And the whole Carnivale needs to know Management is dead, and that Jonesy can run, and all of that. So, we already know all that stuff. But it’s supposed to be interesting to see everybody else’s reaction.

Shelley: Oh, well it was great to see everyone else’s reaction last night! It was great to see Rita Sue’s reaction last night.

Clancy: She had a… She was GREAT, wasn’t she?

Shelley: Yes! And Debra was great!

Clancy: (chuckling) Debra was great! Debra really got a chance to shine!

Shelley: She just… She wasn’t letting that go. She had it all ready to come down on little Samson’s head. She was ready to squash him like a bug!

Clancy: (chuckling) Aw… That’s been hangin’ on since the first episode! (laughing) It’s kinda time to bring that around. Uh…

Shelley: But you’re right, it was time to bring it around, but it was the PERFECT time!

Clancy: You think? I woulda liked to seen it happen sooner, but… I guess it couldn’t have happened sooner, really.

Shelley: It couldn’t have happened sooner because Jonesy had to be healed. There had to be a reason for them to stick around with the Carnivale.

Clancy: Well, good. Now we know. We don’t know if Lila’s satisfied…

Shelley: I wasn’t prepared to see as many believing faces…

Clancy: (chuckling) Yeah! Yeah, ya know, Jonesy carries a lot of affection, I guess... (chuckling) in that whole Carnivale.

Shelley: I guess so!

Clancy: Ya know? If ya did that for Jonesy then, by golly, that’s good enough for me! (laughing)

Shelley: And the Carnivale just has to get there! They have to get to New Canaan, and stay together. And they’ve gotta do that just to tweak Justin!

Clancy: Just for that last shot.

Shelley: Yeah!

Clancy: Him looking out going, “Oh, damn…”

Shelley: Exactly. So, in the episode last night on HBO, Ben gets by a few of the house guards and wanders through the house. TONS of suspense! He walks into Iris’s room and finds one of the mirror shards, and looks into it…

Clancy: And then whatever that was that passed behind him…

Shelley: Well, it had to have been Justin!

Clancy: You think?

Shelley: Yeah!

Clancy: I dunno… It’s just a shadow, it’s just sumthin’!

Shelley: It was either…

Clancy: I don’t know what it was!

Shelley: It either had to be Justin or…

Clancy: Or Iris…

Shelley: Or Stroud!

Clancy: Could have been Stroud. I mean, it really wasn’t anything but a wash of a shadow, and I don’t really know what it was at all…

Shelley: Right, right. But Norman making a pretty big deal of moving his head to go upstairs…

Clancy: Yeah.

Shelley: To Ben… even though he didn’t know the significance of Ben.

Clancy: Yeah.

Shelley: There was just some guy in the house and, God, maybe it was somebody who came to kill Justin!

Clancy: (Laughing) Yeah!

Shelley: Just get him outta my life!

Clancy: (Laughing) Yeah, that’s gotta be!

Shelley: He’s upstairs! Go off him!

Clancy: He’s upstairs! Get busy!

Shelley: Exactly! Last night on HBO Sofie starts out the show as a true, total believer. She doesn’t have a problem with any of it. But after she meets up with Ben in the camp, she starts to doubt, especially after witnessing Brother Justin deal with the two guards who let Ben in the house, huh Clancy? It’s like, excuse me… what?

Clancy: One of which is her dad, by the way.

Shelley: Oh really? Clea’s Dad?

Clancy: Yeah, that’s Clea’s Dad…

Shelley: The guy who put his hand down?

Clancy: No, the guy who raised the hatchet.

Shelley: Ah-ha!

Clancy: That’s Clea’s Dad.

Shelley: Well, that’s kinda fun.

Clancy: Yeah, it was kinda fun. Like I said, we had to accelerate the deprogramming. It is strange to me, though, that the Carnivale shows up and, once again, her life becomes miserable! (laughing)

Shelley: I know, isn’t that true?

Clancy: (laughing) She like finally… I mean, even if it’s built on a lie, she’s finally, like, the happiest we’ve ever seen her, ya know?

Shelley: Right.

Clancy: She’s sort of out of herself, and she’s in service, and she’s over all of her junk. And then the Carnivale shows up and brings it all back… (laughing hard)

Shelley: Yeah, she goes walking down into the camp and there’s Rita Sue and… oh, no! You’ve gotta be kidding!

Clancy: Yeah, I’m sorry, there’s just no escape. (chuckling)

Shelley: (laughing) But later that night… Brother Justin invites Sofie to sit behind… beside him -- behind him would be bad -- on the porch swing, and he leans over to her and, uh, what did he say?

Clancy: He said, “I can see who you are…” And I made a mistake once in the reading, as I did through this whole episode, for some reason I couldn’t get these lines out. But I did say, “I know who you are” at one point, and everybody rushed up to me and said, “No-no-no-no-no! You DON’T know who she is, in terms of…”

Shelley: Who she is…

Clancy: Who she is…

Shelley: In terms of who everybody else knows she is.

Clancy: It’s a “line” – “I can see who you are.” He CAN’T see who she is.

Shelley: Okay.

Clancy: It’s a “line.” From that perspective, even though it wasn’t something clearly done, it was sort of one of those brilliant poetic lines that the girl’s wrote – Dawn & Nicole – that’s what women script writers bring to a script, I think.

Shelley: That little intricate thing…?

Clancy: Yeah.

Shelley: That WE end up hearing that you guys end up saying, that we all know is just BULL!

Clancy: Right!

Shelley: (laughing)

Clancy: Right! But we don’t know it’s bull. We think it’s true, for some reason!

Shelley: How ‘bout that? Right on for the women screenwriters, huh? Now, let’s do a little bit of a recap of one of the decent parts of the… Well, there are LOTS of decent parts of the show, but let’s do a recap. Iris, Brother Justin’s sister, informs Norman that Sofie is the byproduct of Justin’s violent dalliance, if you will, with what she calls “That ridiculous fortune teller in St. Paul.”

Clancy: Ya know, I like to lay it all on that… that self-flagellation, uprightness, and…

Shelley: That he knew he had done something INCREDIBLY wrong, and he had to atone for that sin.

Clancy: Right, for the rest of his life, you know, denying the flesh and all that stuff. So then, of course, all that builds up, after a while.

Shelley: Well, yeah!

Clancy: (laughing)

Shelley: The self-flagellation doesn’t provide that much release.

Clancy: That’s right. And then you realize that actually you’re an Avatar, you’re a Creature of Darkness in service to God, or whatever you are, you’re special, so them rules don’t apply!

Shelley: (chuckles) You didn’t really think those rules applied anyway, huh? But the other thing that was kind of startling was during the Baptism scene, poor dead Eleanor, she just kind of floats to the top of the pond…

Clancy: Yeah, that was actually a bigger moment in the original script. There was a whole… it spun Justin into another sermon there in the water, which I’m SO glad they decided to cut before we even shot it. Cuz I spent long enough (chuckling), in that pond, I tell ya what!

Shelley: (laughing)

Clancy: Oh, my God…

Shelley: I bet you did.

Clancy: (chuckling) But yeah, that was a nice moment. I… (laughing) I can’t help but chuckle when I see that scene, because it was a built dummy that looked JUST like K Callan with her brains bashed in! And there were all sorts of jokes floating around, as it were.

Shelley: (laughing) Oh, man…

Clancy: (chuckling)

Shelley: Nice! Season finale on Sunday night at 10:00. The repeat of last night’s episode tonight at 8:00 on HBO2. Clancy Brown, thank you so much for spending another Monday with us, “Decoding Carnivale”! We’ll be watching!

Clancy: Alrighty!

Shelley: All right!

Clancy: Seeya Shell…

Shelley: Take care.

Clancy: Bye.