The Dead Zone: Dinner with Dana (TV Appearance Post)
Johnny Smith had a near perfect life until a near-fatal car crash puts him in a coma for 6 years. When he comes to, everything has changed, including himself. He know has psychic powers to see into the lives of anyone he touches or anything they have touched. Callum plays Max Cassidy, a photographer who has a unhealthy obsession with his ex girlfriend, Dana Bright, who happens to be going on a date with Johnny Smith that night.
The IMDB page: The Dead Zone: Dinner with Dana (2002)
Jon Cassar directed Dinner with Dana as well as one other episode of ‘The Dead Zone’. He also directed 7 episodes of ‘Forever Knight’, including ‘Outside the Lines’, another Callum guest star role. Other shows: "Due South” with 1 Episode "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" with 11 episodes, "La Femme Nikita" with 14 episodes and ‘24’ where he directed 149 episodes.
Michael Taylor wrote the Episode Dinner with Dana along with 9 others for "The Dead Zone". He also wrote 4 episodes of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", 20 episodes of "Star Trek: Voyager", Battlestar Galactica: Razor along with the Webisodes "Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashbacks" and 6 episode of “Battlestar Galactica" He also was also a Producer on "The Dead Zone" and "Battlestar Galactica"
Anthony Michael Hall - you may know him from John Hughes’ movies ‘Sixteen Candles’, ‘The Breakfast Club’, and ‘Weird Science.’ In the 90’s and 00’s he did a lot of TV guest roles and movies. He just finished working on a movie called, ‘Aftermath’
Nicole de Boer - Was on the first 2 episodes of ‘Forever Knight’. She has been in lots of movie and guest roles. She was in a movie called Cube - a cool little Horror movie (It’s good, check it out.) and then last season of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" as Ezri Dax. Her most current role was in ‘Christmas Town’
Cast / Characters:
Anthony Michael Hall
Nicole de Boer
Chris Bruno
John L. Adams
Kristen Dalton
Callum Keith Rennie
David Ogden Stiers
Anna Hagan on
Rick Tae
Leila Johnson
Johnny Smith
Sarah Bracknell Bannerman
Sheriff Walt Bannerman
Bruce Lewis
Dana Bright
Max Cassidy
Rev. Gene Purdy
Vera Smith
Dr. Tran
Saundra
Original Airdate: 25 August 2002 (Season 1, Episode 11)
Runtime: 43 min
Country: USA | Canada
IMDB rating: 5.9/10 (32 votes)
Genre: Horror | Mystery | Drama | Fantasy | Sci-Fi
Keywords: Character Name In Title | Spin Off | Psychic Power | Psychic | Based On Film | Maine | Stephen King | Sheriff | Small Town Sheriff | Dark Hero | Illuminati
Awards:
For the episode: None
For the series: Nominates for 15 awards, including 5 ‘Leo’, an won a ‘Young Artist Award’ for Best Performance in a TV Series - Recurring Young Actor for Conner Price, who was not in this episode.
No Comments for this episode.
68 Comments for the series.
One example:
"The Dead Zone" stands out as one of the better shows on Television today. The acting, especially by Anthony Michael Hall is completely belieavable and dramatic, sucking you into his life and his pains as he see disturbing images of the future and past. This show sometimes gets gory with the images of blood, death, etc. However, it isn't too hard to watch and the amount of blood stays reasonable. The script doesn't stand out as much as the other features. It's still relatively solid, but has some flaws concerning the love between Sara and Johnny, making it a bit too cliche and corny. Sometimes, the script also loses sight of the episode and eventually just spins out to human drama. Other flaws include the occassional boring episode or Hall's performance as Johnny sometimes falls flat. The special effects though, are amazing. When Johnny touches someone and sees the past or future, the editing and the effects quickly change to show what happened or what's going to happen. It's amazing to see it work, everything builds together so well and the effects of murder, or the entire area being frozen with Johnny walking through is spectacular. I applaud the USA channell for restoring Television with the two arguablly greatest shows to watch: "The Dead Zone" and "Monk". 9.5/10
You can find all the comments here.
Callum Quotient: 45%
Pictures:
Quotes:
- Max Cassidy: You know what happens when you play a country song backwards?
Saundra: *shakes head* hmmhumm
Max Cassidy: You get back your farm, your pick-up and your girl, all in that order. - Max Cassidy: Now I’m confused. Yes means no right? No means yes, right?
- Max Cassidy: (laughs after Dana pulls a knife on him) Excuse me Ms. Bates
Dana: Get out
Max Cassidy: What? I was just fooling around. - Johnny Smith: You wanted the Johnny Smith dating experience. Sometimes it means sharing a bed with everyone you ever slept with and everyone they ever slept with. It’s kind of like six degrees of separation except minus 5 .
Dana: That many huh?
Johnny Smith: Yeah… I’m glad I have a king size bed.
Trivia:
- Anthony Michael Hall's character refers to the movie Six Degrees of Separation (1993) in his bedroom. Hall was in the movie. (in ‘Dinner with Dana’)
- Anthony Michael Hall is the only actor to appear in every episode.
- Started originally as a pilot for a series to be shown on the UPN network in the fall of 2001. When UPN decided not to run it, the USA Network picked it up.
- The show's creator, Michael Piller, also co-created "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993), of which Nicole de Boer was also a cast member.
Interesting scenes:
- Opening where Max’s scares the crap out of Dana by showing up unexpectedly.
- The dancing scene where Johnny sees everyone that Dana ever danced with, including Max.
- Dana telling Johnny about Max with the real life and past life mixed it together
- ’Sex’ scene with Dana and Johnny where everyone and their dog shows up
Do I want to show this to my parents / friends / co-workers?
Poll The Dead Zone – Dinner With Dana
Max Cassidy
Poll Max Cassidy
Does he die?
You really want to know? Are you sure? Really sure? Well, then. (highlight to read)
:: No, but he gets arrested.::
Articles/interviews
Kristen Dalton, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Taylor (writer) did a commentary over the episode
A few things they mentioned:
- Talk about how good of an actor Callum is.
- Cal wanted to do the struggling scene for real ‘for the reality of it’ to the point that the actress was sore after it.
- Kristen(Dana) says that psychopaths are so charms as they are scary. (I liked that line)
- The director was uncomfortable filming a scene with Callum for the dark nature of it.
Besides that, it was funny as well as cute, so watch it when you get the DVD.
*Note on the Commentary: It took me FOREVER to find it, it’s almost an Easter egg, they hide it so well. Go to ‘Episode Guide’; go to ‘Chapter Selections’ of the episode you want. There it gives you the options to turn on commentary O_o
Links
USA Network Site for the Episode Dinner with Dana. It gives a great episode overview, full cast and production credits, and full script. Clicky Clicky.
The Dead Zone: Dinner with Dana Pic Spam More Clicky Click.
Availability
The Dead Zone is commercially available through Amazon or most any place you can pick up DVD’s.
Region 2 is also available at Amazon
And some last words
Cal is just devilishly wicked in the episode. I used to see pic spams of this show and be like “I wish I was that girl” and then watched the episode and was like ‘Eep! Never mind.’ He is so good playing the bad guy to where you totally scared of him even if he is still hot O_o yeah I need help. ^_^
But the show itself is really good. I would admit, I just downloaded the one episode with Cal in it, and ended up liking it so much that I bought the first season on DVD. I would recommend this show as a buy, not top on my list but one worth checking out.