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Tips For Leaving Your Creative Comfort Zone, From A TV Creator Who Went From Blue-Sky To Gritty

06/06/2013

Jeff Eastin has had a huge hit with USA’s White Collar and now he’s spearheading a much darker new drama, Graceland. (...)
Jeff Eastin has had a huge hit with USA’s White Collar and now he’s spearheading a much darker new drama, Graceland. He talks to us about the importance of branching out and how to balance two very different creative projects. Like his best known characters, TV Show creator and executive producer Jeff Eastin has a double life. For the last four seasons, Eastin has been showrunner and executive producer of the show he created, the immensely popular White Collar, a Catch-Me-If-You-Can-like derivative that picks up after charming con man Neal Caffrey is apprehended by FBI special agent Peter Burke. The fraudster and federal rival then team to help solve New York’s most complex cases of forgery and other cons. By sticking closely to USA’s so-called “Blue Sky” formula for storytelling— that’s lots of hijinks but generally happy resolutions—the show became the most watched scripted series in its time slot last year. White Collar season five is set to premiere this fall. But on June 6th, Eastin will debut something darker. Graceland, also on USA, is a gritty cop drama that breaks the blue-sky mold. Based on a true story, it chronicles the complex lives of undercover agents from the FBI, DEA, and U.S. Customs living together in a seized southern California beach house as their cases and ulterior motives overlap. That’s like having the guy who wrote Starsky & Hutch take a crack at 21 Jump Street. It forced Eastin to reinvent his formula for mystery-cop procedural in a new way, one that won’t hurt either brand. Here, the four biggest lessons he’s learned while making a prime time shift.Read Full Story    
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