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Written By: Jami Attenberg
Alan Ball (Executive Producer) wrote "Perfect Circles" (#27), as well as five episodes in the first two seasons: "Pilot" (#01), "An Open Book" (#05), "Knock, Knock" (#13), "In the Game" (#14), and "Someone Else's Eyes" (#22). He also directed "Pilot" (#01), "Knock, Knock" (#13), and "The Last Time" (#26).
 Read the full Alan Ball bio. |
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Instead of the traditional opening death sequence, the season three premiere of Six Feet Under, "Perfect Circles," begins with a series of alternate realities, a bunch of what-ifs for the life of Nathaniel Fisher, Jr.: What if Nate died in the brain surgery he faced at the end of last season? What if he survived, but had a stroke? What if he survived the surgery and married Lisa? What if he survived, but had married Brenda? What if his father, Nathaniel, Sr., had never died? What if Nathaniel, Sr. had married a different woman, and a totally different Nate had been born? And what if Nate were white trash? Alan Ball discusses the influence of physics on this dramatic sequence.
"I have a place up in Lake Arrowhead that I try to escape to on a regular basis just to get away from Los Angeles and the industry," Alan explains. "I was up there zoning out in front of the TV and I ended up watching a special on the Discovery Channel about physics, and what's been going on in physics in the last 100 years, especially in the field of quantum mechanics. I never read those books that came out twenty years ago, like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. So this was my little introduction to the fact that there is empiric evidence in the world of physics to suggest that the universe is constantly dividing into parallel universes."
He continues, "According to the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are countless numbers of other universes, ones in which we exist, ones in which we have already died, ones in which we were never born. And the majority of theoretical physicists actually believe this, and they don't want to talk about it because of the implications. Because what does that do to our notions of free will and destiny and personal freedom and God?"
He was hooked. He delved into the world of physics, reading several books ("Physics for Dummies," he laughs), and when the Six Feet Under writers reconvened for season three, the concepts became part of the framework for the first episode, and drove the vision behind Nate's multiple realities.
"It seemed like it would be interesting to explore this fluid interpretation of what exactly constitutes physical reality? It felt like an interesting, and entertaining, and fun way to flirt with these concepts, and at the same time to have Nate actually die, and to confront death in a different way than we have before."
And with dream sequences, fantasy sequences, ecstasy trips, and visits with the deceased in the past two seasons, the alternate realities should come as no surprise to fans of the show. Is this an obsession?
"It's not a conscious thing for me," says Alan. "I just think it happened because we're writing about characters who live in such close proximity to death. Death is such a huge, primal, psychic, mysterious force, and I think our psyches are so complicated and mysterious...The notion of standard reality...doesn't feel like enough to confront death in terms of psychologically processing it. I didn't sit down and think to myself, oh I'm going to use these techniques - it just sort of came out in the organic process of writing."
So which Nate reality was his favorite?
"I liked the family where Nathaniel had married a completely different woman. It was such a completely different vibe. They were much more upper crust, and kind of snarky. I liked seeing Nathaniel, Sr. in that environment, and the fact that Nate had to confront an entirely different person as Nathaniel Fisher, Jr."
"I also liked the one where it's really ridiculous - the white trash one." Alan notes the nods to physics - Dr. Schroedinger and "Kitty"1, the Eigenvalues "in bloom"2, and the mention of Copenhagen3 - in this particular reality. "I'm hoping there's a handful of physicists who watch the show who might get a kick out of that."
As to the production itself, nothing was left to chance. In most episodes, a staff storyboard artist creates one or two sequences with the director. ("It's very helpful," he says. "You may deviate from the plan, but it's nice to have a plan.") This episode was no exception.
"This particular sequence was storyboarded within an inch of its life. It sort of had to be. Director Rodrigo Garcia really mapped out the way he wanted to shoot it, and pretty much stuck to the blueprint."
And what of the blueprint for the new season? After a season opener with such a big bang, what can this mean for the Fisher family?
"Season three, thematically, is all about choices," he says. "The implication being that on some level, Nate chose the reality that he ends up in at the end of episode one. Now that's taking all kinds of metaphysical and theological liberties, all in the name of poetic license. When you're called upon to make a choice in your life, in your personal life, doing the right thing is not always the easiest thing to do and it doesn't always reward you as much as other choices might."
He continues, "Sometimes being a moral person and doing what is right actually makes your life more difficult. When you do make a choice, you're saying no to a lot of other choices, and that's what we try to focus on...the dilemmas that creates for our characters and the scrapes they get in because of that and how it makes their life ridiculous and absurd and messy and funny, and also better and richer an equal part of the time as well. And how it's just never simple. You know, life just continues to get more and more complex for these people."
And, as always, "There's just more sex, death, and weirdness in store," he laughs.
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1. Dr. Erwin Schroedinger was a Nobel Prize winner for physics, and he once engaged in an experiment involving a cat, a vial of poisonous gas, and a radioactive mineral. A full description of the experiment is available here.
2. Eigenvalues, according to a book written by Marcus and Minc in 1988, are a special set of scalars associated with a linear system of equations (i.e., a matrix equation) that are sometimes also known as characteristic roots, proper values, or latent roots. For more information, read here.
3. Copenhagen refers to "The Copenhagen Interpretation," which concerns how much we can know about a particle, and when, and is named for the leading exponent of the theory, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr.
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