Crave Online: How cool was it to have Tim Sale draw the cover of the first issue?
Milo Ventimiglia: So cool, when Russ and I, my partner, we linked up with Devils Due. We started talking about starting the book, we brought Mark Powers in to write it, and then we started talking about cover artists, and the first thing that popped in my mind was, ”I wanna call Tim, I wanna call Tim.” Then I thought, “Nah, he’s huge. He’s way too big for this.” You know this is a small first time book that we’re putting out. But, I shot him an email that said, “Hey I’m doing this, this is what the story is about, you know me I’m always such a huge fan, I’d love if you would even consider doing something with us.” And he wrote back and was like, “Absolutely, when do you want to talk about it, what do you need, what are you looking for. And he drew two covers for us, one that’s on the first issue now and another one that we may play with and do something. To get Tim [Sale] and guys like Phil Jimenez, it’s nice to know that people are looking at what we’re doing and wanting to be involved with it.
Crave Online: The main character looks like you, is he like you in any other ways?
Milo Ventimiglia: I don’t know, I don’t think I’m quite like John Barrett, I think the one similarity that he and I share and is revealed a little bit more In the #0 issue, that we’re both like an A type personality, I’m a very driven person and in college he was a very driven person where our lives don’t run parallel is that he got stuck, he got stuck in life. He got stuck in a place that for anybody else really just needed to muscle it out work harder through the tough times and hopefully come out the other end a successful man, it’s also when John, getting into the second issue, has now 24 hours to be wide awake he gets a little cocky with it, there’s a little more arrogance in having all the time the world has to offer. Me, I’m a very confidant guy, but I know who I am and I know who I’m not, and to think that I’d be better off than anybody because of the position I’m in is ridiculous . Yeah, he may look like me in the book, but we’re totally different.
Crave Online: This isn’t your typical superhero comic , how would you categorize it?
Milo Ventimiglia: Relative comic? Because its relative to everybody think about your day, what time did you wake up this morning?
Me: 5:30 am
Milo: ok, that’s me I woke up at like 4:45. What time did you go to bed last night?
Me: 1, 1:30 am
Milo: so you get like two, three hours of sleep sometimes, four maybe. Maybe on a Sunday you’ll squeeze in six? Everybody I talk to does the same thing man and we’re all working so hard and we’re all trying to do something for our lives and for the people around us, and this story is totally relative to anybody that I talk to. It’s attainable too, its not something set so far in the future that they have flying cars and people reading each other’s minds, uh… capes and tights. It was something that seemed like you could reach out and touch it, like you knew that all of a sudden this world could happen.
Crave Online: What is your role as producer?
Milo Ventimiglia: Everything from deciding on who is writing it, to the artist, to the direction of the story, how its marketed it’s really a true partnership with Devils Due to put the book out. Creatively and businesswise really trying to be a part of everything. It’s an unlikely title in comics to be a producer. But much like what Russ and I are used to in producing films or TV or anything like that, it’s the same thing in a comic, you gotta make sure you have a good story, the art is good and you have a nice marketing machine behind you. So, I think being a part of all that it’s like well just keep the title that we usually have on the Hollywood side and be producers.
Crave Online: Does Rest do more than keep you awake.
Milo Ventimiglia: The drug itself is called Seracetinol, it suppresses a persons need to sleep. What goes on when you sleep is your body is repairing itself, working things out in your mind that the rational conscious mind can’t. So what the drug does, we use pills as imagery in the book, but what it actually is is a procedure where a chip gets planted in the back of the neck to your spinal cord. Basically it releases the seracetinol drug that nourishes the body of what it needs as if you were sleeping, and lets your brain function past the subconscious. So it has no side effects, the version that John has in the comic, the one that he gets at the very end of his trial has zero side effects . The drug previous, had side effects, had some bad side effects . Teddy is on an old version of the drug and we come to find that his mind starts to slip. You come to find out that there was a test group in South America and that the test went horribly, horribly wrong, this guy is on the old version of the drug. So there is something wrong with the old versions of the drug, but in John its perfected. So John kind of has this dilemma that he runs into that its perfect for him and its perfect for anyone who wants it at this point forward, but what about the people that lost their lives or went crazy because of it. One of them being possibly his close friend. So does he decide to take on the system or does he decide to let it get out and sweep under the carpet all the fallacies of the company.
Crave Online: The book points out that this is a present day setting, How important is that to the future of the story?
Milo Ventimiglia: To the future of the story? Russ always says something great, good sci-fi is something that is just around the corner within the next one or two years. The future of this story, it all takes place within one year’s time, even less like seven or eight months. But it’s not a world that needs- - it actually works better in a world that doesn’t have flying cars, it doesn’t need that sort of crazy futuristic Blade Runner type look, it’s something that is in the now, it’s happening now. I think that if we were to put it further in the future it would be a little unrealistic.
Crave Online: Is there any buzz on a Rest movie?
Milo Ventimiglia: Yeah there’s been talks about it, but first and foremost we want to make a great book, you have to do that first. But a good book will lend itself to a good movie and I think the world that we’re trying to build that Shawn has written, I think it will be a great movie, I’d be really into it and as an actor it would be a great character to play. Or as a straight producer if I could find the right actor to embody the character even more that would be great.
Crave Online: How do you feel about the season of Heroes at this point?
Milo Ventimiglia: Having a good time with it, definitely happy to be back, happy to be working. There’s some things that have confused me. There have been moments that have been driven by story more than character, but at the same time it’s such a talented group of people. Peiople who really want the best, so I think that when we put our heads together before we start shooting we come up with what we think is the best solution for what any concerns with story with character with anything. The process itself, albeit a bear to make the show, it’s 11 or 12 days per episode and shooting 25 episodes 10 months out of the year it’s a lot, but I think the process of making it is a lot of fun.
Crave Online: Has anything happened to surprise you?
Milo Ventimiglia: Story wise? When Peter got his powers taken away, surprised the hell out of me man, I thought it was perfect though, could not have been a better thing to happen.
Crave Online: Some people have said that the cast is too big, how do you feel about that?
Milo Ventimiglia: You know, personally I’d like to see smaller stories, or smaller character groupings. One episode deals with two or three heroes then the next episode deals with different ones, you know like a bigger A story and a tiny, tiny B story. It’s tough when you have all these great people with interesting stories, you want to balance it out. But, personally if they took me out of- - or if I was working on and off every other episode I’d be happy with that, I’d be fine with it. I can see where it adds to confusion, but at the same time I know why people want it. They want to know what’s going on with all these people and how they relate to each other.
Crave Online: How do you like working with an ensemble cast?
Milo Ventimiglia: I think it’s great, it gives us an opportunity to take a break and focus on some other jobs and things in town. At the same time the work isn’t so sporadic that we get lost in the shuffle. Honestly it’s a pleasure to work with a big group of people.
Crave Online: We know some fans who are begging for a Heroes movie, is there any chance of the show moving to the big screen?
Milo Ventimiglia: I’ve never heard about that. I think if they did I’d wanna audition for Nathan. I’m sure if they did that they’d probably have a bigger budget and more time to work with something, but I’m sure the series would have to end before we started worrying about a movie, shit man we make a movie every week.
Crave Online: The show is full of surprises, how hard is it to keep things fresh?
Milo Ventimiglia: Hard at times, I’ll be honest man its slow going, when you work with a character on TV you know you’re going to be with him for 10 months out of the year, 25 episodes. Ina feature film your there for three months and you have a beginning a middle and an end. You know where you’re gonna start and you know where you’re gonna finish. On TV you don’t know, it goes up and down and all around, so I think to keep it interesting, keep it fresh, we as actors have to keep on our toes and make sure what we’re doing is consistently moving forward. I always try and keep it interesting and a lot of that is to make it fun.
Crave Online: We know you’re a comic book fan, what are some of your favorite books right now?
Milo Ventimiglia: Kick-Ass, which is great. Y The Last Man was awesome, that’s something that just kinda like shook me, I read it and got the chills a bunch of times thinking about stuff. Drafted, Drafted is a great book. The Wolverine series Logan? I thought that was great, I dug X-Men 3. The last Ultimates was pretty good, then there was a Sub Mariner that Steven Johnson wrote that I was so into.
Crave Online: Do you have any film projects in the works right now?
Milo Ventimiglia: I’m doing a movie for Sony, on my next break which we’re actually producing called Three Days to Love in LA, it’s kind of a hitman love story. Other than that I have like three movies that are all coming out within the next year
Crave Online: Any concerns about being type cast as Peter Petrelli?
Milo Ventimiglia: No, whenever my agent says hey we need to send tape on you to a casting director or producer for this movie he wants to know which Heroes episode do you want to send, and it’s no no no don’t send that it’s a specific character, people may know it, there’s a popularity to the show and for me personally I like to tailor each character that I play specifically to what the project is. I’m not too worried about it, you know if I landed a role in a movie based on a Marvel comic character wearing a mask and jumping around with batons or anything like that it would be like f**k it, who cares that would be awesome.
