You won't hear about what happened in the latest episode of Triad's new series, Destroying Angel, from coworkers around the water cooler. People magazine won't feature its stars on the cover, and TV Guide doesn't even register its presence. But to a small, devoted cult of followers, this past season has brought the brightest new drama in years, and to Triad, a channel previously available to only a couple thousand satellite and digital viewers nationwide, a dramatic surge in business.
Destroying Angel centers on the life of Michael Ashton (played by Jon Arthur), a mild and humble professor of mycology (the study of mushrooms and other fungi), and his interactions with the students and other faculty at the University of Twisted Elm, Michigan. While most of the stories remain physically within the biology department and the music department in which Ashton's wife, Vivian (Elizabeth Shure), teaches piano, the characters weave in cosmopolitan nuances and narratives that span recorded history. The show is the brainchild of Harold Lexington, Sr., who wrote the entire first season and personally managed the funding. Knotmag recently spoke to Lexington in a phone interview about the motivation behind his new project.
Knotmag: What was the original conception of Destroying Angel, and how did it come to be a television series on Triad?
Harold Lexington, Sr.: Well, it was originally just a joke. I woke up one morning with the idea of creating a pilot for a show that could be billed as one of those mildly edgy, T-and-A action series on Fox or the WB. It would be called Destroying Angel, and I'd get a Queen cover band to do the theme song. The story itself, of course, would be very bland and about a mycology professor. Very uninteresting guy. So the idea wouldn't leave me alone, and I started imagining the promo spots and planning out the relations between characters. Pretty soon I was so invested in my idea that I decided to actually write that pilot, and I didn't want to have to tone it down or make it 'interesting' enough for one of those major networks.
I'd rather not bore you with the finances, but I had enough to start production even without an outlet or official sponsors, which is something I realize I'm very fortunate for. I was more concerned with putting out this season and probably calling it quits afterward than trying for a viable product. Triad jumped at the opportunity to air a program that was already on film and didn't need an advance, though it was still a bit, let's say bizarre, and though largely too heady and bland for TV, at times too racy as well. They handled the promotion (I got to keep the Queen-esque theme song) and attracted enough advertising to put another season through, so I'm really overjoyed at the pairing to be honest.
KM: And the joke is that 'Destroying angel' is a mushroom as well.
HL: Yes, 'Destroying angel' is a name applied to between two and four kinds of mushroom in the U.S. Depending on whom you talk to, Amanita bisporigera and Amanita ocreata are either the only two species of Destroying angel, or they are joined by A. verna and A. virosa. Very little has been determined genetically, and mushroom individuals can be very hard to identify and vary a lot within each species. Great example of how existence always overflows the bounds of our understanding. But these are very deadly on ingestion and closely related to the Death cap, or Amanita phalloides, and Fly agaric, Amanita muscaria.
KM: You said the original idea was to write a show about a "very uninteresting guy;" and indeed, your main character, Michael Ashton, is a man who says and does very little. He dominates your story and fills the screen with dead-pan acting and dead air. How did you decide that Ashton was material on which to base a television series?
HL: Well, Ashton does seem to be completely ineffectual and powerless, and not despite, but because of this, people inflict on him the most bizarre of situations. The ambitious and crooked use Ashton because they know he won't oppose them; the cruel beat him down mercilessly because they know he won't fight back; the hopeless and suicidal come to him because they know he won't be able to help them. Because he is the most moderate of humans, the most extreme elements at hand always find their way to him. And with inaction and silence, I think he can move people more than through action. He subjects the viewer to the incessant slide, the continual loss of control most of us feel from day to day. At times we might be able to see things we might do that Ashton fails to and tear our hair out watching him do nothing, but most of the time we tear out our hair because there is nothing to do. That's the way it is in real life, and that's what I wanted to portray in the show.
KM: I believe we actually have a clip. Now this is a scene between Ashton and another biology professor.
HL: Right. The other professor is played by Daniel Ferris, and he's the herpetologist at Twisted Elm. We've seen him before in the Destroying Angel series, always serious and dramatic to a somewhat comical extent. Definitely very old school. This scene is where we first get a glimpse of who he actually is, what his history is like.
KM: Let's roll it.
KM: So there we see death as a major theme, as it has been throughout the series thus far -- so much so that the Washington Post ran a short but scathing review referring to your show as "Morbid Angel." We see dead grandparents and older ancestors advising Michael; Michael's wife, Vivian, is occasionally visited by the ghost of a presumably kidnapped daughter she had before marring Michael. In some scenes the cast of dead characters actually outnumbers the living.
HL: (laughs) I hadn't seen that review; I'd like to add it to the scrapbook. Yeah, death is a recurring theme, certainly. . . . Let me say this: some fungi are parasitic, some even trap small worms and devour them, but for the most part, they are saprophytic, meaning they live off dead, rotting stuff. Most people know that, they've seen mushrooms growing out of old tree trunks or cow pies, et cetera. Now, the mushroom part is only the fungus' reproductive organ -- it's called the 'fruiting body' -- and that's the part that puts out spores that start new individual mushrooms. What can most accurately be considered the 'self' or 'body' of the fungus are these long threads of cells called mycelia that in some species run for miles and will last even after the mushrooms are gone. Those mycelium threads run all through the dead material, gathering its nutrients and bringing them up to the fruiting body. Man, am I getting off track. Anyway, I think that if your subject suggests a form or a metaphor for the story, you should run with it. The characters in Destroying Angel are, like all people, thoroughly embedded in their pasts, they carry their dead with them, though the benefits of that may only be seen in special circumstances, when something is coming to a head, to fruition, and the rest of the time is just burrowing through the filth of remorse and loss. Ashton's grandparents and mother, Vivian's lost child may drag them down, but they are also there to swell a progress, drive the living toward things they wouldn't normally do. For better or worse, I guess.
As for being morbid or obscene, all the sex and violence, though certainly discussed on the show, is more often left ambiguous -- only hinted at -- and never takes place on screen. The graphic elements are never glorified, but instead presented for serious thought in a way more likely to evoke nausea and unease than excitement. How many shows can claim that? But it becomes "graphic" when you make people think about things instead of just portraying them.
KM: But surely the risqué elements of Destroying Angel are a little more deviant and extreme than what other programs might show.
HL: Yes, maybe, but those other shows are driving the deviance. If you keep broadcasting this big-tits, rippling-biceps kind of sexuality, you're going to force some people out on their own. They think they're out of the norm. The more strictly you enforce a 'normal' sexuality, the more backlash you're going to see.
And you can't teach people that sex is graceful or kind when there is a hell of a lot of people teaching a different gospel hands-on, so to speak. At best, it's a fumbling compassion or raw pleasure. All that glorifying it does is make a lot of people disappointed with perfectly acceptable sex lives and make young folks coming to sex with the mind that it's a glorious experience and maybe getting themselves into situations that will teach them reality the brutal way. Hate to slaughter anyone's sacred cow, but toning down the euphoria and centrality of sex a little wouldn't hurt. As for violence, I hope I don't have to say too much about that. It's a reality and is sometimes necessary. We can show that, but we're obligated to portray it in a realistic way. We don't need to breed bloodlust with rapid-fire action sequences; it'll survive on its own.
KM: Do you really hate to slaughter anyone's sacred cow?
HL: Well, no, I guess not -- what's yours? Maybe there's an episode in it.
NOTE: The Triad Channel will air Destroying Angel's one-hour season finale on Thursday, April 22, at 8:00 pm. Call your local digital cable or satellite provider for details.
