Michael Cuesta is well known for his commercialmaking exploits which led to his making a major mark in independent features. On the latter score, his L.I.E. was nominated for the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize back in 2001 and for Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director, Best Feature and Best First Screenplay in ’02. The director’s 12 and Holding earned an Independent Spirit nom for the coveted John Cassavetes Award in ’07. And Cuesta’s Roadie made its world premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Meanwhile over the years Cuesta has managed to successfully diversify into television series. And 2012 looms as perhaps Cuesta’s most significant year in that discipline as he has broken into the major awards circuit with his first career nominations for the DGA Award as well as the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, both for the pilot of the acclaimed psychological thriller Homeland on Showtime. Cuesta is an executive producer on the series, which garnered nine Emmy nominations overall this year (including for Best Drama Series), and directed its pilot and season one finale as well as a couple of episodes in between. A similar directorial workload–the season opener, finale and two other episodes–is on his docket for season two.
Cuesta is gratified over Homeland‘s Emmy nominations. “Personally it means a lot because there’s sacrifice involved when you have to spend time away from your family, shooting in North Carolina and for the second season opener, shooting in Tel Aviv. Professionally,” said Cuesta, “the Emmy nominations recognize that someone with a background in commercials and independent features can come into the television series arena and do a good job. I think it shows that you can cross over to different disciplines and achieve something.”
Cuesta noted that his commercialmaking experience has served him in good stead on the TV program front. “Working with an ad agency, different creatives’ ideas, helped me to deal with the studio and the network. If I didn’t have that training, I wouldn’t have been nearly as good at navigating properly through channels so that we could do the best show possible. You deal with agency creatives, producers and the client, sifting through their ideas, figuring out how to pick and choose what works best. When I walked into the episodic world, my agency dealings helped me make the transition to handle the politics of this business.”
The director’s TV show pedigree includes over the years his helming multiple episodes of HBO’s Six Feet Under, the operatic-style pagan wedding season two finale of True Blood, and the pilot for CBS’ Blue Bloods. Cuesta also directed and exec produced the pilot for Dexter a few years back, as well as multiple episodes in that Showtime hit series’ first season.
Dexter spawns Homeland gig
It was his work on Dexter that turned Showtime onto Cuesta for Homeland. “Showtime had success with me handling controversial, edgy material [with Dexter] and saw that as a fit for Homeland,” related Cuesta who is an executive producer on Homeland along with such colleagues as this year’s Emmy-nominated writers Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon.
Homeland stars Claire Danes as a bipolar CIA agent who believes that a recently discovered POW in Afghanistan has been turned by al-Queda. The show centers on her obsession with this suspect, who is universally regarded as a hero.
What helps to set the show apart, observed Cuesta, is that the show is not an action thriller but more a psychological thriller/drama. “I think that’s another reason Showtime thought I was right for the series based on the few films I had done, which worked more with the psychological aspects of characters. They saw that connection. Homeland examines scars left behind, most notably the psychological scars in a post 9/11 world.”
Indeed the series plays with psychological character-driven overtones akin to The Manchurian Candidate or more recently Michael Clayton.
Meanwhile, Cuesta’s endeavors aren’t confined to Homeland. Back in March, he directed and served as an exec producer on the CBS pilot Elementary, a contemporary Sherlock Holmes drama. Cuesta also has a development deal with CBS and Paramount, which calls for he and his brother Gerald Cuesta to co-write content. Gerald Cuesta co-wrote L.I.E. with Michael Cuesta and Stephen M. Ryder, earning the Independent Spirit nomination for Best First Screenplay. Gerald and Michael Cuesta also teamed to pen Roadie. On the TV side, Gerald Cuesta and Michael Atkinson wrote Babylon Fields, a Michael Cuesta-directed telefilm/pilot for 20th Century Fox and CBS.
Spot aspirations
When his schedule lets up in December, Michael Cuesta hopes to get back into directing commercials. “I remain very interested in directing spots. It’s just been a question of availability,” said Cuesta whose longstanding commercialmaking home had been The Artists Company which owner Roberto Cecchini recently closed after 36-plus years (SHOOTonline, 7/6).
Cuesta is looking to land with another production house to take advantage of his availability come December, noting that he could reunite with some former colleagues at The Artists Company or explore other spot shop options. His spot filmography spans such clients as Ford, Dove, State Farm, and some emotionally moving PSAs on teen alcoholism for The Ad Council.
Homeland‘s nine Emmy nominations are for: Outstanding Drama Series; Outstanding Directing For a Drama Series; Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series (Junie Lowry Johnson, Libby Goldstein, Judy Henderson, Craig Fincannon, Lisa Mae Fincannon); Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For a Drama Series (Jordan Goldman, David Latham); Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music (Sean Callery); Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody); Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison); Outstanding Sound Mixing For a Comedy or Drama Series–One Hour (production sound mixer Larry Long, re-recording mixers Nello Torri and Alan Decker, scoring mixer Larold Rebhun); and Outstanding Writing For a Drama Series (Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Gideon Raff).
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment in an 11-part series that explores the field of Emmy nominees and winners spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, editing, animation and VFX. The series will run right through the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony and the following week’s primetime Emmy Awards live telecast. In addition to appearing on SHOOTonline and in our weekly email newsletter, The SHOOT>e.dition, The Road to Emmy will also have its Part 6 installment in SHOOT’s August 17 print issue (for details on the issue, please visit: www.shootonline.com/go/upcomingissues).
Click here to read The Road to Emmy, Part 1
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 2.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 3.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 5.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 6
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 7.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 8.
